MrNotorion

Depends on the character. Sometimes just having a simple name without badge or title works better. I do have to say I'd rather see that than a dense word cloud floating above the character, always topped by that neon-green maraschino "HELPER!" where most or even ALL of it is either not descriptive of the character, or worse detracts from any interest I may have had as an observer. But then all of that extra baggage over your head was given for more than just one reason. If you want your PC to seem impressive because they have a NY phone book over their heads, I guess you do you. If you want something more minimalist and more usefully descriptive and definitive for your character, it's there for that too. It's no worse than having to look at some costumes in the first place. 🙂 It's kind of the same with the bio. It's there for those who want it - but some people should actually be forbidden to use it. 🙂

Good guess, but almost certainly wrong. If it was all arranged in some kind of array it wouldn't be hard to simply translate parts to a new, larger array. That's exactly the kind of thing that computers do is pull the one piece of information that is needed from whatever obscure location or separate file or library. Even if EVERY part was moved individually to a new array one at a time with all the necessary pointers to it being added/changed (and then checked on test servers) it would not be that challenging. There are a lot of costume parts but not THAT many. Tedious as hell, to be sure, but not a show-stopper. I remember reading back on live that there was a lot of hack-job kinds of coding going on in the background regarding costume parts and it's because of that mess that we didn't just get a continual stream of new costume bits. Even a lot of the ones they gave us had to be "hacked" in. Ones I'm thinking of in particular that were being discussed were, IIRC, the samurai and roman waist armor. For whatever reasons they couldn't handle them like pants, nor could they work being handled as extensions of upper body armor so they wound up treated in the code as belts if I recall. Wish I could remember details but I just recall it being explained that the coding for costumes was just janky as hell and it was a big deal just to do what they DID manage to create for new pieces. It was a big reason to wish for a COH2 - just to have that code for costumes redone in a way that would allow far greater expansion.

I still have mine.

Changing a letter or two can open up a lot of possibilities: Daredevel instead of Daredevil Making two words into one, or one word into two. Making two-word names you can separate them with a space, a hyphen, an asterisk... You can bookend names with punctuation like underscores, periods, hyphens, asterisks... You can also use alpha-numeric codes for characters which are their spy code names, experiment numbers, or similar. Two that I have as characters are : EMM386 (a robot controller) and Q-147 (a robotic snooker player that has a cue ball for a head and a cue stick - I'd have named him Ronnie O'Sullivan but that would have been too obvious for some and I'd have had to try to make him look like the man). Some of the names I came up with that I at least thought were the most clever: Cerebrawl Fight Knight - SJ in medieval armor Dr. Starkraven MD - stark raving mad? Get it? Soulkrypt - has a perfectly apt and simple appearance - all spectrum (completely black), with starry aura Badge - DP user who is just a simple Paragon City PD cop. Jest Pattern Medical Bill - has the title "Outstanding" so he's an outstanding medical bill Pixie Stick A few I would be willing to part with (just because I don't actually have solid concepts for them) are: Unknown Error Indisposable Fright-Night Not sure if I can get rid of Indisposable...

I can only recall using it on one character back on live - and as soon as I was able I respec'ed and took superjump instead. Other than once or twice dipping into it for group TP and recall friend (again back on live) I haven't touched it since, and certainly not in playing on Homecoming.

Not so much for having a "main". I have preferred to keep changing up the game play with a variety of characters with different powersets and play styles.

If I have it's either because I have a new costume/concept to fit the powerset or I deleted the only character I had with the powerset and want to try it again. A few times I've liked a costume/concept of a character - but not the powerset and so will try the same look using different powersets.

My papa was a rolling stone...

A good half of my alts are reconstructed from live, but half are all-new. Mr. Notorious - Energy blast. On live he was Mr. Notorion cuz I thought it sounded cool and retro-futuristic which is his look. He was my first COH character ever and my first lvl 50. Renamed him for HC because people kept reading it as Notorious anyway. Cerebrawl - Psychic blast. A scientist whose big experiment blew up and now he looks for clues why/how. Costume is a full, skin-tight with bright, blended colors. Looks like he's wanting to suggest a pride flag but I just wanted a colorful costume. Jest Pattern - Electrical blast. Black/white jester costume with panels pattern. Looks like his name suggests - a living jester test pattern. But his attitude is meant to be Joe Pesci in Goodfellas - "Like I'm a clown? I amuse you? Funny HOW tough guy...?" Superette - Sonic defender. One of my favorite concepts. Teenager who stopped a robbery at the store (Superette foods) where she worked as a checker and discovered her powers that way screaming at the bad guys. She wears her high school band uniform. Fight Knight - Street Justice scrapper. In a dust-covered box in a forgotten warehouse an armored knight was discovered in a stone crypt someone had stored there. He had been captured and entombed by a sorcerer. To earn money he's a boxer, but he spends his spare time fighting crime. Badge - Dual Pistols blast. Standard PCPD cop uniform. Tends to hang out at Atlas Plaza keeping order and eating donuts. Mighty Casey - Will/mace tank. Struck out in Mudville and now strikes out villains. Dr. Starkraven ND - radiation defender. A serious nutcase. He's actually a doctor but has been affected by some kind of radiation that both gives him his healing powers and reveals an energetic and loony alternative personality. Concept came about from his costume when I decided I wanted something where none of the costume pieces matched in color or pattern, etc. Flicker Nik - fire blast. A small, green, winged pixie type of guy obsessed with fire. He was born on live under the statue of atlas where everyone used to hang out spamming all their spammable powers. They eventually combined to affect a weed starting to grow in the cracks and up sprouted Nik. Captain Freem - Beam Rifle/time blast. Golden Era style Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon type of hero from another time. KBFE-8096 - Savage Melee/regen scrapper. An escaped victim of experimentation (his ID is a barcode on his forehead). He lives on the streets and constantly wrestles with his beast-like tendencies. Has a wild, somewhat werewolf-ish look with some torn clothes. Tends to get reported as a werewolf. Medical Bill - Empathy defender. Looks a bit like a futuristic EMT - which he pretty much is. Gets his powers from his armored uniform. Screaming Flea - Martial Arts/regen scrapper. Smallest possible toon in a martial arts ghi and coolie hat. Trained on a mountaintop far away and has traveled to thoroughly distant culture in Paragon City - like Cain in Kung Fu. Pixie Stick - Staff fighting scrapper. She's a pixie with a stick. It was so obvious I couldn't believe nobody had taken the name and concept. Tom Atomic - Radiation blaster. Just a scientist character I came up with to play around more with the radiation powerset. Very Mysterious - Mind Control controller. A Dr. Strange-ish character I made to play around with the mind control powerset and was my first-ever controller character. Boiler (a.k.a. Burt Boilerman) - Katana scrapper. I'm actually pretty proud of this concept too recreated from live. I saw the rusty katana sword while messing around in character creation and built a suit of rusted armor around him. He's a mechanic whose family and business were destroyed so he spent all his money making the armor out of an actual boiler in the basement of his ruined shop, hammered out a crude katana and went out busting skulls of bad guys looking for justice/venegeance. He was originally named just Boiler but someone stole that name on HC before I could, so I had to rename him Burt Boilerman which seriously lacks the same panache. Dead Duane Dunderson - Willpower/radiation tanker. Green glowing skeleton dude. Just for fun. Sinkronicity - Water blaster. Your basic weird fish-man, creature from the black lagoon type to play around with the water powerset. Kate Bloomer - Plant Control controller. Green pixie girl created to mess around with plant control and further explore being a controller in general. Q-147 - Staff Fighting scrapper. Stole the concept from someone I saw in game because it amused me so much he became (at the time) like the 4th or 5th staff fighting character concept I had going. He's a robot/android built to play snooker but broke his programming. Soulkrypt - Dark blaster. I had wanted a character that used the spectrum pattern all over. I saw a character in-game that had kind of a star-aura and so combined the two ideas to make a character that looks like you're peering into a hole in the universe out into outer space. Big Money Man - Savage Melee scrapper. Another alt just based on a costume idea - I wanted a businessman in a suit with the money aura. So I repurposed an alt I wasn't playing and changed the costume and name. Unknown Error - Shield/mace tanker. Your basic robot gone rogue. Just wanted to explore the shield powerset. EMM386 - Robotics controller. My third controller character I made trying to decide if controller was a playstyle/concept I liked. (Ultimate verdict is still out but leaning toward not-so-much.) Flat-Top - Street Justice stalker. My one and only villain PC. He's just a street punk looking to climb the underworld ladder of success (and maybe let me explore some red-side content that I've NEVER even looked at for more than a hour or two).

terminals at the university are simply overbooked.

Jack Wabbit?

It's only peanuts when you spend your time in the game figuring out how the economy works and how to manipulate it in order to afford the salvage and recipes. That is NOT what I want to do in playing City of Heroes and back before Issue 9 on live I found it very refreshing to NOT have to play that obnoxious game of pretend-economy that is always utterly whacked out of proportion because of the needs and desires of the people playing level 50 characters letting the players of level 10 characters simply lump it until they can catch up. THESE DAYS, COH has so many things that can be done to "play the market" but is that REALLY the game you want to play - a PMM (pretend market manipulation) instead of a MMO?

Well, some are not from this dimension/time/reality and so I've never considered them to NEED a residence as such. Flicker Nik (fire/fire blast) was brought to life by magic under the statue of Atlas back on live, when that was a much more common gathering place and CC location and there were always a crapstorm of various show-off powers being spammed - so some little seed, blade of grass, or weed became the accidental focus of too much magic and created him whole. When he "goes home" he just crawls up on a foot or something and zones out. Boiler is/was really the ONLY character from live I ever created who I thought of as having a specific residence somewhere in Paragon City (had to rename him Burt Boilerman when I remade him because Boiler was taken 😞 ) - a small combined mechanics shop and attached residence in Kings Row. But even that's not there anymore as it was destroyed along with his whole family as part of his backstory and is now just another one of a lot of empty dirt lots where you find Clockwork and Skulls hanging around. If he has a home it's a one-night hotel room because he's spent all his savings on making his armor and can't afford any permanent residence. Plenty of them HAD a residence prior to moving to Paragon City but I didn't think of where they'd be living as they work there. Others may have been born and raised in Paragon City itself but I never thought of them as having someplace specific to live there now unless it was someplace outside the war walls. After all, when starting out it's really hard for me to assume that even a low-level hero clocks out at the end of the day and goes home to an apartment or house in zone that's CRAWLING with super-villains 40 or 50 levels above them while passersby get mugged or so panicked they run off the opposite direction. It would have helped if we could pick a door in a zone somewhere and have THAT be the actual entrance to our PERSONAL "base" rather than an ENORMOUS SG base accessed only by teleporters. Or a small zone or two that's like Khallisti is now - empty of all opposition and a small "safe space" for heroes to just go home at night to rest, shower, have a toasted cheese sandwich or a bowl of Sugar Positronies before getting on a tram and getting back to the grind.

If I were to complain (and I don't have much reason to) it would be that the game has TOO MANY LAYERS. People forget how much has been tacked onto this game from where it started, some good, some bad, but it's all rather piecemeal and... cluttered.

Well I don't need to play redside anymore to have access to any of the AT's that once were exclusive there. Not that I ever played much beyond low levels but I never cared much for the missions. Really they didn't seem any different from blueside missions other than the opponent groups. I guess I also feel that I can go along easier with my hero PC being just one of a large group - one hero in a CITY OF HEROES. But as a villain PC you're not really choosing YOUR crimes and domination schemes, you're just another crook among a smaller cadre of crooks than heroes, but also generally (seemed to me) just a cog in the wheel of SOME OTHER criminals group. Heroes can typically fit better as members of a team, but villains need to stand alone a lot more often as being THE threat that heroes have to stop.