RikOz

When Homecoming came along, I had completely forgotten about The Hollows (I only discovered the live game about a year before it shut down). It was only after somebody else mentioned it that I realized, "Huh, I'm like 15 alts in and I haven't gotten a single referral to Hollows." I finally found it after clicking the "Find Contact" button and clicking through until it gave me Wincott. But that left me wondering, "How did I get there on live?" I was asking somebody, on another forum, about what the content was in Kings Row before the new Skulls/Superadine arc was added, because I honestly couldn't remember, and they said, "Well, a contact there sent you to The Hollows..." Heh, yeah. I think I was up to about 40 alts before I decided I was really tired of AP and KR, so my last 30+ alts have all done the Galaxy City tutorial, then the first four missions from Habashy to get 3 Merits to buy Converters to sell for starting pocket money, and then it's off to AE to powerlevel to 12, equip themselves with DOs, and then straight to Steel Canyon.

I used to run into a similar problem in WoW, on the rare occasions when I tried to PvP in battlegrounds. In WoW, the targeting reticle is a circle on the ground, rather than bracketing the whole character like we have here. So the hostile player I would have targeted would have a red circle under them ... which would become completely invisible if a Death Knight player used his "Death and Decay" aura, which places a red-colored damage patch on the ground. Or if a fire mage was spamming AoE. I couldn't see the red circle, so I would completely lose track of the specific enemy player I was trying to hit. Anyway, if people think Rad auras make it hard to see their costumes, try Dark Armor or the Fire auras. My dark toons look like little black clouds, and my level 50 Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation/Flame Mastery blaster just looks like a fireball her own self.

The problem more or less stopped for me a few patches ago. The default screenshot functionality works now without crashing my client. Nevertheless, I've switched to using the screenshot ability provided by my GeForce Experience software, because half the time the game's default screenshots are getting flagged by ... something ... that results in my not being able to edit them (like when I try to crop a screenshot to share). Well, I can edit them, but my computer refuses to save the edited file because it thinks it's malware or something.

Here's Ghost, a cat I had a few years ago. Had to give him up 😞 My favorite - the morning light was just right, coming in through the window ... Ghost actually liked to play fetch. I would throw a wadded up piece of paper across the room, and he'd chase it down, bring it back, and drop it into my shoe. Repeat.

I said a while back that, if WoW had mobs with the Freakshow mechanic, based on my 10 years playing that game, they would rez every single time, and you'd only get XP after the second kill.

Or, as we say on another message board I frequent, "WHOOOSH!"

Yeah, the NPC mobs can do it, too. I was doing a safeguard and had to do a double-take when this big Lost guy shot a civilian, and down he went. Was not expecting that!

"Skull Hoodlum has defeated Cardboard Box!" "Skull Hoodlum has defeated Parking Meter!" Ooo, we got some real badasses over here!

Oh, I forgot the Whispered Hand (I think that's what they're called). I don't even bother with my fire/fire blaster's Hot Feet power because the Mercenary mobs, which seem to be the overwhelming majority of mobs in these WH missions, have some ability that I can't even see that keeps turning it off. I decided it was a waste of time to keep turning it back on when that very next mob is just gonna shut it off again.

I wanted some after I noticed the Scrapyarders wearing them in an alignment mission.

There are some ... issues ... with the wording of the first sentence in the "Against All Odds" power description when selecting a new power from a trainer: I'm pretty sure that should read, "Regardless of the odds against you, you are determined to go on."

Ten years of WoW totally burned me out on holiday events. By the time my main over there had earned the meta-achievements for all the holidays, I just completely lost interest in participating in them any more. Also, count me in as one who did not care for a full month of "night". The constant dreariness of the Rogue Isles is one of the main things that makes me not want to play redside, so I'd rather not have it blueside as well.

CoT: I simply despise the way so many CoT maps are jam-packed with those ghosts/daemons/whatevers, so that it's not unusual to find myself with 3-6 ToHit Debuffs stacked on me. Being completely unable to do anything is just not fun. I know that I can counteract this somewhat with yellow insps, but in the level ranges where this behavior is most common (and completely overdone, IMO), I've only got 8-10 insp slots and even if I entered the map fully loaded with yellows, I'd be out of them before I'm halfway through some of those maps. Hellions and Skulls (and Lost, to a certain extent): Over-reliance on knockback at levels where nobody has KB protection yet. Constantly getting knocked back/down just isn't fun. I have noticed that some of these shotgun-wielding minions seem to have only one attack: Slug or whichever gun attack has the KB. While fighting a group, I'll notice that some of the minions do absolutely nothing to fight back except stand there waiting for that KB attack to come off cooldown. Then, with staggered attacks, I get chain-KB'd. The Lost: The big guys with the mental attacks. I just love being slept, then held, then stunned, then slept again, before I've even landed a punch. Sky Raiders: Those Engineers and their forcefield generators. This is generally easy to overcome, once you learn to identify the Engineer in the group and hit him first. But when a map manages to spawn three of them in close enough proximity (usually a case of one on ground-level and a couple up on a catwalk), I can end up with multiple, overlapping FFs, and then it's CoT ghosts all over again, but worse. Often, the only option at that point is to reset the mission and hope the mobs spawn differently. Carnies: Another group where I've learned how to counteract the biggest annoyance, but if the counteraction doesn't work the first time, it's major annoyance time. I currently only have one toon high enough to be dealing with Carnies, and she's a blaster, so I've figured out that I can one-shot even an "orange-level" Grand Illusionist by hitting both Aim and Buildup, then Snipe. But if that doesn't insta-kill the GI, and she manages to cast her Phantasms ... *groan*. The actual annoyance here is that those illusions persist for so damned long after I've defeated the Illusionist, and they're largely immune to damage, and don't do much damage themselves. They end up being nothing but a super-irritating forced waiting game, because whatever objective/hostage the GI was guarding can't be freed until those damned things finally despawn on their own. I honestly feel like it's either a major design flaw, or a bug that allows those illusions to persist after the caster is defeated. Malta: Look for Sappers the same way I look for Sky Raider Engineers. I actually don't have that much trouble with them, but at those levels I have all 25 insp slots, I'm strong enough to not need to rely on Luck insps so much, and I can carry some Endurance insps for the sappers and some Break Frees for the Gunslingers.

Hmm ... I'm something of a writer, though mostly known in circles where pseudonyms are the order of the day. I do try to write at least a paragraph of bio for each of my alts, though with 71 alts (and counting) I have to stretch a bit to keep them unique. I could actually write a full backstory for Captain Apple since, as I mentioned, I originally created him around 30 years ago. My IRL art is more along these veins: The second photo is one of my culinary experiments: eggs, chorizo, and cheese, between two slices of french toast, drizzled with syrup. It was tasty. (I've been a pro cook for 36+ years.)

To be totally fair, this thread was still in General Discussion when I followed/first posted to it, before the forum makeover 🙂

Ah, okay. Suffice it to say, I was not aware of this person 🙂

I figured that, if I was gonna be so uncreative as to straight-up copy the Longbow costume (as well as the face and hairstyle of my favorite Longbow agent), I'd better come up with a decent backstory to explain it 😛 Midnight Blue is a mutant 🙂

How about some of my more militant characters? Soldier 66, so named because he was my 66th alt. (Assault Rifle/Willpower sentinel) : Midnight Blue (Energy Rifle/Bio Armor sentinel): And Little Longbow. She was attending a comic convention and cosplaying as a Longbow agent. Then, the guys cosplaying as Skulls turned out to be actual Skulls, not cosplayers, and started shooting the place up. The stress triggered her mutant gene, unlocking electrical powers. She couldn't figure out how to use them to fight back, but the electricity seemed to protect her and she was able to help evacuate the building and protect the other attendees. She later determined that her electrical powers were strictly defensive in nature, and so if she wanted to be a superhero, she figured she'd better learn to shoot! (Assault Rifle/Electric Armor sentinel). Here's her whole costume wardrobe so far. They're progressing with her level, and she's wearing the pink one now:

Today the client crashed, twice, both time while zoning into Faultline. The first time, I was using the "Teleport to contact" button in "Find Contact" window, teleporting to Jim Temblor. The second time, on a different character, the client crashed as I exited a mission in the Faultline AE building.

I'll try that! EDIT: Works pretty good 🙂

Here's the latest iteration of Captain Apple, a superhero I created probably 30 years ago, "on paper". He was originally intended to be a local hero based in my hometown, and his bio reflects this, but stating that he relocated to Paragon City after his original city was obliterated in an errant Rikti attack. His original costume was bright yellow spandex, with red accents, but as Wolverine humorously pointed out in the first X-Men movie, yellow spandex just doesn't really translate. There is also no apple symbol available for his chest emblem, but I discovered that the banding on the Enforcer chest piece resembles the shape of an apple when colored red. As originally intended, he has no actual superpowers, so he's a Natural origin, Staff Fighting/Willpower brute.

One of the first things I do with each new alt is edit the Help tab to remove LFG because it's hard to follow a conversation when it's constantly interrupted by "looking for DFB" chatter. Part of the Help issue is that it's the only obvious "universal" channel, so in a game that keeps players hopping from one zone to another almost every mission, it's natural for players to gravitate to the channel that isn't going to be interrupted with every zone change. There is a similar issue in WoW - most conversation takes place in the "Trade" channel rather than in "General"; it's because Trade is the same channel no matter which capitol city you're in, while General applies only to the specific zone you're in. Of course, WoW doesn't have a channel that is the same everywhere, but players there are more likely to spend a lot of time hanging around in a capitol city simply because those are where all of the important services are located (banks, auction house, etc.).

I laugh when a hostage I've rescued tries to escape by squeezing between me and the next guy I'm trading blows with.

Don't forget Overdrive, who appears in blueside alignment missions! She's always flying up into the middle of enemies up on catwalks or higher levels of a room. If she happens to be somewhere behind me when she does this, I don't see where she went, and usually only realize she's gotten herself killed after I've moved on to the next area and finally notice she's not following. Then there's No Mind, our introduction to sidekicks in part 3 of the Shining Stars arc. "I cannot damage [these Praetorian Clockwork] by myself!", he says, right before he charges into the next room and runs around slapping every clockwork in there, and promptly dying. The last time I did that mission, I deliberately set my notoriety to -1 to see if that would help me to keep him alive past the first room, but no luck. He literally runs from group to group until he's aggro'd the entire room, and at that point there's nothing I can do to save him. Or Grym, in the mission right before. He's not smart enough to move out of the AOE fire (the Hellions in there seem to use a variant of Fire Blast's "Burn" power), and he usually ends up "too wounded to continue" after the first spawn. Although I mentioned something about this in another thread, and the last time I did that mission he survived all the way to the end. That's when I realized I hadn't seen the Hellions use that Burn power. I don't know if the devs removed the Burn, or if I simply managed to defeat the enemies before they could use it. Though I was on a Sonic blaster, and I can't believe I managed to out-DPS every single enemy before they could use that power.