Tenzhi

Why, indeed? I'm all for getting rid of it.

Oh, sure, make fun of the King in Yellow.

While only offensive (powers that directly affect enemies) toggles get shut off any more, there's still enough of those that getting them shut off can be bothersome. They are in Radiation, Storm, Dark Miasma, Sonic, Ice Control, Fire Control, a number of the Blaster secondaries, and I believe Earth Control. Perhaps more. A number of those have recharge times that make them getting shut off quite annoying.

The only way to use anti-mez powers effectively is simply to use them proactively. Which is to say, to prevent mez with them. I've seen some Empaths do that on teams, and more power to those players, but I find the prospect of doing so myself as an Empath to be far too irritating for aforementioned reasons. When playing other characters, I don't care whether I get CM or not. I'd be just as happy, if not happier to find myself within range of Dispersion Bubble or Sonic Dispersion.

Most of those are powers I'd avoid when possible.

May as well pop a Breakfree at that point, if being mezzed is a big issue. Quicker than asking for CM, in my experience, and either way a number of useful toggles will have been shut off because reactive mez protection is too late.

Dispersion Bubble is a million times more desirable than CM. A nigh constant AoE of mez protection AND defense, which is easily maintained while doing any number of other things. Take that, balance.

The disappointing duration makes it useless. It's too annoying to use proactively, and reactive use is too late. I find it to be one of the most skippable powers in the game.

The OP seems to be unable to do that. "I couldn't make the game window 'go away' with alt-tab or opening the start menu with the windows key."

A more appropriate fix would be to make them invulnerable but still targettable during the resurrection animation.

It's been getting more and more difficult to acquire them in my experience. When I consider them, I usually consider Thunderstrikes and Kinetic Combat.

I did something similar. The character's name was Damnd (because the whistling for Thugs was particularly appropriate), I was using Jake and Dug for the Punks, and I was going to use Andore for the Bruiser, but otherwise the same naming scheme.

That doesn't sound at ALL like something GG would do.

And I believe you can easily make it recharge fast enough to essentially be permanent. My Elec/Energy always runs around with Boost Range on auto. Distance Nuke!

That's already on the way.

Mostly ditto.

I've never personally acquired a single purple IO. And I probably don't even have 100 million Influence between all 23-27 of my characters, including four level 50s. And while I've had some marathon sessions in the past as well as long stretches of regular play, right now I'm playing about once or twice a month on average.

I'm not the one who brought up invested effort, I merely replied to the notion.

No, the game is stingy. The fact that there are items in it and that the chances of getting them are far too low equates to stinginess. Wanting more than practically nothing, on the other hand, is far from greed.

Of course, if my superheroes didn't feel so far from "super" to me, I might be less concerned with items to improve them.

This may have escaped your notice, but getting items is part of playing the game. That said, I generally don't focus on items since they are nearly impossible for me to acquire. The grind to level 25 or so and acquiring a set of basic IOs rather than the horrible expiring SOs is tedious enough. The reason I jump on with my 50s and play is because all their powers are already setup, so I don't have to worry about building them up to where they should be or lacking power selections. Life before level 25 or so tends to feel like a lengthy, tedious bout of character creation for me. Whilst life after that tends to fail to live up to my superheroic expectations.

Believe me, I'd *much* prefer this game to be a single player or limited multiplayer game. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of choice in the vein of create-your-own-superhero games, and despite the problems I have with this game it remains the most palatable of what choices there are.

Yes, it's a horrible, common design amongst MMOs, and CoH certainly isn't the worst among them.

I consider, say, 4 hours of continuous play in a video game to be a significant amount of invested effort. 10+ hours is starting to get ridiculous, being more than an average work day invested in a game. If I don't get worthwhile returns on that, the game is stingy. In all my hours of play I think I've received one interesting drop. The few other items of worth I have on various characters had to be purchased at extremely gratuitous cost.

And that's before even getting into the ridiculous merit system and associated prices.

This game is so stingy that I've honestly begun to expect every salvage/recipe drop I get to be named "VARISTA."

Now, I don't actively seek out farms and such, but I'm also not extremely picky about teams. I generally take invites where I can get them. And in the early AE craze I ended up on more than one AE farm team. The ticket influx almost helped alleviate the stinginess. If not for limited item availability and horrible prices it may have.