SteelRat

Or because it was a business model that was being utilised by the industry as a whole and they knew that if they didn't change to adapt they'd get left behind and further alienating potential new players as well old ones

I know exactly what Twilight is saying, and I still don't understand that viewpoint. Frankly, I'm in the same boat. I played from about I6 to about I13 ish. I've tried the game again at various points along the way again and it's only relatively recently that I've resubbed for longer than a month. A months subscription to CoH realistically isn't a lot of money. You know pretty much what you're going to be getting (if you're an ex player) and it's a darn site cheaper than buying an off line game which you could well get bored of in a week, so what's to stop you subscribing for a month to try it out, and then cancelling your sub if you still don't like it before the month is out?

I was a subscriber, and F2P system or not, I expect to subscribe for the stuff I had. If I wanted to "try" the game, the F2P system at the moment doesn't stop me from rolling a new character and doing exactly that without paying a penny. If I want access to my old characters, which I previously had to pay for by a subscription, then why wouldn't I expect to do so again?

I think the only "fault" is the way that CoH's F2P system is marketed. "Come back and play for free.. weeeelll kinda." And in that regard, their model isn't that much different to any of the others out there (at least from what I've seen)

Fun is subjective. My view is those kinds of people probably wouldn't have stayed around anyway. If you want to play (like I do), you will. If you don't, you won't. What's also worth mentioning is that this is the first time since I13 that there is enough in the game to make me WANT to stay, and would all of that stuff have been possible had there not been a method of bringing more money into the game to finance it? A number of very old SG friends have also come back for the same reasons, and I've even got my gf playing as well (she's a newbie, not only to CoH, but MMO's in general, and she is having a whale of a time!). So while there may be some people who think "screw this", there are some just like me and my friends that think "SHINEY! WOOOOT!"

I can see where you're coming from here, and I do agree that might be a better incentive for people to reactivate their subscriptions, which lets face it, is a position the Devs really want to be in.

However, I do think the biggest problem is simply about the way F2P is marketed. It used to be that if you unsubscribed the dev team would send you periodic emails saying "Come back and play for free for 2 weeks and at the end of the two weeks we'll automatically resub you" which meant that players genuinely had "F2P" for a period to try the game again to see if they wanted to resub. As the F2P model is actually part of the whole system, rather than just a "one off email sent to past players", I wonder if people are still expecting that old way of doing things and get a big shock when they don't get it.

You're still over complicating the basic facts here. What is available to you now as a subscriber compared to what was available to you as a subscriber before F2P was introduced is exactly NIL. You are not getting anything LESS by subscribing under the F2P system than when the F2P system didnt exist. In fact you're getting a whole lot more because of all the things that have been introduced for subscribers since then.

So I really have no sympathy at all with people that say "when I subscribed I had all this stuff, and now I have to resubscribe to get it back". That kind of attitude really does beggar belief, quite frankly.

It was inevitable that someone was going to say this. You were that person. Well done. Have a hat.

Point is from a thematic point of view a netherworld themed powerset that features a dog isn't beyond the realms of existing mythology, so to say it doesn't work for those reasons is simply wrong.

Alright, perhaps people don't really like the implementation of it, but as I've already said, there are plenty of other powers that people have explained away quite happily. Take Illusion Control, for example. That entire SET works on the premise that all the damage a mob takes is all in its own mind and isn't physical. Even in a fantastical Super-Hero universe that idea is on shaky ground imo, and yet people are quite happy to work around that to make the character fit the concept they have in mind that uses that set.

So why, then in those circumstances are people not so flexible when they're presented with a big ethereal pooch when our culture already provides examples where such an idea has already been successfully implemented?

Darkness powers are actually based around a theme of "Tapping into the Netherworld", at least from reading the description text. My point is that the umbral beast has thematic tie-ins to that concept. Given that Hades is the Netherworld of Greek Mythology, it doesn't take too much imagination to see the link with Cerberus (although I do realise that Cerberus has three times as many heads as the UB!)

If you don't like it, fair enough, that's up to you, but saying you think it has no thematic link just because you don't like it is rather foolish. I also reiterate the point that this game has a whole swathe of powers that people have invented lots of different reasons to "explain", so why is this one so difficult?

As for your point about the devs using as many reasons as they can to implement their shiney new 4 legged model, I'm sure you're probably right, but so what? The theme fits, or can be made to fit with a bit of creativity - it's not like it's a giant mouse, or giraffe or something.

This

These

And especially...

This.

If purely "fun" is your goal, don't focus too much on the advice of others as to "What's good". Think about a fun concept that suits the way you like to play and build your characters around that.

I'd add the following:

Do the Hollows arcs as soon as you get to level 6 or so. They're awesome, even now (personally I think there should be a badge for defeating Frostfire)
Only do Radio Missions to open up new contacts if you've outlevelled existing ones, or if you particuarly like doing SafeGuards.
"Be" your character without necessarily going fully RP.

Heh.. so you power leveled the thread to get to the end quick, and once you got there had no idea what it was about

Interested by this post. Popped that data into mids and it gave me a Claws / Elec brute?

Either I'm doing something wrong, or that data isn't right?

Bit confused how a claws / elec brute mimics Iron Man?

Any reason you don't like brutes? Oddly I prefer them to scrappers. I think for me scrapper means "finesse". Brute is just raw SMASH. I'm not saying one is "right" and the other is "wrong", just the concept of a brute is the one I prefer

Yup, which is why adding another method of doing this probably isn't the best of ideas.

100% this. Sums up precisely my feelings on Stone Melee too and its my favourite melee set as well. There may be sets that are more effective on a calculator, but Stone Melee will make you grin like an idiot, every. Time. You. Play.

I have a number of 50s, but if I had a "Main" it'd be my Stone / Fire brute, Volkanik for all the reasons listed here.