Mister Rik

I don't think it was a "book" per se - I got the impression that the Father Brown stories were short stories published in a magazine, much like Sherlock Holmes. I've haven't read them, so I'm not sure how much of a "recurring cast" there was from one story to the next.

Not even that - it's simply the Greek word for "victory", making it a logical name for a brand of athletic shoes/clothing.

Heh. I have a scantily-clad female ninja blade/ninjutsu stalker named "Triple-N", because the character creator wouldn't let me call her "Nearly Naked Ninja"

The character name there, along with Father Brown's description of a criminal becoming worse and worse, resembles Flambeaux's "descent" in-game. I have to wonder if this bit of Chesterton was part of the inspiration for the CoH Flambeaux character.

I've long believed this right here is a large part of the reason for "super groups" in comics. Whether it's the Avengers or the Justice League, or any of the minor SGs, they follow the same pattern: 1-3 "A-listers" (to appeal to a broad customer base), a handful of "B-listers" (who have a good customer following, but not enough to support an ongoing solo title), and then 1-2 "C-listers" that few people really care about, but who need to appear from time to time to keep their trademarks current. It's also why super groups seem to go through membership shakeups so often - they need a reason to rotate different characters in, even if only for a couple appearances.

Likewise, when Marvel of DC does one of their massive crossover storylines, the key "catalyst" character who turns out to be at the center of everything is often some relatively minor character who hasn't been seen in a while (like Deadman in the Blackest Night/Brightest Day storyline).

I love the fact that missions in CoH are instanced. It means I can complete them in an efficient manner, the way I like, and narrate the story in my head as I do so, without interruption or interference. I'm a refugee from Big Fantasy MMO. One of the things that infuriated me the most in that game was getting a quest to kill some named mob who dwells in the back of yon nearby cave, and fighting my way through all the lesser mobs, and as I'm fighting the last group of minions before the named mob, some other player just runs past me and kills him. Then I'd get to spend the next five minutes standing there waiting for the named mob to respawn. And then, on my way out of the cave, fight my way through all the same mobs I killed on the way in.

I'm starting to think we're two of a kind. "MMO" is the genre I've been waiting for all of my videogaming life (which is 30+ years - I started with Asteroids at the convenience store when I was 14), but not because of the multiplayer aspect. I look at games like I look at books. Most video games, historically, are like short stories or standalone novels. Great the first time, but less entertaining on repeat reading/playing. My favorite reading tends toward long, ongoing series, because I like the idea that the story theoretically has no definite end.

So in the 1990s I stumbled across a Mac-only shareware game called Escape Velocity. It was a space trading/combat game that was completely open-ended. It had various default storylines you could play through, but you chose which ones to do, and picking some would lock you out of others due to the various factions in the game universe. On top of that, the author gave the game a plugin architecture, and freely provided the tools for players to create their own content on an unlimited scale. Players could make plugins that did anything from simply adding new storylines, to adding new spaceships and equipment or new planets, to completely recreating the entire game universe. So you could create a character and theoretically play that character forever and never run out of things to do. I played that game for years. People begged for an online, multiplayer version, but the author wasn't interested in doing that. But the game really felt like a precursor to MMOs, simply due to its open-ended nature. I haven't played EVE Online, but the descriptions I've heard (and heck, the name itself) make it sound very much like an online, multiplayer version of EV. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that EVE's creators were inspired by EV.

So all that led to me playing mostly solo in MMOs. I love to just explore every nook and cranny in the game world, and the feeling that the story has no end.

Same reason I left. I'm not opposed to teaming, but I have a very bizarre and unpredictable work schedule that leaves me completely unable to commit to a raid schedule. I got fed up with completing all of the soloable content and then being unable to do much of anything to advance my character.

When I'm playing a hero, I — as best I can — hold to a streetsweeping policy of only attacking mobs that are in the act of committing a crime (mugging, graffiti, property damage, etc.). If they're just standing around, I leave 'em alone.

Huh. There's a low-level contact in, I think, Steel Canyon who sends you on several missions against Outcasts, and on one of them she comments, "There sure seem to be a lot of mutants around lately", or something like that. I always took that to mean that they were all/mostly mutants.

I would guess not - considering that the "pools of light" under streetlamps are really pools of light drawn on the ground - I noticed one of my characters was ankle-deep in one.

*GASP* My main, Flaminatrix, is a red-haired mutant!

Unfortunately, that's basically Marvel's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Dance Studio:

http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/05/27/th...-dance-studio/

I think his point was that some "costume" parts might actually be a physical part of the character rather than being part of a costume that that the character puts on and takes off, so they should be accessible at creation. For example, a humanoid bird character wouldn't buy his wings, he'd already have them as part of his body. A robotic character might have been built with rocket boots (though that might be moot since you can't fly until level 4 anyway).

While it doesn't fall into "broken" status, the main reason I rarely play my villains is the gloom of the Rogue Isles. It's always cloudy and dark. I put a lot of time into designing a villain and his/her costume, picking exactly the colors I want ... and then rarely get to visually enjoy my creation because the dim lighting everywhere just washes everything out.

I do enjoy the writing redside, though.

This is the entire reason I've never gone back to goldside since getting a Praetorian to level 20 and through the portal to Paragon. I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline, but like you said, the constant faceplanting got very old, very quickly. Specifically, low-level enemies loaded to the gills with knockback attacks, with no knockback protection/resistance available to my characters at those levels. It's like every mission went like this: enter mission, encounter first group of enemies who unload on me with knockbacks. And they keep spamming the same KB attack over and over and over. Repeat, repeat, repeat for every spawn in the mission.

I wouldn't think they'd even really need to phase the opposite-alignment contacts. Just set it up so that, if you're the wrong alignment, you don't see the colored circle on the ground under the contact, don't see the NPCs last name, and you'll see a gray reticule if you target them. They'd appear identical to any other random citizen, assuming they're wearing "civilian" clothing. If the contact is a uniformed/costumed member of an organized group, same-aligned players would see the NPC's name, while opposite-aligned players would just see a generic identifier. For example, in the case of a Longbow contact, heroes would see "Captain Johnson" while villains would just see "Longbow Captain".

The biggest problem I can see with heroes and villains having access to the same zones is this: The "regular" zones would have to remain PvP-free (for many reasons), so there would need to be some in-game rationale for why heroes and villains aren't attacking each other on sight. I mean, when a villain does a Mayhem mission, they arrive in the instanced zone to rob the bank and everybody knows they're there and tries to stop them. So why wouldn't that apply while doing regular missions in Atlas Park? I would apply the same roleplaying rationale I personally use when playing my heroes, in that when I'm patrolling/street-sweeping, I choose to only attack "villain" mobs who are in the act of committing a crime. Those Hellions or Skulls just sitting on a wall or standing around talking to each other in Atlas Park remain unmolested by me (unless they attack me first). Paragon City is in the USA, and to the best of my knowledge, simply belonging to a gang isn't a crime in and of itself. So this would apply to player villains as well, and could easily be handled by player villains simply not having street-sweeping/hunting missions in Paragon City zones so that they're not committing crimes in full view of nearby heroes. Instead, villain contacts in Paragon would only hand out door missions, and any heroes those villains encounter and fight would be Signature or Rogue's Gallery heroes, not player heroes. Of course, player villains in Paragon may still be subject to attacks from the PPD or Longbow.

OTOH, I suppose there would need to be a different rationale for heroes in the Rogue Isles, since villains wouldn't be under the same constraints against attacking on sight.

I found them annoying solo in those situations. One of my brutes had the fairy wings, and they looked great on her when standing around or traveling. But in combat they just looked ridiculous — big, stiff, and flat, waving back and forth with every punch. I was very happy when the Cherub Wings recipe dropped for another character. I immediately mailed it to my brute and she changed her wings.

Only level 12 on this character - don't have that power yet.

Of course! My main character is a level 43 Fire/Fire blaster. I remember fighting Sky Raiders on her and how quickly I figured out "Ignore everybody else and take out those !@#$% Engineers first!" Currently, the banes of her existence are those Nemesis snipers (Tirallieurs, or whatever) and the Malta Sappers. The sappers are the entire reason she's finally carrying the blue inspirations - until she encountered them, Endurance was never a problem for her.

I have over 60 characters (mostly blasters, scrappers, and brutes), and the Vahzilok have been a problem for all of them, though.

Yeah, I figured out early on that +ACC should be the first enhancement I slot into every power that can take it. Extra damage/duration does no good if it doesn't hit!

Good advice - I'll remember it for next time.

Would resisting Smashing or Lethal damage carry over to resisting the attack's secondary effects? For example, if the Cadaver/Abom resists the Lethal damage from Stone Spears, is it also likely to resist that attack's Knock Up effect?