Arilou

Originally Posted by Residentx_EU

I read all both the novels(web of archanos and freedom phalanx).
5. What's the story behind Recluse came to settle on Mako, Ghost Widow, Black Scorpion, and Scirocco as the foundation for his organization? How exactly and when did he take over Arachnos? He killed someone, right?

Originally Posted by Carnifax_NA

Also Big Dogs. They might look, dress and sound like especially butch members of exclusively men-only back-street special-interest clubs but they're an utter, utter pain, especially to any sort of control based lowbie.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

Not just my horse - any horse being eaten is gross amd wrong

Originally Posted by Toony

I was unaware those were no longer vet rewards. So they aren't hard for people who have been here 5 years. I wonder how hard they are for people who have been here 3 months.

Originally Posted by Thunder Knight

Not intending to nitpick, but both of those are Silver Age images (the "boner" comic is from 1951, while I don't know the exact year of the other one, those particular versions of the Flash, Green Lantern, and the Atom were created specifically for the Silver Age, in 1956, 1959, and 1961 respectively)

The Silver Age is where most of the well-known cheese comes from, not the Golden Age, which has an entirely different sort of cheese (mainly consisting of Designated Heroes being absolutely brutal to villains, even normal human thugs). To contrast: Silver Age cheese would be Superman being a jerk to Jimmy Olsen in order to protect his secret identity or to teach him a lesson; Golden Age cheese would be Superman threatening to throw a wife-beating man out the window if he doesn't stop, or in several cases actually killing criminals with no repercussions (either legal or ethical).

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Yeah, crazy idea, I know. When I say "reroll," I mean delete the character and create a new one with the same look and backstory, but different powersets and/or AT. To answer the obvious question of why in as short a form as I can: Because I'm done playing Blasters. I really don't want to discuss this, beyond saying that recent changes to the game have made me realise that I never actually liked them to begin with, and I will no longer torture myself playing an AT I don't like.

The "50" in question is The Steel Rook, my second oldest character ever created, second only to Samuel Tow himself, and designed by a good friend of mine back when we were both much younger. The Rook originally started out as, and still is, an AR/Dev/Munitions (eventually, those didn't exist at the time) Blaster. The concept that my friend gave me amounted to "make me a character that looked like the Brotherhood of Steel armour from Fallout and Fallout 2. I did what I could at the time, and thus The Steel Rook was born, pictured here some time later as evidenced by his Justice shoulders. I didn't give him a story up until somewhere around 2007 when I was in the UK and so had time to kill, but his story isn't all that complex: He's a genius inventor who started out working on creating an autonomous robot with his wife, until she was killed by muggers, causing him to turn around and form his own weapons development and security company to combat crime of all natures.

The original idea for the Rook is the idea that never was - that of a guy in very strong power armour armed to the teeth. The "armed" part was easy - Assault Rifle has decent damage and Blasters are good at dealing it. The "armour" part... Not so much. Seven years later, I am done seeing this big armoured brute dying like a chump, so I'm rerolling him, along with a fair few other characters when time and opportunity permits. The question, and the very reason I made this, is "Into what?"

I have four options here, highlighting the four ATs I'm prepared to play: Scrapper, Brute, Mastermind, Stalker, in that order. Of those four, I have two overall directions I could go:

1: Melee of some sort, capitalising on his power armour and likely going with Invulnerability. This means either Brute or Scrapper, but WHAT/Inv? I want to keep the high-tech aspect of the character, but I really don't know what to use for that.

2: A Bots/Traps/SomethingElse Mastermind, delving into his background of robotics design and his general aptitude for science and technology. This will probably require that I downsize the armour suit, however, as Masterminds aren't known for being personally very resilient.

Any of the ATs above will fill the criteria I have for character performance, so I'm really mostly looking for which one will suit my concept and design the closest.

Any ideas?

Originally Posted by Toony

It seems somewhat impossible to have a harder time with enemies that have one attack and brawl yet an easier time with enemies that have numerous melee and ranged attacks and frequently ambush.

Maybe clockwork (though with stamina being inherent their problems have ceased for me) but skulls/hellions?

Originally Posted by Toony

They're not fun to fight against at that level.

I have far more trouble with Praet PD and Resistance and Ghouls than I do with Clockwork or Hellions or Skulls. They are noticably more buffed up as pointed out with PPD having numerous attacks and hellions having about one.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I'm not saying they're less elitist. Any challenge with a high chance of failure will have elitists bragging about it and rubbing it in people's faces. What I'm saying is that this is a challenge that's simultaneously more involving to the player and one which requires less of an investment to attempt.

A stat-check challenge may be simpler and thus available to more people theoretically, but it requires a certain level of preparation, which will both lock out more people for the simple fact that such preparation may constitute "work" inside of a game, as well as present an actually lower challenge once the right stats are met.

This is the fundamental difference between challenges for the character and challenges for the player. If we view our characters units in an RTS, then it makes sense we'll want challenges to basically constitute preparing said character and sending him in to do his best as a father might send his son to his first baseball game. I, however, happen to see City of Heroes as a more action-oriented game where character performance should depend more on the player's intervention than that, and as such challenges should test the player's ability to actually use said character's abilities as a driver might take his sports car to the race track.

Character-specific challenges take the game out of the player's hands, and as such don't constitute an actual challenge as I see it. They constitute a gate. "You must be this tall to ride." Player-specific challenges, that is to say events which challenge the player's actions and reactions, are both in keeping with the game and more proper challenges. City of Heroes really isn't "actiony" enough to actually constitute any challenge which requires extraordinary player skill, so the task falls to testing people's ability to interact with each other. And for a team encounter, it only makes sense.

Originally Posted by Bosstone

That kind of misses ST's point, which is that the developers sometimes don't seem to get that they have created a Skinner box. They make a system which has moderate rewards if you play it the "right" way, but has better rewards if you abuse the game and in the process your own enjoyment, and then are surprised when people tend toward the latter.

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction

On the other hand, you do need to have these stats. Whereas a coordination-type challenge is equally open to a relatively new player, or a player who isn't concerned with IOs, or a Scrapper trio, because the minimum stats needed are lower.

Meanwhile, these "stat check" challenges are still not idiot proof. If your tank can't hold aggro, or your debuffer keeps standing in the wrong place and dying, or someone with all the "right" powers never uses them, you just spent all that time putting together the "perfect" team just to fail anyway.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Once upon a time when Trials actually existed, perhaps. That depends on what you mean by "that kind of challenge." If you're referring to the Sewers Trial, then Zamuel and I did it on a pick-up team of people I'd never met before in my life with only the communication that the Team channel permits, and we did it without even all that much of a prologue lecture. People don't really need to chat all that much, they just need to be willing to read. All it takes is a leader who types fast and that's good enough.

Originally Posted by Dispari

Oh I know; but redside you really only find them in mayhems. Mayhems which are easy to avoid, and which I don't really see people running and enjoying in that range, and which I myself stop doing mayhems to avoid. Throwing them in the new arc is about as fun as fighting Vanguard.

So, the new redside arc? I run it on every new toon I bring out of Praetoria. I had fun running it on a 6-man superteam type thing as we left. I ran it on my new DS/Pain toon and my Huntsman. I even flashed back to it with another. The blueside one? I'm sorry, but even though it has a neat story and some really interesting new maps, it's absolutely ruined by the gang they make you fight. PPD at that range, with those powers, are not fun. At all. I don't care how good the story is, I'm not going to enjoy autohit debuffs and things that floor your hit rate and defense. I ran it twice (once ghosted everything, to get badges on main badger), and never again.

Originally Posted by Toony

Praetoria is noticably more difficult than older lowbie content. And it is indeed new.

Resistance and PPD are far far FAR more difficult than Hellions or Skulls. Heck, even Vahz, IMO.