The_Demon_Hunter

I thank you all for getting the word out on this. It means a lot to those of us who have been building for all these years. I'll be doing this for all of my bases in the next few days, to be certain, along with a few maps of sentimental value.

It's been a long time since I've posted in this area of the forums. I'm not going to rehash why. It's no longer important. Some of you know me from the BaseBuildersInc. global channel as @DemonHunter-1 and @DemonHunter-2, always on Virtue.

This was my first MMO, and the one I measure all others against.

I never stopped building, but in the last 4 months I got back into base building quite heavily, especially for Ellis Industries. I found that one of my newer characters was essentially a printing press for Prestige (close to 9 million earned, without any inf conversions, in his first 2 and a half months). I had also found a muse to inspire my efforts once more, someone to help me see base building through new eyes as I helped her learn the basics that led to the glorious wonders we all created in cyberspace.

It's always been there as a creative outlet, and in fact there have been months in the last five and a half years where all I did was edit one base or another, for myself or someone else. It was as important for me to do this in-game as it was to do anything else. Some of my SGmates can attest to the fact that after i13 hit, they literally had to gather everyone to where I was working in one base, just to use every high-vfx power they had at the same time in an effort to crash me out of the game to get my attention for TFs or RP or whatever they wanted me in on that day. Those were good times.

My bases, all of them, are what I'll miss the most from City of Heroes. Being able to wring out a little more from the editor than some thought possible was a source of pride for me here, whether it was from creating sewers and an abandoned subway station in one base, or a full-on 18 wheeler to sit at the loading docks of another, or a 40-foot tall robot prototype in one, or a fully realized space station, or the forests and caverns outside the home of my main in yet another. That's just naming a few of the bases I've had a hand in over the years I've been here. All of these things and more were important to me here.

When the lights go out for CoH, all of us who frequent this are of the forums will be losing a large part of our gaming hobby.

My next game is The Secret World. Cabals don't have bases. Maybe somewhere down the road they will, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

Good luck and good journey to you all

I'm definitely interested in being part of this project in some fashion if it has legs, whether it's to assist with whatever I can spare financially or help provide story framework for a new player-created world. I'm more than a bit intrigued by the possibilities here.

I'll throw my name in for this as well. Might as well start with one of the big ones I have.

Your Forum Handle: The_Demon_Hunter

Your Global: @DemonHunter-1 @DemonHunter-2

The Character who will be doing the tour: Web-Spinner

The name of your SuperGroup: Web-Spinner's Amazing Friends

Your Home Server: Virtue

A brief description of your base: Hidden in the sewers between Skyway City and the ruins of Faultline, teen heroine Web-Spinner and her young friends have set up their base of operations to battle crime in Paragon City and beyond. Approximately half of the 24x24 plot is taken up by sewers and abandoned sections of the Red Line, with the hidden areas including a ruined underground temple chamber, a makeshift "apartment" for a homeless schizophrenic, and of course, lots of sewers, complete with water effects. Somewhere in these tunnels is the entrance to the hi-tech base.




*Edited for a typo. I hate typos.

The Rune of Warding as a permanent Temp Power like the Blackwand or Nem Staff. I'd gladly pay to unlock that as a permanent power for each of my accounts, as it's a far more suitable ranged option for my magic based toons than the Blackwand.

I've done the Keyes trial exactly one time, on launch day, on Virtue, using my heavily IO'd and Incarnate-slotted storm/elec/elec defender. Skjor is simply a monster, as some of you may have seen if we've teamed. She's designed and played as my card-carrying thunder goddess, and she lives up to that billing.

We succeeded at the Keyes trial easily, despite most of us going through it for the very first time in that run, having skipped the beta for once. We had leadership who communicated what we were looking for at each stage of the game and we knew where to go and what to do/not do. Hell, I don't think anyone even died once it came time to fight Keyes himself.

For more than a few of us, it wasn't fun though. At all.

I can accept being defeated by masses of enemies or powerful AVs. I can accept that my characters aren't really meant to do the things they often do, and that I can get in over my head with them if I'm not paying attention. I can accept that Skjor can be defeated if I'm not bringing my "A" game that day (and sometimes even when I am). That's part of the game.

What wasn't fun was exiting the hospital only to lose half of my hit points on several occasions to auto-hit, unresisted pulses of damage. Or being hit while in the Hospital. Or being held while in the supposedly safe zone of the Hospital.

It told me that the devs realized too late (or didn't realize at all?) that they'd make us completely OP'd with the use of Incarnate powers and now had to resort to cheating and doing things outside the game mechanics to provide a challenge. If they have to do things that break the game's previously established rules to create any kind of challenge for players, they've made some egregious errors long before reaching this point IMO.

As far as raising the rewards goes, if it's less than triple-digit Emps (yeah, seriously, call me when it's awarding 100+ and maybe I'll join a few), I won't do this Trial again without a really good reason. I play to have fun and for me, this ain't it.

I have two accounts and play only on Virtue. I've gotten 28 to 50 so far, I think. Most of them have at least their Alpha slot unlocked, and I've gotten to at least T3 for the more recent slots on 5 or 6 of them.

I've also deleted 2 50s this year, a tanker, and a blaster. Both were replaced by a re-roll of the same characters.

My first 50 was my namesake dark/regen scrapper. I won't delete that one.
My most recent 50 was a DP/EM/Mace blaster. I won't be deleting him either.

Another great issue! Good to see this keep going

My tastes might not always match up with the others here, but I do have some thoughts.

Ghost Widow -- Everything that people have said so far. Seriously. Perfection here.

Scirocco -- Love everything about his look. He looks like he is the storm of the desert.

Arachnos -- As a whole, the organization has some of the best designs in the entire game, from Lord Recluse on down. Everything about this group stays within the motif of spiders and manages to be visually striking in the differences of the units and AVs as well.

Statesman -- He is the classic hero. His look is a perfect blend of everything iconic about Captain America and Superman, with the faceplate being an obvious nod to his godly power. I could see him possibly with a Magneto-style helmet, but nothing too over the top. Perfection once again.

Nemesis -- This guy is as close to Dr. Doom as we have in CoH, with his infinitely-layered plots and constant ability to leave us wondering if we've faced the real Lord Nemesis or not, and that gigantic ornate steam-powered body makes him out to be every bit the threat that he is. He's something special, and that level of ornate complexity trickles down into all his followers. Again, perfection.

Clockwork King -- He's an obsessed madman who has his brain suspended in a fishbowl mounted on a massive patchwork frame. Can't do much better in getting across that he's essentially a poor man's Nemesis for the 1-20 crowd. And that rusted, jalopy-style construction for the Paladins and Babbage make them stand out as signature pieces of his would-be army.

Banished Pantheon -- I love the look of the Totem bosses. It just screams "crazy arcane ritual ahead" when I see them.

Warworks -- The giant War Walkers are just awesome to behold the first time and are visually a massive threat.


And because almost nobody likes them, I feel the need to defend....
All of the gangs. Seriously. The Outcasts, Hellions, Skulls, Trolls, and Warriors are all street gangs. They don't need to be redone to be all flashy and amped up. They're already exactly as they should be. Their look matches their station They're a threat to the locals and a scourge of the streets in low level areas, which is where we start out. These are just barely a cut above the typical muggers and purse snatchers that guys like Batman, Spider-Man, and Daredevil started against before they moved up to taking on the big guns.

Our heroes and villains aren't ready to take on Recluse or Statesman from the start, and our lowbie enemies should reflect that. They're a little more than the police can usually handle on their own, but they're not so powerful to take down the whole city. These were designed to perfection in my opinion.

Let me start off by saying that in addition to the bases I've done for SGs I've been affiliated with in the last 4-plus years on Virtue, I've been hired to do a few bases in my time as well. Just to name one you've heard about, I'll let the cat out of the bag here about one. I was the one Dechs Kaison chose a few months ago from the boards here to build the medical center and research labs for his base. (Again, my thanks to Dechs for letting me be the one to bring his vision to life in-game. It was a lot of fun to work in that style and for a great client.)

As a builder, I hadn't considered paying with RL money for these services, to be honest, though I'll freely admit that if the opportunity arose, I'd certainly consider it to cover my game expenses (boosters and subs for two accounts adds up lol). To date I've solely been paid in inf and in-game items. It's sometimes a case of "I have this timeframe to work with, for this amount of inf if done on time" and there are others who simply pay whenever a new room is completed.

You'll find that many people who build for others have varying viewpoints on how they approach the work and the quality they provide.

As Dechs can attest to, I like to go through the existing base (if there is one) or show some of my existing work while chatting with the prospective client about what ideas I have to bring to the project and how I can execute them. I take notes as to what's needed, any kind of specific requirements that are involved for style/items/function/RP/whatever, what badges are currently held by the SG, stuff like that. Don't be afraid to ask for references and samples of a builder's existing work. Most will have access to at least some of them. I'd like to think that this is how most hired base builders would operate.

An important consideration is to remember the Prestige budget we're working with. I've seen some groups that had a certain amount they'd been building for a long time specifically to have something done. I had another client who told me "if you run low, holler and we'll just take care of that. Use whatever you need." Everyone's level of resources will be different, and its important to take that into account when you start planning it out in your head. Don't accept a job that you can't do within the Prestige limitations for that group.

Once the work begins, I tend to do a small sample area and then ask for a lot of feedback based on the style I'm working with to make sure we're on the same page. It's happened on occasion that someone has actually said "Oh actually, I was thinking more like x instead of y" and if it's caught early, this is easily taken into account for the rest of the project. Once the client agrees that the style is what they're looking for, it's off to the races at that point and the building blitz is on.

I think that the most important thing for any hired builder to consider is this -- you've been handed the keys to someone else's castle. You've been entrusted with bringing the vision they have in their head into the virtual world of City of Heroes. They've asked for a medical center, their own X-Mansion, the Watchtower, the Sanctum Sanctorum, an ancient ruin, the TARDIS, or whatever, and if you can't provide that, you need to be up front about that.

This is not a small matter, in my opinion. I take matters of trust very seriously, and I am always disappointed when I hear of people whose base isn't really what they asked for. I take pride in my work, but unfortunately not everyone does these days, just like in RL. Again, don't be afraid to ask for references.

All of this is what both hired builders and potential clients need to look at when sitting down to find an agreement on base building.