Ironik

I'm kind of surprised you didn't get that those were bullet trails. The entire point of that style of art is to abstract things out while still communicating the point. The fact that he used also as borders around the title is brilliant.

I like the idea of varied rewards, although the designers would have to pay attention to mission arcs to make sure people don't just drop the same one each time because it gives a larger finishing reward. I haven't expanded any brainpower on how that might work.

I didn't ding the CO character creator out of "fanboy tunnel vision" -- I dinged it because it sucks. It is a truly terrible design that is clunky and unintuitive. That has nothing to do with the genuinely crappy look of the characters themselves; I'm merely talking about how one navigates through it. It's just awful on a number of levels.

I think the CoH editor can be greatly improved, but others touched on that already.

The best Blaster combos in my experience (and based on what other people claim to achieve, I must be a decidedly below-average player) -- which are Fire/Fire and Ice/Ice in that order -- are my fastest levelers. Certain Brutes would be second and certain Scrappers would be neck-and-neck. My Dual Blades/Willpower Scrapper is easily the most fun character I've ever played, and he levels as quickly as my Electric/Electric Brute did. Maybe more. They both feel near-immortal below the upper 40s, like chipper-shredders through a hedgerow. When my Brute got in the 47-50 range, he slowed down.

Controllers are truly wretched soloers below 32, but once they start getting pets and slotting up their abilities, their power seems to increase tremendously. Generally speaking, the last 5 levels take a lot longer to finish than the first 25, which may account for the discrepancy there. Speeding up the last 5 levels significantly would really throw the comparison out of whack. A Defender, though? I dunno. Maybe there are some powerset combos that are amazing, but so far none of mine have been in any way as impressive as a Blaster. Maybe compared against the worst Blaster powers... hard to say. I don't really pay attention to speed much. I know my Fire/Fire Blaster roared to 50 like a skyrocket.

...and a kite.

And running off those who would degrade the quality of life.

(I really should've read to the end of the thread, because we're making similar points.)

And that's the thing about real-world villainy: often the bad guys live in opulent splendor while the ordinary citizens live in conditions ranging from lower-class crime-ridden neighborhoods to absolute squalor. We see that over and over again, from the USSR to Il Duce's Italy to 1950's Viet Nam to Idi Amin's Uganda to the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos to Saddam's Iraq to Apartheid-era South Africa to current-day Brazil, Mexico and any number of central African countries. There are plenty of areas of those places where people lived/live decent lives in fairly nice surroundings, be they towns, cities or suburban neighborhoods. But the truly evil had palaces while millions lived crappy lives in vast slums.

It'd be nice if the Rogue Isles resembled that sort of thing more, with some really squalid areas contrasting to some really nice areas. I think part of the issue was that the FPS is really about the post-apocalyptic wasteland, and there is a ton of that flavor in CoV, unfortunately.

Excellent idea. After all, one of the more interesting parts of Al Capone's story was that despite being a brutal crime lord, he also took care of his neighborhoods and looked out for the people living there. That was the same about the mafia in the parts of NYC my dad grew up in. Partly because they had a twisted code of honor and partly because it made good business sense to keep your customers happy.

Hence the number "2".

There is not enough mental bleach for the mind's eye vision of two floating fat men colliding.

I'd enter more, but I only have five 50s: 2 on Guardian and 3 on Virtue.

Oh yeah, my global is Ironik.

I am drooling agreement. Plus with the news just now makes me feel all Cappy.

But she has no nose!

Dear God no. Terrible idea. Kill it! Kill it with fire!

Adding more zones, SFs and other stuff to CoV wouldn't entice me to play it any more. I hate the story. HATE it. Plus, the zones are fugly and annoyingly difficult to navigate through. It has so many strikes against it that it's hard to even get interested in taking my lone 50 there from Villain to Hero. I basically just log in every couple of weeks and drop another tip mission so he can eventually go blue. Should take about 2 years.

Pop in to the Screenshots and Fan Art forum. Many people have done this. SuperMaoriFuller is actually getting his guy (Comrade Hero) turned into an animated TV show.