Galaxy Girl is a kind of "cool down" time so, yes, people are mostly discussing and "not acting like heroes".
Yet, sometimes, more dynamic events happens.
As a whole, the Galaxy Girl crowd also play missions "in character".
Depending of the mood and who is present, I suppose you could also just walk there and ask for help/partnership and move away, doing missions, patrolling etc...
There are several RP supergroups on Union if GG isn't your thing. I don't actually know how to find them, but there's a large number.
There is more to GG than standing around talking about things. We also run plots that operate outside the game's mission structure, often running "missions" over IRC if the game itself is too restricted for what we want to do, though many of us also roleplay during missions.
As has been said, GG is more the social side of RP, where heroes come to cool down and relax after a days work, talk and get ready before a nights work, and friends, family and ordinary folk come to sit about. For the kind you're lookin for, RP SG's would be the best idea, and the only way I can think of you finding them is to ask in the Union forum.
As has also been said, missions and plot often happen away from the statue, but those require getting involved in the plot and that can take time, depending on the plot.
I have a question about roleplay in CoH, too... 
I'm fairly new to the game (created my first char last friday) so I was wondering... What would be a good way to hook up with roleplayers? I mean, thus far I've only been to Atlas Park and Galaxy... whatsit? Galaxy City? (my memory fails me), since all my characters are only lvl 6 at the moment. There really doesn't seem to be much roleplaying going on with level oners. So what do I do? Wait for a miracle to happen, if I would meet a fellow roleplayer? Level up fast to 50 and then see some roleplay?
If you're interested in the RP being more mission-based, Your best bet is to simply put up a post on the Union or Defiant boards, depending on which server you're on, and ask if there's any RP groups that are looking for members.
If you're interested in RPing the more social side, then take a visit to Galaxy Girl behind the Freedom Corps building in Galaxy City.
(Of course, Roleplay SG's have social RP too, and GG Rpers have mission RP 
)
Character level doesn't normally play a part in the RP process, as everyone has characters at high and low levels, and to discriminate againts lower-levels would be rather silly.
Just a case of looking really. 
You'd be surprised how often you can get good RP in a pick up group as well. My mission in Pocket D yesterday was quite an enjoyable jaunt with a Dark Villain.
I've actually had some problems with roleplaying in Pick ups. I've tried to stay in character, but sometimes get flack from other non-RP members.
What do people think is the best way to handle this, or to find casual RP in missions, without hanging around GG listening to people (yes, I've had that trouble too!)?
Formerly @Crimson Archer, now @CA
The Militia - Protecting Paragon City through roleplaying since June 2006!
Usually you can find out from just the style of pre-mission chatter.
People who say 'Lo' and then dive in aren't gonna be big RP'ers. People who ask you where you get your hair done, or complain because the Circle of Thorns are ready to move to destroy them, usually are.
Don't feed it down their throats though, some of them actually don't seem to like RP, odd though that might seem. 
There are quite a few rp-groups in coh/cov, and most aspects of rp are covered in some form.
Dealing with non-rp groups:
Heres my methods.
1: ((keep all your own OOC chatter in brackets)) ((youd be suprised at how many role-players you can lure out that way )).
2: Ask the team if they are IC or not when you join, that way if you dont want to team up you can thank them for the offer but decline and leave.
3:Use broadcast to ask for rp team invites, or if in doubt make one yourself
I went to GG yesterday and had fun. Thanks Nathalie!
Ive found that sometimes its hard to get into a convo with other R-pers if you're new. They know each other from Rping in the past. Just stick with it though and try not to be rude.
At last I've found some people who actually roleplay on the English servers!
When I first got the game a few months ago, I spent the whole sime soloing for the sole purpose of learning as much about the city and its people as possible, so that it'd make rping much more "realistic" when I joined a group.
I only went up to level 28 - I wanted to get a good basic knowledge fo the more common enemies and locations to reflect my chacracters experiences - after all, even if you came from otuside Paragon City, it's pretty likely you'd have heard something of what was going on there from the news, internet etc.
I'm saving the later levels for when I'm rping in a group, so that there's more mystery and supense about what exactly you'll be encountering in each new mission.
Unfortunately, my experiences since then have been bad 
It's not that I haven't had fun, but after a while, just ploughing into a mission with just a few "readies?" and "wait till every 1 is here this time lol" as a prelude, followed by "woo-hoo!" "lvl up!" "well done m8" "ty" etc during the actual fighting just makes me wish for a bit more depth.
I mean, we've got a greeat game, great setting, great villians, rich backstory, and almost limitless looks and styles for our characters, but, from my experiences so far with the co-operative part of the game, it seems most people uses it more like a 3D version of a chat program
I know it's not as flexible as a pen and paper game played round a table, but what it lacks in flexibility it more than makes up for in visual aural immersion.
I was thinking of going back to just soloing, because that way, you can rp properly - although that does defeat the purpose of a MMORPG...
Either that, or hang round Galaxy City and Atlas park and wait for new users to show up, and then offer them the chance to sidekick.
The problem with that is that while it might be good to catch them early before they join a bash-level-bash-level group, they might be a bit self-conscious about rping from the get-go, especially if they're still learning the game functions.
Hmmm, that's a pretty long first post
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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although that does defeat the purpose of a MMORPG
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I hate that phrase. Know what the 'purpose of a MMORPG' is? It's to have fun. Even Cryptic have worked out that it's possible, just maybe, to have fun on your own sometimes, so I wish people would quite with this concept that if you aren't teaming, there's no point in playing on an MMO.
(That wasn't a criticism of you, btw. I'm just trying to point out that if you have more fun soloing, then get on and do it!)
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I'm saving the later levels for when I'm rping in a group, so that there's more mystery and supense about what exactly you'll be encountering in each new mission.
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Unfortunately, I don't find mission RPing to be at all 'mysterious', or 'realistic'. The problem being that you'll end up facing the same villains over and over, on exactly the same missions. Particularly as your level increases, it starts getting totally stupid that (for example) Countess Crey is uncovered as a villain, an arrest warrant is issued for her, and yet, tomorrow, she'll be back at the head of her megacorp and no one will be any the wiser.
IMO, there is no such thing as an MMORPG. They are too inflexible, and too repetitive for suspension of disbelief to work unless you actually solo the entire game... at which point when you hit level 50, you've single-handedly rescued the whole city.
hence, I prefer RP sites like Galaxy Girl, where we make up our own one-off plots, we don't generally discuss uber-game-plot, and we mess about a lot doing things that are largely unrelated to the lousy background the game has.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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Know what the 'purpose of a MMORPG' is? It's to have fun. Even Cryptic have worked out that it's possible, just maybe, to have fun on your own sometimes, so I wish people would quite with this concept that if you aren't teaming, there's no point in playing on an MMO.
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Of course you can have fun soloing, but then that begs the question of why not make the game a normal PC game with an online play option?
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IMO, there is no such thing as an MMORPG. They are too inflexible, and too repetitive for suspension of disbelief to work unless you actually solo the entire game... at which point when you hit level 50, you've single-handedly rescued the whole city.
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Rp-ing adds variety to missions, rather than having your character just charging round trying to level as fast as possible (again, isn't the point of all the costume options and power sets that you're supposed to make unique characters? Why not just make a set of generic body-suits instead, if the characters are only going to be used for rushing, bashing and levelling?
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I prefer RP sites like Galaxy Girl, where we make up our own one-off plots, we don't generally discuss uber-game-plot, and we mess about a lot doing things that are largely unrelated to the lousy background the game has.
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I wouldn't really call the backgorund "lousy" - sure, there are parts that I don't find as good as others, but over all, it gives a good variety of enemies and tasks.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Of course you can have fun soloing, but then that begs the question of why not make the game a normal PC game with an online play option?
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Well, if they had, I'd probably be playing it. Instead they made this one. I'm not an MMO player, prior to this my online gaming experience was Neverwinter Nights. I set up a server in that, and we roleplayed. If they provided some similar facility with a non-MMO online game, I'd happily be playing that.
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Rp-ing adds variety to missions
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I don't like RPing on missions much, frankly it detracts from the process of beating things to within an inch of their life.
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Why not just make a set of generic body-suits instead, if the characters are only going to be used for rushing, bashing and levelling?
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And the last time you saw a game released which had bald, features less dummies running around shooting things was? Games these days sell on their graphics (hell, they always did, I remember when PacMan had awesome graphics), if you released a game, even a single-player one, like that it would bomb so fast it's untrue.
CoH is a superhero game. Superheroes wear a variety of weird and wonderful costumes. Even the editor we have is restrictive, I'm sure there are people who would love to be able to do far more. CoH has a good customisation system for characters because it wouldn't sell otherwise.
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I wouldn't really call the backgorund "lousy" - sure, there are parts that I don't find as good as others, but over all, it gives a good variety of enemies and tasks.
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It's got gaps in the size of Nebraska and elements which directly contradict each other. To make things playable, key concepts in the IC justification for things get bent out of shape because Cryptic need to do it to get things to function.
And I want more from a background than just a variety of villains. I think you are looking at it from the point of view of a gamer. You see a viable game setting. I see a roleplay setting in the early stages of development, before the supplements come out and flesh out the gaping holes in the background.
PS. New player? Or new to the forums? Either way, welcome to the madhouse.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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Rp-ing adds variety to missions
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I don't like RPing on missions much, frankly it detracts from the process of beating things to within an inch of their life.
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But missions are a great way for your character to express his or herself - the tanker who pulls out of a battle once he's down to 2 hps, and waits round a corner until he's recovered is both frequent and sensible from a purely gaming point of view - no one likes to get into debt after all
But the Balster down to 2 hps who uses Taunt on a fully healty foe who is pounding the groups Contorller, who is the Tanker character's mentor, is less frequent - it's not sensible gaming, and it lands you with debt.
But from a rp-ing point of view, it was very much the right thing to do
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Why not just make a set of generic body-suits instead, if the characters are only going to be used for rushing, bashing and levelling?
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And the last time you saw a game released which had bald, features less dummies running around shooting things was? Games these days sell on their graphics (hell, they always did, I remember when PacMan had awesome graphics), if you released a game, even a single-player one, like that it would bomb so fast it's untrue.
CoH is a superhero game. Superheroes wear a variety of weird and wonderful costumes. Even the editor we have is restrictive, I'm sure there are people who would love to be able to do far more. CoH has a good customisation system for characters because it wouldn't sell otherwise.
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They could have gotten away with a lot less as far as costume creation goes and still made money on the game
The vast amount of chest detail options, for example, seems to suggest that they were trying to give players a great deal of choice when it came to reflecting the personality and background of the character - important for rp-ing, not so important for bashing and levelling.
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I wouldn't really call the backgorund "lousy" - sure, there are parts that I don't find as good as others, but over all, it gives a good variety of enemies and tasks.
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It's got gaps in the size of Nebraska and elements which directly contradict each other. To make things playable, key concepts in the IC justification for things get bent out of shape because Cryptic need to do it to get things to function.
And I want more from a background than just a variety of villains. I think you are looking at it from the point of view of a gamer. You see a viable game setting. I see a roleplay setting in the early stages of development, before the supplements come out and flesh out the gaping holes in the background.
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Like I said in my first post, I've not played all the way to the end yet, so I've not had a chance to pass judgement on the entire story yet
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PS. New player? Or new to the forums? Either way, welcome to the madhouse.
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Sort of a new player - I started near the end of last year, and took a solo chacter up to level 28, then took a break for varous reasons, and am now back and trying out the team/rpg options, which is why I got the game in the first place - and am finding the rp-ing is sadly lacking 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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But the Balster down to 2 hps who uses Taunt on a fully healty foe who is pounding the groups Contorller, who is the Tanker character's mentor, is less frequent - it's not sensible gaming, and it lands you with debt.
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That would really very much depend on the situation. If the controller had the possibility of recovering to save the rest of the team, but the blaster couldn't, then dragging the mob off the controller is good game strategy.
My view on this kind of thing is that, yes, it's roleplaying, but it's roleplaying a hero and that's about all. I like roleplaying a character, an entire human, and doing that on missions tends to result in very, very slow missions.
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The vast amount of chest detail options, for example, seems to suggest that they were trying to give players a great deal of choice when it came to reflecting the personality and background of the character - important for rp-ing, not so important for bashing and levelling.
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Oh please. A badly implemented mechanism for mapping a smile, two-colour bitmap onto the chest. They changed it slightly later to become a sort of lapel badge for suits, which was nice, but they've never fixed the fact that for most forms of chest covering, the emblem looks terrible. It only really works with suits and spandex. Put it on, say, a leather jacket and it sucks.
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Like I said in my first post, I've not played all the way to the end yet, so I've not had a chance to pass judgement on the entire story yet
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Neither have I. Let me give you an example of the way MMO-ness destroys the RP setting.
I helped arrest Countess Crey last week. (As someone said on the mission, where does it say anywhere that she's head of a megacorporation and a powerful psychic?) Next week, if I go looking, I can arrest her again. One of the richest women in the world is arrested for all sorts of horrible crimes. There will be no nes coverage, no trial, no actual arrest, and no one will bat an eyelid when she's back at the head of her corporation again.
There are two different versions of what Warwolves actually are.
The entire Kheldian idea is a laugh.
Statesman gets rescued from Tyrant quite regularly... but no one knows where he is.
War Crow has Omega Level Clearence, which lets him access any information he wants... but Indigo and Crimson won't tell him anything.
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and am finding the rp-ing is sadly lacking
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Which server?
And do you just do mission RP or have you tried the GG meets?
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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War Crow has Omega Level Clearence, which lets him access any information he wants... but Indigo and Crimson won't tell him anything.
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Omega Clearance is SERAPH specific.
Indigo and Crimson aren't SERAPH...
But on the otherhand... That old lady on Striga gave my character her wedding bands to get used to the idea of her being a sorceress or witch, where as my character is a mage. So it makes no sense for her to have any of the fears of "magic" to aleviate.
Also, in the later Preatorian missions I saved a citizen/ghost from shades. And it helped me with "some magic"... Hello? Mage!
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
The best part of the wedding bands is they even work on machines. Now THATs magic Mind you, machines can also get the Vahzilock wasting disease, so nothing new in random cross-genre stuff.
Omega level clearance needed the approval of the Vice-President. Thats a lot bigger than just Seraph.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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I like roleplaying a character, an entire human, and doing that on missions tends to result in very, very slow missions.
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And who says slow missions are bad?
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The vast amount of chest detail options, for example, seems to suggest that they were trying to give players a great deal of choice when it came to reflecting the personality and background of the character - important for rp-ing, not so important for bashing and levelling.
[/ QUOTE ]
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Oh please. A badly implemented mechanism for mapping a smile, two-colour bitmap onto the chest. They changed it slightly later to become a sort of lapel badge for suits, which was nice, but they've never fixed the fact that for most forms of chest covering, the emblem looks terrible. It only really works with suits and spandex. Put it on, say, a leather jacket and it sucks.
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But here, the intent is important - giving a far greater variety of symbols than would be normally needed if players were just creating characters to game with rather than roleplay.
The execution may be somehwat sloppy, but the intent is still there.
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Let me give you an example of the way MMO-ness destroys the RP setting.
I helped arrest Countess Crey last week. (As someone said on the mission, where does it say anywhere that she's head of a megacorporation and a powerful psychic?) Next week, if I go looking, I can arrest her again.
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Can missions be played through several times? I thought once a story-arc was done, it was done?
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There are two different versions of what Warwolves actually are.
The entire Kheldian idea is a laugh.
Statesman gets rescued from Tyrant quite regularly... but no one knows where he is.
War Crow has Omega Level Clearence, which lets him access any information he wants... but Indigo and Crimson won't tell him anything.
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Again, I've not encountered these parts of the story yet, so I'm going to have to hold fire for now
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and am finding the rp-ing is sadly lacking
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Which server?
And do you just do mission RP or have you tried the GG meets?
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I have a number of characters spread across Union and Defiant, and have only tried mission rp-ing so far, as my work hours mean I tend to be on at rather un-natural times...
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
These arguments are going around and around.
The fact is, why would anyone buy a game if they -couldn't- create a character whose appearance they liked? The costume creator isn't there because it's a roleplay tool (if it were, we'd have secret identity modes from the start, Icon would be free, and any amount of suggestions that have been made over the months). The costume creator is there because it attracts players who want to play with pretty graphics. It is -the- most detailed character creator in any game. And that, is a selling point.
As for story-arcs, yes, once you complete it, it's completed for -you-. However, it is not completed for the 6 other people you regaularly team with (as an example). Other characters get those missions too, so you can go on them over and over again. I mean, on one character, I've defeated Dr. Vahzilok twice in as many weeks.
On the subject of other things, how many wedding bands does that woman in Striga have, anyway?? 
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But here, the intent is important - giving a far greater variety of symbols than would be normally needed if players were just creating characters to game with rather than roleplay.
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Okay, now we've covered this. You apparently think that a game will sell in the current market if the producer doesn't pay attention to character creation and costume. I think that's plain stupid. Since you insist on repeating the same argument again, I can only assume that it didn't sink in the first time, so:
The character creation system is there to sell the game. It is one of the main marketting points. Without it, this game would not be as successful as it is. Without it, people would sit there and laugh at CoH being a superhero game.
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Can missions be played through several times? I thought once a story-arc was done, it was done?
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Yes, for you. Do you only ever solo? You roleplay missions on your own?
No, then you'll find you can set off and kill Infernal ten times, Countess Crey a few dozen. Hell, people do one Atta/Frostfire mission after another in the Hollows. Those guys escape the Zig before the cops have the cuffs locked on them.
If you find yourself on Union around 9pm, come to Galaxy City and see if you can put up with the roleplayers there.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
Im really wanting get into roleplays ince I came back to the game becasue I think it will add to the fun of the game.
I have been to GG but to be honest standing around for hours listening to conversations that mean absolutely nothingto me wasnt too much fun. Is that the only form of RP found in the game? Do you actually go out and clear up the streets in character and act like heroes? That to me would be good fun. Is this mainly restricted to the RP supergroups?