The Witchfire

The Justiciars SG was infamous for this, esp one of their leaders. They'd even file petitions against names they wanted and then snap them up if they got the name striken from another character. It caused a major schism between the United Sentinels of America and the Justiciars. If your experience was different, awesome. Virtue had some absolutely amazing people on it, but that doesn't mean everybody's experience was the same. Likewise, we can't shoot down ideas like this thread based on fears of the lowest common denominator. We sbould be aware of the possibility though.

Right off the bat, waiting till you're finished is a never-ending process. There will always be another character concept or build to try out. You're also missing out on the fun of RP'ing your character's growth. That was one of the things I liked best about the Teen themed SG I was in back in Live days. Think of it as the game equivilent of finding work / life balance. What have you REALLY won if you've turned entertainment into a grind? 🙂

I've got to agre with Ultimo. I've seen some utterly brilliant fake danger rooms back on Virtue in the Live days. Heck, I had a shooting range and a basic danger room with a fake giant spider created by clipping a bunch of things together. It's not the same as having lie target dummies or even something like an AE access door for bases, which would probably be the truest copy of an X Men style danger room that you could get.

You're completely overlooking human nature, not to mention that "Game Theory" teaches people they're not winning unless others are losing. It doesn't matter IF they need it. Some folks will take all they can just because they can. The ONLY way this works is if the devs worked in an account age check into the fund's access.

A ton of replies here already. Let's see if I can put my thoughts together here... I guess I wouldn't have any problem with marketeers IF it was straight buying and selling; pure capitalism with morals as opposed to market manipulation. "Flipping" being the easiest example there. Reading some of the early replies, some folks have strange definitions of it also. The straight real world definition is buying something at a low price and turning around selling it at a higher price. THAT by it's very definition is inflation. As a side note, yes, the money that farmers flood into the economy is also a factor, probably a bigger one, but we're talking about maniulating the market for insane profits here. The OP bragged about being able to make 200 milion influence an hour. Geting back to flipping... It may seem like a harmless game if you're already in the elite, super rich crowd of veteran players. It makes it extremely difficult for casual and new players to get up to speed though. WoW at it's peak was a great example. Level 5 basic gear going for millions of gold. Why? The long term veterans could afford it and didn't care. During my brief time in that game, I tried to sell the same lowbie gear at reasonable prices only to hve flippers buy and immediately repost it for 1000x more. Star Trek's introduction of the Ferengi and The Wolf of Wall Street were supposed to serve as warnings against predatory capitalism, not endorsements. Before anybody says I should have marked up the stuff the same way, let's be real. The veterans that MIGHT buy stuff at that level were PLing their alts with their friends / guilds, outleveled the gear instantly and didn't even need OR BUY it. I watched that same stuff sit there for weeks on end. Cornering the market was strictly about ego gratification and shutting out new players. Is THAT what we want COH to turn into? Games die when the player base squeezes new and casuals out of the game. As far as the slow deflation goes... Increasing the supply of purple drops, Hami Enhancements, etc... is the only realistic way to keep the game's economy from spiraling out of control. Given what the costs on alot of purple set recipes are, I have to wonder how much money is truly enough for some players.

OK, let me start by saying just because you've never seen something doesn't mean it doesn't exist or hasn't happened. I've never been to Australia but it's still there, lol. "Even on Virtue" meant that before the other servers were getting shut down or dying out (leading to the servr being invaded by farmers and trolls), Virtue's RPers were genraly more tolerant in my experience than the average player when it came to game mechanics issues. Funny you mention Champion server also, because that's where my first blaster started out; Energy Energy also. My job and other real life issues kept me from having a regular play schedule, so I had difficulties growing a friends list, which was all but vital finding teams. Groups repeatedly refused to let an unknown KB blaster on the team, I was outright told repeatedly that was the issue. It took me FOREVER to get to the mid 20s and the only reason that character made it to 50 at all was Breaker Udual let me on his Family farm runs. That was pre AE days when PI missions got farmed over and over w/o closing the mision out. Strong Girl's antics: That was WELL before Fold Space and it's power set were available. Clockwork seem to be less KB vulnerable than they used to back in those days also, but my experience with them since returning is a little limited. Power sets can and do get tweaked over the years. The incident with Strong Girl stuck in my mind because she was just doing it to troll the team too. If she hadn't been an SG member, I'd have booted her from the team. We wiped 6 or 7 times on one mission at standard dificulty... Against CLOCKWORK. Never should have happened. Regardless, all I was trying to do was getan overal feling for the community's view on the subject

OK, I'm going to necro this one since another thread had me briefly grumbling with my past experiences playing blasters. First, let me say there's alot of good, but conditional advice on blasting in the thread. I say conditional because most of it seems to assume the character is already at 50 and possibly also has been sugar daddy'ed into IO sets. The game plays completely diferent when you're new and broke. Doubly so if you play at odd hours and can't make steady friends for teaming. That was my situation the first year or so of playing Live. I started playing blasters because, as Miyagi said "Best way avoid punch, no be there". Side note; anybody else find it silly that a man who had been in the US for almost 50 years at that point spoke such broken English? 😄 Geting back on topic, the advice I got was always the same ; fly / hover and kite. I'd always get knocked out of the air though, or run out of space to backpedal in the instanced maps. I think it took 3 years of soloing to get that first Blaster to 50, and the character never was able to farm up a single IO set. The time was partialy because I racked up so much debt i'd set the character aside and let it burn off. Instead of sounding like I'm just bitching, the general problem I found was that somewhere betwen 15 and 20, the mobs became too big and too damage resistant to take down before I'd get mobbed. I got a bit better over the years, but I gotta say Blasters were probbaly my least favorite class. If anybody has tips for low / poor characters I'm all ears.

Knockback, or at least the energy blast set (with it's knockback), came up quite a bit in my thread about building a power armor character. Based on that and some of the positive reactions to my PB character, I'm wondering if KB is still the same vile concept it used to be in Live days. I'm guesing some of it has to do with characters being so overpowered nowadays. "Scatter a mob and have them pull in another mob or two? Who cares, I farm 6 mobs at a time." I can remember dealing with it at middle levels on live though. Worst instance was running misions as an SG and having Strong Girl get us wiped repeatedly via Shield Rushing Clockwork, scattering them everywhere, and then getting shot from 10 different directions by the mob and all the nearby ones that got aggro'ed by the first mob being knocked all over the map. Hel, I even had to retire my Energy / Energy blaster because nobody would group with a KB causing character, even on Virtue.

It took me a while to get back to this. Real life has ben crazy, and what litle spare time I did have has ben spent in the game for stress relief. Something I'm sure most of us can relate to. 😆 I have to admit, I didn't expect the topic to spawn such an in depth disusion about Tony's powers specifically. There were alot of great replies here and all of them went into the final concept of my character. My desire to build something SIMILAR in apearance and powers came from the love of the general idea of powered armor, the Champions Online power armor AT (which I wish Homecoming would duplicate as a power set; something similar to arsenal mastery perhaps), and a great RP concept character in CO that I had. I'l have to add a pic when I'm back home instead of replying ia phone at work. I ultimately went with Sentinel AT with Radiation and Invulnerability. I admit I keep second guesing the Radiation choice, but I figured no KB would be better for teams, plus it has the bonus of defense reduction. Force would definitely beter duplicate the feel of repulsors though, and possibly help soloing. My character is level 11 though and can wade into Perez Park mobs with little trouble. FWIW, I think Sentinel fits Iron Man a litle better, at least until higher levels when all those ancilary and extra pool powers can be added in. Tony has a ton of defensive systems that most fans forget about. The suit is normally environmentaly sealed for starters. That means he can't be gassed, can fly in space, is proteted from disease, etc... A blaster build could certainly work, but I'm a bit biased there as blaster play was the bane of my existence on Live despite have 4 level 50s. That's a rant for another thread though 🙂

On a more serious note... I'm newly returned so i didn't realize the fire farm missions were such an issue. Maybe the devs could set up a choice window at the start of opening up the AE interface to choose farm or story content. Yeah, I know the search options SHOULD help there, but let's face it, people are lazy.

I can do you one almost as bad, LOL. Back in the Live days, i made a mision tailored to my SG, based on DC's "Darkest Night" storyline. Gave all the returned to life "villains" dark melee and regeneration... BAD things man, bad things. The whole SG got quickly and severely beat down multiple times before we gave up on the idea, LOL

I may still be relearning the mecbanics, BUT i was able to visualize those parts & how they came together just fine. Maybe I've spent too mucb time at Icon since 2004, rofl.

Being newly returned and still learning all the cbanges, I have to ask though; is the Sentinel as durable as it seems? I've only hit 10 with Witchfire, but I love the Sentinel AT so far. Obviously I'm not expecting Tank or Brute level durability, but I want a character that can still take some hits. 🙂

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way and save a few replies; every character with any combination of powers COULD be conceived as having them come from power armor. 🙃 I'm specifically asking about trying to build a concept like Iron Man or the Power Armor AT from that OTHER superhero MMO (lol). Tank or scrapper with ranged powers coming from the higher level sets? Sentinel give you range early, but can it get as tanky as Iron Man? Anyway, I'm just looking for some creative build ideas for such a concept. 😀

A ton of fabulous information there. Thanks. 🙂 And yes, I agree that each AT should have a slightly more defined role on a team.