New player, overwhelmed by all the power types!

Hi everyone. I just started the trial for the game and I haven't even done much in the game world yet. I've just been tinkering with the character creation, which is amazing.

However, there are so many power sets to choose from. I thought about just picking two that sounded good, but within five minutes of playing I start to get restless. What do the other power sets look and play like?

So I start a few other characters to check out their powers, but they only start with one from each set, and there are eight more in each. I can't possibly try all of them out.

So I'm doing some search to see if there's any way to preview powers. For instance, the 'Psionic Tornado' skill in Psychic Blast may look awesome but there's no easy way to preview it. Does anyone know of a website or program that can show you what powers look like? Thanks in advance!

I believe that with I16, you will have the option to preview how the power will look prior to selecting it. However, I do believe you will already have to have the power set chosen for your character. There isnt a way to view the animations for all the powers as far as I know.

Issue 16 brings an in-game way to view the powers (and to custom color them)...if you want to wait for live, it'll be a few weeks unfortunately. If you want to do the somewhat-techy thing and install the test server to see it for yourself, directions are here.

Please note that test server takes a while to update its account information, so if you literally JUST opened your account, you may have to wait up to 48 hrs for the account information to sync.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

First off, welcome to the City! You're in luck. We're a few weeks away from getting Issue 16. (Issues are free content updates, like mini expansions.) One of the features it's adding is a revamped character creator, including the ability to preview a power's animations, in addition to power color customization, so you'll be able to see what say, Psionic Tornado looks like before you make the character, and if you don't like it, you can change the colors to something you think looks good.

ParagonWiki is the player-made source for just about everything you might want to know about the game, and if it doesn't have the answer, come ask here, we love showing off knowledge and helping new players. And don't worry about wondering about the other sets. Making lots of alts is a way of life here.

If you do decide to get a paying account, make sure you upgrade your current account rather than making a new one. That way, you'll keep any characters you made on the trial account.

Thanks for the info!

I have the room to spare, so I'm currently downloading the test server.

I'm not really a roleplayer, per se, but I do like making characters that make sense. I would hate to design a red and orange villain whose energy auras are all purple.

I sense the early stages of altitis here... Trust me, it only gets worse. Welcome to the game!

Luckily, the game is well balanced and each and every one of those combinations you find is viable, though some might do better while on a team.

And if you want to know more about how they play- you're in the right place! Each of the Archetype forums has guides on how every combination plays, and you can just open a thread asking on how certain combinations will play.

Wow, the test server client was worth the 3 gig download. Being able to see all the animations for each powerset will help a lot in choosing one. I'm still working my way through all of 'em.

Thank you for the heads-up!

Welcome to the City Skipper!

Yes I can see a future member of the Altitus group.

Roleplay not that heavy in this game thought there are some groups that do so. Thought that many take pride in coming up with cool characters with background bios.

Enjoy the madness!

Ya. Why limit yourself to just 1 toon.

Play a scrapper, pick two powersets you like and enjoy.
Play a defender, pick two powersets you like and enjoy.
Play a blaster, pick two powersets you like and enjoy.
Play a tank, pick two powersets you like and enjoy.

See where im goin with this?

Someone above gave the great advice of playin to your mood. I think this game gives you the best way of doin that.

You wanna do damage? grab your scrap/blast and fire away.
Feel like playin a support role? defender/trollers are great at it.
Wanna be the point man? Tanks are it.

Theres alot of nuances in City of. Enjoy the game, I do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

And welcome to the game and the forum, Skipper Dan

Please remember that what happens on the test server, stays on the test server. You can't move any characters there back to the live servers. Thought you should be told this since you are new here.

Scrappers are very good starting characters. They survive well and their playstyle is very straightforward. I recommend playing a scrapper to all new players.

It's a lot easier to figure out what's going on and get to know the game world if you don't have to worry so much about strategy and using your powers correctly. With a scrapper, there is no wrong way to use your powers, just run up to em and hit em until they're dead. Technically there isn't a wrong way to use anything if it works for you, but some teammates will get annoyed if you start a fight with Rain of Fire at level 6 (Rain of Fire is a Fire Blast power, enemies hit with it tend to scatter everywhere trying to get out of it, since level 6 is before tankers get their agro control powers it makes the enemies harder to deal with)

While you can see the animations, you cannot see what the power actually does when it hits a target. For example: The animation of Psionic Tornado doesn't give any indication that it sends everything it hits flying up in the air, you have to look at the power info to see that. The animations of Energy Blast don't indicate that pretty much every power in the set will send things flying backwards. I advise against making Energy Blast your first character, learn to play before you start knocking stuff everywhere, your teammates will thank you. Knockback is fun, and useful, but until you know what you are doing with it, it's more of a liability. If you really want to play Energy Blast, create the character and don't team with it, spend some time learning how to aim knockback by positioning your character.

I won't give you any other advice in creating your character. It's YOUR character, if someone tells you you're building it wrong...well, they're wrong. Any way you build it that works for YOU is correct, no matter what anyone else has to say about it. later on when you want advice to make your character more effective, check out the Archtypes section of the forums. If you have a question about a particular AT, ask it in the appropriate forum, which is where the people who know that AT well tend to congregate. (I hang out in the Scrapper and Blaster forums, and lurk in the Defender and Brute forums)

Don't be afraid to ask questions in game, for every jerk you encounter there will be 4 friendly, helpful players.

That's about all I have for you, everyone else answered your other questions pretty good.

Welcome to Paragon City, hope your stay is as enjoyable as mine has been!

I actually started playing this game on the Pinnacle Server with Scrappers, then went to the other game servers and started making other types of characters, a few of which were, in my way of thinking, "Specialty Characters". I now have at least 13 characters on all the live game servers, and I love this game! And, like some of the others, I say, welcome to the game!