Picking AT and sets based on concept only

[Snarky]

There is a penalty for studying a game too thoroughly.  One of the reasons I have not obsessed on chess theory.  It ruins the game.  Not saying I am a Gary Kasparov, but he famously hated the game after he “learned it”. That can be true in City of X where knowing what is “best” precludes choices until you paint yourself into the same corners repeatedly 

 

Now take my main undead concept, which I have been evolving from Vampire to Lich in the backstory.  I am starting to lean i to this either being a Invul/Dark Tank (yawn) or a Dark/Invul Sentinel (interesting) but have become open to it possibly being another “squishy” as well.  After all an Incarnate Troller is “invulnerable” to low level mons and would fit the concept fine.  Although something with a self rez (no enemies around either) would be very appropriate 

 

What do you folks do when writing up characters?  Backstory first or game knowledge first?

[Astralock]

I just pick what looks fun to play, and then min-max the heck out of it.  That includes things that are far from meta.  As long as you are having fun and not harming anyone else, that's all that matters.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Both.

 

I have some characters that I regularly bring into all of the games that I play. I always try to find a class/AT/power set that best fits my concept of them.

 

I also will find a class/AT power set that I want to try and then come up with a name and backstory for that character.

[SeraphimKensai]

Lich? Maybe too far of a progression but Necro/Dark MM is actually pretty fun.

[Lines]

I look for ATs and Powersets I've not tried before, and then build concepts around that.

 

Meta be damned.

[Grouchybeast]

I usually come up with a terrible quasi-punning name and then try to fit some powers to it.

[Luminara]

42 minutes ago, Astralock said:

I just pick what looks fun to play, and then min-max the heck out of it.

 

That.

 

Stop worrying about what "fits" and focus on fun.  You can always change colors and animations, grab pool powers, use a crowbar to force it to "fit" later.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I have been more successful in figuring out what I want to play first, then coming up with a good name/costume/backstory than starting with a concept and figuring out what best fits it in my mind.  I so, however, take a lot of leeway in redefining in my head where certain powers come from.  Doctor Pajama was one of my mains in Live.  He invaded the waking mind with dreams.  As an illusion/radiation controller, he had nothing to do with radiation but the weakening/debuffing was explained in my head by using the victims' fears against them.  My teammates neither knew or cared about this!

[Yomo Kimyata]

37 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

I usually come up with a terrible quasi-punning name and then try to fit some powers to it.

 

I'll usually do the reverse!  Start with the powers then pun out the name.

[TheZag]

I start with the powers and then take my name and add +1 to the number behind it for the new character name.

 

[Luminara]

I wanted to play a succubus, but not as a dominator or controller, so I threw together a costume and went back and selected Psi Melee.  And then, when I was playing with the costume options after a few levels, I stumbled on the combination of no head and an eye aura, so I started running around with a headless character with flames coming out where the eyes are supposed to be.  Then I added the thundercloud path aura so it looked even freakier, and by that point, I wasn't playing a succubus any more, so I redefined the character as a nightmare come to life and renamed her Phantasmagorie.

 

And then I added sharks.  Because it's not really weird unless there are sharks.  And even though I despise the inane lockout balancer in Insight (same reason i don't play my level 38 Savage/whatever scrapper much), and throwing sharks is sloooooooooooooooooow... I have to say, I like playing this one.  It's nothing like what I started with, what I intended, and I'm not the least bit displeased.

 

Don't get stuck on making a concept work, just go with the flow.  Step outside the concept zone and see what happens.  As long as you're enjoying it, it doesn't really matter whether it's true to the original vision... and you can always make another character to chase that vision later.   You have 5000 slots, Snarklebelle, you can afford to explore.

[TheOtherTed]

I'll usually get hit in the head with a character concept, juggle some ATs, powersets, and costumes to see what feels "right" or "cool" (which usually involves repeat deletions and re-creations), and then, once the dust has settled, I'll try to play with the hand I've dealt myself.

 

The one exception involved trying to recreate my Skyrim vampire in game, and ending up with a Praetorian Darkness Control / Nature Affinity ...thing that I still don't know what it is.  I just liked the visual weirdness of the two powersets together, and got a surprising amount of mileage out of that alone.

 

On a side note, I would love to do something with the Microbial Aura.  For some reason, it reminds me of the Lovecraft story "From Beyond," in which a scientist invents a way to let people see extra-dimensional beings (and for the beings to see people...).  No idea how to capture that in game, though.

[Ironblade]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

What do you folks do when writing up characters?  Backstory first or game knowledge first?

Mostly the first - probably about 90% of the time.

 

On rare occasions I work backwards like when I made a character to help on Really Hard Way badge runs.  Wanted high DPS, buffing team DPS and had to be a corr to counter Tyrant's regen so I made a beam rifle/kinetics corr.  Now I wanted to make one for advanced difficulty task forces so I asked people who run them what they would want - ice blast / cold domination corr.

[Spaghetti Betty]

Hm, I guess it's a mix of both concept and gameplay knowledge. Not because I make any toons that are cutting edge. I have a library of meta builds that's collecting dust because I haven't bothered attaching a name and a face to them.

 

That being said, a lot of my fun toons turn out as a concept first. A recent example; I was researching Japanese mythos and landed on a concept for a Savage/EnA Scrapper that is now known as the Shirikodama Stealer (have fun googling that). I'm pretty happy with it. The build looks amazing. And playing it is funny.

[TygerDarkstorm]

27 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

On a side note, I would love to do something with the Microbial Aura.  For some reason, it reminds me of the Lovecraft story "From Beyond," in which a scientist invents a way to let people see extra-dimensional beings (and for the beings to see people...).  No idea how to capture that in game, though.

I finally found a use for that aura! I have wanted to use it so bad and I ended up slapping a faint version of it on my Battle Axe/Nin Scrapper and have reasoned that she has it because she's working for my mad scientist Dr. Elaina Wrath, and Elaina used her science to enhance my scrapper's natural abilities, and thus, the faint aura of "science," lol.

 

In regards to the actual topic: I generally go for concept or backstory before anything, and some of those just happen to coincide with "meta" type combos, but even so, I am not a min/max type of player. I left that type of community in WoW because I'm just not a fan of that type of playstyle, and because the reality is, I'm an average player at best, and I'm okay with that. I'm playing games to have my version of fun and escape reality for a bit. And like many others here, my most fun characters are often the ones where a solid concept has slid into place and I have headcanons for them as I play them. Like, I'ma end up rolling a Nature/Sonic defender, but only because I thought of a funny concept for it that I want to play around with, not because I'll ever use it in hardmode. Even my characters' epic pools and incarnates are catered as much as possible to their concepts. I'm grateful to have a game like this where things like character concept and fun can be "king."

[Zhym]

I’ve done both.  Usually, I come up with a character concept and then try to fit an AT and power set combo to it.  But sometimes I want to try a power set combo, so I try to come up with a concept that fits.  I’d say I’m about 50/50 on how that works out.  I’ve had concepts I loved where the powers just sucked to play.  And I’ve had power sets that worked reasonably well but the character concept didn’t grab me.  It’s the characters where the concept is fun and the power set works that I really enjoy playing.

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Zhym

[Doomguide2005]

Is there an opposite to j/rangers no?

 

Hmmm

 

That'd be an emphatic "Yes!"

 

     I sometimes have a backstory and concept swirling around in my head and spend time beating my head in the costume creator trying to match it (I generally suck at it and just want get in game anyway).  Other times I'm much more into exploring the mechanics of a specific pairing and any concept comes along later.  Sometimes much later.  Rarely do they make it into the in-game bio in either case.

[Greycat]

14 hours ago, Snarky said:

What do you folks do when writing up characters?  Backstory first or game knowledge first?

 

100% "Whatever looks interesting."

 

I know I could min/max. I don't because it's boring to me. (And yet some characters still get to the point of "can stand in the middle of a mob napping and be safe." If they get there 'naturally' it's fine.)  Reasons I'll make a character:

 

1. Character concept. I want to be this person, or this person would fit a story in my head. What AT/sets fit best? (Backstory first)

2. "Ooh, I want to try that powerset."

3. "Oooh, I don't think I've tried that combo." Sometimes a "for the lulz" reason, like stone/MA flipping around while attacking sounds funny.

4. A name comes to mind, is available, I like what ideas come with it. (For instance, Rock Yew is still waiting for sentinels to get stone armor. Til then, earth/TA.)

5. SG reasons, which is kinda-sorta 1 but externally prompted.

6. Mix of the above.

 

The times I've made a character to deal with something specific in game... are rare (introduction of the purple triangles, IIRC, prompted me to make a rad/rad, and that felt forced. Got her to 50, she was (and is) a fun character, but ... eh.)

 

I'm pretty much 100% either "What sounds fun today?" or being a smarta** in naming (*Rez dispenser waves from the RWZ.*)

[High_Beam]

I evolved.

 

I have been, since I was like in the second grade, a lover of writing, and I love to write.  Most of that writing even now, bad.  Short stories, long stories, paragraphs to whole books (not kidding).  None of it published, and the web site I used to post my stuff on, I let go.  Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs of eighties spurred a lot of my writing and that was where character creation and back story became a big thing for me.  Then real life as an adult and 20 years in the Navy put some of that on the back burner but also pushed more traditional writing to the forefront.

 

Then came City of Heroes and initially I created characters based on the powers that sounded the coolest then created the story around them; and most of those stories were crap.  Their back stories were riddled with comic book tropes and in general zero actual creativity because I was trying to craft stories around the actual powers.

 

Then I evolved.

 

And started to create characters based on story ideas I had.  and that was it, the rest of my characters on live and all on HC had their story written up before I even picked powers and as such, there are a lot of hard to play characters in my alts stable. And because of this, many of those alts don't go very far as my attention span from a story concept starts to wane.  I have six and a half full books (650 + pages each) about the Munitions Mistress (a recreation of my live 50 Mercs/Traps Mastermind) who still sits at level 38 on HC (nobody picks this because they are teh uber, she epitomizes theme over function) yet in those books she is a high end incarnate, and I am still writing about her.  And now, pretty much any new character I create is built on a character from that writing if at all possible due to power constraints.

 

And that is where imagination is awesome and this game is awesome because it spurs that imagination.  Runeslinger (daughter of the Munitions Mistress) is a DP/Atomic Blaster but in the writing that atomic isn't atomic but lucent energy, I just chose atomic because the mechanics of what it did fit the mechanics of her light powers.  So I pretend she isn't radiating radioactive mist when Beta Decay is active but rather she is radiating rune-infused light auras that do the same thing.

[Starslayer_D]

Hmmm.. I actually work in several different ways there.

- Sometimes I first have a powerset and asecondary I want to try on an archetype. Like claws/SR scrapper  "Nights Claw". 

- Add in a costume to that. Miss Melanchony (fortunata, whose name came via her mourning gown outfit).

- Or I find/conceptualise a build alone or with friends. Phoenix Fatale, (Fire/Fire/Fire blaster, and defenitely optimized. Thanx Croax an the others from the HYDRA discord).

- Sometimes I have a costume and then try to match a powerset/class etc to it...  even the random buttom in the costum creator can create something nice looking. So when I had a green skinned lady in purple fashionable vixtorian outfit... Lady Troll, Street Justice/Regen Brute. (Though I am to he day waffling whether super strength would have been better...

- And very often I have a name and the rest follows...  Blame Shifter (Mind/Time controller), Enemy Mime (Illusion controller, dressed like a MIme). Major Destruction, Major Carnage  .. both MMs.

- Some are  a mixture between a costume and a name just leading the concept: Quantum Ghost, (Energy/Ninja srntinel).

- And then there are the costume contest victims.. Orange Juicer (runner up for the food contest, Water blaster), Rudolf the Paindeer..  for chrismas.. a boxing raindeer.

- and some inspired by powersets, costume pieces and mythology.. Minotauress (Invul/Axe), Euryale Gorgo (Stone/TA controller), both came via the monster heads.

[DarknessEternal]

This is the problem where the best is allowed to stay so much better than the non-best forever.

[MrAxe]

All I know on creating a character is that I am never picking concept over fun again. When shield came out I picked energy melee over electrical as it fit the concept better. Not only did I pick a rubbish set over a good one, (a combo many chose for how good it is in fact) the em clipped horribly through the shield and drove my ocd craaaazy! But I had to stick with it because 'mah concept'.

 

I just go with fun now.

[Ceejer]

All the starting places listed above. Sometimes it's a name other times it's combinations I haven't tried but always for the fun and more about the journey than destinations.

 

I have pages and pages of character concepts. They'll be crafted for hours and sometimes months. 

 

I went Mind/Dark Dominator for my science based Lich. Dominators are very vulnerable early on and even later there are factions that be vexing for Mind/Dark. Just had another idea, off to see if I have a Mind/Savage already.

[Sir Myshkin]

I dare say that my knowledge of how the game works is what drove me to have more fun playing it than compared to when I started. I’m a little quirky, a little insane, some might even call me mad in that regard, but I find a certain level of enjoyment in knowing where the limit is and trying to break it.

 

I used to make character AT and power choices based on concepts, now I more make concepts based on the set choices I make ahead of time. When I first came back to Homecoming I focused on building all the pairings I never got around to that I had wanted to, that later evolved into pairings that could do extreme and ridiculous things.

 

I have also invested almost zero major time into costume design as I had so many back logged costumes that I’ve just been pulling old stock and tweaking them to fit new stuff.

[Zhym]

On 9/30/2022 at 1:16 PM, Greycat said:

A name comes to mind, is available, I like what ideas come with it. (For instance, Rock Yew is still waiting for sentinels to get stone armor. Til then, earth/TA.)

 

On 9/30/2022 at 2:07 PM, Starslayer_D said:

And very often I have a name and the rest follows...  Blame Shifter (Mind/Time controller), Enemy Mime (Illusion controller, dressed like a MIme). Major Destruction, Major Carnage  .. both MMs.

 

Yeah, I do this a lot.  Thus, I have ended up with:

• Captain Kangaroo: MA/SR scrapper.  Lots of fun to play.  Was my "main" on Live and one of the first characters I recreated when I joined Homecoming.
• 70s Man: DP/MC blaster.  He was an AR blaster on Live, but DP is so much better.  This toon redefined what "lots of fun" could be and quickly became my main on Homecoming.
• Splendidman: SS/Inv tanker.  'Nuff said about this one.
• Crystal Cannon: Ice/Ice blaster.  The name is a play on "glass cannon."
• Tomcat: Claws/SR stalker.  
• Teal Ninja: Ninja/Ninjitsu stalker.  A great powerset combo for soloing.   
• Canned Heat: Fire/Fire Blaster robot cop (okay, technically it's "Canned.Heat" because I joined Homecoming too late to get the name, but I had it on one of the Live servers, so I'm going to pretend I have the real name)
• Pippi LePew: BR/Devices blaster.  This is also a fun combo.
• Siouxsie Tsoo: Kin/Sonic defender dressed up like a Tsoo.  Kin/Sonic is a great combo, of course, and this is a fun toon to play in groups. 
• Gort Mk. VII: Time/Rad Defender.  I had a couple of versions of Gort on Live, since I'm not sure what the canonical power set would be for the movie version of the robot.  This combo works pretty well, though.  I also have Gort Mark XII, a Rad/Atomic blaster, but that combo hasn't quite grabbed me.
• Mediocre Fred: Claws/Regen scrapper.  Based on a Smothers Brothers song, he's a normal looking guy (or bicyclist) who turns into a werewolf.  I like the character concept a lot, but he's not at the top of my list of fun characters to play.
• The Bureaucrat: AR/Invuln sentinel.  This was totally a concept build, and it didn't quite work.  Worked well enough to get him to 50, and even play some after that, but it's not my favorite.  Which is a shame, because I love the concept.
• Dr. Pierce: Emp/Arrow defender.  Modeled after a certain TV army doctor.  As a playable character, he's...fine.
• Subordinate Claus: Ice/Time controller.  Santa in bondage gear.  Pretty fun to play, but I only bring him out in the holiday season.

There are a whole bunch of other names that I rolled up characters for but haven't leveled much for various reasons: Statsman (Kin/Regen brute—don't do this), Human Trampoline (SS/Shield brute, with the idea that I'd pick lots of knock-up powers as he leveled, but I never leveled him), Andromeda Brain (BR/Mental blaster), Seismogram (Seismic/Earth blaster), Ninja Pirate Robot (DP/Ninja blaster), Sound Blaster Pro (Sonic/Sonic blaster), Laddie Liberty (Broad Sword/Shield scrapper), Celery Stalker (Savage/Bio stalker), Major Weakness (Mercs/Poison MM), and OVH Tech Support (Robots/Time MM). 

 

I also have one or two characters with power sets I like, but who I don't play much because I can't figure out a good name to go with them.  I must have changed the name on my SJ/WP stalker three or four times now.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Zhym