Olantern

I didn't read the whole thread, but I skimmed it . . . do I get partial credit?

My 50's:

Djinniman (inv/fire tank, Victory)- my first character and still one of my favorite costumes and backstories. The first tell I ever got was within a minute of entering Outbreak, complimenting his look. Ah, memories. I leveled him up back in the heady days of i3-i4, when tankers were kings and Dreck and wolf farming were the order of the day. I remember feeling like I had to spend a lot of time being powerleveled just to burn off all the debt in the high levels back then. Because tanks were so common back then, I was only ever a "backup" tank, and I didn't really learn how the AT worked until relatively recently. In the meantime, I discovered I prefer other AT's more in gameplay terms, but Djinniman remains one of my favorite concepts of all.

Kid Eros (archery/fire blaster, Liberty)- My second and most-played 50. With an emphasis on pure range, fighting from the air, and exotic IO's (he was 35 when i6 hit), he's one of my most effective characters. He's also one of the most interesting as a character, having a very different concept and outlook from the average superhero. I come up with new Kid Eros stories all the time, some of which have become AE arcs and some of which have become comics or scripts for planned ones. Check the link in my signature for more about him.

Rikti Mage (ice/fire dominator, Victory)- My first villain 50. He was leveled up back before all the dominator buffs. It was slow, slow going, but I still recommend ice/fire as a good dominator combination, and dominators remain one of my favorite AT's, though I haven't played one recently. My friends had pretty much decamped from Victory by the time i10, which meant that this character, who was all about finding a way to return to the Rikti homeworld while killing as many gods and quasi-gods as possible, never really got to finish his story. Also, he's jealous that the revamped Rikti look neater than he does.

Operative Bay (crab spider, Liberty)- This character just leveled up in a blur during i12. I just found crab spiders that easy and fun to play. Plus, I like his costumes. They're blue. Blue crab, get it? Okay; no one else thinks it's funny, either. "Old" Bay (his bio is all about crab jokes) is my most-played villain 50, probably because he's so handy on teams. Even the speed-running, min-maxing teams that seem required to finish some of the tougher challenges in a reasonable amount of time can find a use for him. He's also the only character I will take on farms (I don't enjoy farming, having sat through too many on Djinniman, but I have a friend who does almost nothing else), since he's all about mowing down large numbers of enemies. Bay is also administrator of my VG, which is mostly alts of mine and a few friends'.

Knight of Gears (broadsword/shield scrapper, Liberty)- Another character whose sets just spoke to me. He was probably the fastest-leveling of all my 50's. He is the most min-maxed of my characters, with lots of special IO's and set bonuses. Despite his effectiveness, the real reason I played him so much was the fact that I love his story and his outfits. His concept is that he's using advanced technology to replicate the abilities of his deceased brother, who was a Magic Origin, sword-wielding hero. His costumes are all meant to suggest knightly armor, but they're mostly made of techy-looking parts, which made for an unusual take on the bs/shield scrappers that were so common around the time he was created.

Mr. Foudroyant (peacebringer, Liberty)- I created "Mr. F" the day Djinniman hit 50, but I didn't play him much, partly because my CoH friends had decamped from Victory to Liberty. After about two and a half years, he had reached 32 or so. The last round of Kheldian improvements made him viable as a soloist and more effective on teams, so I finally decided to move him to Liberty, where I could finance some IO's for him. He soon reached 50, after a quick respec. I enjoy his versatility, his funny costume (it's classic superhero stuff, but in an odd shade of mint green, which I explain as his favorite color), and his amusing backstory. His human portion is James A. Foudry, professor of Frislandic and Oranbegan literature, who teaches such courses as "The Maniacal Rant in Oranbegan Art" and "Literature by Bodiless Authors."

Rain Scarecrow (fire/storm corruptor, Liberty)- Like Mr. F, this corruptor began his career on another server (Justice, in his case). I made him as a way of preserving a bio that I really liked. I finally decided that I liked it so much that I wanted to use it in some non-CoH work, so I deleted it and replaced it with a throwaway story about his being an actual scarecrow animated in a mysterious, horror-story-like event in Croatoa, which I ended up enjoying even more. In the meantime, I found that I enjoyed playing the character so much that I decided to move him to Liberty to team with friends more often. Fire and storm are a great combination, though rough on the endurance. Again, I also leveled him up because I liked looked at his costume, a figure in a checked shirt and a long coat. The pumpkin head, which was released midway through his career, was perfect for him.

Sidereal Knight (radiation/energy blaster, Liberty)-My newest 50, just hit this past Monday. I'd always liked the look of both radiation and energy, and I'd never had a character with yellow powers, even though my favorite color is yellow, so I made this character on the second night of i16. He's a sort of tribute to the '90's DC Starman, being a reluctant hero with light powers, though his look is somewhat different and his story involves magic rather than superscience, including a connection to the Legacy Chain and other aspects of CoH lore. I had great fun watching him zap enemies with pretty, yellow lights for 50 levels and came up with some interesting costumes to compliment his original "street clothes" outfit. He's also loosely connected with an AE arc I have about the Legacy Chain. Even though I'm not a roleplayer, when I finished that arc with him and afterwards had him switch to his Legacy Chain outfit for the first time, I really felt a sense of achievement.

I'd always thought those chimneys in FF were mooring posts or something. I don't think they're part of R'yleh, though; my characters seem to remain sane when swimming past them.

On the other hand, I think the surreal, yellowish "night" of Faultline might indicate Cthulhoid influence.

I wonder how the devs expected this to affect the servers, or if they considered it at all. Did they expect diffusion or consolidation of the actively played characters?

I'm in the mid-Atlantic, which is supposed to be hammered by a fairly major snowstorm tomorrow. On behalf of the entire region, I say that all of you in southern Britain are more than welcome to take some of that snow, although you'll have to come over here and pick it up yourselves. I'd box up and send you some, but I don't think snow has a long enough half-life to make the crossing in a state in which you'd want it.

I haven't seen it (yet) myself, but from talking to people who've done testing, your conclusion is basically correct. I suspect that only one Lord Winter's Realm exists at a time on any server (though there can be multiple instances of the same Lord Winter's Realm), with a new one being generated if the last one has closed, so every box leads to the same one.

37 of 70 on the first try. The thing I found most interesting is that, after several years at this, there are still four or five characters on that list I've never even heard of.

The Banished Pantheon Mask who's a bartender in the Tiki lounge. "The spirits recommend a Red Beast Energy Drink. 'Red Beast: unleash the animal in you!' The spirits command you to unleash the animal!"

Thanks for the Thanksgiving arc review. Good comments, and I'm impressed that I could come away with 4 stars on an arc I essentially threw together at the last minute when I couldn't find a team to do anything with. Too bad you didn't get to see more Gobblers (those turkey boss things), but one can't have everything. Thanks especially for suggestions on how to highlight the various helium jokes.

I, too, am troubled by the lack of an actual parade in an arc about a parade. The MA forum's own FredrikVanSanberg made a useful suggestion in his comments: Mitos could be used as balloons. I wonder what a Mito does when it runs for an entrance. Oh, and for all you MA technicians listening in, in answer to PW's question, yes, you can use DE monsters as hostages. I'll have to try this.

Thanks again!

Most of my obvious choices have been covered already: Spectrals Whatsits at low levels, low-level CoT bosses, and Malta, which seems to have been designed as a place to put all the "challenge" enemies that were left out of other factions. (I've long maintained, based on background and difficulty, that Malta should rarely or never fill entire missions; they should appear to support other groups, as they do in the mission in which they're introduced. But that's another discussion.)

Other enemies I can't stand include:

-Rikti drones. Impossible to hit and impossibly resistant to lethal damage.

-Arachnos drones. Excessively resistant to a common damage type, yet they spawn at a level when most attacks aren't well-enhanced.

-Mu at low levels. The endurance drain of these things is just brutal, pre-stamina. They also resist a fair number of damage types.

-Higher-level Consiglieres and the unique boss Kadabra Kill. In theory, these aren't especially challenging, as mid-level bosses go. However, all of them summon Singularities AND have their own Gravity Control powers. That makes it easy for them to stack holds. These enemies are some of the few that have wiped out my melee characters even without help.

Oddly, I generally don't hate Carnies. While they tend to phase a lot, they don't run away the way other phasing enemies tend to, or at least not as often, and it's possible to avoid their endurance drains. However, the real reason I like them is that they're one of the very few groups at high levels that isn't highly resistant to lethal damage (common to both my preferred AT's, scrappers and blasters). In fact, they're vulnerable to it! For high-defense Lethal characters with mez protection, Carnies are like xp-snacks.

I misread the thread title as "When Catgirls Ruled the Earth," which sounds like a Discovery Channel special. I hadn't realized catgirls left a fossil record.

Also, "When Catgirls Ruled the Earth" sounds like something someone would title a AE arc, if someone hasn't done it already.

Hello, fellow MA mavens. After years of posting joke threads containing "Feedback on the Thanksgiving Event," I decided to make my own using the MA tools, just in time for Thanksgiving itself.

Therefore, I give you arc #347683, "The Wentworth's Thanksgiving Day Parade." The Wentworth's parade has been a tradition in Paragon City for decades, but this year, it's in danger! Rescue some unusual characters, battle some peculiar enemies, and get home in time for Thanksgiving dinner! This is a comedy arc, but it's a bit more canon-related and, I hope, internally consistent than most.

This is intended to be a solo-friendly arc, with no enemies ranking above boss level and no mechanical or power "tricks" to make things more complex or challenging. There are custom enemies in the second mission, but you can avoid a lot of them, and while they aren't pushovers, they aren't impossibly difficult, either. The arc is also short, only two missions.

This arc is not recommended for people who don't think marching bands, pilgrims, subtle humor, Nemesis, helium, or large flightless birds can be funny. Do not take internally. Author carries no cash.

P.S. Yes, I'm aware that Canadian Thanksgiving has been over for a month already. I wanted to include a joke about that in the arc, but I couldn't work it in. Let me know if you see a good place for it . . .

Since I script a comic series about this kind of stuff, I've thought about it a lot.

Skipper LeGrange and Katie Hannon seem like an obvious pairing, once Skipper moves out of his mother's basement. Something about the pairing of the geeky man-child and the wise immortal appeals to my sense of symmetry. And humor.

See arc #30242, "The Love Talker," for a minor subplot about this. It played a much bigger role in the original Kid Eros script on which the MA arc is based, but I had to rework the story to make the player the central character and keep within the limits of the MA tools.

***

Speaking of Kid Eros, in another story, Kid is forced to seek help from Mender Tesseract, and the following exchange occurs:

TESSERACT: Well, if it isn’t Paragon City’s Sickeningly Saccharine Supercupid! What are you bothering me for? If you think you can set me up with someone, think again!

KID: Well, now that you mention it, I have noticed the Pilgrim looking at you –

TESS: Shut your immortal pie-hole, godling. We both know I’m not going on any dates this epoch.

KID NARRATING: Too bad. Tesseract might be almost bearable with a decent man in her life. On the other hand, anyone I found for her would never forgive me.

***

In the past, I have suggested that there may have been some kind of relationship between Lord Recluse and Red Widow. If so, things obviously didn't end well.

I only have one account, but I do have some connected characters, two on my own account and one part of a duo with another character.

Agent Walters (Denton Walters, AR/Traps corruptor) and Analyst Rayce (Arianne Rayce, electric/energy blaster), who work for Crey and Hero Corps respectively, are boyfriend and girlfriend. I created them back when creyindustries.com and herocorps.com, two expanded bio sites, were being actively maintained. I ended up posting quite a few profiles on there, and all of the Crey ones included notes by an "Agent Walters" complaining about his horrible treatment. Eventually, I decided to make him as a character of his own, and I created a counterpart to write all the reports on my villains once herocorps, the CoV site, went operational. So far as I know, those sites are no longer being maintained, but I still play the characters periodically. Walters, now that he can be recostumed and his powers recolored to make him look like a proper Crey agent, is finally nearing 20, and Rayce is 32 or 33. I just gave her a second outfit, a Merit Vendor costume to go with her Hero Corps one.

Those characters, however, don't actually work together. Two that do are my Reefwarden (ice/mental blaster) and a friend's Guppy Gal (cold/psi defender). Reefwarden was my attempt to make an aquatic hero who wasn't, well, lame. Like many of the classic aquatic heroes, he's some kind of nonhuman creature from beneath the sea. Because I was tired of every ocean-going character out there being some sort of ultra-serious environmental mascot who hates humanity, I made him a very casual, laid-back personality who enjoys hanging out on land because that's where the good cuisine and the drinks are (he wears sunglasses in all his forms). His first costume was a classic "superheroic" look, but his others have been made to resemble different kinds of sea life (a clownfish and a sea slug so far, and I'm working on a way to do a manta ray or a good-looking nautilus). Anyway, a friend of mine, the teenaged daughter of another friend, liked the clownfish look so much that she decided to create Reefie's teen sidekick, Guppy Gal. Unlike Reefwarden, "GG" is a human mutant with powers that mimic Reefwarden's natural reefwarden powers. Like him, her first outfit is a regular hero one, though with a somewhat different color scheme from Reefwarden's (his is blue, hers is sea green and white). Her "alternate" forms are of a red starfish (head made from a Jester hat and one of the horn details) and a purple tropical fish. She's also done an angelfish, although she had to "store" that costume to do the purple one.

They're up to 40 and somewhere in the 30's now. Since I recently figured out how to play Reefwarden without getting him killed every fight, they've become quite an effective duo, although it can be difficult trying to hold aggro with a blaster.