Biowraith

Freakshow!

Anything that'd make my character significantly stronger than one who'd not bought it. Stuff like Ninja Run is fine because it's more of a convenience thing than a boost in power, but if they decided to sell a tier 9 nuke or a personal shield or something that would not be fine.

Also stuff that'd physically (well, virtually) split the playerbase like zone access, because I don't want my teaming opportunities to be based on who has and hasn't paid for things yet (and I'm speaking as someone that'd likely buy that zone access). I'd hate to be in a team and someone suggests, "hey, let's run the moon zone arcs" only to find one or more people saying, "I can't, I haven't bought the moon zone". Especially since some won't even realise they can't access it meaning the team'll actually have committed to going to the moon zone before it becomes apparent that some can't do that.

Add my voice to the ones saying "variety".

Variety in appearance and concept, both in terms of powerset flavour and costume creator, such that there's very little you can come up with that can't be translated into a character in the game (only really one other MMO rivals CoH for this, and it's debatable which one comes out top).

Variety in builds - the huge variety of classes, powerset choices, and then power choices within whatever you choose; and the sheer volume of time that can be spent on setting up builds, the different directions you can go without even changing the powersets much less the AT.

Variety in playstyle - solo, teaming, casual, minmaxing, farming, badging, raiding, etc. All viable ways to enjoy the game.


I probably wouldn't cite "community" personally, as while we do have a better quality community than many MMOs, I've played some that are pretty much on par with this one, and outside of the obviously awful examples (usually the bigger name MMOs), pretty much *every* MMO's forums reckon theirs is the best community on the net - as a result it doesn't tell an outsider as much when you tell them how awesome your community is, because they're hearing it from the other MMOs too.

For me it's definitely the variety in all areas that CoH is leading the pack on.

I run a fair few female characters and in seven years haven't once been asked my gender, or received gender-based attention. I feel terribly unloved.

More to the point... Jet Powered Rocket Pants?

A female only server would be 90% populated by the sleazier variety of internet male.

So I suppose at least it'd get *them* all in one place and out of the general population.

I find Praetoria a little rougher than normal content, but nowhere near as bad as many apparently do. I dislike soloing so my experiences are mostly from pickup teaming, though Praetoria is pretty much dead on some servers so I did have to solo at times (a WM/EA Brute, a Grav/Sonic Controller, an Elec/Kin Controller, an Elec/Storm Corruptor, and a Kin/EA Stalker so far).

It reminds me of the difficulty CoH's early game used to have, way back before various changes were made to make the ride that bit easier and smoother (e.g. it used to be suicide to let a Lost Swordsman or Rector/Eremite get into melee range with you, and potential team wipe scenario if you let a CoT boss level mage self destruct). Not a *huge* difference, just enough that weaker teams struggled and soloing could go downhill fast.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say Costume A and B, so maybe you know this already and this is what you're referring to: Any costume slot you unlock after the first gets access to the full range of costume pieces that any other character gets. The only restrictions are 1) you're stuck with Arachnos weapon options, and 2) Crab Spiders are stuck with the backpack (as are any alternate builds if even one of them is Crab Spider). You can unlock your first extra costume slot via one of the VEAT contacts at level 10.

So you're only stuck with the really limited faceless-footsoldier-of-Arachnos until level 10, then you can make a 2nd costume with all the options other characters have.

I don't really see any way to build an SoA to be a purely 'support' character that wouldn't be contributing significantly less to a team than one built to deal damage too - the two aren't mutually exclusive so you can do both (and are wasting potential if you only do one). I feel similarly about Defenders mind you, but far more so for SoAs.

While SoAs do bring a fair amount of buffing to the table, most of those buffs are either toggles, or longish recharge click powers, meaning if all you did was buff you'd spend large amounts of time just standing around doing nothing. As for debuffs, the main one is Venom Grenade, which also does decent damage (and since you can't enhance the debuff itself, you may as well enhance the damage). The others are either on a non-spammable recharge (Surveillance), or are just -def, -rech, and -spd debuffs as secondary effects of some of the attacks, none of which is really worth enhancing over damage.

I guess you could do a control focused Fortunata, take all the buffs (as a damage dealing build would also usually do), use the AoE controls when appropriate, and spam the single target controls while the AoE ones are recharging - you'd have three to cycle between (four if you count knockback, five if you count subdue), so at least you'd be doing something. I think that's about the closest you'd get to a non-damage support SoA that wouldn't be wasting loads of potential (though it'd still be possible - and more useful - if you mixed in damaging attacks too).

I've been playing a couple of thermal characters recently (Mastermind and Corruptor), and I've not noticed anything different about their aggro, ambushes or otherwise. The Corruptor only really gets aggro when I over-AoE (Rad primary, so lots of AoE to throw out there), while the Mastermind only gets aggro when I hit Provoke (otherwise I can happily sit with pets on aggressive while I buff and heal the team with almost nothing choosing to attack me, even with the occasional Crack Whip and Fireball). That's on full teams, and earlier today a team of four.

Just so long as at some point there are beacons, and we have to shut down all of them.

I'm quite happy with my Crab Spider's name, Pinchy. It was, as most assume, inspired by the Simpsons, but oddly enough not by the Lobster. Rather I had Stampy the Elephant in mind while naming a crab pet my dwarf hunter in another mmo had, and settled on Pinchy. Kinda childish amusement value that carried over to my Crab Spider in this game. I also like the disconnect between the silly name and him being a hulking juggernaut of destruction. It's neither clever nor creative, but it keeps me entertained

I'm also quite pleased with Cascade Electric, my Grav/Elec Dominator. It was the result of thesaurus and google searches (where it's used in categories of electric fires, of all things), but I really liked the way it sounds, which is rare for me with names generated that way. Couldn't really explain why, it just feels right to me.

The villainous Controller, City Hall, if only so I can have a battle cry of "You can't fight City Hall!" as he locks down the entire spawn

Scorchio, my Fire/Fire(/Fire) Blaster, just because I couldn't believe it was available on Freedom as late in the game as I nabbed it (and for the Fast Show reference).

And also Bow Selecta, Ninja/TA MM. I'm not actually a fan of Bo' Selecta!, but the pun still amuses me.


To be honest, most of my character names would score low on creativity and originality - they tend towards 'iconic' names (lets face it, most comics characters have pretty simplistic and obvious names), references to other material, or silly names that just amuse me. I'd be hard pushed to explain exactly why I like the names I like other than that they feel and/or sound right for the character (which often makes it tough for me to find names I like because while I can come up with loads of names that fit on paper, very few of them 'click' with me and feel/sound right).

I'm not seeing a headbutt on that screenshot

Having tested it in the past on my Dark Defender, I'll confirm that (unless it's changed lately) -Res will amplify the effects of -Dam i.e. if you use Tar Patch you get more out of Darkest Night.

-Dam doesn't do anything to the effects of -Res though - using Darkest Night will have no effect on Tar Patch.

Substitute Heat Loss and Melt Armour in the above as appropriate.

You can access the incarnate armour on any of your extra costume slots (not the default one that's limited to veat costume pieces).