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MrNotorion

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Everything posted by MrNotorion

  1. 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. 🙂
  2. 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.
  3. 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...
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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).
  8. terminals at the university are simply overbooked.
  9. 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?
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. Bad taste? No problem. This game has been chock full of REALLY bad taste names since I started playing again a year ago and names in bad taste related to the current world pandemic are surely no exception. Bad taste is not the same thing as downright OFFENSIVE. Bad taste is EVERYWHERE in character names. I'd suggest you're not paying attention if you think bad taste is only just becoming a problem. Now, if you think a name is downright OFFENSIVE - report it. If Homecoming GM's agree I'm sure the character will be generic'd or the account suspended and that'll be that.
  14. I would not be averse to having a LITTLE more space for bios, though what it REALLY needs is better interface for entering and manipulating text in that box. However, I also heartily agree with others that players should not be using the little bio-box to try and write The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire. If you want people to read novel-length fan-fiction about your character then point them to an out-of-game location that is far more appropriate for your epic tale to reside and you can blather on to your hearts content. The in-game "bio" is your teaser/trailer. Short. To-the-point. Description that is geared to act like headlines, grab a bit of attention, and MAYBE make someone interested enough to want more detail of the years you've spent developing your characters origins and backstory. But the actual movie trilogy that depicts that exhaustive detail belongs WAY outside what the game should be providing space for. TLDR: if you're genuinely and seriously chafing about the bio character limit then you're doing it wrong. :)
  15. My own recollection of back-in-the-day was that the crowd was not around Ms. Liberty - it was consistently gathered under the statue itself away from her. She has a lot more to do now; more reasons for people to interact with her. The crowds of pets and obnoxious toggles around her were more transitory in the old days. Most of those leveling there were low levels, not higher levels and had fewer and easier choices of powers and enhancement slots. People would level quickly - and then go away, even if they didn't go any further than to stand under atlas with everyone else rather than IN FRONT of atlas next to her. The noise and light and crowds were sometimes obnoxious UNDER atlas, but then you could actually just get down off that platform and largely get away from it. You stepped UNDER Atlas for the specific purpose of being there to hang out. Now, you go to Ms. Liberty and have a laundry list of things you can interact with her about - including two of the most time-consuming tasks in the game. You sometimes can't even see her to click on her. Just now I popped in for several minutes (4pm, pacific time, excelsior) just to check. There were consistently 10+ people within 15' of her and the server population wasn't even red yet. One leaves, another comes running in. Some people are there for a long time. I have noted this because I have a habit of hanging out under Atlas to chat, observe, look at peoples costumes and read a few backstories. They are a wide range of levels, not just low levels. They can be from 1 to 50 and often are. But look at what choices you're offered in clicking on her these days. Level up, obviously. If you haven't got your choices planned out you could be there a good while just looking things over, possibly even alt-tabbing out of the game to look stuff up. But she's also a TAILOR. You can spend hours messing with a costume - while on hover right next to her. For newbies she's an information kiosk, the in-game wiki-highlight reel about the game - builds, sidekicking/exemplaring, task forces, new costumes, earning titles, selecting titles, respeccing, inventions, and consignments. She has been made a central focus and she doesn't need to be. Now I doubt anyone is spending time reading the game data she provides. Still, at most she should simply politely refer questions to... someone else. Anyone else, just to move them along so the next customer can step in. Say, some desk jockey inside City Hall or a field rep that stands on the opposite side of Atlas' platform from the P2W vendor. But most certainly she should not be a tailor - which she is. At most she ought to be redirecting people ACROSS THE STREET TO THE ICON SHOP. The simplest and possibly most effective thing that could be done to begin to address the issue with the crowd at this ONE location is to have only one reason to be around her - to level up. There are NPC's with all the other tasks and information she provides nearby (or could be, without any heavy lifting of code). These tasks are, I believe, available at ALL level trainers. Back when there were 15 servers it didn't seem to matter. Now there's one server (there can be only one!) and I'm thinking that it could make all the difference. At worst it's an EASY experiment to try and then change back if necessary. If it cuts down that crowd then it is just a matter of asking those with pets and toggles to shut them down in consideration of others as needed. That would be the more traditional and friendly COH way in any case I'm a-thinkin'. I think the best way to deal with it is grass-roots. Send POLITE tells asking to turn things off in consideration of others. Remind people periodically in broadcast and local chat if you see it happening. COH always used to be the UNQUESTIONABLY most friendly, polite and respectful community in-game and out, and this topic shouldn't be anything that self-policing can't work wonders on regardless.
  16. I suspect it's not a matter of changing xp values in and of themselves than it is changing attack, defense and damage values throughout each issue update, so it IS a change in the rate of gain. That makes it hard to quantify because the RATE of xp gain is buried in a lot of other under-the-hood changes that aren't even going to be the same for all AT's at each level against all enemies. I think it's adequate to simply say that it's faster xp gain at sunset/now than it was when the game first went live even without xp boosters.
  17. Dr. Starkraven MD Your basic mad doctor in a Willy Wonka top hat who mixes mauve plaid with neon green polka dots, radiation defender. Fight Knight Just a guy in plate mail boxing bad guys with street justice moves Cerebrawl Psi/psi. Think "V" crawling out of the flaming ruins of Larkhill and instead of kinestesia can blow #@$& up with his mind. Medical Bill Just a guy in kinda stormtrooper-ish black/white armor pads running around with a red cross on his chest giving out teh heelz Jest Pattern Black/white jester outfit. Elec/elec blaster. Pixie Stick Literally a pixie beating people up with a stick. Boiler Not really a pun. He's literally geared in rusted steampunk armor made out of an old boiler who scraps with a rusted katana.
  18. Verified this bug several times now. The event is announced but no marker appears on the zone map and a search of the entire zone finds no fire taking place.
  19. Even simpler methodology I've found. Create your character. Do Outbreak only if you want the Isolator badge. Run DfB four times for the four different boosts that don't expire until level 22. No need for an xp boost and you'll earn influence normally. Do one more if you're less than level 13 (which will let you then use level 15 enhancements). Don't slot ANY of them while you're running as you'll just out-level them anyway and DfB runs move too fast to bother. When you come out you should have a few level 15 or better SO enhancements that you can probably slot. Sell the rest to one of the peeps to either side of Ms.Liberty. Your character is already rich - you just don't know it. The influence you now have you only need to pay listing fees at Wentworths. No need to go running around Atlas hunting badges, and taking the much higher amount of time working through all the mission arcs. You see, you also will have picked up salvage on those DFB runs. One or two of those salvage will be rare. Just go sell the rares at Wentworths. Prices are sure to be 500,000 or better. This afternoon I was selling them for 600-700,000. Sell two at those prices and your ONE toon will have well over 1,000,000 influence without even exchanging anything. The point being that one character can in perhaps 1 hour thus supply influence for enhancements to a dozen other new characters that you might not want to powerlevel but wouldn't otherwise be able to afford enhancements at low levels. How far that million influence will stretch depends on what you have characters do with it, how many characters dip into it, and for how long, but you can make a totally disposable character to quickly scrape out another 1,000,000 influence at any time.
  20. So, which of your characters would work best as the basis for a new comic book, and why? Who would be their personal nemesis? What kind of story arcs would it have? Who would show up as secondary characters? etc.
  21. Cerebrawl Psy/Mental blaster (simple costume of tights blending from red at the head down through colors to purple feet) [survived an explosion that gave him powers so face is also masked] Fight Knight StJ/Regen scrap (simple, straight-up set of medieval armor) [Was magically sealed in a coffin by a sorcerer but otherwise can't remember much of his past. Cover identity is as an MMA fighter.] Jest Pattern Elect/Elect blast (black and white jester costume with panels pattern) ["I'm funny? Funny how? Like I'm a clown? I amuse you?" :) ] Medical Bill Emp/Elect def (black/white armor colors with red cross chest emblem and other red trimmings) [Just a normal guy who became a paramedic to heroes] Dr. Starkraven MD Rad/Rad def (came up with the name and gave him a costume of pieces of wildly mismatched colors and patterns) [back in the day I used to have him occasionally jump around in the water at the base of Atlas babbling, "I'm a fish!" When not "on the job" he could indeed be quite, quite mad.
  22. An "undo" button. Even just for one step. Can't count the number of times I change a color or part but then can't remember what the previous one was, or discover that when I clicked the unlock for color pairs it DIDN'T unlock and now I just changed EVERY secondary color when I thought I was only changing the secondary for the part I'm on and so, didn't think I needed to note which colors ALL the other parts were. For that matter, even if it defaults to black/white matched colors for everything having them NOT locked when starting should be the default state. Or perhaps one better than that - you have a separate indicator of what the locked colors are and for each part you have an option of, "Set To Locked Colors" and then under the very first left column button have an option of "Set ALL To Locked Colors". It seems apparent to me that nobody, and I mean nobody, goes with a universally color-locked costume. Colors ALWAYS get tweaked. SOME items stay the default pairing and thus you want jackets and sleeves to start as matching colors/pieces, but the default setting should be to allow separate color change, not color change across the entire costume, and to UNDO that one change or at least go back to matching the initial master color pairing that you set. An undo button would also allow switching back and forth between two options. Say you can't decide between Tiger pattern and Cheetah on your pants, but it's a pain to have to go back into the menu and scrollscrollscrollclick between two widely separated choices. An undo button lets you go DIRECTLY back and forth to compare any two selections of costume piece or color without having to dive through menu layers.
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