Coyotedancer

Got stuck taking something like Gust, huh? XD (And yeah. It would be nice sometimes to have a choice...)

Eh. The brown version of the mine mapset is just really unattractive, though. I think the purple, as troublesome as it is, is a lot more visually appealing. If I'm going to have to spend half of my character's life underground, I'd rather it be in Purple Hell than trapped in the Mustard Mines.

'About half-way through building the iToys for #32 now (That would be Thaelian, the Sonic/Rad Defender)... ... And I already have a plan in mind for #33. *facepalms again* Still, that Darkity-Dark Blaster will give me three complete pages on Everlasting. My active unwillingness to start a whole new page might be just enough to let me call the collection of magi *DONE* and not add any more... If that's the case, I'm not sure what I'll get up to next. The non-Oranbegan/assorted-mythic-thing 50's that I moved over to Torch to run with friends there are fine on their own. I don't feel the need to add anyone new on that server. Mina, Carwyn, Red Traveller and Shonokin are good as they are. Maybe I'll move Harry over and revisit the unfinished (and basically abandoned-) flock of "bird-things" I left on Excelsior. It's been over a year since I even looked at those characters. I've never even included them in "the count". Of course, if I end up finishing ALL of them... I'll end up with a crew of 45. Ooof. o_0

I'm not sure how much you may or may not remember about the original base raiding system, but the pathing and placement requirements were pretty strict. There's just no way our current building practices would be at all compatible with those requirements. We break those rules constantly, and that in turn would break the way the raiding system was designed to work. As I understand it, it's not just a matter of "Okay, this turret was turned upside down and half sunk into the floor to make the base for a telescope, so it's harder to hit". It's "This is in the wrong kind of room, with no power source, in an illegal and inaccessible position rendering the item/base/instance invalid, so let me crash in spectacular fashion because the raid system is not coded to handle that".

This comes up every so often... and the answer is always the same. It's about as likely to happen as the servers sprouting wings, turning into pigs and taking flight. The way we build bases these days breaks all of the placement and pathing rules that base-raiding required. If you want raiding back, you'd have to kiss things like objects in hallways, objects that clip through the walls and through each other, disconnected rooms and raid items used for non-raid construction goodbye. I doubt any of us who build would be very happy with that.

I have a very silly "concept character" named Bahir... What I wanted, essentially, was a Photonic Sentinel. So I made a human-only perma-Lightform Peacebringer. He turned out to be a heck of a lot of fun to play and I'm very confident about jumping into the middle of things with him, leading to one team dubbing him the 'Fearless Fuzzball of Fury'. Apparently they'd never seen anyone play a PB quite like that before. Or at least, they hadn't seen one do that and survive. I got some "well dones". XD (And yes. Bahir has a collection of KB-to-KDs in his build. I'm not a monster. )

For what it's worth, I pretty much always run my support characters with mid-level teams... and as I said in the Market forum thread about spending INF, I habitually look at my team-mates info panes when I do that... I'd say that under half have *ANY* set bonuses or procs listed at that level. The rest tend to have a few things listed... Procs and Specials, in particular... But nothing too extensive. A lot of people out there are running on mostly-SOs or mostly-commons in the mid-game. As for the roleplayers, even if they aren't power-gamers they ARE people with a pretty high personal investment in both the game itself and, probably more importantly when it comes to time and resource investment, in their specific roleplayed characters. It only makes sense that they would want nice toys for those favorites, so I'm not sure they can really been looked at as Joe & Jane Average players any more than serious PvPers or the theory-crafting MIDS-Wizards.

I have a kin/fire and a claws/fire and they handle just fine. I'm not sure why they're such rare birds. (My pair were both "unicorn" characters. At the point I leveled them to 50, no one else had done so according to the AT/set data the devs posted. A few others have made them since then, but they're still really unusual combinations.)

That's something else that comes with having had a ludicrous collection of alts... You learn how different sets handle, and what works well with what. After awhile, you pick up on the tricks of the different sets, and while there are variations between ATs, there are also enough similarities that playing, say, a Dark Corruptor will remind you a lot of playing your Dark Defender. That Claws Stalker you leveled last spring is a reasonably close cousin to the Claws Scrap that you built last Tuesday, and that kind of thing. I'd agree that the very FIRST of anything you play probably ought to be leveled in way that lets you pick up familiarity... But once you've had experience with the AT and the sets the character is made of? You're already ahead of that game.

More INF is a useful thing... and as you already pointed out in the first post, sometimes it's just flat-out *FUN* to jump into a huge pile of red and purple goons. And that's as true solo or duo as it is when you're right in the middle of an eight member wrecking ball of a smash team.

Yikes! XD A solo Iron Eagle run at +4/x8 would be harrowing... With THAT many goons? Somebody's eventually going to get lucky, no matter how careful you are or how solid your leveling build is. The numbers would just be against you all the way through.

If you're into the standard MMO Social Hub standing-around-talking-about-everyone's-personal-issues/sex-lives/random-kinks-of-the-day conversational/"BarP" thing, I doubt you'll have much trouble in this game no matter what kind of character you come up with. There are some very odd ducks in the D and under Atlas' boots, and I suspect it would take an actual, determined effort to come up with something that would be deemed too off-the-wall for those groups. Even a pulpy, amazonian Space Vixen from Jupiter isn't likely to raise many eyebrows. (Although an asexual character with no interest in interpersonal drama might! XD) Genre and tone are likely to be much more important to the self-described "serious roleplayers", from what I've seen... But many (Maybe even *most* these days-) of the Serious Roleplayers tend to stick to playing with their SGs and friend-groups. If you're looking at joining one of those, having a solid conversation with the rest of the group about expectations and lore conventions and all of that is going to be pretty important. Establish where you... and they... stand right off the bat. That ought to take care of most of the potential problems, so you don't end up bringing the Tick while everyone else joined the Watchmen.

Word. I don't crank up the difficulty all that much when I'm soloing, either. Soloing at +4 with piles of goons is for the characters who have their set-builds complete, or nearly so. Or for the ones who have that done, plus their iToys on top of it. Generally, it's not for the lowbies and mid-levels I'm running on common IOs or "whatever DO/SO drops the game gave me". I usually tend to start at even-level or +1 with a new solo character, depending on the AT, and then switch to +2 once they have SOs or common IOs. Some of the tougher ones who can handle it eventually end up at +3, but that's usually not until later in the game, when they have more of their powers and at least the beginnings of their "real" build... Number of goons varies A LOT from character to character and AT to AT over here. For a Tank or a Brute, I'm likely to go with a lower (+) and higher (x). My Stalkers do it the other way around; harder targets in smaller batches. My support types rarely solo, so it's not really a concern for them either way. But, yeah... Soloing +4/x8 is for the grown-ups in my gang.

New content would help, yes. Although after awhile it would stop being novel and I'd be right back in "Oh, no. Not THAT arc again"-territory. As for what would keep me playing at low levels in spite of finding it pretty much the opposite of fun... I honestly have no idea. Because aside from regular doses of new content, anything else that was proposed to improve the experience would no doubt trigger howls of OMGPowerCreep!! and OMGTheGameIsAlreadyTOOEASYandYOUJUSTMADEITWORSE!! from the usual suspects.... Because heaven forbid any of us *not* have to spend our characters' lowbie levels with END issues, no status protection and the inability to hit the broad side of a barn... with or without any relief from the Same Old Content issue.

I handled my Anima Sola and Mist in Moonlight the same way. In Sola's case case in particular, the pair didn't always see eye-to-eye on particular subjects, which led to some... interesting... conversations. XD

Sharkhead Island After a Certain Dust-up At Villa Requin Kaikara Midnighter or not, the man in the dark coat wasn’t particularly adept at perception-enhancing magic, Kaikara decided, watching him from the edge of a convenient rooftop. Granted, pulling a veil of shadows around herself from the shifting darkness of the Void did make her very difficult to spot, but one solid Detection charm would still have given her away… If he had thought to cast one… Which he had not. She’d followed the clues pulled from the Family’s ransom video across the Isles as quickly as she could, but it hadn’t been fast enough. By the time she got to Villa Requin, this man… The one Ashley had called “Darin”… had already infiltrated the building and found two of the mobsters' captives. Brighid and Azuria were safe, at least, and though he looked like the sort who might try to wring a little extra profit out of the situation, he hadn’t. She was impressed by that. ‘But where’s Tina?’ she wondered, dropping into the alley to follow the mercenary’s path. The other two had talked about the Family taking her “elsewhere” before Darin’s arrival, but that could mean anywhere. ‘Hope this guy’s got more of a clue than I do.’

'Thing is... many of us who play here have (Or have had in the past-) *A LOT* of different characters. Maybe a ridiculous number of them in some cases. (Altitis? >_> Who? <_< Me?! Never! *coughs* You can't prove anything.) We've run those same lowbie arcs so many times that no matter how much fun they were the first hundred-odd times through, they've become as dull as dirt over the course of all that punch-rinse-and-repeat. Speaking only for myself? If it weren't for the ice ramps (Which will never not be fun-), I'd probably tell Frosty he could HAVE the Hollows and be done with it at this point. I have absolutely no desire to slog through the majority of the content that exists in the early levels of this game ever again. If other people still love it? Excellent! They're welcome to it, and I'm not going to tell them it's BadWrongFun. But I'm also not going to join them in running it anymore. It's just not what I want to spend my limited play time doing. Looking at the number of us who short-cut to mid-levels with DFB/DIB or AE farming, I'm probably not the only one who's at that point.

Why are you guys still taking Zee's bait?

Chipped Talon is for the low level ones, Castigator is for higher level version. 'Not sure about the arcs, honestly... I don't think I've ever had a character that's done the First Ward/Night Ward stuff without ALSO getting the badge.

It depends on rather or not you have the defeats badge for the lower-level Talons, IIRC

My Kin/Bio/Dark is the favorite here on Homecoming... Tough enough to stand up to just about anything I throw her into, and hits like a sack of bricks. Back-in-the-day it was my DB/WP/Mu. That one was just stylish, and when paired with a perma-summoned Adept partner (Yeah. Serious Recharge Monster was serious, and I had invested a lot into her NPC companion'), they collectively turned into something of a nightmare.

Midnighter’s Club Two Days After “The Incident” Kaikara (with a "guest appearance" by Tommy) “No, I’m serious… He fell asleep in the middle of all that static and smashing and punching and he STAYED THAT WAY! For the ENTIRE FIGHT! … It was ridiculous.” Perched on the corner of the reception desk, with a loaded Nick’s chili-weenie in one hand and a ridiculously colorful Unicorn Slupie in the other, a dark-haired girl with a light, Etoilean accent and wire-rimmed glasses gestured vaguely to the polished white skull that rested beside her, laughing. “And that was AFTER he’d already lost his lunch because of the sewer smell.” “I know everybody has bad days, but... Man. Yeah. That sounds like a real doozy for old Justin, alright.” The ghost’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere, bound to the skull like the entity himself, but not contained by it. ‘You all handled the situation though, right? I’m not going to hear about Bricks turning into some kind of Freak-a-palooza sink-hole with homeless spooks all over it, am I?” “Pretty sure we did. Even if some of the old city’s corridors or caverns do get flooded, Apallos’ cabal can fix that a whole lot easier than they could fix whole sections caving in… I just wonder why Dreck is so worried about this guy getting out? I know they had issues. But… Turning the whole Zig into rubble? THAT’s more than just “issues”. That kind-of sounds personal… And now Arte says that the guy those Hellions were working for is somewhere in there, too… In the Zig… Some guy who calls himself ‘Tempter’.” She shook her head. “One of us is going to have to follow up on that. I don’t like it, but Artemian will probably have to do that on his own, since I’ve still got to catch up to the Family before they do something really bad to Tina and the others.” “Sounds like you’re up to your eyes, kiddo. Your side-kick, too… Promise an old man you’ll be careful?” “We will.” She grinned. “Well, as much as we can be, anyway. Hero-business and all.” “You’re going to give me grey hair. You know that, right?”

Nope. They may SAY it's about XPs and merits and all that.... But we all know the real truth. It's about the ice slides. *nods*

Dear Diary- I wonder about Manticore sometimes… Surely, a person who has so much experience in the hero business and who’s been a member of the Freedom Phalanx for so long must be good for *something* other than his cosmically large expense account… But I admit that I have yet to figure out exactly what that might be. Every time I’ve had to work with him, I’ve found myself asking “Why couldn’t Numina have come with me? Or Penny? Or Brawler? You know… Someone USEFUL??” I keep hoping that someday Manticore and I will be assigned a task together and he’ll show me why he deserves to be taken seriously. Today was not that day. I’ve already talked about the big riot at the Ziggurat in Brickstown, how something was causing earthquakes all around it and how I met one of our people when I was out helping the PPD catch their escaped prisoners… A Ruin mage named Apallos… Who told me that the tremors were threatening the entire district of Oranbega that’s underneath the prison. He and the other mages in his cabal were doing the best they could to keep the city stable, but sooner or later something had to be done to fix the problem. I went to the prison to try to find out what was going on, but ended up having to chase down about a million Hellions and Freak guys instead. And then Unai needed me at Portal. And then I had to deal with the Family in Atlas, where they grabbed Gregor and Azuria and so I never did find out anything about the earthquakes… Apallos kind-of had to take things into his own hands while I was running all over Paragon City. He talked one of the Freakshow guys that we had met in the sewers into going with him to explain to Manticore and Swan and the Brickstown PPD what was going on underground. Another Freak named Dreck was planting sonic bombs because he *wanted* to collapse everything! (Olm says that Dreck and that Upstart guy who started the riot have “a real beef” with each other, and that Dreck was super serious about not letting Upstart get out of jail… Wrecking the whole place to stop him seems like overkill to me, buuuuut “over-the-top” is kind-of the Freakshow’s THING, so-) Anyway, Apallos sent over a spectral last night to tell me what he’d done… and to say that Manticore HAD A PLAN. I should have known it was going to be nuts. >_< Manticore’s answer to the sonic bomb problem? He wanted to flood the sewers. All of them. The entire network of tunnels under the prison. To keep that from becoming a total disaster for us AND for Paragon City, *someone* had to go down there and manually set all of the proper sluice gates and access points to control the water flow. Guess who those “someones” had to be… We also had to take the Freakshow guy. (He’s a Super Stunner named ReVolting, and is that ever the truth, Diary. The guy is a total creep.) And Manticore. To “keep an eye on us”. Sigh. I think he ended up regretting his choice to come with along, though. It seems like he may not be as used to running around in smelly sewers as most of us in the hero business. We tried very hard to not to laugh at him, but it was hard and I was glad I was wearing my mask. The Freaks had sent a bunch of big guys with speaker attachments and awful taste in music to plant their bombs, and since we were there and they were there (and the Freaks really needed to be somewhere else before the place flooded, anyway-) we arranged for them to go back to nice, quiet jail cells. ReVolting had wandered off on his own for some reason, and got into it with some of the other Freaks, and we had to rescue him. That was annoying. I used my Concealment cantrips on everyone after that, just to keep the big guys from seeing us and picking fights before we were ready for them. Eventually we got all of the gates closed and the sluices in place and found the flood controls… And that’s when ReVolting decided to be an even BIGGER JERK than usual, and tried to stop us from flooding everything. It didn’t go very well for him, because Apallos and I had kind-of been expecting somebody to do something stupid… either Mister Freakshow trying to stop us or Mister Hero-guy trying to arrest us or SOMETHING. We hit him really, really hard. Or, I should say, Apallos and I hit him really, really hard. Manticore got caught up in the static field and spent the entire fight sleeping. He missed everything and didn’t even know what had happened until it was all over. I’m kind-of glad he can’t speak Oranbegan, though… As we were getting ready to go, Apallos laughed and said “We really should have left him there. I’m sure the water would have woken him up.” It was tempting, Diary. It really was. -k PS: While I was running around the sewers and hopefully not flooding whole neighborhoods of the old city, Artemian was out chasing down the rest of the captives the Hellions had taken. He found out that this “Tempter” fellow we saw mentioned in their instruction letters is someone inside the Zig. We still don’t know why they want all that junk, but it seems to have something to do with the demons they’re working with. I told him to keep looking into all of that. I need to find Tina, and Gregor and Azuria… and that Dagger, too… But one thing at a time, Diary. One thing at a time.

That's pretty much what all of my support characters are for these days... My Time/Dark Defender is about the only one of them who ever runs at 50. The rest? It's much more fun to drop them in with a crew of 30-somethings. XD