Ashen_EU

Best new forum feature?



The ability to talk to my City of "Insert preferred archetype here" bretheren in America.

Hello all you joyous, wonderful people!

Bindweed pretty much seems to have got it right on.

While the US servers were each tight and there were several multi-subforum posters the EU forums seemed FAR more tight on friendships/relationships etc.

Nothing against the americans at all, they have a fun and active forum. But for the EU it always kinda felt like "we'll make the best of what we have". I lurked mainly, but the active posters REALLY worked hard with each other to build up a friendly, personable forum.

Meanwhile with the sheer size of the US forums it's, well, easy to get lost.

It was a double exp weekend!?

DAMMIT!

Thank you Forse for proving to me the intelligence of the fine people that partake of the intellectual melange of these fine forums.

Yes you mistook others fun for insults. Is that wrong? No, not at all.

You brought up many valid points that, while may have only been made valid to the subject at hand by others jest, were still quite apt. Segregation, of any kind, is a problematic approach to conversation across, and inside, country boundaries.

However even more than that, for me at least, was the fact that you admitted that your immediate opinion wasn't wholly informed. I won't say you were wrong, indeed your anger I believe was drawn from one of the purest causes I know, equality. You admitted your confusion and apologised for comments that, technically, weren't wrong even though the tone could have been better.

I've seen many forums and many posters, but few with the integrity to apologise for something so trivial and yet that could touch on such deep held beliefs.

Again, Forse, I say thank you for proving me right to stay with this game.





Also, for all of you that this post was too serious for. I LIKE MONKEYS!

As one of "those people" that in general never gets a max level character despite the fact some people can do it in two weeks. As one of the many fellow sufferers of altitis (Come ON medical professionals how long must we suffer?) As a veteren, though not quite of the same pedigree as yourself......I say well done.

For getting the character to the maximum level of course. But more than that, for playing to that level how you wanted, when you wanted, in the manner you wanted. Congratulations for playing the game your way.

Don't stop.

Hell, don't even slow down. By current estimate if you do it'll probably cause a chronological anomaly.

I don't know about you but I LIKE the advantages of having been born.

For serious names my favourite is my AR blaster Ashen. Has nothing to do with his powers, but I think it sounds cool.

Other than that it's a merc/poison mastermind called General Anaesthetic.

Well.....I like it at least......

To be fair this is an organisation that houses a wide variety of people in game, ranging from the lenient, to the more militaristic (see the Rikti warzone arcs) to the downright villainous (whether or not they know it, see Lt. Demitrovich). While I'll admit at least some of them would be frowned on, at the least, by the organisation at large it does nonetheless allow for a large amount of leniency when it comes to roleplaying the handling of enemy combatants or prisoners.

After all, it's a large organisation which seems to operate many small satellite installations which are relied upon to act on their own discretion if something should threaten security. Each individual group would probably respond in a slightly different manner dependent on the military composition and commander of the group. When push comes to shove, who's to say what gets lost in communication?

This is just my opinion though. In the end it means nothing, It's just how I've come to see longbow after numerous encounters as both hero and villain.

And yes I know it amounts to a glorified "I'm sitting on the fence" but I thought trying to classify an organisation as large as longbow as "good" or "bad" was pretty pointless.

My least favourite?

Personally it's Mako. In everything bar looks he's a poor mans wolfman with all of the personality and depth of a pathologically genocidal rock. I've seen no reason to relate to him, no reason to sympathise with him and barely any reason to think he's even remotely interesting. He is, in essence, hatred on legs and even the most shallow villains I've seen in other films, games and books (not a major comic buff here) have more thought put into their character.



My favourite character is more difficult however after some thought it has to go to:

The Clockwork King.
This villain is cliche in nearly every sense of the word. Steampunk design? Check. Brain in a jar? Check. Massive Psionic powers? Check. Huge ego and psychological problems? Check and check. While I hate going up against clockwork I enjoy that they've taken a mass of comic cliches and actually molded them into a villain with character. After you've done a lot of the arcs based around him you really get a feel for his motivations and, depending on your particular mindset, even sympathising somewhat. It is even revealed at one point he has a somewhat noble side.



To summarise, in general I like a villain you can sympathise with or at the least understand. Either the reluctant villains, those with some clear motivation or at least those that happen to be insane and admit it. Those I don't like are those with nothing going for them other than an obsession with killing.

Got to wonder (since I've never done one of these before) But are these raids still on and, if so, can a mm join in.

If not would it not be a good idea to check with both the hero and villain forums to gain players (Rather than just hero as you seem to be doing)?

Hoping to help, whether or not I take part.

Just to specify, my chars are under the @Cacophony mail.

Oooooh.

Me likey.

Feeble? Not on your life.

I can really see where they're coming from when it comes to "not designed for the PC" thing.

I just wish it made it easier to swallow and less diasppointing.

I wanted to make an Epic AT with some sort of style instead of a generic lookalike.

Guess I'll have to make do.

Not great at thinking up names so I only have two pretty bland ones at the moment:

Anna Bergite - Any earth based AT. (Named after a mineral, technically plagiarism but I still liked it.)

Egress - Anyone with the teleport move power. (Roughly means - To exit.)

EDIT: 3 names now:
Terran Surge - Earth or Earth/Elec based AT.

(Also, nice idea for a thread.)

Damage, damage, damage, damage and more damage, While it might not be as immediate as stone melee (at least in single target) it's cheaper end wise and has better AoE damage. In general it is THE pure offensive set to take if you want to deal with groups and just don't want to stop moving.

(Well in my experience anyway)

Oh don't get me wrong, I agree character names should reflect on the fact that you're a superhero. I just don't always agree that they should always link inexorably to your origin and powers.

I mean, can you see a normal person running round calling themselves "Ashen"? Personally I doubt it (unless you're heavily into role-playing and LARP). As such, while it might not immediately conjure up the image of a gun-toting ex-assassin, I see Ashen's name as perfectly acceptably purely because, once it got into the public imagination at least, that single simple name WOULD conjure up the characters image in someone’s imagination, even without a direct link to the character physically, historically or thematically. (Without it sounding, in my opinion at least, stupid.)

The problem is deciding on the precise level of co-ordination a name should have with powers, costume, origin and history.

As you said some names ( Go Snurflepants!) will probably never really work. However that isn’t to say all heroes should rely on merely their powers and history for a name. Fire based heroes, for instance, would have an immediate bonus to recognition with a fire-based name. Whereas, water based heroes wouldn’t (linking back to my previous post). But despite that with a suitably catchy name both could capture imagination even without referring to their abilities. It's all about human recognition patterns.

As I said before, I’m not trying to discredit your guide or yourself. Merely offer another point of view. Most of my characters tend to be more “street level” than actively super-heroic. As such I may go about naming in a different way, despite my characters still being superheroes.



To be honest I find characters like Superman rather boring. “Yay he’s a man that’s super. Well I’ve learned all I need to in the title, I’ll go read something else then.”

Though that’s probably just me.


(To summarise while the name may reflect the stature I disagree it always has to reflect the powers and abilities. Yes I'm being picky and awkward. Also I apologise for derailing the thread somewhat, I just find this topic quite interesting.)

Honestly, I have never seen a brute that goes down faster than one with Dark Armour. I've had numbers quoted at me till my head is full and I still maintain that DA is the single worst armour I have ever seen or used.

I'll freely admit I've never got a DA to level 50. Or even higher than 20. But that's mainly because I got sick of getting eaten by mobs that every other brute I've made or teamed with could kill with relative ease.

Yes it has a lot more in the way of control abilities, but anything above a lieutenant and you tend to die within a few seconds from both my, and most of the people I've talked to's, experience.

Honestly, never seen a DA brute last more than 3 attacks from an EB, and 5 from a boss.

This is….a difficult topic to cover.

The problem with inspiration and plagiarism is there can be a very fine line to skate. Combine that with the fact that at least 60-90% of ideas can technically be linked very closely with existing Intellectual Property (even without the creator having any prior knowledge of the IP) and you wind up with a veritable minefield.

The main thing to focus on is, rather than “I want my character to be like X”, you should be thinking “This is my character can I make the bits I like from X work?”.

You should focus on less what the suits do and more on the character using them. What are the characters motives, drives, ambitions and reasons for acting as they do. How have they got access to the suits, do they own them or merely pilot them. How public are they, how many people know what they do. Make a person with their own flaws, gimmicks, quirks and odd little habits. Tony Stark isn’t Iron Man, Iron Man is Tony Stark.

Robotic suits have been around for long enough that a character using them in an online superhero game is hardly likely to be shouted down as plagiarism. If you liked the film and it made you want to make a robot-suited hero/villain then good for you. The main thing to remember, in my opinion anyway, is that a suit is just a suit, change them as much as you want but it’s the pilot that makes the character.

Iron Man would merely have been a hideously expensive statue had Tony Stark not been at the controls.

While I agree with the guide on most points, the idea of linking a name thematically to a character doesn’t seem all that essential to me.

All right taking a fire based character and calling them “Aqua Dude” or the like is a bit, well stupid to be frank. But not all names need to be thematically linked.

My primary example is always my blaster (also my first ever CoX character) Ashen. His name has nothing to do with his power sets (AR/Traps), or his costume, background or any aspect of the character in general. I just thought it sounded cool. I think the closest you could get to a link to the character is due to his history he sees most things in shades of grey rather than black or white. Do I think that makes it a bad name purely because it doesn’t fit into the ideal that “Names can (and should) describe a little bit of the owner’s talents”. No I don’t, you may or may not disagree.

This isn’t intended as a dig at you or your guide, merely as another point of view. I also respect the fact that you state that there aren’t any real “rules”. However, while thematic names are mostly a good fit in the world of superheroes I would feel remiss if I didn’t point out that they aren’t really a requisite.

That said I would believe the whole point of the article would be to promote imagination and variation in character names, a goal I wholeheartedly support.


To prove my good will I leave two examples of my toons that follow this guide pretty much to the letter.

Cacophony: Sonic/Sonic Corruptor (Made before they introduced the hero of the same name into mayhem missions)
General Anaesthetic: Mercenary/Poison Mastermind

Whether they're overall good or bad I've always liked Genin. As a mastermind I've always been of the opinion that "more ablative meatshields = good".

But then that may just be me.

Honestly? As a veteran MM, never used keybinds, Macros, helpers or any sort of editing short of making a "defensive follow" command on my power slots.

Still the GoTo does TEND to work, but I've still seen instances of melee critters using ranged attacks while in melee range.

Not to complain really since most of the time the GoTo command solves it fine, it's just the odd once or twice it doesn't.

Honestly? There's been no noticeable fix to any MM set AI bugs I've ever encountered. The undead/ninja ranged preference problem has been known about for a long time and hasn't been addressed.

Honestly I wouldn't expect a fix any time soon.

Truthfully? I'd LOVE some (at least semi) adaptable costumes. The main problem would wind up being servers having to account for not just one villain costume, but seven in the case of masterminds.

While it might be a nice pipe dream. In actuality it's an unfair use of other peoples processing power. More's the pity.

Yay for the ability to respec out of the rather nasty Patron skills I took.

Trust me, in these TF's it ain't pretty.

Doable, but ugly.