Lord Mayhem

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Think this should do what Valk suggests :

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Thanks for doing the hard work, Carnifax Now, modifying those binds (from memory, so correct me if I'm wrong), the following should do the same thing when pressing the W key to move forward.

For the uninitiated, create a folder in your root c:\ drive called binds and inside of it create the following two .txt files using Notepad:

c:\binds\hasten.txt
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
w "+forward$$powexecauto Hasten$$bindloadfilesilent c:\binds\dom.txt"
</pre><hr />

c:\binds\dom.txt
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
w "+forward$$powexecauto Domination$$bindloadfilesilent c:\binds\hasten.txt"
</pre><hr />

Once you've created those txt files, and gone into the game, to get them working you just need to type the following into your chat bar and hit enter (you only need to do this once, unless you press the button in the options menu to reset all your keybinds at a later date):

/bindloadfile c:\binds\hasten.txt

And it should work.

Thanks Carnifax. Btw I took the dashed spaces out of the bindloadfile command as they're not needed and just take up space you may not have when doing especially long keybinds (and yes I have hit the 255 character limit before ) - I think not using them is a good habit to get into, though some people like using them for clarity's sake.

I also changed the bindloadfile commands into bindloadfilesilent, which should stop the keybinds from spamming your chat tab with a confirmation every time you hit W (if my memory serves me correctly).

And obviously anyone using the binds would need to specify whichever harddisk and folder location the txt files are in if they're not using the c:\binds path. Main thing to bear in mind is not to use a folder name with spaces or longer than 8 characters as I found out a while ago that can stop binds working - personally all my txt bindfiles are stored in c:\cohbinds (in there I usually have a base keybinds file for each archetype, a specific one for each character, and my Warshade has 4 keybind files to himself I think, hehe), but c:\binds would work just as well.

Happy Birthday!

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Re: Whatever happened to the community?

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Has anyone checked down the back of the sofa for it? No? Maybe if we can all put our heads together and think about where we last saw it...

Seriously though, a couple of weeks ago someone said to me at the BM in Cap that they thought Union was really dead lately and that global channels were really quiet compared to "the old days" and they couldn't work out why so few people were running TFs. After a little chat it turned out that they hadn't played the game for a couple of months, still had the graveyard-like UBH in their chat tab, and hadn't realised that most badgers/TFers had moved to "sal's badgehunters" channel. They switched over and suddenly their global chat tab came alive.

Not what the OP was talking about, I know, but it does show how subjective your own personal perspective can be when it comes to how busy/empty the servers are and how healthy the community is. Especially when such a tiny thing (adding a new channel to your tab) can drastically change your entire outlook on how busy a server is.

Food for thought.

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Heh, I really enjoy the Yahtzee ZP reviews, you might want to give people a bit of forewarning about the language and such that tend to occur in his videos...

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And the speed - you almost need to be wearing a seatbelt to listen to his voice

But yeah he's hilarious - at least once a month I try and catch up with all the recent ZP reviews.

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Bind the two keys you use most to both what you use them for and the command you want autoed...

So eg:

/bind w "powexecname hasten$$+forward"
/bind s "powexecname indomitable will$$+back"

So in my case everytime I hit the forward key it'd try and fire Hasten, and backwards it'd try and fire IW... you'd get a lot of power is still recharging messages but it works.

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I did that for a while on my Dom when I finally achieved reliable permadom for him, by keeping Hasten on auto and having Domination bound to my W key so it would activate whenever I moved forwards (if it was up). But those recharging messages and the noise they made drove me nuts - after one mission I couldn't bear it any longer and I reset the W key to just moving me forward.

Something I keep meaning to do when I can be bothered is to try and set up two .txt files that bindloadfile each other, but have one of them setting the auto-power to Hasten and the other setting the auto-power to Domination - theoretically that would basically flip the green circle between the two powers every time you hit a certain key that you'd set to bindloadfile one of the two .txt files (I'd probably use W again). Also you wouldn't get the recharging messages above your head, because powers set to auto don't do that.

Whether it works in practice, and whether there is even a keybind operator for setting an auto power (I think there is) I haven't researched yet. But someone may wish to try that - I can't log into CoH/V until this evening, don't have access to all my printed notes about keybinds at the moment, and tbh I haven't played my dom much since he hit 50 anyway, so I can't really say more than that for now.

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The biography boxes are never big enough for me to properly describe the kind of psychotic, neurotic lunatics I keep creating. And that's just the heroes.

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And here I was thinking you'd just type "Grrrr, Khorak SMASH!" and leave it at that

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When you come up with a name like 'Carnal Sin' but want to roll a scrapper, ya need some crazy to explain why a hero is a rampaging sexual deviant.

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Just to answer the implied question in the subject, no I don't think proliferation is godmode if the devs are careful about it, which I think they have been so far re the changes to Psychic Blast and their continued denial of certain sets to certain ATs (Dark Miasma to Controllers, for instance).

Funnily enough some of the characters I've played recently with I12 proliferated sets have seemed weaker than some of the non-proliferated ones I played before - sure, that's definitely personal bias in what I picked, but it does make me think that personal bias is as much to blame for the OP's claims as it is for any blinkered spurious claims I could throw around based solely on my I12 proliferated characters.

Objective good, subjective bad

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noticing a common theme occuring with Korean MMO's.

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I do tend to avoid them, but mainly because I dislike the art styles and the grindy gameplay that is always mentioned in reviews. They're games created for a different gameplay culture with different expectations/needs and I very much doubt I'd get much out of them.

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Now, if someone turned these franchies into MMO's, and good ones at that, I'd be happy:
Shadowrun
Deadlands
Fading Suns
Pokemon. (Don't you dare laugh. Come on, it's the ultimate MMO!)

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Shadowrun and Deadlands definitely - both very rich IP backgrounds that would make fantastic MMOs. While we're mentioning old pen &amp; paper RPGs may I add to the list Rifts, Paranoia, RuneQuest/Glorantha, In Nomine, and the old World of Darkness too (actually I think there's a WoD MMO in planning as White Wolf is owned by the company behind EVE Online now)? I'd love to see more MMOs based on old RPG properties (hey it happened to Champions - anything is possible).

I never owned/played Fading Suns, but that sounds fun too from what I've just read about it on Wikipedia - so it's a bit like Traveller but with more flair and religious elements? In fact from what I read it could be a less dark version of Warhammer 40,000 - actually I'd kill for a good WH40k MMO. There are only two IPs I'd want to see made into an MMO more than that - G1 Transformers (how cool would it be to play an avatar that could transform?!), but most of all I want a Battletech MMO.

Just imagine how awesome that could be - a Battletech MMO where the players could be Mechwarriors who can own multiple battlemechs (and perhaps even aircraft, tanks or elementals too), customise them and scavenge new parts/weapons for them from defeated mechs - player-guilds would be mercenary outfits who would own (and be based from) their own dropship, and both unguilded "freelance" players and the mercenary outfits could work for any of the Houses/Clans in the Inner Sphere and even switch allegiance from time to time, to keep the faction-based PvP fresh. It's a dream I have...

I won't laugh at Pokemon - actually I feel a bit nauseous - does anyone have a bucket?

Best of luck for the future, Rockjaw. And same to you Aero, and to anyone else who lost their jobs (Bridger? Wasn't he working on the unannounced MMO that got cancelled?).

My first MMO was EverQuest - I spent 3 years there. I spent short periods of time after that (6 months in each at most) in Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, and I dabbled with tons of others like AO and SWG. Then after an enforced 18 month or so break from MMOs while I finished my uni degree I had a few months in Rubies of Eventide, Runescape (dull), Biosfear (awful) and a few other free MMOs whose names I forget, then 9 months each in EverQuest 2 and Planetside (though my playing times on those did overlap as I had a SOE Station Pass), I dabbled with D&amp;D Online on a 14 day free trial (and almost hit the level cap by the end of it!), I beta-tested Vanguard, Auto Assault, Guild Wars, Irth Online (awful), and CoV, and have spent 2 years in CoH/V albeit with a year break in the middle for 6 months of WoW and 6 months of beta testing Tabula Rasa and Pirates of the Burning Sea.

The only games there I miss are EverQuest 1 &amp; 2 rarely, Planetside quite a bit, even WoW sometimes, but mainly for the experiences and friends I had there more than the games themselves. The only MMO I've ever missed so much that I re-subscribed to it is CoH/V - and yes it does seem to have spoiled me. Before I played CoH/V I was interested in every MMO that was coming out and wanted to try them all - I was always looking to jump to the next new MMO - but I've become so jaded and disappointed by new MMOs lately, and so happy just playing CoH/V, that there are hardly any MMOs I'm looking forward to that much anymore.

Honestly if I was to become bored of CoH/V in the near future I don't think I'd be playing an MMORPG at all - I'd probably just go back to playing lots of single player games.

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WISH died 9 days into closed beta.

It was to be an RP'ers dream, kind of. But the interface was poor, there was no in game documentation, no out of game documentation, a poor tutorial, it looked like Neverwinters Nights and ran even worse.

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I was sad to see both WISH and the original Horizons die - and to not have seen Hero's Journey come anywhere near release (that looked like a nice lore/story-heavy MMO too). That terrible Irth Online I beta-tested did buy some WISH assets, but it was hard to wade through all the rubbish the Irth Dev team had done to see any of that (you couldn't even walk uphill without getting stuck). In fact Irth was so bad it actually messed up my PC to the point I had to re-install everything. It could have been worse though - I could have been a beta tester for Mourning or Dark &amp; Light

Oh that is bad news. Commiserations but also good luck to Aero and Rockjaw on finding new jobs - and to anyone else affected at NC Brighton.

I'm guessing we won't get the official announcement from GR until tomorrow, but I'm somewhat concerned as to how it will affect the playerbase/game here. Surely the community team losses show that this is not just confined to the Dev teams of TR and the unannounced MMO project.

I guess worst case scenario is that if they do close down the EU servers/forums and merge our character databases into the least populated US servers then a lot of us may lose character names, supergroups and SG bases, and a few days of playing while the transition happens - and longer term possibly gain a lot of lag (depending where you live - the connection might improve for others, but I rarely get good connections to US servers) and lose our community feel from here (especially if we're forced onto the US forums).

I really hope that doesn't happen, that things aren't that bad, and that we'll get to stay on our existing servers - I'd rather keep the existing community and my character names and bases, than gain a potentially busier server. Still worrying, though.

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Anyway, I now have an ice/storm 'troller on Defiant named Glorious Winter.

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Winter is a good word (so is Glory). My L50 Claw/WP scrapper is named Winter Tiger; he's a Soviet super-soldier experiment, somewhat inspired by putting Wolverine, Winter Soldier, KGBeast, Mynx and some Siberian Tiger DNA into a Crey blender and holding down the button until none of the original influences are too obvious

I've never had a situation where the name came first and inspired a whole character, though.

Recently I've been trying to brainstorm names and a starting costume for a planned Elec/Nin Stalker (I've already got concept, bio and target build finalised - I just need a name and costume that fits) and I was amazed how few potential names from my shortlist had already been taken - of a shortlist of about 20 names, only 5-6 were in use and 1 was "not available" (looking at Wikipedia I soon realised why - I checked for Ironfist and there's a Marvel superhero called Iron Fist). I'm still undecided on which name I'll use though - as the days go by fewer and fewer of the names on my shortlist seem that fitting.

You can see now why it takes me a while to create new characters and why I prepare them in advance, hehe. Tbh finding the right name is usually the most time-consuming part of the whole process - once I have a concept the writing of the bio doesn't take me that long at all - probably an hour or so (same as the costume, if I have an idea for that in advance). But I've actually deleted characters in the mid teens and remade them because everything was working fine except that I was starting to dislike the name - so nowadays I make very sure the name fits perfectly before I spend any time on a character.

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I don't go much for linked characters, it seems somehow incestuous.

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I don't link characters on the same server much, but not for that reason - it just hasn't cropped up much yet. I do have a new Psy/MM blaster and a new Widow (to be a Fortunata) who are both Crey-made clones in concept and I've been toying with the idea that they were cloned from my L50 Mind/Psi Dominator Agent Godwin (who used to work for Crey), but I haven't finalised their bios yet - originally they were going to be clones of another character that I recently deleted (a Mercs/Traps MM who recruited and controlled his soldiers using psychic domination).

What I do have is some villains who share an identity with some of my heroes. While this is currently a minority of my characters, it has become a trend recently. All my villains are on Union and all of my heroes are on Defiant, so the "Union-verse" is almost the Praetorian equivalent universe for my "Defiant-verse" heroes (or vice-versa probably, as most of the villains existed first). Usually some small difference in their backstory sets my Union character onto a more villainous path than their Defiant equivalent:

Polar Storm (my L20 Ice/Ice Blaster on Defiant) and Arctic Prince (my L38 Ice/Storm Corruptor on Union) are the same human mutant, Viktor von Metz, driven out of his small Bavarian hometown by his family/friends for being a freak, and who eventually trekked across the arctic ice cap to reach the US - but each responded differently to his rejection:<ul type="square">[*]Defiant-Viktor took the rejection to heart and was determined to prove himself worthy. He came to Paragon City seeking acceptance, as he thought a city with so many mutant heroes would be more welcoming to him.
[*]Union-Viktor became bitter and took revenge on his tormenters. He fled to Paragon City to hide among the hero population, hoping to avoid prosecution, but he was arrested there and locked up in Zigursky Prison.[/list]Nightbow (my Archery/En Blaster on Defiant) and Ghost Spider (my EM/EA Stalker on Union) are both Ryan Kane, a Paragon-born orphan who lived on the streets and was beaten and tortured by a Hellion as a teenager, but whose body was then rebuilt with cybernetics - their differences stem from who discovered them after that tragedy:<ul type="square">[*]Defiant-Ryan only lost his eyes to the Hellion before being rescued by Manticore, who felt sorry for a fellow orphan and paid for cybernetic eye implants. He later recruited Ryan for Wyvern where he was trained in archery (his bionic eyes making him a keen marksman). Yet, haunted by his torture by the Hellion, Ryan wanted to focus on Paragon’s gang problems rather than the Rogue Isles so he left Wyvern and became a hero.
[*]Union-Ryan had no rescuer, so his assault reached more terrible extremes, until he turned savage in his agony and killed his Hellion torturer. Captain Mako, returning from an assassination mission, gleefully observed these events and saw promise in the teenager’s vicious survival instinct, so he took the boy back to Grandville where Ryan was enhanced/rebuilt with cybernetics stolen from Black Scorpion and was then trained by Mako to be an Arachnos assassin.[/list]I probably spend far too much time thinking about this stuff

Definitely signed - I love ragdoll physics and would like to see that being applied to player avatars on death.

In my experience most builds have endurance issues before L20/Stamina - some even have end issues after that!

I find Ice sets the worst, personally - my Ice/Ice dom had such terrible end issues at low level that he could barely finish a single spawn on one end bar - my Ice/Dark Corruptor had similar issues and a similar fate (deletion), as did my Ice/Ice Blaster though he did make it to Stamina by teaming. My Ice/Storm Corruptor has been pretty bad for end as well, but I think I've finally managed to fix him at L38 by putting more end reduction in his attacks (but I'm still taking Scirocco as patron and getting Power Sink at 41 just in case ).

Storm Summoning is far worse than Dark Miasma for having lots of end-hungry toggles, so I would suggest you slot some more end reduction into your high end-cost powers on your Dark/Elec Defender and see if it helps before giving up on the character. I only have experience of Electric Blast set on a low level blaster back in I5, but it didn't seem too end-hungry to me, not compared to Ice Blast anyway - but it is a low damage blast set, and with Defenders being a low damage archetype it is probably taking you quite a lot of blasts to kill an orange, so that might be your problem - teaming will definitely help as others have said - Defenders are pretty much biased towards teaming (for soloing a Scrapper/Brute/Stalker/Blaster would be faster/safer, or even a Mastermind though they can start slow).

Also with Dark Miasma don't try and run Shadow Fall before you have a 3-slotted Stamina either - it can be quite a costly toggle, especially when you're already running Darkest Night in combat most of the time too. But generally you'll find that end reduction in attacks (i.e. your electric blast powers) will help you more than slotting up toggles with end reduction (though that helps as well, and certainly helps end to recover faster between fights if your toggles are on all the time like Shadow Fall will be eventually).

Sticking to Heroic/Villainous difficulty until you get Stamina is also a good idea too - you mentioned fighting an orange con enemy - well yeah that will drain end quite badly as hit-points/damage for enemies does scale up quite fast at low levels, so an orange will probably seem nastier to you below L20 than they will eventually at later levels (when they'll probably be what you're fighting all the time). You level so fast at low level anyway that putting the difficulty up pre-Stamina can actually slow down your progress instead of speeding it up.

And if all else fails pre-Stamina you can always do what I do with a lot of my low level characters - fill your tray up with blue inspirations before every mission. I do this on Brutes especially, because there's nothing more annoying than filling up your Fury bar only to find out you need to rest to refill your end bar, then watching all that Fury drain away.

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How many alts did you create before you
a/Dinging 50 (GRATZ)
b/'Pimped' a build
Also how long did this take you as a secondary question

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a) Probably dozens - when I first start a new MMO I make and play several characters through the early levels before I decide to focus on one of them, but then I'll stick with that one character all the way to the level cap. At that point I either quit the MMO, stick with one character for the endgame, or rampant altitis sets in - I guess the latter has happened in CoH/V as I find the journey more fun than the destination, and levelling is so fast, so I just keep getting new L50s.

I'm not sure if I have any "alts" though - that word means "alternate character" to me - in past MMOs that meant any character that wasn't your "main" level-capped character that you used for the endgame (raiding, usually). In CoH/V there isn't much of an endgame so I have no "main" really (unless I count the first character I hit 50 with, but I don't play him much anymore), which would either mean I have no "alts" here, or all of my characters are "alts". I have 28 characters currently across two servers - 10 at L50, 3 being played actively (L39, L38 &amp; L20), 2 are "dormant" (L20 &amp; L16 heroes, as I'm focused on CoV atm), and the remaining 13 are new L1-10 characters I've made but not played much yet - I don't know how many of those would count as alts by your definition.

b) I have no idea what you mean by "pimped" a build - do you mean "twinked" (i.e. using inf from other characters to make one character "uber"), or fully "purpled out" with very rare IO sets and the best unique/special enhs possible, or just fully slotted with IOs/HOs and not using any SOs, or do you mean builds that we've prostituted out to other players in return for payment?

All of my L50s have the best yellow/orange set IOs possible without dipping into purples. I still use HOs too, but I don't use SOs at all anymore. True, I have slotted two purple sets on my dom, but only "cheap" purples (sleep, confuse) to make perma-dom easier to achieve. I can't really justify more than that as I only tend to wheel out my L50s occasionally for TFs at weekends or for newly added content. I'd rather have all my L50s well slotted in case I feel the urge to play them, rather than focusing on 1-2 characters and purpling them up - but their builds only tend to cost 100-125mill inf each, at most 175mill for my dom.

Though I do share inf/salvage/recipes between my characters freely (some of my 50s are now devoted almost wholly to bidding/trading on the BM/WW and they fund and/or buy for the others to save transaction slots on my "play" characters for selling what they loot), so if by "pimping" you mean using inf from some characters to make other characters better then yes I do that.

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Do you think about the background before you design the character? Does the character background come after you’ve picked the AT or before?

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When I make a completely new/original character the archetype and powersets always come first, then I come up with a concept to explain/justify those powersets being together, which dictates the origin, often inspires a name too, then I think of a theme for the costume, then write the bio, then lastly I create the character and might do the tutorial with them before logging out. Then at some point, often months later, I’ll play them or delete them. Just as I do with creative writing I think it’s important to leave your creation alone for a while and come back to it with a cold, clear head to see if it’s still a good idea later (and thus decide if a first draft is worth revising/re-editing, or worth playing in the case of a CoH/V character).

I tend to have at least half a dozen L1-2 characters created at a time, just ready to go in case I feel like playing something new or quickly need a character for a new duo with a friend once our existing duo(s) hit L50. It can take me hours/days/weeks to make a character, so it's not practical to expect my friend to wait for me to do so - heck, it can take me an hour or more just to make a costume I’m happy with.

Though my character creation order does change if the character was inspired by something else: e.g. I've deleted dozens of characters because I didn't enjoy playing them or disliked the lack of synergy between their powersets, but if I liked their name and/or costume and/or bio/concept enough then I’ll re-use them for another character if I possibly can. Not always the same character, either - a few times I've merged pieces of the bios of two "failed" characters together to create the bio for a third new character, or a costume from a “failed” character and the concept from another have given rise to a new character with a different name/bio.

Very little gets wasted - I keep every bio I've ever written and occasionally re-read them to get ideas/inspiration for new characters. I also keep a screenshot folder of every costume I've ever made and similarly sometimes use that to get costume ideas. Thus my deleted Invul/EM tanker from I5 eventually resurfaced as my EM/Elec brute (with just a few tweaks to his bio/costume but an identical name/costume/concept) and 2 weeks ago I made a DB/Invul scrapper with the same name/costume/concept as the first CoH character I ever made in I5, a BS/Regen scrapper, which bears the same name as my forum name here.

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I don't really care that they have a uniform. I kind of care that they are there to handle a threat (Arachnos, not the Rikti) which has never materialised and they have never been stood down.

Was there ever a convincing in-game reason for planting Longbow all over the place? Or a OOC game reason for that matter?

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Well the Arachnos threat has materialised in the sense that the Arachnos-governed Rogue Isles are only 50 miles off Paragon’s coastline, Arachnos are already invading the city (Faultline, Siren’s Call, etc) and are supporting villains that operate in it (mayhem/safeguard missions and other CoV arcs), have a nuclear silo on a nearby island (Warburg), and are threatening to expand their territory into a UN protectorate (Nerva Archipelago) and other nearby islands (Bloody Bay).

I always thought the reason Longbow are thematically present in Atlas/Galaxy, and not much in other "core" city zones, is because they're protecting Freedom Corp assets there, such as the Freedom Corps HQ and especially the RV portal. PPD and the heroes trained by and registered with Freedom Corps (i.e. players) are the only ones responsible for policing the streets.

Remember, Longbow is just a division of Freedom Corps, the non-profit corporation set up by the Freedom Phalanx to support and train Paragon’s heroes (as an alternative to Hero Corps, who wanted to charge the city for training/supporting its heroes) - they’ve been active in the city for years and ALL player heroes are registered with them (i.e. your “ID” in-game) - those red &amp; white suited Freedom Corps trainers (i.e. the TO vendors) have been in the hero zones since CoH launch afaik.

Sure, Ms Liberty set up the Longbow division mainly to counter Arachnos , mainly in the Rogue Isles, but it’s not hard to believe that Freedom Corps would also use their own highly-trained militia to defend their own assets - even Crey has their own “security force” for that - it’s really not that different to the private security contractors (i.e. mercenaries) in our world that corporations like Halliburton employ in Iraq

Sure, Longbow are potentially doing shady things in the Rogue Isles - I think the only place they’re legally allowed to be under UN/NATO mandate is in Nerva, as that is not an Arachnos-governed territory (hence why Nerva has a Longbow base but no Arachnos fort like most of the other Rogue Isles), and Longbow are basically there in a peacekeeping role - but Longbow are certainly agitators elsewhere (not least in Sharkhead and St Martial where they stirred up the Scrapyarder and Dockworker strikes). But I fail to see how Longbow can be accused of anything “shady” on Paragon City turf - well, except for maybe playing around with time travel in the RV portal under Atlas Park

As for Blue Steel, yeah he crossed the line, but I bet Manticore has done worse

It’s probably worth adding that while I enjoy reading humorous bios, I rarely write spoof/joke ones like that myself unless it’s for a silly-themed character (and I don’t tend to play those often, though I did make a semi-silly character recently) - plus I find comedy really hard to write because whether something is “funny” can be really subjective. So I prefer dramatic bios with interesting twists/quirks, weaved seamlessly into the official lore/story of the game, and without glorifying the player/character - that shows creativity, attention to detail and humility - traits I admire.

Imho there’s nothing worse than an egotistical self-glorifying bio with a bad grasp of lore and an even worse grasp of grammar/spelling - and they're often sported by the disruptive kinds of players I don't enjoy socialising or teaming with.

Which brings up another point I wanted to add - often when a player compliments me on one of my bios, or I complement another player on theirs, we discover that we share similar interests in comics and other storytelling mediums - good chats and even friendships have arisen out of those moments - so a bio can be a great "icebreaker" for starting conversations and finding like-minded players. I just wish more players could be bothered to write them.

I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about what makes a good biography - it depends purely on what the player writing it wants out of it. Personally I write bios firstly as a creative challenge for myself - it’s not always easy to sum up the essence of a character in the short space we have for bios, but it is satisfying when it all comes together.

Secondly I write bios to bring “life” to my characters - the bio is the final “spark” that fuses together their costume, their name and both powersets into a believable whole - I really can’t motivate myself to play a new character until all of those elements come together. By believable I mean making a rounded character that I could imagine reading about in a comic strip, with a succinct bio that wouldn’t seem out of place as the introductory blurb on the Wikipedia article about a franchised superhero/villain (e.g. like Marvel or DC ones).

My main objective when writing a bio is to explain how/why the character gained the powers they have, and how that led to them becoming a hero/villain (i.e. their motivations) - their origin story, basically. For my villains I also usually explain how they came to be in the Zig before the Breakout (CoV tutorial). Some bios take less than 30mins to write, some I’ve spent days or even weeks thinking about - sometimes it’s tough to find a concept that will plausibly link together two powersets that I want to play for gameplay synergy reasons, but I usually manage it (justifying powersets for my Plant/Elec Dom was quite a challenge, recently).

I’m not a roleplayer though - I write bios purely for my own amusement and as the “finishing touch” to a newly created character.

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Problem with that is, thematically [SPOILER] mercy is meant to be a proving ground for the destined ones, Lord recluse wouldn't let anything to dangerous run around free. Plus, the snakes god is actually a foe in a lvl 45-50 arc, so you'd have to fabricate why a Giant one, more powerful than their God, exists (btw, the 'God', is from the same vein as Statesman, her powers come from the well of the Furies)

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Yeah it would be crazy for the Snakes, [SPOILER]considering that the purer their breed (i.e. the closer they are to their "god") the more powerful they are.[END SPOILER]

For other factions it wouldn't, though - e.g. at first I found it hard to rationalise how the Master at Arms of a single Rikti mothership (GM U'kon Gr'ai) was so much more powerful than the leader of the entire Rikti Lineage of War (AV/EB Lord of War: Hro'Dtohz), until I realised that in the real world Generals are often old veteran soldiers, more experienced than the grunts for sure, but usually not as physically capable/imposing. You could say the same about Babbage/Paladin compared to the Clockwork King (he's more of a mastermind/leader, than a frontline warrior like his largest creations).

I don't like the idea of a GM in Mercy (nor Atlas/Galaxy) for most of the reasons already mentioned, but it might be nice if there were events for those zones that didn't involve GMs (like the Ghost Ship in Talos/IP, or fires in Steel and Troll raves in Skyway). Maybe hordes of Snakes could assault Fort Darwin from time to time, or Hellions/Skulls in Atlas/Galaxy could riot.

Oh and The_MESS, that Longbow Ballista EB spawns in St Martial, not Mercy.

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Well...somehow I can't name a minion Arthur. I tried multiple times but all the time the name gets reset.

Is there something about a name like Arthur that isn't allowed?

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I've wondered about this too. With my MM I originally wanted to name his Assault Bot "Megatron" after the Decepticon leader from the G1 Transformers franchise, then name the ProtBots after his lieutenants, and have the drones named after all 3 Decepticon seeker jets. But the game wouldn't let me name a pet Megatron, and Starscream was blocked too (even though Skywarp and Thundercracker were accepted).

My suspicion is that the pet names are filtered using the player name filter - I suspect it won't block for using a pet/player name that already exists, but it will block for any pet/player name that has been banned in the past for either being a copyright breach or otherwise breaking the naming rules. So I reckon some players have been generic'd in the past for using Megatron and Starscream as names, but not any of the others I tried (nor the 6 Decepticon names I eventually used ).

But even if that is true I can't see why "Arthur" would be blocked unless it was frequently being used in some kind of compound name that broke the naming rules (although I can't think of anything obscene or copyright infringing involving that name atm). E.g. I recall from when I played EverQuest that a player on my server had the name "Zgrim" for 2+ years, but then decided to add "Reaper" as a surname - but soon after a GM took a dislike to it being a "compound phrase" and not only deleted the surname, but forcibly changed his first name too (to something the player hated, sadly), then must have added "Zgrim" to the naming filter's ban-list as it was "unavailable" after that (or so I recall from the furore that followed - the player did quit the game over it).

Maybe a GM/Mod just took a dislike to the name "Arthur" at some point in CoH/V and added it to the filter list as a banned name.

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here's a bind i use now on pretty much all my fly chars.


/bind button5 "powexec_name Hover$$powexec_toggleon toggle X$$...$$powexec_toggleon Toggle 1"

That bind will toggle on as many toggles you like (Sapphic Neko has 6 on one button) starting with the toggle you put in last. Once all toggles are on, the button will toggle on or off hover.

i then bind fly to button4 on mouse and thus have easy reach to travel. This way i don't need a specific button to kill toggles.

Just my personal preference.

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This is exactly what I do on all of my characters, regardless of their travel power (if not a Hover/Fly switch then I'll make the bind switch CJ/SJ, or toggle on/off Superspeed) - it is bound to the F key on all of my characters (except my mastermind, who is a teleporter, and has pet commands bound to F and other nearby keys), which makes re-toggling and switching between travel/combat really fast, easy and instinctive.

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I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.

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&lt;writes on a piece of paper and shoves it over to Zortel&gt;

So you want us phoneys to leave you alone?

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Ok Val the 'laundry' is done, could only raise 24.5 hope that will suffice, I'll make the drop at your conveince.

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Oh heck, now I feel guilty - if you're that stumped for inf then I can't possibly take it off you.

Heck, I sold two IOs this weekend on redside, each worth over 50m, so I'd feel like an utter git taking 24.5m off you that you struggled to raise. So just keep the inf - I won't tell anyone if you don't (oops) - or give it to newbies if you really don't want it.