Nihilii

No, never going to buy one. Indeed, it's easy enough to level.

That said, I hope (for the sake of people who said that) the whole "I turn off XP" or "it should be made harder" is hogwash to look cool on the forums, because I can't possibly understand this reasoning.

If I play 40 hours and end up with 2 level 50 characters, I have experienced just as much content as if I would have played 40 hours and ended up with 1 level 50 character doing the exact same tasks rewarding me for half of the exp, and I also got to enjoy greater diversity in my own characters - which in turn gives each encounter a bit more variety.

About the only argument I could see is if you want to read the stories and are worried about outleveling them, but I don't think you can claim to love the game, period (and insinuate people who don't play like you don't by doing so), if you only enjoy a small part of it. And, if you don't think stories are a small part of CoH, I feel sorry for the time you spent playing a game where 90% of the time is spent punching dudes.

"Press enter" in respecs? Neat! Can't say I've ever heard of that one.

37, either you have mad mouse skillz or are a very patient man. I find it tedious to move all the way down to the bottom right of the screen and all the way back up to the middle of the screen 49 times in a row, this tip will certainly be a great QoL boon here.

Ranged/Armor
Melee/Buff

NO lore based AT. I can make up stories on my own just fine, and would rather have the gameplay tools to build my characters than to have to tweak my background to fit a predetermined template.

Low direct ST damage, lack of passive aggro management coupled with DoTs leading to stuff running.

Cue in people naming pylon runs and missing the point. In real gameplay, tough targets don't always come one by one, actually move and do more damage.

On top of that, I've got more personal grievances such as heavily concept-locked looks, lots of cones and relatively long and boring animations.

I wouldn't delete my crab because it's fun to log in once in a while and throw AoEs willy-nilly in complete safety, but I can't play it as a "serious" character.

And just as I glance up after typing this post I see the usual suspect has already took the bait. Let's address his comments:

Servers being shut down, I guess. I thought I'd quit when they changed the launcher, and I didn't, and I believed I'd leave when they started tying most of the interesting new content and rewards to group activities, and although I'm not VIP anymore and play perhaps a dozen hours per month I'm still here.

So, yeah. It would have to be a change to the rest of the MMO industry rather than CoH, because what else can we play, anyway? It's 2012 and in the average game sidekicking systems still don't exist, your appearance is still heavily locked and determined by the loot you wear, and you're still a grunt fighting a few enemies at a time.

Buying in bulk, I prefer to run to Steel. Waiting a few minutes can often mean a 500% price drop, and by the time I craft the IOs I already have enough materials for, I can hop back to the market, get more salvage or recipes, craft more, etc..

I move all the time, but as little as possible.

There's a thin line between getting more targets in a particular cone/aoe and losing damage over time due to too much time spent positioning (and sometimes, in certain situations, half a second can already be "too much time").

KM/Inv scrapper, so, not very uber at all. Unfortunately. Most power builds in this game also comes with boring animations or playstyles (to me personally).

Done a search, couldn't find a word on that. Freebies can get to DA, but considering specific drops can be tied to VIP, I was wondering.

Damage numbers be damned, I can't dislike a powerset with a 10+ feet radius PBAoE.

Going to echo what has been said, don't ever expect another TW. If you use one of the two best options as your baseline for performance, you will be disappointed often.

His post seems pretty clear to me. *shrug*

I'd be all for an incarnate slot dedicated to auras. Damage auras, taunt auras, -tohit auras, mez auras. Perhaps ally auras as well (i.e. +regen, +recov). Would be fun.

I used to be a big PVPer about a decade ago, when both games and gamers were generally more intense about it (i.e. asian MMOs with full pvp on every zone, important bonuses tied to it, hefty death penalties, with players that cared about it like it was the most important thing in the world). Going from that atmosphere to last and current gen MMOs where PvP is mostly consensual and has so many caveats and rules it feels like some children pretend fight I just couldn't get into it and made an immediate and complete switch to full PvE.

What also likely plays a part is back then I was in my late teens and didn't have much going on in my life, and games were a good outlet to relieve that need for aggressivity, competition and validation, and MMORPGs a good choice for the sore loser I've always been as grinding and game knowledge is worth more than pure ability in these settings. Nowadays, I get all the challenge I could ever need from real life responsibilities, I don't get that urge to fight with people anymore and when I do I find it more therapeutic to yell on random strangers or go on crazy rants on internet boards, and I just simply can't care enough to do my best even the few times I do play. It's funny; ten years ago I was that guy who yelled at the fools who didn't give their all, now I'm the guy who leaves a team game ten minutes in because I suddenly feel like eating a yogurt or watching TV documentaries.

Number tweaks can be all that's needed to turn an unappealing set into a popular one. Shame people (both devs and players) always want to throw everything out of the window and reinvent the wheel instead of building on what's already there.

Thanks! I still use Firefox 3.6.xx and plan to hold off upgrading for as long as possible (they lost me as early as Firefox 4 with that new UI, as a computer idiot I simply don't have time to get used to changes on basic functionality), so this should come in handy. Looks like I got some research to do.

Hamis are pretty neat on F2P/premium accounts without IO access. Between these and the attuned AT sets, you can make some relatively decent builds.

I've never seen the point.

The character building angle doesn't appeal to me. Heroes don't get interesting because they can or can't punch a building, it's how they feel about punching that poor building that is cool to explore. Besides, if we're talking, for example, about using IOs instead of SOs, then the only difference is in technicalities. I can't really see any roleplaying bonus in doing 130 damage instead of 150. If anything, it means this particular character would take longer to get through the non-RP, purely mechanic parts of the game, as they'd earn experience at a slower rate.

Even the most minmaxed character isn't going to have enough power to tackle on absolutely every threat by himself, anyway.

Everytime I hear people claiming there's no teaming problems on their low pop server ever, all I can hear is: USA! USA! USA! USA!

Like it or not, some of us are (gasp!) foreigners or may not play at peak hours. When there's, literally, one or two dozens level 41-50 characters on through search, half of them already teamed up in a TF or trial, a few AFK and a few soloing, no matter how proactive you are you will not get enough warm bodies to start a Manticore TF or a Dr Keyes trial. ****, even starting ITFs, RSFs or BAFs is hard on some servers at times. And by "at times" I mean "most of the day" on something like Vigilance.

(Admittedly, being willing to wait one hour to start an ingame activity is already complete insanity by my standards. A ten minute wait already qualifies as way too long when your playtime is something you try to sneak in between your social life.)

What do level shifts have to do with trial success? How did you people accomplish anything back when the trials just came out?

Frankly, I think itrials powers should be nerfed, or people with level shifts should have diminishing returns on the easier trials, so players have to actually play the game rather than rely on gimmicky crutches to power through it.

I definitely factor in inspirations when building. I also factor in computer speed and internet connection. For example, stalkers sucked for me before I22 as with high latency, I always got AS interrupted (and lost end for nothing) as the server still considers me to be moving for an extra 1/5th of a second everytime I stop. Likewise, I used to build for more survivability overkill when I used a rig where FPS would drop to single digits.