seebs

I guess it depends on what someone else would have bought it for. If I'm paying more, I'm destroying more inf. If I'm paying less, I'm destroying less inf.

Also, if the thing I bought was Neverselling Ice, it would never have generated a sale without me.

But I think you have a point, it's not quite fair to count both 10% hits towards my total. So out of my 15M profit, I'm paying 3M in fees, so the amount destroyed is equal to 20% of my profit. If I make 100M that way, I've destroyed 20M in inf. So unless I made 20M from another source during that time, I'm HELPING!

What was it? I missed it, whatever it was.

Grouped with a pair of masterminds. A good time was had by all. It wasn't fast, it wasn't efficient... but it was a blast. And full of hilarity.

I was really, really, impressed with the amount of mitigation provided by knockback, knockdown, knockup, and the like. I could keep a small number of things basically incapable of acting, and substantially reduce the output of larger groups.

Just a heads up.

If you see "Helpy McHelperson" looking for a team... Be aware that he is a joke character. He's a grav/storm troller, with the whole teleport pool as backup, and he is played for laughs.

If you are not in a hurry to get things done, maybe wanna work on some debt badges, and have a sense of humor about exuberant incompetence, I think you'll find him amusing. If you are trying to get things done, or don't find that fun, I recommend that you kick him the moment you see him. (I'll update the team kick counter in his bio.)

The intent here is not griefing -- it's being funny for people who enjoy silliness. I'll do my best to avoid grouping with people who won't find it amusing.

Ohh, hadn't thought of snow storm + knockback.

No group fly yet, but I have the whole teleport pool. I'll let people know that, for the Best Experience, they should turn off teleport prompting and just go with the flow.

Helpy McHelperson is indeed on Virtue. After all, he's an RP toon -- his character background is that he was tragically orphaned when he came along with his crimefighting parents on Take Your Child To Work Day, "despite his best efforts to help".

Being a lazy bum, I accepted a team invite in Atlas Park, and he is now of a level to be getting some initial IOs. No team kicks yet, though. And yes, he has Dimension Shift. Which strikes me as one of those powers that you could conceivably use in a beneficial way about once a week, maybe.

Okay, I have the clashing neon costume with the AWESOME visor, a very impressive aura and cape, and a teams that have kicked me counter in my bio. Helpy McHelperson is ready to start helping.

Helpy McHelperson. If that'll fit.

I would like help with a build.

The character concept: "Why are you all angry? I'm HELPING!"

That is to say, the sort of hero who uses gale pretty much randomly, or possibly pessimally. Yes, I'm aware this could easily be annoying; the character will be played only with people who are aware of what they're getting into and think it's fun.

So, help me build a grav/storm troller who has maximal options for disrupting things! I am pretty sure that group teleport is a must, and probably both recall friend and tp foe. Are there any other pool powers you'd particularly recommend for their potential to Cause Chaos?

Naming is an issue, too. I'm not sure I actually want to name the character "Captain Knockback", especially not if some of the hilarity comes from other powers.

Any naming suggestions? Ideally something that an over-enthusiastic teenager would think sounded really good.

When I was first playing, I made an energy/dev character without much thought, but basically because someone I knew who'd had a trial account once said it was fun having knockback because thugs would keep trying to attack you and failing.

I learned pretty quickly that KB is not popular on teams, but it's not as though I had many powers without KB. And once I knocked a CoT lt off a third-story balcony. (I went and finished him off.) I apolgized, but one of the group members said it was no big deal, because I followed the 0th rule of knockback:

It's okay if it's funny.

I would never dream of using a character like this for something where there was, say, a time limit. Or some other reason for which people wanted to play "seriously". But one of the things I've noticed in CoH is that people aren't always in a mood to play "seriously". They don't always care about maximal efficiency, or whatever; sometimes they want to do other things. Or they'll take powers for RP reasons.

So, basically... Yes, there are players for whom this would be griefing. Which is why, if I do play this (and I probably will), I'll be sure to carefully avoid any risk that teammates don't know about the character concept and design. The impression I get is, some people would think it was hilarious and funny, other people would find it annoying, so I just have to restrict my group choices a bit to match that.

Heat is just small-scale kinetics.

I'm reminded of a cake recipe:

Waaaah.

I'm still at work. I can't start yet. Waaaaaah.

Okay, grav/storm and ill/storm both look pretty credible. I might go with grav/ just because I don't have one, and wormhole looks like a power that could pretty much wreck ANY setup.

Oh, definitely hurricane too. I have a plant/storm that is planning to use his second build to do nothing but slot hurricane for acc/kb.

Why?

Because I went into the sewers with him, pulled together about three spawns, turned on hurricane, and just sat there laughing.

I am pretty sure this was in character; he's a hicksie (a hillbilly pixie, basically), and he would, in character, "git tore up", go into the sewers, and do exactly that, then laugh until he puked. And consider this Good Fun.

But yeah, the intent here would be very much a roleplaying thing, warning people in advance before teaming. I would not want to inflict this on people who don't want it.

But imagine a stormie who leaves KB on and runs into melee screaming "Looks like you're outnumbered. I'm HELPING!"

ETA: I've got the origin story. Captain Helpful's career was started in tragedy; he was taken out crime fighting by his parents, on Take Your Child To Work Day, and by sheer bad luck, this was the day that they met their match, despite his best efforts to help them. Now, he has devoted his life to helping other people fight crime. He's helping!

(It becomes funny once you've grouped with him.)

Okay, sounds like the answer is, some people would hate it, some would find it amusing. Conclusion: I'll make a macro for warning people, and run with it.

I'm open to alternative suggestions for good ways to be humorously disruptive. Storm Summoning seems to win for knockback, but given that, I'm not sure I need more knockback; if some of the control sets allow for amusingly disruptive behavior, that could work too. Ill/storm does sound fun. Now, to be fair, confusion doesn't really hurt under pretty much any circumstances, and I mostly just think it's hilarious. I made it through most of a sewers run once on an ill/ troller doing very little but charming embalmed vazh. It does, however, provide the feature of causing unexpected outcomes, so that might be better.

Ideally, I want the option of being genuinely really helpful to a team, but also of running in, creating mass havoc, and then issuing my battle cry: "Why are you angry? I'm HELPING!"

(ETA: Gravity control? Hadn't thought of it, what's it got that's awesome?)

I saw, once, a cartoon that had a picture of a harried mom in a kitchen covered with messy stuff, spatters on walls, and so on, and a small child. Caption: "I'm HELPING!"

I have toyed with the idea of building a superhero (or possibly a villain) who is "helping". Say, keeping Gale on auto. Slotting energy blast for knockback.

The question is... Would anyone ever willingly play with a character whose character concept was that the was "helping" in a woefully inefficient way? Would the humor value make up for the inconvenience?

And if so, what is the most inconvenient build you can think of? Emphasis on something that a sufficiently exuberant child might think was "helping".

Yes. My point is that earning money is in and of itself morally neutral, until you have specific effects that the method has on other people. The earning-money part is neutral; it's the effects of the methods that are significant.

Usually, I like to try to understand what an action's effects are first, and then decide whether it's moral or immoral or what.

So far as I can tell, marketeering in and of itself is pretty much neutral, like any other way of earning money. It isn't generally harmful, and may even be generally helpful (due to slot shortages, and flippers stacking things). However, since people don't engage in it specifically to improve the market for others, in general, I don't think it qualifies as "good", it's just a case where self-interested behavior produces desirable results.