Eisenzahn

I've killed off characters in other games for the sake of the story. I had a Mage: the Ascension character in particular who could have managed to circumvent his death, but the Storyteller and I both agreed that doing so would have cheapened what was ultimately some really great gaming. He did pull the whole ghostly mentor Obi Wan thing for his son in the second generation of that campaign, though.

In an MMO? Honestly, it's been a long time since I've managed to get drawn into online RP enough to care about a storyline like that. Without a storyteller/GM/DM/referee to hold things together, many online games tend to feel a lot less solid and meaningful to me, and I have a hard time caring about the story enough to want to make "major" contributions. If I was experiencing a very strong connection to another specific player or group of players, that'd be different... but if I was, it'd likely be through a specific character, making me that much more reluctant to sacrifice them for the story. So... eh. I could see myself doing it, but here in CoH, with its often tongue-in-cheek attitude towards comic book tropes, I'd have a really hard time making it permanent (even if the "resurrection" was a clone, an extradimensional doppleganger, a robot dublicate that thought it was the original, a corpse-theiving demon just wearing their body as a suit, etc.)

I don't know all the details, but in situations I've RPed in that were similar to what you've described of this one, I've declared the offending storylines non-canon with relation to my characters and acted as though they never happened. Whether or not that's an appropriate response from your perspective depends an awful lot on how positive of a relationship you'd like to maintain with the story's creator and other participants, I suppose. But even when the stories sounded interesting, I didn't want to reward a behavior I found unacceptable by ignoring the discourtesy.

If you explain your displeasure politely, a good player will either provide you a quick backdoor out of the story, or even retcon the story elements that touched on you into having never happened, so there's not any continuity problems with your future interactions. The ability to creatively edit the past is a vital part of what keeps actual comics from collapsing under the weight of decades of accumulated plot convolutions (and occasional periods of just plain bad writing), and it's certainly a valid tool for other forms of storytelling, including interactive ones like roleplaying. If someone intends to run stories in an online setting as though they were the GM, often incorporating players with wildly different goals, levels of commitment to the story, styles of play and maturity levels (generally a far greater variance in all of the above than a typical live gaming group), it's probably one of the first techniques they should learn to use.

Eh. There's a lot of really neat new toys, things I'm definitely excited about. But until we get some new story content, I'm going to have a hard time talking myself into playing with any of it. I see myself unsubscribing until Going Rogue hits, even though I'm very grateful that I'll have all these new options available when I get to GR's content.

I can't say for 100% certain how it'll play out on Tankers and Scrappers, but my Elec/Elec Brute counts Carnies among the enemies she can comfortably defeat in spawns set to 8, ranging from -1 to +2 levels. I've defeated maps set to +3 or +4 levels without dying or using accolades or temporary powers, but I was relying heavily on Power Surge, and burning inspirations faster than new ones were coming in.

So, yeah. On Scrappers, Electric Armor should do fine. Just focus your end drain and whatever mitigation your primary and pools offer on the bosses.

Darn shame you're moving on, but just about the nicest "I quit" post I've ever seen. Thanks especially for clearing out your old names. I wish more players would think to do this before letting their accounts die.

All I really want is Midnighters Club access somewhere other than Cap Au Diable. If I had that, I would never again enter that hellish laghole again. Alternate Bloody Bay access would be nice too, but I can live without Shivans, or just take the black helecopter to that side of the zone without approaching the horrific congestion between the Cap AE, high level Ferry, Vanguard portal, Midnighters Club, only redside university (where even dedicated crafters often don't know about the abandoned labs in other zones), all arrayed in an unholy pentacle of lag around the Cap Black Market.

As for Paragon... things are already pretty well connected there, considering how many zones total there are. Between Ouroboros, Base portals (and base teleporter), Pocket D (and teleporter), the Mission Teleporter, and a few key zones like Atlas Park, Steel Canyon and Talos Island, I can get pretty much everywhere from anywhere else in two hops, three at most. Faster would be nice, but compared to standard MMO travel times we've already got it waaay easy.

I'd happily ditch VS for pretty much any additional attack, whether or not it had special secondary effects. Out of four characters with VS as an option (an Elec/ Blaster, /Elec Defender, Elec/ Corruptor and /Elec Dominator), only one selected VS... and then only on the secondary build that I haven't bothered to switch over to in months. The rest played around with it on the test server, but decided not to bother in their live builds.

The appropriate forum for the original post would have been Suggestions & Ideas, a few further down the list.

As for the idea itself, I could imagine it being made to work... if it'd been part of the design of the game from day one. As is, it would take far too much effort to chop up the existing system and reassemble it into this, and massive post-launch changes (especially five years into a game) have a distinct tendency to upset far more players than they please. It would be like going into the wacky unpredictable unbalanced days immediately post-beta all over again, where anything and everything could be subject to rebalancing at a moment's notice, and I for one would unsubscribe without hesitation. There's a reason I didn't start playing the game the first time around until it had already drawn past that awkward phase.

Rep is... interesting. I'm currently playing a sort of balancing act. I keep getting total positive and negative feedback from the same posts that have coincidentally identical point values. I fluctuate in and out of green and red, but by the end of the lifespan of any given post controversy, I seem to wind up grey again. One of these days I may shut it off and stop checking the comments, but for right now it's my favorite new forum minigame (miles ahead of the "Adding Superfluous Thread Tags" challenge).

My little brother was in the closed beta, and let me fiddle around with it. The gameplay seemed adequate, but not my style. I couldn't imagine teaming ever becoming popular, or even supported by a large minority. Teaming, in CO, felt to me like PvP does in CoH. Like the developers had given up on it as a serious priority, and the players were following their cue. And their costume generator? Options seemed to generally fall somewhere between bland and hideous. I did like the greater body shape customization options, but that's about it.

It's kind of sad to say that my first question regarding this acquisition was the potential impact on the Kingdom Hearts series. Now that I've seen some possibilities... my enthusiasm has waned.

Consider the possibilities though. Disney brings Square to the table as a successful collaborator. And Marvel still has friends at Capcom. ULTIMATE CROSSOVER MEGA FIGHTING SUPERGAME! MARVEL/CAPCOM/SQUARE/DISNEY VS. EACH OTHER! OVER 4,000 UNLOCKABLE CHARACTERS! MEGA MAN VS. MICKEY MOUSE! JILL VALENTINE VS. AURON! GOLIATH FROM THE GARGOYLES VS. GOLIATH FROM THE AVENGERS! DR. DOOM VS. KEFKA!!!!!!!

Brutes are my personal favorite. This isn't a surprise, looking at my past MMO experience. I've always tended to favor the heavy melee-DPS "Off Tank" type, the character who can stand up to some aggro but isn't built exclusively to absorb it full time (often at the expense of actually dealing damage). Scrappers fit that pattern too, and are my second most played AT, but the Fury inherent is a lot more entertaining to me than Critical Hits, and after Going Rogue is live I'm likely to reroll as many of my Scrappers as possible as Brutes instead.

So a good indicator may be classes and types that you've favored in other games. On the other hand, Archetype "roles" are a lot more flexible in this game, and vary a lot within the same AT from one power set to the next. Every AT can fulfill some functions that aren't obvious parts of its description, and it's definitely worthwhile to spread your attention around.

I know that personally, after Going Rogue I'll never touch a Hero AT again unless it's got a powerset I can't find the equivalent of for Villains. So my Ice/Ice Tanker, Illusion Controller and any future Kheldians that I finally get around to making are safe. My Storm/Elec Defender and Elec/Elec Blaster get a free pass, because they're already 50, and have been my main Hero Side badge collectors. Everyone else is getting rerolled into a Villain AT without hesitation.

At level 25, you can gain access to a special zone that will let you replay any story arcs you've already completed, or may have leveled past.

Some individual missions aren't available this way (Mayhem and Safeguard missions, most notably), but most content is. This matters more villain side, where the Mayhem Exploration Badges are needed for an accolade (a minor bonus power for completing a specific set of badges), but even if you level past them, it's fairly easy to find people who are running through them in any given level range who will let you join up.

Last I'd heard, the Dom changes weren't expected to make it in until after I15 actually went live? Glad to see this is happening ahead of schedule! This is where Beta actually begins, as far as I'm concerned. I'll transfer the most current versions of my Mind/Psi and Plant/Thorn over to test as soon as I get home tonight.

While I'm still excited for most of these features... there's been no mention of story content in this issue. Is there any? New contacts? New arcs? Any progress at all on the Coming Storm storyline that's been left dangling since Issue 12?

"Yom Kippur...
Yom Kippur...
Self Reflection...
...and...
A-tone-ment!"

Oh wow, I LOLd until snot and tears were streaming like someone had sucker punched me in the Glowing Vulnerable Spot for Max Damage.

But, uh, yeah. That was pretty awful. I think it's kind of funny that the Most Wanted Song by the same guys was similarly awful.