Mjolnerd

I don't know, I think their power level is Tsootable for the zone.

I've always been a fan of Seer Marino's "Oh, Wretched Man!" arc, which is available a lot sooner (15 or so?) and felt like a "Ghost Widow patron arc" before Ghost Widow even had a patron arc.

I mentioned upthread that I do exactly that. Because I don't, personally, care about what's happening there, but also don't begrudge people using the General chat channel for general chatting. I simply take my leave without complaint. Given that both channels are enabled for all characters by default, I don't think it would be unfair to presume that anyone aware of one is probably also aware of the other. At the very least, someone asking for advice on a particular in-game subject in General is likely to be gently directed toward a more focused, topic-specific channel where they can get more focused, topic-specific answers. Either way, though, that (obviously) wasn't the point I was making. My point was, if someone has a game-related topic they want to discuss, there are dedicated channels already in place for most of those topics -- Help, LFG, Arena, et cetera. And those players should absolutely take those discissions the appropriate channels. But the purpose of the General channel is, again, just to be... well, general. It's the "whatever" channel. Unless we're going to advocate for the unnecessary, draconian step of demanding that nobody ever use in-game chat to discuss any topics not directly related to the game, General is absolutely the right place for idle communication and socialization. As long as they're not posting anything to it that's harmful or otherwise a violation of HC's rules -- and as long as they're not flooding the chat with multiple lines at a time and preventing others from using it -- then whatever people are posting, whether or not you or I personally care about it, isn't "spamming," it's just chatting.

Great White Shark reminds everyone to stay delicious safe at the beach over the holiday weekend!

I usually start with a name. That likely suggests a look and/or powers and I go from there. So concept first. Sometimes I'll get it into my head that I want to try out a specific powerset instead, and I'll try to find an available name from there, but more often than not that's an exercise in frustration -- especially with sets that sort of demand a name that refers to them instead of basic/generic ones. (If I'm trying to make a character with fire powers, I want a "fire name." If I'm trying to make one that fights with a stick, there are a million different directions I can go so it's easier.) So that usually ends up tabled. It's the reason I still don't have a high-level Plant controller or dominator despite having desperately wanted one since the set debuted with CoV. Once I've got a name and a concept and a costume, I'll start actually playing. Run through the tutorial for the badge, followed by soloing the Matthew Habashy (or equivalent redside) arcs to get a feel for the powersets without the pressure of pulling my weight on a team. Maybe refine the idea a bit. Oh, I like these powersets but I think I'd prefer them on a brute instead of a tank, or vice-versa. That kind of thing. If feel like I need to, I'll delete and remake the character; by then I've probably only invested about an hour into it so no big deal. After that I'll grab a team if I can. DFB, level-appropriate contact missions, 50+ PI radios, whatever's happening at the time and will have me. My work schedule means I'm sometimes on at relatively quiet times so maybe instead I'll end up soloing the King's Row missions up through Veles too. I try to pick up TFs when I'm able, but if the next one on the list isn't forming up right now, oh well. I'll go back and do it eventually. At this point, whenever I level I'm probably just picking whatever powers seem fun or useful or concept-appropriate at the time. Once I hit 20-25 or so that's when I know this is a "serious" character, so I'll scour the forums here for a build, modify it to suit my tastes (usually just trading out travel powers or replacing epic powersets that don't fit my theme -- enough with the ice armor already, people), and respec into that. I fill slots with attuned IOs when I'm able, but mostly I use SOs as placeholders until I hit 50 and then slowly replace them one at a time. I don't join other people's farms, but I do have a solo farmer that funds all of my alts. So any time one of them is too broke to use the "upgrade all" button on the enhancement screen I switch over, run the Comic-Con fire farm once, sell the drops, and email the resulting 4-5 million inf to myself to be claimed by that lowbie and keep their SOs green for another couple of levels. Takes about ten minutes. Then I leave that alt parked at level 30 or so, create a dozen new ones, and never go back to that one again.

That's more of a Help channel discussion, isn't it? General chat is for, well, general chatting. For what it's worth, last night my team spent an entire TF conversing about music and all I did was show up with a character whose name vaguely reminded someone of a song title. It's a subject that gets people talking.

There's a reason it's become kind of a cliche around these parts to point out that every powerset or combination of powersets can be good depending on... well, a lot of factors. Less so nowadays with the player balance shifted more to the hardcore/performance-focused end of the scale as a result of the game dying and coming back. Recently I've seen a lot more "Kinetic Melee only does 95% as much damage as most other sets, it's broken and unplayable" or "Storm Blast takes twenty entire seconds to completely clear a 54/x8 spawn, what were the devs thinking releasing something so worthless?" kinds of sentiments than I ever did on live. But... eh. They're both fine. Perfectly cromulent sets that are fun to play even if they aren't "I win" buttons. Anyway. I have a Street Justice/Regeneration brute that's also fine. Regen may not be as totally unstoppable as some would like, and it could definitely use a going-over next time someone wants to look at improving existing sets, but it's absolutely workable as is. Even the "worst set in the game" is still a solid 7 out of 10. In fact, building for recharge so I can always have the clicky powers in Regen up when I need them means I can also activate Spinning Strike more often, and that's maybe my favorite individual power to use in the whole game -- the clicks-to-joy ratio on that one is through the roof for me. She won't be tanking Lord Recluse solo or anything, but she stays upright and does awesome spinning kicks that knock whole groups of bad guys on their butts, so I'm happy.

You're forgetting who you're talking to -- if Snarky were to form a TF, he'd quit immediately after it started just out of habit.

Or they're using it as in icebreaker, attempting to start a conversation and establish common ground with their fellow human beings: "I'm listening to [band] right now." "Oh, cool, I'm a fan of [band] too, what do you think of their new album?" But hey, speaking of "par for the course in today's ridiculous online life," let's just assume the worst of everyone. Makes it much easier to look down our noses despite not knowing them.

Released Uraniumania, Pharaoh's Curse, and Bloodstreak (didn't end up keeping it).

It's not impossible to abuse something like that, but depending on the specific implementation it could be made very difficult. Like, needing to organize dozens of people difficult. Which would probably make actually performing the abuse more trouble than it was worth. Oof, no. Ever seen what happens when a post in a Facebook group gets removed by a moderator? Invariably the person who had their post moderated reacts by taking the oh-so-mature route of immediately making another post, throwing around baseless accusations of "abuse of power" and angrily and publicly demanding that the mods explain why their previous post was removed. (Hint: the answer is always "because it broke the rules, genius.") Mute notifications would only lead to the muted parties spamming the chat to whine and complain about the report, trying to play it off as both not caring, and as the other person being some kind of weak, thin-skinned loser who needs to just get over it. And then everybody else would have to mute them in chat too. What absolutely wouldn't happen is the person who was acting like a douchecanoe in the first place deciding not to do that anymore. They might also decide to single out the person they presume sent it (even if it's anonymous, they'd probably figure it out based on pushback they got in the channel before the mute came through) and trying to harass them.

I know there's been some debate over this outlook, but I propose using the names of the channels as a guide. I can't imagine a clearer or more concise method than that. In the case of this particular topic, I'd say as long as it's kept to General and not, say, Help or LFG, hey, go nuts, kids. Or maybe a temporary mute that doesn't permanently ignore the person but does silence them for some amount of time? An hour, a day, a week, I don't know. Just because I don't feel like dealing with someone right now doesn't mean I won't change my mind (or they won't change their behavior) later or in a different situation.

At the end of the day, which armchair copyright lawyer is correct about what constitutes infringement and what doesn't, isn't really all that relevant. Whether HC wants to take on the risk of running afoul of Disney's (or WB's, or any other massive corporate entity's) large, highly-trained and expensive legal team very much is. A court case is a massive headache even if you win -- and let's face it, they wouldn't. Create ripoffs at your own risk. The graveyards are full of people who had the right of way.

That might be the design intent or how the absolute math works out, but I've never personally known it to be the case in practice. I've got certain alts that have been sitting at 30-something for a year at this point, but once I have a 4 in that tens column, 50 is in sight and I'm making a mad dash for it. I can run 40+ content just as well at 50 as I can at 41, ya know? I actually save charges of the Experienced power for that final push; I move it into my tray once I'm (number of charges I have) levels away from 50 and activate it as soon as the fifth bar in each level is filled so that the second half goes by faster -- it's like fast-forwarding Christmas Eve so morning comes sooner.

Are they "spamming" chat or just... chatting? Look, I don't give a damn about probably 95% of what goes on in General (or Help) chat. Part of my "ritual" when I make a new character, along with visiting P2W and rearranging power trays to my liking and grabbing all of the badges in Atlas to unlock the teleporter, is to just remove both of those channels from my chat window. I'm not about to block someone so I don't see them come up in LFG a week from now just because today they said "hey, I'm listening to a song" in a channel that exists for nonspecific chatting.

Okay, fair enough. But my second post in this thread... that counts, right?

Thank you! I will take you up on that later on. Appreciate it! Okay, see, even after just glancing at the TL;DR paragraph in the first post, this is already about ten times as useful as most guides I've tried -- generally those are about 25% self-congratulation about how much money the poster makes, 40% assuming the reader already knows the jargon they're throwing around, 10% "I'd go into more detail here, but of course you understand why I can't winky-face emoji," and 25% implying that anyone not currently Scrooge McDucking their way around an enormous tower filled with enough inf to swim through is either lazy or stupid because making money is just so easy to do you guys oh em gee I can't believe everybody isn't as rich as me. It can be very easy for someone with in-depth knowledge of a subject to forget just how ignorant others might be about it. The vast, vast, vast majority of "get rich on the market" guides are written by consignment-house billionaires, for other consignment-house billionaires -- people who, frankly, don't really need a guide. Almost none of these things are targeted at people who don't already have a comprehensive education about how it all works. They might claim to be, or they might be indented to be, but in practice they aren't. They're just obtuse and confusing and rely on the assumption that the reader has already gone through dozens of other, very specific, pre-existing guides, some of which probably aren't even here on the forums because what do you mean you don't also frequent Reddit and Discord and the archives of the old forums from live? That's why "just use a guide, they're already out there" is so frustrating. This one is much better about... not being that, than most. Also, I thought I'd share this funny meme I found. Apropos of nothing, of course. Isn't it entertaining? I apologize for it being completely unrelated to the topic at hand.

Wait, I think I can save this. Turn it into a rant. Or at the very least, a diatribe. Hopefully not a screed, though -- I don't want anybody to get hurt. Which is to say, I get it, to a point. I've tried reading these mythical guides people keep mentioning, but most of them are so vague and paranoid and secretive as to be almost useless. "How do I get started using the market to make money?" "There are already guides. Read those." "I've read several. They all said I should do something called 'converter roulette,' but none of them explained what that is or how to do it." "Oh, that's because it's explained in other guides." "I looked at other guides, none of them had any actual useful advice. Like, what kinds of things should I be on the lookout for? What should I convert things into?" "You'll figure it out." "Yeah, that's literally what I'm trying to do right now. Can you give me any specific, practical information I can use as a jumping-off point? Please?" "What? You mean mention a particular recipe or piece of salvage in this context, even just for the purposes of providing an example, instead of just gesturing vaguely toward the market as an overall concept?" "Kinda, yeah. Not that I expect it to be perfect, I understand we're talking about a living economy that's constantly changing due to any number of different factors, but literally any kind of actual starting point would be really helpful." "But my niche!" It's like trying to get a mobster to give you a straight answer about how he's able to afford the Mercedes he bought for his wife as an anniversary gift: "I do business. If you know what's good for you, you won't worry about what kind. Capiche?"

Any blast power when you're standing right next to your target, then for no discernible reason you extend your arms above your head and fire straight up into the sky.

I tend to only read/post to General, Art & Multimedia, the various archetype forums, and the one for the one server I play on (Excelsior). I'll venture into Suggestions about once a month, but not regularly. Everything else I pass right over.

Oooh, ideas already bubbling away for these. Grabbing them now to experiment with, I'll release them again in a day or two if nothing comes of it.

Ooohhh it's a female character! Yeah, no cigar for the ladies. For... reasons? I don't know why. But it's been that way forever.

Y'all just jealous 'cuz it's a good name and you didn't think of it.

If I'm remembering right, the cigar has been in there since day 1 (or at least, the point when I started playing, around issue 3 or 4). The cigarette was part of the Gunslinger add-on pack that was added after the transition to CoH Freedom.

Hey, didn't we do a Posi together last night? Speaking of, I've been on kind of an "optimistic heroes" kick lately, so here's my Supergirl/Power Girl/Mary Marvel homage, Excelsiora (Energy/Energy scrapper).