Patteroast

I just ran three TFs on beta. Had a stalker along the whole time, he even ended up being the leader on the third one. I was on an Empathy Defender. I picked up 10 incarnate shards in a few hours.

I don't see any problems. And after that I quickly soloed the arc to unlock the alpha slot on my Energy/Energy Stalker. That was pretty quick and easy, and I got a shard out of the deal. So yeah.

I have to reiterate that I am thrilled that they added exploration badges to the Shadow Shard.

When I made my way through to double-check their locations, I really enjoyed the atmospheric text. Different areas in the Chantry and Storm Palace aren't just named after emotions for the fun of it.

My plan is, just because I'm excited about changing them, I'm going to respec my 50s and other characters that are important to me right away. So they'll have the extra respec. Although I think in reality, I'll be using the last free respec that was offered, since most of them haven't done a respec in a while.

I only have a few characters who have a second build, so I guess I'll make a point of getting them taken care of in that first week. Other than that, I'll take my time, and go through my characters whenever I feel like doing respecs. It would be nice, even on characters who only have one build, to have another freespec lying around after I'm done.

It's not supposed to be earned by all. I don't think they ever will change that. And I don't think they should.

I just don't see a problem in there being a badge out there that can't generally be earned. Just ignore it. When I find a bug, I report it because I want the game to be better, not because I think it'll get me the Bug Hunter badge. Incentivizing finding bugs could lead to some weird results of people hoarding bugs until they're sure they have enough. Also, I think a point system would be unwieldy and take attention away from people who should be keeping the game running.

I don't think Ninjitsu is very likely to get proliferated anytime soon, if ever. It's basically super reflexes with the auto powers taken out and replaced by a heal and a few utility powers, all with making it good for a Stalker in mind. Before it could be proliferated, I would think they would want to change the utility powers to something that fits non-Stalkers better. But if you take out the utility powers... you pretty much have super reflexes plus a heal.

I think pretty much all the other armors are more likely to get proliferated. Just my opinion, though. I thought for sure that the last buff/debuff set that Defenders would get would be Traps, and I was very wrong.

How about, say, Smoke? Also, there's Taunt, which takes accuracy, but only because in PvP it can miss.

I've never been very clear... what powers actually are auto-hit?

If anything, I'd say Paragon could use another market and vault more than the Rogue Isles could.

Zones in Paragon City with a Market: Atlas Park, Kings Row, Steel Canyon, Talos Island.

Zones in Rogue Isles with a Market: Mercy Island, Port Oakes, Cap Au Diable, Sharkhead Isle, St. Martial.

Why the city with a lower population and fewer zones has more markets doesn't make much sense to me. Sure, the same number was fine, but I am just confused as to why they added one to Port Oakes.

I've used the smoke and tendrils auras to pretty good effect on my two highest Dark characters. Are we talking about, say, dark fire?

I do have to say that I am annoyed with how many times I've run that arc. It must be upwards of 50 times now. I decided that all of my characters (I have 112) should work on day jobs. All of them. The only restriction being that they couldn't get ones that are still level-restricted. So every time I get a hero to level 10, they do the arc and log out in the Midnight Club. Then when they hit 35, they go to Cimerora.

And please correct me if I'm wrong, but for a villain who is soloing at their own level, it isn't possible to get into the Midnight Club earlier than 30, is it? As far as I know, the arc that actually makes you a member and allows entrance isn't given out until then. That is also annoying...

Then again, it doesn't bother me much as a gate for the LGTF. I'd run the arc on any characters who wanted to do that quite shortly after it became available. And yes, getting every level 10 hero in just for the day job is kind of a silly reason to be running the arc a bajillion times, so I'm not too bothered. I'm just getting suitably bored with the arc by now.

I think that if you really wanted to have that character be tech, it would work just fine. But I agree, I think it sounds more like science. I think you're in the overlap zone between science and tech, where it just comes up to a matter of opinion.

Don't they want the average player to be able to get the most powerful, expensive, and rare items in the game?

No. No they do not.

Nor should they. It's not just time, but lots of work to get the most ultra-uber stuff.

But here's the thing: it doesn't really matter. Because none of that is needed. It does not harm the average player to have something out of their reach without a ton of work. I submit that it helps! Because unless you've invested a lot of time and effort, there's always something better to aspire to.

But you don't need PvP sets. Ultra-rares are almost as good. But you don't need ultra-rares. Rares are almost as good. But you don't need rares. Uncommons are almost as good. But you don't need uncommons. Commons are almost as good. But you don't need common IOs. Single origins are almost as good.

And just to note: I'm a 69 month veteran. I have over 100 characters. Thirteen level 50s. And only about half of my 50s have even common IOs, maybe three have any rare sets, and none have ultra-rares or PvP sets. I do not feel robbed. I didn't put my time or effort into min-maxing or marketeering, instead I put it into getting a very good grasp of all the different powersets and the setting of the game. And I got what I worked for.

Time isn't all that you need to put in. The very highest end stuff takes a lot of effort. People are trying to tell you that they've figured out the most efficient way to go about doing this, and you're ignoring them. Don't know what else to tell you...

Sentinel is insanely awesome. One-click badge tracking and two-click build exports to Mids'. Just... wow.

I found a pair of Master Illusionists outdoors in Peregrine a couple months ago, and annoyed them while I had a damage aura on... they kept flying up to me and spawning their pets in my aura, and then flying off out of it... I just waited for their summon powers to recharge and kept it up until I got the badge. So I can say that I have seen their summon powers work recently.

Except you can never earn Gunrunner unless you've become a villain and earned the villain version of the badge. You fill up the bar, but it doesn't award until you're a Villain. If you then go back to Hero or Vigilante, then it's Gunrunner.

My Stone Tanker herded up all the DE monsters on one of the smaller islands in Peregrine with just Granite and Rooted slotted with SOs. Yeah, not being soft-capped with a huge amount of resistance means you take damage, but the regeneration from Rooted, plus Earth's Embrace and the occasional inspiration were plenty to survive until I got bored and left.

Just wanted to point out that the different between non-soft-capped Granite and soft-capped Granite is the different between being able to tank insanely well and being able to tank incredibly insanely well.

Can't speak for other people, but I'm not letting the anticipation of I19 stop me from playing as usual. In fact, I've been playing a lot of lowbies recently. And just in case they get to 20 or over before I19 hits, I've been picking up fitness powers.

I'm holding off on any respecs, because the reason that I want to respec doesn't exist yet.

Few of my characters are supernaturally-based, so I'm probably not going to have any characters that are 'gods'. The characters I have that are supernatural are more along the lines of "interesting guy who keeps getting reincarnated" and "personified aspect of nature". Even most of my characters with Dark powers try to explain it as something more sci-fi such as dark matter, or even simply smoke.

I've heard plenty of people say that they don't like Absorb Pain, but I've never come across people saying that you're a bad player if you take it. When used at the right time, it is an awesome power.

I think my main objection to having Healing Aura on auto is the people who stand around with it on auto when there's no fighting happening. It just gives me the impression that they want to do nothing more than follow the group around with it on auto and leech XP. And I have met people who do that. (They are known as healbots, pronounced "terrible players".)

Clicking Healing Aura onto auto when the fighting's really crazy and lots of people are in aura range? Completely justified. Although I prefer using lots of Heal Other, and then splashing a little Healing Aura to top things off.

There are certain bits of specific lore in CoH that are limiting, storywise. Especially the in-game explanations for powerset proliferation and the origins. I flat-out ignore the whole 'no mutants before the atom was split' stuff.

But I find little, pointless things like the name of a hero that a statue is created after, or an important event that took place in a certain location, or even specific examples of different NPC's pasts to all be very enriching things for the game. In my opinion, anyway.

Even though there are some big inconsistencies that pop up if you read too closely into the background information... (How could Mayor Spanky Rabinowitz have been born in the late 1800s on a certain block in Talos Island if the island didn't exist before Talos and Chimera fought, rupturing the ocean floor in the 1960s?)

If people want to join in on community sites, one that I think needs love is the Ouroboros Portal Wiki. If you're at all familiar with wiki editing, it's pretty easy to just start making pages for your characters there.

I often find myself getting bored of gameplay in most games, and end up spending more time fiddling around with the background stuff. Especially exploring maps. For example, one of the things I'm most excited about in I19 is new exploration badges for hazard zones. I can't wait to search around for them and get new little bits of backstory. (And have my fingers crossed for the Shadow Shard being included.)

It's just a matter of taste, though. Different people prefer different things in games. Having a sufficiently deep background for which delving into is optional seems to be the best way to go for the largest number of players.

Strangely enough, people are allowed to be friends with people on other continents.

And as for people never wanting to play together because of different time zones... my strange sleeping habits led me to make the acquaintance of several Australians, and I even became good enough friends with two of them that they invited me to come visit them. I had the time and money at that time, so I did!

So yeah. Latency can be annoying at those distances, but not enough of a problem to really impact play.

As for where the talk is coming from... it seems to be only wishful thinking from players at this point.

I have my characters sorted by level, highest to lowest. If characters are tied, by how far into that level they are (6 bars ahead of 4 bars, etc.), and if they're STILL tied, by when they achieved that level (therefore, my 50s are all in order of when they hit 50.)

Hey! Just saw this thread, and have to admit that I've done this too. Maybe a year or so ago, a friend was looking at my character list, and noted that I had a character for every letter with the exceptions of J, U, and X. It became my mission to fill those gaps, which I did within a couple months of that.

So, listy-time...

A: A Blown Fuse, A Crossed Circuit, ARROW'D, Accretion Burst, Agent Greyling, Anne Inja, Annihili, Ariolimax, Asoposl, Atomic Lizard-Donkey
B: Banana Slug Man, Banana Slug Woman, Bible Boy, Big Sally, Bill Bowman, Bonsai Assassin, Bose Condensation, Bullet Bill
C: Canadian.Shield, Captain Jamaica, Captain Kalamari, Chill of Darkness, Cleavage Man, Cold Revenge, Comrade Yetniy, Cosmic Downpour, Crater Jr.
D: Dr. Asbestos, Dr. Birdseye, Dr. Enthalpy, Dr. Fejwol, Dr. Isotropy, Dr. Mal Practice, Dr. Stein
E: Electric Pufferfish, ElectroPunch, Elfis Lives, Explomadoza
F: Fire Banana, Fire Robot 4999, Frank Benjamin, Fratricidal, Fryhtu
G: Geokinesis, Geomancy
H: His Noodly Appendage, Hot Justice, Howling of the Wind, Hyperion Elite
I: Ice Removal Services, Implomadoza, Intergalactic Potato
J: Juris Malus
K: Ka Anor, Kiviuq, Kung Fu Freddy
L: Light of Progress, Llecarud, Lord Richter
M: Mad General Jack, Meanie Genie, Minnesota Man, Modern Hephaestus, Motion Blur, Mr. Ninja Werewolf, Ms. Pelafina
N: Nectar of the Gods, Nerrivik, Ninja Jim
O: Ol' Smokey, Old Man Marley, Operative Greyling, Original Name
P: Pantomimus, Particle Accelerator, Patteroast, Patticus, Piezoelectric, Pinkbeard the Pirate, Professor Lowell, Professor Orange, Project-83, Psychotic Steve, Pungol, Pyrrho
Q: Quaoar
R: Rawr Pat, Really Angry Man, Rezigrene, Robert Frostbite, Rubber Chicken Man
S: Sergeant Parry, Set To Eleven, Setebos, Sir Fisticuffs, SpaceBot 8300
T: t3h Ub3rbl4st3r, Temporal Anomaly, Through the Flames
U: Undersecretary Liv
V: Veggie Burger, Verlustoff, Vermicula
W: Welding Man, Weywot, Where There's Smoke, Wojapi, Wundermind
X: Xeryck
Y: Yetniy, Yintey
Z: Zombob

Screenshots, backstories (when they have written ones), power lists, and links to their profiles on City Info Tracker and Ouroboros Portal Wiki are all available on my somewhat obsessive character list (linked in my signature.)