RikOz

Tell me about it. I soloed the entire arc on a mid-30s fire/fire blaster. Extremely painful, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

Heh. My character, "Cybernetic Queen" is based on a sexbot from a song. She started out looking a lot like a Praetorian clockwork, and as she levels up she's gradually replacing parts of her body with more human-looking parts.

Interesting article on Cracked.com on exactly this topic: https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-we-train-teenage-girls-to-love-psychopaths/

Ooh! I have an elec/elec brute named Elektricheskiy Shok! I originally called him "Old Soviet Hero", as he's a middle-aged Russian man who grew up in the Soviet era and was a member of a government superhero team, and emigrated to the USA/Paragon City in the early 2000s. I haven't fully written his bio yet, though. Right now his bio just says, "I am capitalist now!" (Though I will admit I don't know how good the name is, as I just relied on Google to translate "electric shock" into Russian for me.)

I have a character named "Epic Gear" whose costumes are purple and incorporate those big gear-shaped shoulder pieces. He's a direct spoof of "elitist" WoW players (I've played WoW since 2008, except for when I'm playing CoH): Epic Gear began his adventuring career on another world, in another dimension, where he was a mighty warrior known to all as Pwnmastr. In his long and storied career, he defeated elemental lords, lich kings, murderous dragons, demons, and even a few ancient, evil gods. In short, he was one of the most elite, hardcore heroes of his world. Alas, a teleportation spell gone wrong, probably cast by some noob casual adventurer, sent Pwnmastr hurtling through dimensions until he landed on this ... "Primal Earth". Although this new world was vastly different from the one from whence he came, he saw that there were evils to conquer and villains to pwn, and he set forth to become a hero here as well. Despite being still early in his career as a ... "superhero", he is clearly already one of the elite. See how he is clad head to toe in epic purple gear! On the other hand, another of my "tribute" characters is named "Mendacious D" (mendacious: adj. Lying; untruthful) made to resemble Jack Black's wrestling costume from Nacho Libre. His bio reads, "This is the greatest hero in the world. This is not a tribute." 😄

I have become curious about the villain "Mangle". In the hero alignment mission, "A Talking Cylinder", we rescue the hero, Arc Flash, who says she wants to help Mangle because he's a "tormented creature" (and then the player goes on to defeat Mangle). I also recently discovered a villain alignment mission, where you go to give Mangle the beatdown and put him in his place, and Overdrive shows up to stop you, again calling Mangle "tormented" and in need of help. I think I may have gotten a similar story in the vigilante version of the Talking Cylinder mission, but I've only done that one time, so I'm not totally sure. In any case, does Mangle's story ever get resolved? Perhaps in the higher-level villain alignment missions? My highest-level villain is 29, so has not yet done any of the next two tiers of alignment stuff. I'm kind of wondering if Mangle has an arc similar to Frostfire's arc on blueside. I'm not asking for spoilers; I'm mostly just curious if this actually goes somewhere.

I've noticed this as well.

Psimonator, my Psionic Melee/Electric Armor Scrapper Psimon Psanders was a psickly child, most likely due to the fact that he and his mother lived next door to a psuperadine lab. Fortunately for Psimon, he turned out to be a mutant, and when his mutation manifested it pstrengthened both his body and his mind. Unfortunately for Psimon, his mother died after getting caught in the crossfire of a gun battle between rival gangs of psuperadine dealers. It was then that Psimon decided to take on the persona of Psimonator, and psytematically punish all drug dealers and their ilk, psundering their lines of manufacture and distribution.

Carnie Illusionists/Master Illusionists need a bit of a nerf, and I'm going to approach this as a logic issue. Those danged Phantasms, Decoy Phantasms, and Dark Whatsits hang around way too long after I've defeated the NPC Illusionist herself. In particular, I'd like to complain about the Decoy Phantasms. The logic: These are illusions, not genuine physical entities. Logically, they should require the caster to "maintain" them, and the caster should not be able to "maintain" the illusion while unconscious. Thus, all of these illusions should, logically, despawn shortly after the Illusionist is defeated/rendered unconscious. Even if the illusions are the result of the NPC directly affecting the player character's brain, those effects should quickly fade upon the NPCs defeat. Why it's a problem: These illusions are often cast by an NPC who is guarding a hostage, and the hostage cannot be "rescued" until the NPC caster and all of her illusions are "defeated". If the player is not able to defeat the illusionist before she is able to cast her illusions, the whole fight is pointlessly dragged out for a stupidly long time. This is why I'm singling out the "Decoy Phantasm" in particular. I can fight and "defeat" the Phantasm and the Dark Whatsit. The Decoy Phantasm, on the other hand, neither deals nor suffers much damage at all. Once the other illusions are "defeated", the Decoy Phantasm is more or less part of the scenery, less of a threat than, say, Caltrops. It doesn't actively attack me unless I move into immediate melee range, and even then it isn't particularly dangerous. Trying to kill it is just wasted effort. The Decoy Phantasm is basically nothing more than an arbitrary, pointless waiting game. The player doesn't "defeat" a Decoy Phantasm. The player simply waits it out. Which takes entirely too long. Waiting simply for the sake of waiting is Not Fun(tm). If the idea was to make the player wait while actual human enemy reinforcements rush to the scene, that would at least make some sense. But simply forcing the player to stand around waiting for mechanical reasons is, again, Not Fun(tm). Solution: Drastically reduce the timer for these things to despawn after the NPC illusionist is defeated.

I decided that my fire/fire/flame blaster, Flaminatrix, needed a black costume. For those situations requiring stealth.

Indeed. It's also why I love my fire/fire blaster so much - fire solves everything (mostly) 😄

I play almost entirely solo (I've completed precisely two TFs - Citadel on my SS/Rad brute, and Market Crash on my Fire/Fire blaster). With 75 alts at this point, I've naturally soloed my way through a lot of the same low-level missions/arcs with a multitude of different ATs and powersets, and it's been fun (and sometimes frustrating) discovering what is strong and what is weak against particular enemy groups. For example, I've learned to never again accept a Banished Pantheon arc on a psychic character, and that brute-force melee is pretty ineffective against CoT ghosts. I just completed a lengthy CoT arc on the aforementioned SS/Rad brute, and with all those ghosts he had to punch, and punch, and punch, and punch... GAH! When doing the Midnighter arc in Steel, I'm in the habit of setting my notoriety to -1 before entering the Lady Jane mission if I'm on a melee toon.

I usually have some RP reason (if only in my own mind) for the origin I pick. Or thematic reasons. For example, I have a "supergroup" made up of twelve of my alts; they're all Science origin because they all got their powers from a super serum created by the team leader. The lone exception in the group is Natural origin, because she's a Martian and was already a trained warrior (Broadsword/Shield) who didn't need any superpowers, and the fact that she's not human meant the serum wouldn't have worked on her anyway. She's a member because she was already a personal friend of the team leader. (Actually, there's a mutant in the group, but that was a mis-click when I rerolled her after I decided I didn't like her original powers, so for RP purposes she's still Science.)

That would be cool, because even playing on a 32" TV, I cannot distinguish the little letters on those tiny buttons over the input line.

I made a WoW "tribute" character, named "Epic Gear": Epic Gear began his adventuring career on another world, in another dimension, where he was a mighty warrior known to all as Pwnmastr. In his long and storied career, he defeated elemental lords, lich kings, murderous dragons, demons, and even a few ancient, evil gods. In short, he was one of the most elite, hardcore heroes of his world. Alas, a teleportation spell gone wrong, probably cast by some noob casual adventurer, sent Pwnmastr hurtling through dimensions until he landed on this ... "Primal Earth". Although this new world was vastly different from the one from whence he came, he saw that there were evils to conquer and villains to pwn, and he set forth to become a hero here as well. Despite being still early in his career as a ... "superhero", he is clearly already one of the elite. See how he is clad head to toe in epic purple gear! ((Ran out of room before I could add, "Epic Gear is currently investigating the existence of a gigantic epic mount or vehicle so that he can park it in front of City Hall's doors, or perhaps on top of Miss Liberty, where everybody can admire it and recognize his elite status.))

So they still exist, but aren't useful?

Are Hero Merits even still a thing? I know I've never gotten one...

I made, and soon deleted, an Illusion/FF controller, mostly for the concept as part of a themed "super group" comprised of some my own alts. As an almost purely solo player, it didn't take long to realize how useless she was by herself.

I've used him a number of times, in the same situation. With the XP boosts, I usually hit level 8 by the time I come out near Thiery, and I like to take my travel power at 8, and getting from Thiery to Miss Liberty when you don't have a travel power yet is rather inconvenient. So I go get it from BAB, On a related note, I thought it was rather hilarious the first time I got that alignment mission to break up the drug convention, and it sent me to a door right smack across the street from BAB. You know, the hero most known for his anti-drug crusades doesn't notice the humongous drug deal going on across the street. Or equally hilarious, the big bad drug guys deciding to hold their convention right in front of BAB...

I don't see a countdown when I log out in a university, but I do see it in police stations.

Really? I've literally never seen her do it in Faultline, fighting her as an EB. Maybe there's a level cutoff where her powers change or something? I'm usually done with Faultline by level 22, but I'm still doing this morality mission all the way up to 29. EDIT to ADD: Just fought Nocturne again at the end of the Jim Temblor/Fusionette part of the Faultline story, and she definitely did not self-heal. I reduced her to near-zero health, and she promptly teleported herself out of there. My character this time started the mission at level 20, and leveled to 21 upon defeating Nocturne (love it when that happens, leveling up on the final boss of a mission!) Anyway, that character is ready to start the final part of the Faultline arc (in the dam), so she'll get to fight Nocturne again. I'll pay attention to what happens. I think I will also XP-lock a character at level 20 or 21 until they can get the Fire in the Hole mission, and see what Nocturne does at that level.

Nocturne is certainly my most-fought named villain, given that I can fight her twice (and optionally a 3rd time) in Faultline, and she's also the end boss in the level-20 range Hero morality mission, "Fire in the Hole". It is in this last appearance that she exhibits odd behavior. Basically, while fighting Nocturne in that mission, I will beat her almost all the way down, and she instantly heals herself back to full health. She does this twice during the fight. For a while she also had a tendency to come popping back up and attacking me again after officially completing the mission, but before clicking on the Exit button, though that seems to have stopped. She does not seem to do the self-full-heal thing during any of the fights in Faultline, so the fact that she does it (twice) in the morality mission makes me think it's a glitch. Is she actually supposed to do that? I know I ran the mission multiple times on live, but it's been long enough that I honestly can't remember if she did this back then.

I'm more curious to find out why, every so often, when I click on the "Go to this post" link in a forum notification e-mail, GMail pops up a warning that it's a "suspicious link".

Never mind, already answered by earlier poster and I missed it.

Aside from TFs, one thing I've always thought this game is missing is the ability to view the map of a zone I'm not currently in. It just seems odd that I can view the full city map, but I can't click on the zones to zoom them in. I mean, considering that our contacts are giving us the exact street addresses of the buildings we're supposed to visit, the effect is more like, "I need you to do something in Steel Canyon; I'll text you the address once you get there". So you take the tram to Steel Canyon South, and only then find that the mission location is a building up near the Icon store. Given that we heroes are supposedly residents of the city who know our way around, being able to preview a remote zone map would more accurately represent the idea of a contact telling us the address and we know right where that is and can travel to the nearest station.