AkuTenshiiZero

The majority of my characters are concept-based. When I first started out, it was more along the lines of "I like the idea of playing an X/Y, how can I finagle a story out of this?" Nowadays I tend to come up with the story alongside the powersets, or end up swapping powersets around until I fit the concept.

My latest creation is Madam Magnetic, an Elec/Stone Dominator Hero. I had initially planned on the name "Lady Lodestone" but that was taken. I'm not entirely sold on the idea yet, as I'm not sure if the concept is really clear enough for people to understand right away without explaining it. I just wanted to make a character based on lodestone/magnetism.

The character who gets the most compliments is without a doubt Ectofreak, my Dark/Rad Defender Hero. I managed to color all his powers in a really awesome neon green and black color scheme, making it look very Jack Kirby-esque IMO, and people always comment on how cool my powers look and that it works perfectly as ectoplasm. So I'm really proud of that one.

Claws and Regen are the only sets I've reused so far, and I used WP as a sort of "surrogate Regen" on my Claws/WP Brute, since RttC was a better fit to the concept of scaling strength based on threat. Despite the inherent weakness both Regen and WP have to high burst damage, I still love the ability to win the long-term fights and have ludicrous amounts of Recovery so I can scrapperlock like a fiend.

When I started to hit the higher-end content in the 40-50 range for the first time in Grandville, I had the distinct feeling that I had become somebody important in the Rogue Isles. When I finished my first patron arc, Scirocco spoke to me, somewhat begrudgingly, as an equal. My journey was coming to an end, my efforts were being recognized, and I had the power to match my status.

Now that I've started getting into Incarnate content, I feel...pedestrian. Like I'm just one f a bajillion other heroes/villains scrambling like rats in a maze. I'm no longer a respected member in the upper ranks of a massive organization, because Arachnos doesn't amount to a pile of dirt anymore. Frankly, I haven't felt so insignificant since level 1.

The problem here is twofold: One, being forced to have a massive team for trials makes the individual feel smaller. You literally aren't making enough personal impact. Going fist-to-fist with Back Alley Brawler made me feel powerful, being one of 10 Corruptors chipping away at Siege makes me feel weak. Secondly, the narrative is no longer personal. This is where the SSA's shine infinitely brighter than trials, people call me by name and know who I am! In trials, nobody knows who I am, nobody knows of my deeds, and nobody will remember what I've done.

Finally, there is the factor of how poorly the Devs have scaled trials. This is going back the the infamous Rocks Of Death. When I started the Incarnate content, I was expecting the opportunity to face cosmic-level threats the likes of Galactus or Onslaught. And what did we get stuck with? Being pelted to death by rocks thrown by housewives while raiding a TV station. Way to seriously drop the ball, guys. I know we already have Rulaaru, and it's probably pretty tough to top that in terms of threat-level, but these are threats I surpassed in the freakin' Zig Breakout tutorial. Again, we need bigger threats to match our new level of power, if those were legions of planet-devouring Lovecraftian horrors throwing rocks at me, I would be satisfied. Housewives. F***ing housewives.

My "main" when I started out was my spunky teenage android dude, Zeta Silver, a Claws/Regen Scrapper. I played the heck out of him, RPed a ton, had a grand time as I leisurely climbed to 20...

...And then came Capt. Stormrider.

I think it was mostly due to a falling out among my SG mates, and my success in finally getting my RL best friend to play CoX, but when he insisted on making a Corruptor (this was years before side-switching) I realized I needed a villain too. So I created my throwaway Elec/Storm Corruptor Space-Pirate with a lame storyline and a name that I had pulled straight off of the Iced Earth album of similar name. I had no intention of playing him much, as I already had a villain of about level 15, and Stormrider existed just as a holding pattern to get my friend caught up.

I don't know when or why it happened, but I suddenly realized that Stormrider was rapidly becoming my favorite. Nowadays, Zeta remains untouched at level 20, and the aforementioned other villain only recently reached 50 as my second, but Capt. Stormrider will forever be my main and first to 50, nearly fully decked-out in sub-Purple IOs and well on his way to Incarnate completion. If I ever do amassthe collective resources to purple out a character, it will be him before anyone else. What started as a throwaway villain with a lazy backstory became my most carefully-tooled character with the longest, richest storyline woven in and out of existing CoX lore and still evolving with each new part of lore released.

Because nobody has asked within recent memory, and searching "toon" will get me nowhere.

There are alot of things about this game and it's players that drive me loopy. Catgirls, Fire/Kin roflfarmers, "Dark Lord Dark of Darkness" characters on blueside, to name a few. But there is one thing that has been slowly plucking at my nerves non-stop since I started my career of defeating enemies by bludgeoning them with my own health pool: People using the word "Toon". Maybe it's the childish, degrading nature of the term instantly calling to mind Bugs Bunny slapstick*, serving to remind me that I am in fact a 26 year old manchild playing a MMO instead of getting drunk and grunting at football games like a real man.

I really can't explain why I hate the term, but I do know that I have never heard it used in any other game I've ever played. So far as I know, it's exclusive to CoX, which is pretty odd considering how universal MMO lingo usually is. And most of those terms can trace their roots back to either programming lingo or D&D lingo, "Toon" just seems so random and out-of-place to me. Where did it come from?

--EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION--

I know the origin of the word toon. Roger Rabbit sits comfortably in my upper bracket of movie rankings. What I meant, and what people seem to have missed, is how it became a relevant term to this game, or alternatively to whatever other game it may have spawned from, and how it migrated to us. Like I said, you won't find people in may other MMOs using the word toon to describe their characters. And most terms have easy-to follow roots. "Proc" was just short for "procedure", describing a line of code which triggers and executes when certain parameters are met, and that term can easily be traced from WoW to everything else. "XP" is likewise easily traced to D&D, the grandfather of all modern RPGs, shorthand for "Experience". See what I'm getting at? Nowhere in CoX is there a word even similar to "Toon". It's not short for anything. It can't be traced to programming code, it can't be traced to D&D or WoW, it has no connection to anything related to CoX so how did it become so widespread?


*Disclaimer: Bugs Bunny is a total BAMF and I mean no disrespect to the Almighty Rabbit.

What I'd like to see:

Right Upper Arm
Left Upper Arm
Right Arm
Left Arm

All separate categories. Just have that in one big section replacing the existing "Robotic Arm" categories. The problem with those sections is that they give you so much untapped potential for asymmetrical designs and it's agonizing to see it never come to fruition. What if I want the arms reversed? What if I just want a special forearm on one side? What if I, like so many other people, are just trying to use this to have a special empowered gauntlet without being limited to the Robotic Banded arm being the only decent-looking thing to call armor!?

Nutshell: At least give us the option to use non-robotic parts for the left arm. I'd kill to have the Ascension Radiance gauntlet on my character's left arm, with just a bare skin arm for the right (okay it's specific, but I'm dedicated to the look :P )

So it occurred to me yesterday...I haven't seen a Rikti attack in months. Zombie attacks are almost non-existent too, only the rare Deadly Apocalypse sprouts up now and then to liven things up. And promptly get ignored, because really who cares about zone events and GMs, anyways?

Well, I do. And I kinda miss those aliens and their wacky antics in the streets, even if nobody else really gave a damn.

BAF is basically the easiest Trial, expect to see 9001 BAF teams and an occasional Speed Lambda.

Keyes is no longer hard, some of the kiddies are giving it a try now. I've been recently running it alot on my Stalker, since it's the one time in a team setting that Stalkers can almost feel like a real AT.

UG requires heavy coordination. Let me repeat that: Coordination. From CoX players. Write this one off for eternity, it's pretty much impossible.

I have never seen a MoM team. It is probably more difficult than sleeping, hence why nobody does it.

I've been on one TPN team, and haven't seen many more. The biggest complaint I have is that the story writers and programmers seriously dropped the ball by having Citizens to amazing damage to f***ing INCARNATES. TPN takes your game-world immersion and pile-drives it into the concrete. Also it requires people t not use AoE around Citizens, which is like asking a chimpanzee not to throw poo at you.

So in conclusion? Enjoy your BArFs and LAMes, because nobody does anything else, and probably never will until Paragon Studios invents a system which plays the game for you.

Peacebringer can't solo +0/x1 No Bosses at level 21 without 2-4 deaths. Who designed this AT!? I have played every AT except for Controllers, Tankers, and other EATs over the course of ~4 years, I have NEVER felt this weak. And what's with this passive? Recharge slow resistance if other EATs are on the team? Is that supposed to punish you for working with EATs because it's certainly doing so!

I take back everything bad I ever said about Stalkers. This...Dear LORD this AT is bad...

Alright,long story short: I left Praetoria long ago and moved on to the Rogue Isles. I played through every single mission in the Loyalist/Power storyline. And I just now at level 32 realized I'm missing this badge with 4/5 progress.

I don't get how that's possible. I ran Praetoria dry, there is nothing left for me to do there, and if there was it wouldn't matter since I outlevel everything now. What gives and/or what can I do?

Hell, I'm mostly just pissed off that:

A) Once you hit level 30, no more First Ward. It would have bee nice if someone had mentioned that First Ward was going to be a one-chance event. Of course they could try fixing Ouro so that Praetorian missions are included, but why fix broken content when you can pile on more broken content? Its really piss-poor planning on Paragon's part to include a storyline that you can easily outlevel by running the damn storyline, and then be completely screwed out of the right to play it. Why add content if you aren't going to let people play it?

B) Quick, count how many Seed teams you've seen in the past month. Wanna know how many have been on Virtue? I'll give you a hint: It's somewhere between zero and "What's a Seed?". Maybe if you didn't have to jump through hoops to get to the zone, people might actually know it exists and go there. There is nothing, nothing that points you to First Ward. The freakin' Egg Hunter badge is more common knowledge than First Ward.

How about they stop releasing new powersets for a little while and make some of the old ones look less like a**? Mastermind pet customization. Alternate Claws animations (Actually, every melee weapon set, claws is just the worst offender). Gun options for Blast sets.

Christ, let's just get the battalion here already so I can start feeling like a superhero again and not some whacked-up paramilitary clusterf**k. Of course, I'd love to be a supervillain, but no matter what happens in the end villains are basically just heroes with anger issues, I gave up my delusions of megalomania long ago.

That said, all that it would take to fix this is just giving the civvies a differant, non-damaging power and making the Telepaths stronger to compensate:

Rock: "This simple, ordinary rock is nothing compared to you and deals no damage, however the contempt in the eye of your attacker is enough to make you give pause, be it out of pity, shame, or perhaps even disgust." Like civvies in earlier Praetorian missions, instead of damage the word "Ineffective" floats over your head. Your character momentarily shields themselves with their arm and flinches, suffering a 1-second "Only Affect Self" debuff. This way you don't drop toggles or lose aggro or anything, you just stagger a moment and move on. Too much of this and you get into serious trouble, but if properly managed it's no issue.

The idea is to make this a challenge while not making the civilians stronger than the f**king Arachnos Patrons. Come on, this is easily the most immersion-breaking hack-job since...Well, since someone started to write villain missions.

Implying that demigod civilians with the ability to crush cosmic-empowered metahumans with a single, baseball-sized rock can't handle a measly little lightning bolt. I mean really, for a civilization entirely composed of demigods they sure do whine about the littlest things.

You can easily simulate the experience by taking 24 heavily-caffeinated ferrets, covering 4 of them in technicolor spraypaint and the rest in black, and placing them in a box with a (slightly) irate tortoise. Then add about thirty-seven strobelights of varying colors, bang some random objects together, and turn on a marathon of Chris Tucker movies at maximum volume.

Am I just missing them somehow or is this the biggest content hole in the history of this game? Did someone on the dev team really think to themselves "Nah, nobody's ever gonna want to play new content on their higher level characters, they need more iTrials."

Please tell me this is just me not knowing some trick to accessing Praetorian Flashbacks...

NO! I would have to re-roll my Bots/FF Dollmaster, and he's already in the mid 40's!!

If they released a powerset like this I would cry tears of remorse for all the time I've spent so far on this character T_T

Now if they were to make "toy" skins for bots...That I could get behind.

You are not helping my altitis.

For kicks, I decided to try making a character to fill the android trope. I got as far as the costume, name ("Number 79", a reference to his gold plating), powersets (Elec/SD Brute because I hate Tankers), position (Engineer), and rough story (he is literally an ancient artifact, found on a dead planet that hasn't supported life for thousands of years, it's speculated he was built by a far advanced race once native to the planet, but his memory banks are blank after being inactive for so long.)

I don't even have a character slot for this thing. And if I did, the last thing I need is another character. :P Even if I did grow up on Star Trek TNG and this is definitely calling to my inner trekkie.

IMO, if Scythes are ever added it should be a TW. If you've seen the SF animations, they don't work with a Scythe. It's too much thrusting and would look terrible if the weapon were poorly balanced. TW has much more swinging around, it would work much better for a scythe. I've already posted on the lack of a Rulaaru TW, it would be cool to have the Rulaaru weapon be a scythe.

New aliens?

NEW ALIENS!?!?!

To get to the point quickly: New weapon powersets have come out, and old themed weapon model sets have not been updated to include them. What gives?

For example, we lack:

Vanguard Pistols (Thugs existed when Vanguard weapons came out, some matching pistols should have been made then.)
Vanguard Titan Sword and/or Axe
Rulaaru Titan Sword and/or Axe
Celestial Titan Sword and/or Axe

And when Staff Fighting come out, I get the feeling there won't be any Vanguard/RUlaaru/Celestial version of that either. So are these things just "in the pipeline" or just not happening? I'd hate to think that new freebie, in-game unlockable content is going the way of the dodo, but it's been looking like that lately.

On top of that, there are holes that could use some filling, such as the lack of Organic weapons besides the sword, what prevented the addition of more weapons? With the new microtransaction system, now is the perfect time to add some boosters to the....boosters.

I'm not really sure if this is the place to put this, but...

Why in the hell is Dark Armor so insanely lag-inducing? I never really have lag issues until I log on my DA character and the camera gets too close. Is there anything that can be done to make DA less of a graphical hog?

Secondly, again, not sure if this is the right place, I've got a bone to pick with Bioluminescent and Ascension Radiance parts: Why do I need to change the WORLD shaders to change the way my CHARACTER looks?? I could max out every single character-related graphics slider and be fine, but mess with the world settings too much and I lag like nuts. It's incredibly frustrating that these two things are conjoined, why can't we change character and world shaders separately. Now, of course, I'm no programmer so it may not be possible, but has anyone at least thought of this and how much this can limit player options?

I've played this game for (I think) 5 years.

I have two 50s and only one has Incarnate abilities slotted. And only one of them is a Tier 4 ability.

Altitis is a hell of a thing.