What keeps you playing 1 chaarcter?

[A Cat]

Little of everything. Character concept, looks, and at/powerset. The last thing varying based on what I'm doing a bit. I mainly enjoy playing a tank or brute on MSRs since i they have a more active role. Solo, I like scrappers/stalkers. I know blasters are considered OP now but IMO that's only true with a pretty mature build. It's just easier to level as a scrapper IMO. Teams, they're all pretty fun. As far as character concept, I do (a possibly cringey) thing where I have in my head my character's personality, and play out the missions or whatever with that in mind. Like solo RP I guess, lol. It's not always easy to form a concrete personality though. I definitely enjoy playing the characters that I manage this with though. Being just in my head, I don't have to inflict any possibly half baked ideas on other people, which I am always trying to avoid. 

[Heraclea]

When I see a team recruiting, especially for level 50 content, I ask the recruiter if they need anything specific.  I can supply anything except dedicated healer.  Otherwise I go with what works best for what they're running; debuffs for Kahn, tank with CC for BAF, DPS for Lambda, ice/plants blastroller for Hami. and so forth.  Eventually I settle on one or two characters for those roles, and those characters eventually become T4 incarnates.   They still get played to supply raw materials for the Factory.

[Six-Six]

10 hours ago, pawstruck said:

Costume/character making is at least 50% of the game for me. I'd argue that it's what makes CoH the king of superhero RPG's.

 

 

Whaaaaat??? There's a game AFTER the character creation screen??? 😃

[chi1701]

I keep playing my keldian peace bringer, having forms for ranged damaged and higher survivability melee and at low level gives it a consistent play style for a larger level range.

[Parabola]

3 hours ago, Six-Six said:

 

Whaaaaat??? There's a game AFTER the character creation screen??? 😃

I often struggle to even get as far as the character creation screen. Building in mids is practically an addiction now...

[Aracknight]

For me, the Aracknight is really the only role I can slip into.  On the surface, he's just an old school MA/SR Scrapper doing MA/SR Scrapper things.  But his eyes were the first eyes to see Atlas Park back in I8.  His eyes were my last eyes to see sunset.  And his were the first eyes to see the sun rise over Atlas Park once more with Homecoming.  At over 1500 badges he's done so much, and with each issue there's more for him to do.  With each new power set or pool modification and easy respec access, there's more for him to try.  With each new invention set comes endless tweaking, pushing him to the absolute edge of performance.  With so many costumes and builds available, he can carry around an Arachnos mace and summon Arachnos pets to fight alongside him, or he can toss lightning and ion judgment, or various sized fireballs around.  I can create three different builds with different concepts or specializations, like PVP, if I ever actually become interested in it.    I think Bill Z framed it best, that Aracknight's love and contributions to the game are the best version of Me that I can bring to Paragon.  I can tweak for pylon times.  I can tweak for taking on AV's.  I don't need to post all my results, because it's really just Aracknight vs Aracknight, which is the most Scrapper thing I can even conceptualize.

 

I've tried the alt game, but I could never slip my mind inside any other toon for more than a little while.  The best I've been able to manage is various MA/SR ported archetypes: Tank, Brute, and Stalker, and they're all pretty similar but give me options.  I haven't been fortunate or personally vulnerable enough to make actual friends in the game that might need the Aracknight to serve more than one purpose on the regular, but please don't think that's about the population, that's about me.  I'm not even in a supergroup, I just PUG or solo my @$$ off and it's let him earn all those badges I mentioned earlier just fine, Including several Mo's (even Keyes!)

 

One day I might get into AE, and create an Aracknight origin story, or an Aracknight Task Force, and that's cool to have as an option too.  Regrettably someone nicked his name on the roleplay server and seems to have vanished, so he hangs out on Excelsior and gets into whatever nonsense he can there, but roleplaying would be ideal.  I'm endlessly grateful that he can continue his adventures.

 

Thanks for letting me wax nostalgic and poetical about this, and sorry it went so long. 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2021 by Aracknight

[Seed23]

On 12/1/2021 at 8:02 PM, Krimson said:

My method of playing is currently.

 

1. I make a build on Mids. 

2. I will either farm the toon to level 50 or, I will solo the character until I get bored which is usually around the mid 30s, low 40s. Then farm the rest.

3. I will probably play the toon until I am Vet Level 12, and get Incarnates to Tier 3 or, if I really like the character I will play it until Incarnates are done. 

4. I have about 25 level 50 toons. Maybe more. About 10 of them are fully Incarnate. 

5. I currently have zero toons below level 50. This is quite common. Quickest I have gone from Mids thought experiment to fully slotted 50 is about 3 hours. 

6. If I have no inspiration for a new toon, I will find an older one to work on. Some of my early builds are not quite Godlike, so I revisit them until they are. 

This is me 100%. I have about 35-38 or whatever 50s on my main, and I think 5 on this alt account doing this process. It works great! Plus, I mean, builds are mad expensive in my experience. What keeps me from alting like a rabbit is trying to not be broke to afford the new 50. Seems to work wonders.

[Doomguide2005]

I'm very much like @Aracknight.  I have a Main.  First created, first to see or try new content.  The last I played before Sunset.  That said I'm also very much an altiholic having over 100 50's back on Live.  Pinnacle was nothing but 50's.  But I created clones of my Main on several servers and on Redside (before you could readily swap sides) and she was always the first.  Why?  Got me beyond the simple joy of playing the game, playing her.

[Snarky]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

My latest toon is a Dark/Dark Brute. I made it as a general purpose Brute, but boy does it tear through Smashing/Lethal farms and unlike any other toon I have, I have been able to solo Giant Monsters. Well, just Babbage and Kraken so far, twice each, but that is a big deal for me. 😄

I think Dark/Dark is strangely the most balanced of all Brutes.  To make a long explanation short: Nothing sees you until you melee it. When you melee it you debuff it’s accuracy.  You have very good resists and the best heal in the game.  You have good AoE including crowd control. You have very good ST damage.   Is it the strongest? At anything? Prob not.  But very good at everything?  Pretty much!

[Fermi]

Coming here a little late, but offering my point of view.

Until Sunday, I had 42 toons, over 35 on lvl 50, most fully T4, the others still in T3.

Each toon was created following that idea. The idea could be a different powerset/AT combo, or a character concept, or even a costume.

But as I'm a RPer, I wouldn't have time to properly play all of those. In fact, looking at the list and seeing toons with "Last logged on 180+ days" made me think on why that was happening.

So I made my decision: I'd trim my list. And that would mean really delete toons, not sending them away to other shards in exile.

No. I needed to cut deep.

I selected the toons I've RPed most, and even a couple that I had just created. Moved everyone to the front page.

Then I logged in all others. It didn't matter I was looking at Vet Level 40+. It needed to go.

The only thing I did was to unslot everything and store it on a base. Then... deleted it.

In a few cases, when the powerset was compatible with a RP toon I wanted to keep (like a secondary build -- I have a Fire/Pain Corr and retooled a Fire/Cold Corr to use it as an alternate), I renamed it, changed bio and costume. The rest? Retired forever.

I need even update the thread where I kept my toons' fake comic cover to reflect that... Things to do later.

So, now, I have 11 toons -- including a farmer. -- A total of 18 chars, as there are alternates for some (like I described above). And my upper limit will be 20 chars, but not a single one more, still keeping the 11 chosen ones.

Was it easy? No way.

But I felt it was the best for me. YMMV.
 

[Shred Monkey]

There's one more thing that I haven't really seen mentioned above directly, that I find matters to me a lot.  I have to feel like I'm adding value to the team.  I mean, if there's already a tank, I'm not going to want to play a tank because I'm not really making the team better.  Sure tanks can do damage. but not as much as other ATs.   Similarly, if there's already more support than needed, or nobody is dying, then I don't really enjoy playing a defensive support or control character.  Debuffs, aren't particularly much use in fast moving teams in missions with no AVs or hard fights.  Even DPS doesn't feel valuable if you're team steamrolling so fast that you spend most of your time corpse blasting.  

 

I think this is why I usually end up coming back to my ST DPS stalker and run almost exclusively TFs and +4 content.  I have dozens of targeting macros to allow me to focus on the bosses and hard targets of almost any enemy group or Task Force.  In kill-all type missions  I'm focusing on eliminating the bosses before the LTs and Minions are down.  In objective style missions, I'm providing high DPS to the AVs and other hard targets.  The only times I don't feel valuable is when we're doing speed runs and someone's always loading in and beating me to the objectives, and I generally (not always) just don't join those types of teams.

 

I also have a few toons parked at levels 12, 20, and 40 for running on teams that aren't overpowering content and my support toons and tanks tend to be of more value.

 

I'm a big fan of content updates like we just got, where we can put our high end toons to the test in more difficult content.  It absolutely makes for a better game, in my opinion.

 

 

[PLVRIZR]

Two words:  Foot Stomp

 

Yes, I'm super old-school, playing Inv/SS tanks.  Right after the aggro nerf, which eliminated the fire tank dumpster diving, when Inv/SS tanks were the kings of S/L farming..and still going, today.  Nothing is quite as satisfying as FS, every 7 or 8 seconds (with Hasten running).  NUT is my absolute go-to, when just wanting to have fun on a +4/8 ITF, fire farm or exempting down to Posi (or any other TF).

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 12/1/2021 at 8:22 PM, biostem said:

 I want to stick with just one character, but cannot seem to get through the slog of the higher levels.  Do any of you folks have a particular approach or mindset that you get yourselves into, in order to complete that journey to 50 and beyond?  Thanks for reading!

 

I have lots of characters, lots of 50s, but only one has gotten significant post-50 play (something like 70 vet levels).  I'm assuming that you are looking for something that you can play well past 50, mainly in team settings.  Some thoughts:

 

1.  Choose a style that you enjoy.  Melee/ranged/support/whatever.  If you love blasting, don't make a tank, even if you think it's "better" in the long run.

2.  Choose animations you enjoy.  You are going to be seeing a LOT of them.  There are a bunch of powers that I just refuse to take because I hate the way they look.

3.  Here's where it gets opinionated.  Play solo and regular XP to your 30s.  It's so easy to get to 50 in a few hours that lots of people will bow right past this.  But to me, it's important to know your sets.  Which work great at level 10 and are useless at 30?  Here's also where you figure out which animations you like or hate.  I don't recommend doing something like Posi 1, for example, until you are in your 30s because you can level a few times in there and you'll miss some of that learning experience.

4.  If it gets boring, move on.  I have a bunch of alts in their 40s that I've just stopped playing because they don't currently interest me.  Sooner or later, I'll probably take them to 50, but as long as I have more interesting things to do, I'm gonna do those things first.

[SaintD]

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

 

What is level 50!? What's this Incarnate thing people argue about!? I hit level 30 amidst a graveyard of twenty other deleted heroes, and park that poor bastard alone and forgotten in Bricktown while I make another fifty more!

Edited December 8, 2021 by SaintD

[Dazl]

I would image that your role and reputation on a server would also have an effect on how much you play certain characters. SG leaders, trial-raid leaders, RP’ers, and PvP’er might all fall into this.

[the1egend1ives]

On 12/1/2021 at 7:22 PM, biostem said:

I see someone else's costume, or I get inspired to try out a particular build, and I run off to whip up a costume and get to playing it.  I get the character to the teens or mid-20s, and quickly lose interest.  I want to stick with just one character, but cannot seem to get through the slog of the higher levels.  Do any of you folks have a particular approach or mindset that you get yourselves into, in order to complete that journey to 50 and beyond?  Thanks for reading!

 

Play the character that inspires other people rethink their life choices. When you're constantly getting PMs in game saying what a great name/costume/concept you have, you tend to stick with that toon.

[gamingglen]

What?!?  We do NOT have to alt?  Unthinkable. 

[Ashington]

Badge Whoring and mad scientist Roleplay are what keep me invested in Dr. Pesker