Bright

I never liked "speed runs", and even though there are more people doing more killing on the way to their objectives now, a lot of the old speed run habits seem to die hard... Ignoring the ambushes while key hunting in the STF, for instance, or pulling both AVs down while dealing with the computer and the bots at the same time on the ITF. (As someone who tends not to play uber-build toons with untouchable levels of defense, I hate that particular habit a lot. It's one of the reasons why I stopped joining ITF runs pre-I19. It's not fun spending that entire encounter eating floor tiles because an uncontrolled AV or a half-dozen bots decided your toon was a juicier target than the otherwise-occupied tank. >_>)

So, it's a bit of a wash for me, to be honest. I'm glad people aren't exclusively going for SpeedSpeedSpeed all the time, but I really wish they'd stop running a few things as if they were. The short-cut mindset is hard to break.

I have an almost equal number of male and female toons, since I usually alternate the gender when-ever I create a new one, but the AT breakdown is something I'd never thought about.

Tanks? 3 female vs. 3 male
Scraps? 2 female vs. 3 male
Stalkers? 3 female vs. 3 male
Controllers? I only have one. He's male.
Blasters? 1 female vs. 2 male
Defenders? 3 female vs. 2 male
Kheldians? One of each. My Peacebringer is male, my Warshade is female.
VEATs? Again, one of each. Female Widow, male Bane.

So, yeah. Looking at my own crew, there does seem to be a very slight bias towards the guys when it comes to Scraps and Blasters, and an equally slight bias towards the gals with Defenders. Everything else is about equal.

I still love Freaks. They're just so gleefully goofy... And they like to melee and cluster well, which makes them popular with my Dual Blade types. Nothing Sweeps quite like a horde of silly cyber-boys.

I'm in the "delete the toons I dislike"-camp... but so far there have been very few of those, and most of them ended up being eventually re-rolled as different sets or ATs.

Azirion started out as a WP/Mace tank, but ended up rebuilt as a WP/Electric. The first Kephren was a Sonic blaster, now she's a Sonic defender. For a while I had both a Dual Blade/Dark version of Ke'khali as well as a DB/WP build... I got rid of the Dark in the 30's.

Fluffbunny, my first multi-form Peacebringer, didn't make it very far. I absolutely hated the way that toon handled, so I didn't even consider playing another Kheldian until I started up a new human-only PB a couple of months ago on a whim. I've had much better luck with him, and at 44 I think it's a good bet that Mist is on my list to stay.

Of the existing 50's... I'd have to to say that Li'nai, my Katana scrap, is my least favorite. I don't like the timing of the animations on her primary set and when I compare the way she plays to my Dual Blade and Broadsword toons, it just feels like a fight to do anything with her. That's always been true of the character, but being half of a pair I felt like I had an obligation to stick it out and "finish" her. Which I did. I just haven't done much with her since.

Among the under-50's, my only current "problem child" is Mister Mistoffolees, my Illusion/Kin cat-boy controller. Meff isn't a bad toon at 26, and I'm told Illusion really improves at later levels, but he just isn't all that interesting to play. I'm not quite willing to delete him... He's actually a re-roll of the very first City toon I ever built (though never played-) on FCM's account, right after the game launched. I waited a long time for guys to get cat ears and for a decent tail to come along to try him again. It feels a little silly just to ditch him because I haven't figured out how to enjoy being a controller.

Heh... I have the slots open on Ash and Kestrel.

Neither has their actual boost yet. Kestrel still only has one shard. Ash was "lucky" enough to pick up a second one last night.

This is going to take forever.

Yep... "Your Life Story" does that, just like the Arachnos mission. I've just been bugging it every time that happens. It may be WAI instead of being a bug per se, but it's still annoying. >_>

To add to the Wedding Bits issue on female toons... That cleavage shading looks even worse on characters with "non-standard" skin-tones. My blue-skined sonic defender looks like she's suffering from a rather unfortunate skin condition when I put her in the Bridal top.

Also... Pets that can't figure out how to follow you through a door. Kestrel's adept has gotten "lost" entering or leaving Recluse's tower in Grandville so many times that his trouble with doorknobs has become a running joke. >_>

The current AI "feature" that has Mender clocks and Crey Medics and Geneticists running in to heal or rez their defeated friends from halfway across the map is getting pretty old, too.

I blame FlyingCodeMonkey (Mr. Brightfires-) for getting me to play City. I've never been a huge MMO fan, and would never have considered this one if he hadn't played.

I think my first toon, Palrah, also takes a share of the blame... If I hadn't had as much fun flying around with that silly, sword-swinging goof-ball as I did, there's no way I'd have stayed, much less made any of the other two-dozen or so characters I now have.

So, yeah... I blame the husband and the tank. It's their fault.

I just want to alter my Adept's color a little, so Kestrel's team-mates will stop mistaking him for a stray goon.

Some of mine have taken quite a lot of tinkering to reach a point I'm happy with...

Mist in Moonlight, my "human"-form Peacebringer (Winged, clawed, pointy-earred Elysion bird-things tend to get a little ticked off when people call them human. Especially after they've gone all mix-it-up with an alien energy-being. ), went through more hair-dos than I care to count before I settled on the "Bart Simpson"-style spikey hair he has now. I've done almost as much reworking on Lan, my Dark Archer; mostly chalked up to to playing around with his power colors. Pally, my main, has had a lot more costume redesigns over the course of his life than most of the others. Though he's pretty much settled now, it took some time (and a lot of questionable fashion choices o_0) to get five outfits that really suited him.

Others toons, like Suzume and Ty'ree, I got the proper look for right off the bat. I never had to do a lot of fussing around with them.

Most seem to fall somewhere in the middle. I might have to rework a costume a couple of times, or fine-tune the colors of their powers or auras once or twice before I get them exactly right, but they don't take the kind of intense, "Oh, goodie. Here we are. Back at the tailor. Again." process Lan or Mist did.

Not a foam pumpkin (Or all that impressive by the standards of some of the others in this thread... There are some seriously awesome carvings upthread-), but CodeMonkey's jack-o-lantern went a little Rogue this year.

My crew are arranged into two basic groups... The bird-things on pages 1 and 2, and the "non-birds" on page 3.

With my Elysion bird-brains, I tend to build characters that are connected in some way to others in the group... Siblings, cousins, partners, parents, children or what-have-you... So on the two "bird group" pages, my toons have ended up ordered by family or personal affiliation more than alignment, level or origin. Palrah is listed next to Ty'ree, for instance (they're brother and sister-), and Winter Sky and Summer Night (mates) will always be placed together, with Spring Rose (their daughter) and Song of Autumn (her grandmother).

The "non-birds" are a lot less complicated. I just have them arranged into Heroes and Villains and listed in the order they were created. 'Nothing fancy for those guys.

I suspect I'd get an awful lot of "And WHAT, exactly, were you thinking when you made me do that?!"

Nah... None of my crew would have any aspirations to godhood. The lion's share of them are all members of the same (completely, utterly non-canon) species of Shard natives. They're essentially Rularuu when you get right down to it; Faathim's creatures, forced out of their home territiory by outside invaiders and the other Rularuu after their creator found himself trapped in his own Chantry.

Trying to channel the power of some other divinity through one of the Elysion would probably be a little... problematic. As kind and polite a being as he may be otherwise, I don't think Faathim would appreciate that at all.

Instead, I think I'm just going to stick with the idea that they're just getting more used to the conditions on Primal Earth. Becoming more comfortable with the higher gravity and the lack of the background energies they used to draw from "back home"... Generally just adapting more completely to their current circumstances, in other words.

I've only deleted three toons since I started playing this game... and two of those were later re-made with slightly different power combinations or ATs, so I guess I have trouble letting go.

The original Kephren was a Sonic blaster and was deleted at around lvl 20... the current version is a lvl 31 Sonic/Sonic Defender. She's definitely a keeper.

My first version of Ke'khali was yet another DB/WP scrap. I moved her from Liberty to Virtue at around lvl 45, and tried building a second version of her on Lib as a DB/Dark scrap. I toughed out getting that one to 38 before I finally said to hell with it. I *really* didn't like the way that Dark version played, so to the bin she went. The original one I'd moved to Virtue is still around, and I eventually went back and got her to 50.

The last casualty was Fluffbunny, my first Peacebringer. I tried to go multi-form and just ended up hating everything about her. I deleted that one at 15 or 16 and didn't touch another Kheld untl I started Mist about a month ago. He's human-form only and I'm a lot more comfortable with the way he plays... Unlike Fluff, he's here to stay.

It seemed like some of the zombie weren't counting for my Stalker yesterday evening... 'Big turn-out in Peregrine, lots of people, tons of zombies, my partner (a Mastermind-) and I both doing our fair share of the bashing... All I ended up with was the Lt. badge. He got that one, plus several of the others. >_>

I'm not much for capes, seeing as we can't equip them with wings and most of my crew are winged bird-things, but there are a couple of very nice auras in there.... 'Love the Atomic and the Runes. The Sparks and Steam Jets are adorable, too. I know a few 'bot-toon players who'll really love those.

I'm a drive-by buffer. Well, a "fly-by" buffer, anyway...

I like taking Suzume through Atlas and dropping force field bubbles on all the lowbies.