Putting my cape back on, buuut...

~x~

WB!

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Originally Posted by Grausigkeit --------- Straight Questions Starts Here ------------ o How do you, oh veterans of City of Heroes, make the game feel fresh, or at least somehow continue scrounging up fun?

can't help you here. First, I've never stopped having fun. Second, I don't currently have the time for anything but marketeering and if I'm lucky running a mission or two. I'm sure the rest of the peanut gallery will have useful suggestions though.

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o Do you have any suggestions as to how I can somehow make doing the same lower leveled content feel alright again (like, perhaps building a nifty A.E arc or something)?

I like to hit MA, search for 'lowbie friendly' and run some story arcs.
As with everything about MA it's hit or miss, but even the mediocre ones are vastly better than the low level hero content. And I've run into several truly excellent ones, but alas I have no arc id #'s.

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Do you have any suggestions as to how I can make the City of Heroes experience feel more social, friendly, and more like an M.M.O.R.P.G rather than a mental abuse machine?

As someone with very little time for teaming, my only suggestion is do what you're doing here- be active on the forums. I rarely have time to game with others, but I have fun chewing the fat here with other like-minded individuals.

Gotta agree with Nethergoat, on all counts Except to add two things.

First, roleplay can keep things fresh, if you're into that sort of thing.

Second, the Fusionette Task force. It's an MA Arc and not official content, but it is one of the best arcs I've ever played through. To whomever wrote it: WOW!

-Rachel-

Personally, I find this game doesn't have a lot of varying things to do, but what it lets you do is awesome. In practice this means many may get burned out quick, but many also eventually return and have fun again.

I get the impression that's kinda where you fit in. There's nothing wrong with that, either. You play while you have fun, you stop when things get boring, and you play again when the CoH bug bites.

As for making things more social, in my experience (being that I purely play on the Virtue server), this game has a lot of followers but not many leaders. Coupled with the fact that the game is heavily instance-based, if you simply wait for a team to recruit you, you may either get lucky and get a team quick or you might wait forever and end up thinking the game is dead.

But once you start throwing together teams yourself, you'll find there are tons of people willing to team up with you.

I generally make use of a three-point assault. First I make use of global channels dedicated to finding and forming teams. About every server has a dedicated teaming global channel. On Virtue I use Virtue LFG Alpha, but what the ones for other servers are called, I do not know. You'd have to check the appropriate server forum for that.

Then I hit a level-appropriate zone and broadcast that I'm forming a team at level X and that you can feel free to send me a tell if you wanna join. This usually doesn't net you as many people as global channels as people don't see broadcasts in mission instances and there's little reason not to do mission instances.

Lastly, I use the team find feature. In case you don't know how to find it, you need to click on Team on your chatbox, then Find. Anyway, what I do there is, I first set it to look for people who turned the Looking For Anything and Looking For Team flags on and hit search. Then I send tells to people five levels above me (the new Super Sidekick feature lets people keep powers up to five levels above what they're exemplared to) and ten levels below me asking if they wanna join my level X team. Then I set to looking for people with the Not Looking flag and look again for people five levels above or ten below mine and send tells.

Why do I look for people who are set to Not Looking? It's the default setting and most people either don't know about looking flags or don't care to set them. Many of them are actually happy to join your team.

Reading about my three-point Global Channel-Broadcast-Tells method probably takes as long as forming a team of four to eight people in the game.

As for social aspects outside of beating up villains, there's also global channels dedicated to chitchat, often dedicated to a server. Virtue's chitchat channel is Virtue United, for example.

The one thing that changed the game for me was joining some global channels on my server. I met tons of people, found that a lot was going on that never hits broadcast or local, and found myself a LOT more active than I ever was. I can't recommend joining your server's active global channels enough for keeping the game fun and exciting.

I read your whole post, but I want to focus on your questions:

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Originally Posted by Grausigkeit o How do you, oh veterans of City of Heroes, make the game feel fresh, or at least somehow continue scrounging up fun?

For me, that has always had to do with making new exciting characters and basically pushing my own limits wit what others often find to be stupid stuff, which I nevertheless take perfectly seriously. It's simple things like a girl made out of slime, a Marxist time-travelling elf, a(nother) really tall monster woman, a more classical yet not really classical vampire and so on and so forth.

Turns out I had a LOT of childhood fantasies when I was younger that I either forgot or was never fully aware of, but every now and then I'll hit upon a concept and go "This is so cool! I can't get enough of it!" I have quite a few of those, and every time I go back to them, I keep thinking "I can't believe I'm actually playing this. This is too much fun to be possible!" It's all down to having a character you can't stop playing, or at least is for me.

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o Do you have any suggestions as to how I can somehow make doing the same lower leveled content feel alright again (like, perhaps building a nifty A.E arc or something)?

Once you know the content by heart, it's pretty safe to assume you no longer need to read it, at least not word for word. Instead, try and figure out how you would re-write the missions to fit your character better, yet keep true to events just the same. One example I can think of was redoing Marshal Brass' missions with a new-ish villain of mine, whom I made as the right hand of another of my villains. I basically pictured her taking orders from Brass, then hopping to the top of a tall building, whipping out a communicator and reporting in to her leader.

I know it's a pretty cheap mental game that probably isn't nearly as entertaining if you're not naturally a dreamer personality, but if you like your characters enough as characters, it helps a LOT because it forwards their story and it lets you just have fun with it.

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o Do you have any suggestions as to how I can make the City of Heroes experience feel more social, friendly, and more like an M.M.O.R.P.G rather than a mental abuse machine?

I couldn't begin to tell you. I try to avoid making my experience any more social than it absolutely needs to be, and the few times I've contemplated leaving the game it's been because "sociable" people have pissed me off like you couldn't believe. I'm sure someone else will know, though.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Random pick up teams.

I know a lot of people despise them because they've had their own bad experiences with them, but it's what has kept me going with my latest toon all the way to 30! (which is amazing for my tiny attention span. usually Ive created 5 characters by now)

its easy

its sociable

and nothing keeps your mind off grinding if you dont have to slowly work your way through mobs like when soloing.

Thank you, thank you all! This fill my heart with hope, which is interesting because usually it's filled with this weird sticky red stuff (I think they call it 'Strawberry Yogurt'). From all of your suggestions I've pretty much set up a decent way to revitalize my love for City of. My girlfriend totally didn't buy into any of it, but she'll wait until Going Rogue comes out (taking from Eva Destruction's idea). The list of A.E arcs is also long and beautiful, love it. I'd continue going on about how I used everyone's suggestions but then my fingers would fall off, which would suck for me.

Thank you all for the assistance, I really appreciate it. Feel free to keep posting, maybe someone else could use the various suggestions on this thread to help make the experience of putting their cape back on a little bit easier.

I thought this was a buttcape thread.

As others have said, welcome back! I think you can tell we're glad to have you return.

Also, I'm sure you've gotten plenty of good advice here, but figured I'd chime in anyway. Four years and about a bajillion comic books has gotta count for something.

o How do you, oh veterans of City of Heroes, make the game feel fresh, or at least somehow continue scrounging up fun?
- Altitus (it's not as bad as you might think! Join us! JOOOIN UUUUUS!!)
- AE Missions. I know AE has gotten a bad rap as a farming house, and many seemed to get turned off by the changes closing some of the farming loops, but man...for those of us who just wanna PLAY? There's a goldmine o' fun admidst some (admitted) garbage, but running some Architect missions, particularly in the early levels, can ease the tedium of "not another Snake mission AGAIN!".
- Set a "Game Date" with my wife. There are many playing couples in the CoXverse, so if you're one why not set a game date with your SO? For the last couple of weekends StarSpangled Soldier and Sweet Annihilation have torn up nearly a half-dozen missions. And I think my wife's character has an CUTE pink sword.

o Do you have any suggestions as to how I can somehow make doing the same lower leveled content feel alright again (like, perhaps building a nifty A.E arc or something)?
- See above.

o Do you have any suggestions as to how I can make the City of Heroes experience feel more social, friendly, and more like an M.M.O.R.P.G rather than a mental abuse machine?
- Find me on Infinity and hit me up. My wife and friends from Texas would be happy to introduce themselves. Me too, of course, but only if you're not a jerkenstein.

How do you feel about dying? Some of us play "hardcore" City of Heroes with the Iron Eagles II Supergroup on Justice. Any defeat after level 9 (basically, one that would entail debt) is considered permanent, and that character is deleted, or at least removed from the SG (you could continue the character as a non-hardcore character outside the SG, of course).

This is harder than it sounds -- defeat is more integral to comic book battles than some other settings, and the game has a way of throwing surprises at us. And to remain an Iron Eagle you have to be perfect, defensively at least.

But here's a game where defeat matters. A team who is paying attention and not clicking while watching TV. A battle where the other half of combat -- not just damage dealt out per second -- also matters. A place where your Defender will always be greeted with enthusiasm.

We're few, we're small, we're mostly poor, we level slowly. But we're scrappy and we've earned every level enduring the greatest risk possible, permanent death.

There's a thread in the "Player Events" section if any of this intrigues you.

Much like Nethergoat, I just enjoy the game.

Still havent found that one build I want to call my own, but I keep trying!

Well it's always better to find what suits you best, but information is key to making those choices, so I can simply say what does it for me.
Simply -
- Join server specific Global Channels - Keep you socially involved even when soloing, make friends and by and large, get on good teams/ task forces
- Try to find a Supergroup with players you can have fun with. No need for it to be large or small. Find players you like, in terms of playstyle and attitude. If you can laugh with your teammates, you got a winner.
- Alts. Lots of alts, with more concepts/ costumes than you can shake a stick at.

Happy Hunting!

I like the game a lot more when I'm playing with teams and am in an SG. You might try looking for a large SG. Just go to the sg registrar in city hall and look up the top 100 SGs. Most of them have a description posted in there. Find one you like and then be on the lookout for 1 of their members and ask them if they are taking new members.