Bindweed

Liberty Girl was evicted and now has a room in Unity Tower in Skyway City.

Columbia has moved back in to her big waterfront house in Founders Falls.

Bambi Delight got her old apartment back in Port Oakes but spends so much time in Paragon City these days she often stays in a fleapit motel in Kings Row.

Firearm lives in Kings Row with his sister.

Gingersnap moved to Croatoa, but when she loses control of the power to her demon half, apparently she likes to hang out in a big subterranean palace hewn from the rock by the Circle of Thorns. They're all dead now - she must have got the idea from Khorak...

Doctor Bindweed is rumoured to have taken over a partially drowned Arachnos laboratory complex in Faultline, but they say he still keeps a treehouse in Eden for the weekends.

Thanks Neko and Federico!

You're absolutely right with your suggestions to the coloured piece, F - that's why I need these practices Unfortunately I have a terrible problem with digital colouring - I don't really like doing it. I'm trying hard to find a way to do it that will make it easier and therefore, hopefully, less of a chore - so today I installed the drivers for my new, tiny Wacom tablet. If I can move the pen and work the buttons together without my hand and arm feeling like I've borrowed them from someone else I'm hoping to get better results than these, which were done with a mouse.

For some reason which I don't understand, the hues as they appear in Photopaint 9 are quite different to those that appear in the Deviant Art upload.

Another of my heroines, Liberty Girl. She was leveling very happily until she got distracted by GG and I got distracted by a even more new alts

Again, I haven't used a digital paint package for a long time, so I'm still getting used to my old Photopaint 9 stuff. Anyway - here are the things, for the general review and response, etc.

Liberty Girl - inked line drawing

Libby in colour

I must be rubbish at using these uber-toons, since my Fire/Kin, Gingersnap, has been around for over a year and stuck at level 33 for months now. So, to make her feel better I had a play with Corel Photopaint 9 - a package I've had for a very, very long time. I know I have a long way to go with this but there you go. You never know how you're doing unless you get feedback, so with that in mind - here she is:

Gingersnap

No. Especially if all that could be moved were a main hero and a main villain. Even if I could move a coupla dozen characters I'd still say no. I tried a US trial and I saw no evidence of the high numbers people have claimed they get even at EU peak times, and there was certainly no evidence that the content of Broadcast was any better.

I like being a part of the local set-up too much. I like our community. I like our GMs. I even like our Forums Moderators...

Also, as difficult as it is to persuade the Powers That Be to let me ride the locomotive to Birmingham, I do stand a chance of making it to Memorabilia and letting everyone buy me large glasses of frothing ale. Mrs Dan would certainly have cast a much smokier glare had I suggested Comic Con in San Diego.

Being buffed up doesn't really bother me, although it does seem pointless when I'm shopping at WW/BM. I would like an option to reduce/eliminate the visual/graphical appearance of all auras without turning down the graphics options for the rest of the game, though. I don't spend ages in character creation/Icon just to have the loveliness of Serge's creations obliterated by a big hummy glowy mess each time I click a toggle.

Apart from the aesthetic and personal space issues, are there any practical negatives with spam-buffs? I am as a toddler amongst giants when it comes to PC techie stuff, so forgive an ignoramus asking what might be a dumb question, but given the not infrequent lag and rubberbanding issues I'm getting on Union these days, would a well-intentioned but unasked-for fire shield/ice armour etc. run a risk of exacerbating those problems?

I don't understand... you get xp for not playing?

Just how long have I been asleep?

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But that would mean joining Facebook, and I won't do that even if you threaten to shoot a helpless kitten.

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/e signed. Don't much care for the kittens anyway, but nonetheless...

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What I hate is when things are impossible without a certain team line-up.

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Agreed. And, as it seems from later in your post, not only might a certain line-up be essential for success, but it may also make the task a piece of cake, which defeats the object.

25-30 times? Sounds like you really have got the "stubborn" part right

Indeed - like I said, I don't get to do AVs and GMs very often, so my experience of them is far less than most of the veterans here. And I haven't done Hami since those olden days of simple costumes and complex plans - everybody wait on that hill in your colour-coded plain bodysuits while the first wave spams mez before the Phantom Army parachutes in...

No doubt many things have changed. I'm often over-sensitive to the fact that these forums are frequented by vocal experienced players who are wise, mature, constructive and well-meaning ( ) but who nevertheless might sometimes forget that significant numbers among the playerbase don't have their experience.

Sometimes TFs fail. It's not as nice as when they don't, maybe, but when I did my very first TF we failed, and it was still a great adventure. I was on countless failed first Respec Trials before completing one successfuly, and the consequent thrill is something I haven't had from this game for a very, very long time.

I agree that it can be tiresome when you fail a Statesman TF as a 50 and you have the top build you can have and you've done every AV in seconds and your pride just won't let you believe your glorious and mighty hero(ine) could possibly be anything other than irresistable - not to mention that it's taken weeks of scheduling to co-ordinate an SG team into a two-hour window on a Tuesday night because Norm has to work night shift and Cliff has an early start so you have to be done before 11... But going into it after you've done the planning and the numbers and the prep and scheduling, knowing you won't fail I find to be more tiresome still. It saddens me, not having that thrill of succeeding in beating something that's supposed to be really hard to beat. Hard enough, in fact, that you're likely to fail.

People still form PUGs and do AV arcs, and those PUGS don't always have the powersets that some people might insist are essential. At least once I've waited in a team while the leader hunts for a specific defender or controller before picking the AV mission. And yet there's been nothing wrong with the team up to that point. It would, I guess, be "really bad luck" to be unable to take out those AVs, but not uncommon for it to take a long slog. In fact, if it's not a struggle, then I can see why so many veterans with high level characters, powerset/build experience and SG teams who've done them all several times before might think they needed overhauling to make them interesting.

Perhaps that's somewhere at the heart of my suggestion, too - that those who are not familiar with the "best way" to take down a given AV or GM might be allowed to spend a while in a hard struggle learning how tough these critters can be, and then win a significant reward for the effort.

I don't get the chance to confront a GM or AV very often, so they're still interesting for me. My main issue would be the usual one about having an adequate reward for the hour-long grind to wear them down. Is it a stupid idea, therefore, to link the reward to the effort involved?

I'm thinking that some teams have a composition that makes bringing down an AV or GM a long and arduous operation, which I guess would be most casual teams just working missions and arcs. They deserve a decent reward for the amount of effort they put in. Some teams might be pre-planned and tailored to farm AVs for badges or whatever, and can tear through them quickly with much less effort. Their reward could be somewhat less, commensurate with the struggle. The badge would still be there, but perhaps nothing much else to make easy(ish) farming very attractive.

There could also be a new "Cloth Eared Nit" badge for the brave but foolish souls who charge the Psychic Clockwork King before the wise Illusion Controller can drop his Phantom Army to take the psionic nuke. There's nothing like seeing a bunch of Inv tankers go down in a heap, all at once.

Only ever did Hami once, a long time ago. Unless it's changed, the only way I'd go back there was if the atrocious lag was sorted.

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Wasn't ED that did that to tankers, was the GDC.

ED was more a problem becuase we couldn't even double the defences any more due to the scale res and def enhancements were put on.

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I stand corrected. (It was a long time ago...)

Way back in the Pleistocene (or was that the Plasticine?) on the original account, I seem to remember I had one of those Inv tanks that grabbed a whole room of aggro then teased them while I went to the shops, came home, made dinner, then watched a Peter Jackson trilogy. When I eventually returned, tanker was still standing, green bar untouched, spamming taunt. Then, one morning, there was ED. In charges the tanker - omg! Faceplant? But there are only 8 purple Carnies?! I fretted and mourned and heaped curses upon the head of Statesman and all his evil minions...

Then I just learned to be a tad more careful and pay attention to what I was doing and a couple of weeks later pinged 50.

I haven't played a lot of PvP so I can't speak for that - although in PvE I have played an AT that people once liked to call "uber" when it pretty much was "uber". When it was "nerfed" with ED I, like all the other tank-players, was initially horrified but it didn't stop me enjoying the character. I just learned to play less carelessly. PvP and some scrappers might require a reappraisal of tactics and approach too, but it hardly renders things unplayable.

My scrapper is still getting regular team invitations, my brutes less so (but they may be somewhat due to the Villains culture), and for what it's worth I still play a tanker and I still love having scrappers on the team as much as any AT.

So - obsolete? Not on your nellie!

My feeble brain, by a process of elimination, concluded Energy Transfer and Total Focus. I can't say I've noticed any difference on my Energy Melee brute or Energy Manipulation blaster, but people say the nerf is there, and who am I to argue...

My game's still fun

I've only just realised what ET and TF mean...

And I've got an Energy Melee brute...

And I haven't noticed any changes...

I wouldn't read too much into the photo. You know how...erm...peculiar...media researchers can be with library images.

Auras.

You spend ages stitching sequins on your spangly new duds then - KABAM! - big perma-glowie mess all over it from your vital armours.

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Anyone else just HATE HATE HATE the pointless kill 50 malta/carnies/insert really annoying mobs here missions

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Yes! Yes! And double-Yes!!

(And apologies for near hijacking)

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sorry Col, I should have clarified on the concept rather than assuming everyone knew what I was on about

Room 101 originates (i think - please correct if wrong) from the George Orwell novel "1984" in which people live in a true "big brother" state complete with thought police and what-not. People who refuse to conform are arrested and sometimes tortured in the eponymous "room 101" - which is where you come face to face with whatever your greatest fear is. example: in the film the guy was afraid of rats so they put a helmet on him that had rats in it etc.

This was subsequently used as a basis for a comedic chat-show in England whereby celebrities (or varying standards of fame) are invited to nominate several of thier pet hates to the host who will then decide whether to consign them to room 101 where they are destroyed and erased from reality (this last part is debateable as i'm sure someone put Anne Robinson in once).

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Fixed. Originally Orwell wanted to call it 1948 because he has always had a very right wing political agenda and wrote it after Atlee's landslide victory in 1945. However it's an apposite read currently some might argue.

Orwell is also famous for writing Animal Farm and fighting in the Spanish Civil War (I'll let you guess which side he chose :P)

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I thought he was a Communist, and those books were written when he realized how Communism would become the same as fascism, because both systems were undemocratic, and actually very alike?

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He was certainly a Socialist, at times an Anarchist. He joined the International Brigade and fought for the Republicans against Franco's fascist Phalange during the Spanish Civil War. Like many intellectual western European Socialists he became deeply critical of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union and the slavish support offered it by British communists, some of whom entered Parliament in 1945 on the coat-tails of the post-war craving for social justice and a better peace. He was far from a Right-Wing thinker.

Back on track -

Yes, I also get tired of chasing Isolator (especially with defenders and controllers) but at least veteran rewards make it less difficult if you have them. I wouldn't change it, though, since I also recognise and agree with the point made earlier that to do so would devalue the badge - especially for those who already have done the slog - and with a controller back in the day when Sands of Mu and Nemesis Staff were merely twinkles in the eye!

On Union I have these:
Doctor Bindweed - Plant/Rad
Rockette - Earth/Thermal
Arctic Storm - Ice/Storm
Gingersnap - Fire/Kin

I have a Fire/Rad and Ill/FF on Defiant but I rarely play them these days. Not 'cause I don'y like them but 'cause I tend to stick on Union more often than not.

I recently made a Mind troller after having a good time with my Mind/Psi dom, but he's stuck in Outbreak with my new Grav, trying to get Isolator

Inv/SS (50, semi-retired)

WP/DM (22, active, crazy fun but can't herd or hold aggro as well as the Inv could)

Ice/Ice (5, on...er... ice )

The tanker I don't seem to see around much anymore (maybe I'm never at the right place) is Stone/- They used to be everywhere... where'd they go?

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* A VERY personal one here and no doubt controversial, and not one i'd want anything done about...I just find it kinda sad these days that we see so few fire/kins being played for fun ... but it seems all I see of them these days are farming/PLing in PI (can't remember the last time I saw a non lvl-50), all with nearly the EXACT SAME cookie cutter build. It just seems they've been relegated to farming tools rather than good fun toons. And some of the names...you can tell by the lack of imagination that they were only lvled for one purpose. My hats off to any litle fire/kin's out there in team/solo pvp enjoying your experience, it's a wonderful thing (oh and look me up, i want to see you to beleive it )

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I've had my fire/kin, Gingersnap (Union), for donkey's years - she's still only level 33 and has reached those giddy heights almost entirely by soloing from about level 20. She doesn't farm, she's a city girl. Her build is probably wrong for that anyway. She wouldn't know how to herd if her life depended on it, and she is constantly hurling her imps to their doom and then swiftly faceplanting herself. I've been so caught up in my more recent, shiny alts that I'd forgotten about her and how much fun she could be.

Room 101ers though...

They've been said, I think - especially the constant running from one place to the next just to say "Hi" - I mean, if Cadao Kestrel wants to ask Azuria if she thinks Jurasik is uglier than Baphomet - why doesn't he just call her instead of sending my hero on a slow and tedious flight? I had Azuria's number from level 5 in Atlas - how come I can't use it to call her and tell her Cadao wants to take her out for coffee? Why must I do all that traveling? Who thought that the traveling was going to be fun?

It's not as bad as in The Other Game, but still.

Maybe an integrated transport policy for Paragon City, including buses, is the answer...

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...Unless you are unable to line up cones properly...

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That'll be me, then! No-one appears to have told the bad guys NOT to move into a better position to thump me AFER I have carefully run into a position where I can clobber them all in one mighty Mu/Maul

Actually the cone thing seems to work just once in a blue moon with me - I could put 16 Sky raiders in a sack and unleash Mu and still hit only one of them (if I'm lucky). Because Dark Maul can be enhanced, it's better - but not always. Mu is great in the early levels, but woe betide anyone who has to rely on it landing to save their butt.

I wish the animation was a bit different to Dark Maul, too. Just so my DM people don't look so manic ALL the time

That said - apart from my "Queen of the Undead" MM (who uses the Axe as a purely disciplinary tool, of course) - I seem to always choose Sands of Mu, because when it does land it does whopping great damage, and cuts down the time needed to get Isolator in Breakout by a year or two...