Jophiel

Oh no you DINNINT!!

I find leveling my characters to be part of their "creation". I imagine a character who does some nifty-awesome things with a sword or their mastery of fire, not someone who can only hack or shoot out one type of fiery bolt.

I spent the first several years of this game not getting anyone past level 20. I was burning out because each time I'd do Atlas Park, Kings Row, maybe Hollows, Skyway and Steel Canyon and start over. Finally I decided to become more open to grouping and would set my LFG flag on and accept almost any invitation, started joining task forces, found out my server's globals, etc. It wasn't long before I was over the hump and seeing new places, new contacts, new mobs and especially new powers.

As for concept, there's plenty of good advice here. I personally can't play a character I don't "relate" to. Even if I don't have a bio or backstory all worked out and don't know their "real" name or if they have siblings, I need to at least be able to say "He's a happy-go-lucky fame hound who loves hero work for the public praise" or "She's an amoral killing machine". I suppose it's like the well-worn line, "What's my motivation for this scene?" Even if it's something cliché like "Out for vengeance because his parents were murdered", just go with it and flesh it out later if you're so inclined. You don't need to tell everyone about it, just something to give you a little spark as to why this guy is punching Hellions or robbing Longbow bases.

Not sure if you saw this part when you saw the "no increased endurance" bit but Black Scorpion also said:
Double score! (Another person looking forward to taking his Bots/FF out of mothballs)

Oh, thank God people can finally stop crying about Mystic Fortune...

It also said that prisoners were making seat covers for cars. So buying a car means subsidizing a brutal penal system. If they can't make money off that, it'll be sewing athletic shoes or filling disposable lighters with butane or assembling DVD player components.

I'm not defending illegitimate RMT sales. I'm saying that the problem in the article isn't gold farming, it's China.

Hey buddy, I was told that if it wasn't brown, brass and more brown, it's not real steampunk and thus an insult to the genre

Having spent considerable time in the parts of the forum dedicated to art and costume creation and showing off concepts, this doesn't really seem the case with this game. For instance, I almost never saw people showing off costumes using Vanguard bits until it was made universally available. I almost never see people showing off concepts using the Roman armor or Rularuu weapons.

Conversely, I see people using paid booster parts all the time. I don't doubt that people who hit 50 and accumulate A/E merits will get these bits incidentally just because they're there. I don't have any real objection to their being there. But I don't have any real reason to believe that any significant number of people will stay with the game and push for 50 with these pieces being any real motivator.

Given the wide-eyed Dev fascination with all things Praetoria, I wouldn't call this a safe bet.

It seems like the biggest complaint is needing to be level 50 to use it.

"Biggest" being relative. Compared to AoE buff effects, they can lock the costume bits behind having every T4 unlocked for all I care. I'll be giggling madly while I mass FF my group in my old school costume.

I don't see how. It's the same effects, it just takes less button clicking on your end to do it. Powers shouldn't be hampered by the physical annoyance they inflict in the real world.

I suppose there's a benefit to the fact that the endurance cost hasn't increased to you'll save some blue bar but it's not as though SB'ing a team left me gasping for breath.

I can take my Kin and my FF out of mothballs now.

Both good ideas. Unfortunately, I don't have room for yet another DP/AR style character in my stable. As I said in my other post, it's too bad that using the jacket sleeves limits you to just a handful of glove options because it would be nice to use some other sort of "mechanical" glove with that costume for shooting fire or ice or whatever.