How do YOU enjoy City of Heroes?

The great thing about an MMO is that there are so many ways to approach the game. Whether you're crafting, leveling up, or just trying out new powers, everyone has their own way of enjoying it.

Lately with me, however, City of Heroes hasn't been clicking. Not a knock against the game; it's just that when I log in, the things I once did aren't fresh right now. I know that they'll return. In the meantime, however...

Give me ideas! How do you play the game? What makes it fun for you? Do you always do radio/newspaper? Do you play it in Windowed Mode while talking to friends? Is Ventrillo involved, or do you full screen it and block out the rest of the world?

What rituals do you follow that are absolutely vital to your having a fun time in the City? Let me know. Thanks!

Oh, and for reference, here are my rituals:

• Windowed Mode.
• Hulu/Netflix playing the latest episode of the latest show.
• A messenger device set up (Skype, Facebook, Twitter...)
• Radios/Newspapers only.
• Pick Up Groups. Never preplanned play sessions.

I'm not sure I *DO* enjoy it. I just find myself playing it from time to time.

Really now, Marc?

It sounds like you're trying to ignore the game instead of playing it.

Maybe it's because I'm 48 and enjoy concentrating on what going on in game instead of trying to keep up with the world, but I'd rather try to exceed my expectations with a toon rather than watch a cherished piece of media or partake of an out of game conversation. Reality and games just don't mix

Nekkid.




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... what?

EDIT: Although, speaking of nekkid and CoH, I did stumble across CoH/Rule 34 a while ago. It was just screenshots in someone's SG base using a catgirl and poorly-done texture mods, but I was surprised to find it at all. I suppose Rule 34 is true after all...

I'm always windowed and have a browser open in the background, normally to flick to during load screens.

I have a chat channel open at all times, normally the RP OOC one I help to moderate. I like to do story arcs and still haven't done all of the ones in game yet. If I fancy a quick blast, I'll just do radios/papers. If I want to try something new, I'll alt to the character I keep permanently in AE and work my way through the AE arcs by contact that is up in the MA forum (can't remember the link, but it's ace).

I'm always in some semi-RP mode, mainly because I create all my alts with an RP concept but that never stops me picking up non-RP groups or throwing myself into TFs/SFs that might pop up.

Over the last year, I've finally got into inventions and draw up builds for all of my toons so I spend some time on the market, almost like it's a mini game. Owing to this, I have some toons parked at level 33 and will occasionally run an arc at the highest setting I can, just to see if I can do it. I don't PvP but I'll occasionally badge hunt, especially if it's on one of the three toons I have allocated for doing that. One day I'll try PvP I'm sure.

It's like TV, you can't always be sure that you're going to enjoy what you're going to be sitting through but then some night's you will be. Times do happen where things lose their gloss but then that's where I might put more into other things like build planning, marketing, sg base work, concentrating on doing the little bits that might enhance the game for me later.

Right now I am at work designing away and say whilst the topology of my work is updating I am doing this. You could be watching a movie or listening to music and playing CoH if you're solo just edging your characters get towards their goals.

I play full screen, seeing it windowed pulls me out of the game too much. Normally I either have the tv on as background music or winamp if there is nothing remotely interesting on the tv.

I do always have my browser open so that I can check stuff in loading screens or resting. I find myself playing mostly solo lately(when I play) but that's okay because I like to have really short sessions of one or two missions and then do something else.

I play windowed (but maximised).

Browser and Mids Hero Planner in the background to switch to during loading screens, quiet periods, or when waiting for teammates to hurry the hell up.

In-game sound at 10% (*just* loud enough to here that an effect has fired) with mp3s playing over the top.

Almost all pickup groups, usually joining rather than forming, and ideally with 6-8 members. Preference for contact missions, but will run radio/paper if that's all that's on offer. TFs if one happens to be forming on a global channel that's in a range of a character I want to play.

Main PC has the game's screen in full on, Steam turned off. No messaging programs run on it.

Laptop to the side of me has running:

Some form of media. This can be either YouTube (Music/Sketches/Parts of an episode of a show), BBC iPlayer (Film, series, comedy, or a documentary), BBC iPlayer Radio (Either BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4 (For Comedy), BBC Radio 6, or BBC Radio 7 (For Dad's Army, Steptoe and Son, The Seventh Dimension Sci Fi Show, No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Hancock's Half Hour, and others). Sometimes i'll bring out my Eee 901 and slimline DVD player to watch something too.

Mid's Hero Planner

IRC/MSN/AIM/Google Talk. Friend has an IRC server that I talk and RP on.

Google Chrome, with the official forums open, 4chan's /traditional games/ board, BBC News website, various other websites.

And a variety of books: fiction, non-fiction, RPG sourcebooks.

While in game, I have some of the OOC RP global chat channels up, and either roleplay, work on the Unity Vigil base, team with friends or solo. Very rarely do I PuG or do TF's. Sometimes I play about with the AE or try out different arcs.

I'd get too bored of the game without a radio station though.

I understand the need for multiple input streams. Sometimes it feels like one isn't enough anymore, I need more Gb/sec going through each eye..

To that end I often play two characters at once on different PCs. I rarely team with anyone else doing this, and line them up matching storyarcs. Sometimes the duo is a dedicated pair (eg two Empathy?Energy Defenders), sometimes its a mix-and-match pairing of characters from one of my groups.
I find playing with others in dual-box mode too stressful, and I can't talk (ie type, i dont use Ventrilo) when I'm doing that as well.

Other times I play one character, either solo or on teams. I'm always in character, and the main draw there is just being one of my characters and interacting with others. Sometimes I'll have Paragon Wiki up on the other pC for reference, but no videos or anything. When I'm playing, I'm playing. Teams are usually PuGs, sometimes wqith an SG-mate thrown in, and I quite like leading and recruiting.

Even solo or dual box, the characters are talking to me in my head, and feel sort of alive in that way.

Every character I play collects merits thjrough story arcs, and uses set IOs. I usually have a plan mapped out for them by the time they hit 20. I've started to get increasingly maverick with these plans - I've doen a mezzable Stalker, my current Pain/Energy Corrupter duo is slated to be low accuracy - high recharge and low end cost in their attacks so they can spam the battlefield with inaccurate blasts. We'll see how that goes

With me, it's make a new alt so that I can think about the story from a new perspective (RPing in my own head) and handle challenges with different tools. The Duke of Earl is fun to play for a different reason than Old Fossil or Daisy Dukes, even though they are all Tankers, for instance.

While playing CoX (in Windowed Mode), I tab out to Facebook and the CoX Forums mostly. I don't do voice stuff since my headset broke,but I'll get back around to it some day.

I play "City of Heroes" the game, and I also play all sorts of mini-games within it:


-- I've got three different bases -- all small SG's made up of regular players -- and I'm constantly adding to, redesigning and/or tweaking said bases for maximum efficiency and/or aesthetic appeal
-- I roleplay the majority of my characters
-- I play the markets and have made a few billion off it
-- I play around with Mid's and have worked up -- and built -- six semi-ridiculous "dream builds" for what I want to do with my PvE play. I now have a scrapper with whom I can tank better than some other people can with their tanks, and a range softcapped hoverblaster who's taken out level 54 Rikti spawns in RWZ solo.
-- I solo, I team with friends, I occasionally PUG though I used to PUG a lot more
-- whenever I've started to get bored with the game, I've found new mini-games to play: I started badgehunting relatively seriously, I built a couple of toons for PvP and...didn't like it as much as I'd hoped, I spent a few nights working on the crafting table accolade and find that power to be pretty handy at times!

Rituals:
-- must have caffeine within reach
-- fullscreen, since I often like the "game immersion"
-- TV or radio for background noise -- sometimes
-- other PC within easy reach for browsers for wikis, forums, and/or music -- sometimes.

I tend to have my old laptop on with a browser and chat open. and the game full screen on my main machine. I also often have a book handy for when I am waiting on others.

I play full screen on my main computer. I don't tend to have other music playing but have the game sounds on. I usually do arcs or TFs and only do papers to do the safeguards/Mayhems. I occasionally badge and do minor trading. No flipping, just selling drops more than anything.

::Opens mouth to answer... pauses... closes mouth... considers for a moment... opens mouth again... shuts it... frowns::

You know what? It would take far too long to explain.

Let's just say I enjoy CoH by hyper-organizing my play, taking all the little rewards and challenges and assigning them points, scoring EVERYTHING...

OH....

... and spreadsheets... lots and lots of spreadsheets.

I don't. CoH is awful. CoV is better.

My rig is set up:

• Fullscreen play
• Firefox running so I cal Alt-Tab as needed
• Sometimes either Windows Media or Winamp running to listen to my music collection

• Prefer to solo, but will PuG if I feel like it
• Duo with my GF and Trio with a friend of hers as well
• Prefer to run all the regular contact storyline content as I can
• No XP option is my friend
• Trying to finish tweaking several of the SG bases the GF and I have

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)

I do have a set play order for my characters, highest-level to lowest. I don't have a set time for each, I play until I'm satisfied with their progress, or they get defeated twice in a row on the same mish.

What makes it fun for me right now is exploring alts and ATs. I plan to have at least one character of each AT, with multiples for the ones I like. I often newspaper and almost never radio. My villains are more skilled at robbing banks than my heroes are at stopping bank robberies.

I play full screen and have multiple browser windows open in the background, starting with the CoH forums and usually the Paragon Wiki.

I hang out on a Vent server with friends from another MMO, so I can keep in touch with them.

Ritual-like behavior:

Some form of caffine to drink: Coffee, tea, Monster, Rock Star, Red Buff
Start a character play session checking the AH for sold items
Go through a character's mission list from lowest level to highest level mission
Do newspapers when stuck on my villain's mish list
Skim the forums inbetween character play sessions looking for stuff to comment on

- Always fullscreen, never have anything else running to distract me, my ADD gets plenty of use as it is.

- I'm about half solo and half PuG.

- This sounds terrible, but I don't have many actual friends in the game at all, and those few are rarely on, if ever these days. Nobody I know IRL plays. I mean, I listen to and participate in chatter on Broadcast, Team, and Globals, but it's mostly just me. Hell, I'm mostly alone in the world, and somehow I've made it through. I'm not whining here, just pointing out that I can't really rely on in-game friends to keep up my interest here, no matter how good the community overall is.

- So what does keep me here? Two things that go together: I'm an action-RPG fiend and an RPer. This game is THE BEST I've ever come across that accomodates both. And RP to me doesn't include talking in my character's voice or using custom emotes a lot, I actually feel really self-conscious when I do that so I don't. Basically, I like to imagine that a movie is being made, and in my head I act as director for my character's actions. I zoom and pan, and imagine reaction shots. I go way out of my way to set up enemies so that they'll either attack or (preferably) be attacked in the most dramatic way possible. Death/defeat scenes run through my head in slow motion. I bet you can guess knockback is my best friend for this, every time I defeat someone and send them flying I just grin like a fool, and if it's particularly amusing or dramatic I get a little shiver. I could play this game for years to come, even if never got another update.

- I adore making characters. No, scratch that, that's just the end result. What I truly love is imagining characters, coming up with new stories, new concepts, new directions. I don't care about level 50 at all, I've gone there twice for the sole purpose of allowing me access to more ATs, but now I couldn't care any less about maxing out. What's important to me is creating, and then getting them to the point where *I* feel like they've "made it". Just like in a console RPG it's rarely necessary to max out, it's only important to see the story through, so too is how I play this game. Obviously the content can go on forever, but my characters only follow it until they feel it's done for THEM.

- I love exploring. Wandering around, checking the sights and sounds, just happy that I can experience the world. Oh, and it's fun in the game too.

- Full screen mode.
- TV usually on.
- Solo.
- Mission oriented, especially story arcs. I need plot to immerse myself.
- Altitis. I don't have long play sessions with any given character.

Windows media player playing symphonic metal, ska or dance music....

fighting large numbers of enemies at once, watching a good dragon's tail launch an entire crowd around me, and hopping in on all invasions, because they tend to throw huge numbers of enemies at me at once, mothership raids also feed my mass beatdown needs.

Telling multiple dirty jokes on LB, and ill hop on teams if they ask.

huntingfor players that seem confused, and checking badges to see if i can grab a new player-my tremendous ego feeds on helping new players. occasionally i get an alt account of a regular, but i have caught a few newbies.

spendingabout 20% of my time in icon fine tuning my character's look exactly. I once spent 30 minutes and 3 tokens varying a character's height around a half a foot. because he was just...too...tall...

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I normally just run the game. If I could run it in Windowed Full Screen mode, though, I'd probably alt+tab a lot more between the game and Facepunch.com. In game, I normally just meander around with my LFT flag on. If I get an invite, nice, otherwise I just street sweep.

I enjoy it just fine, thank you for asking.

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Oh, wait. You meant what do we do to enjoy it. Well, since I quit smoking about a month and a half ago, in favor of vaping, I now enjoy it with some tunes playing in the background (usually some sort of Classic Rock like Pink Floyd, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Guess Who, The Band, Procol Harum), my personal vaping device close at hand, along with a few bottles of flavored e-liquid (Grape and Dr. Pepper are currently in front of me).

As for in-game, it really depends on my mood. If I am feeling particularly social, or trying to get through a leveling hump, I'll log in and find a pick up group to run with. If I am feeling like I want to play but sort of want to be alone, I will log in one of my soloing toons.

For my solo toons, I typically have a few specific arcs I run along the way that produce some specific end reward. For example, on the Red Side I always run all of Marshal Brass' arcs so that I get early access to the Ouroboros Portal and can start dropping it immediately (around level 17 or 18 by that time usually) and step through it the moment I hit level 25. On the Red Side, there is, of course, The Midnighter's Arc around level 10 so that I have access to the Midnighter's Club and Cimerora when the time comes.

Other than that, on my solo toons, I run paper missions until i hit level 25. Then I start soloing flashback arcs for XP, drops, and Merits. I don't farm them repeatedly. For most of them, it's a "one and done" type deal, though I may repeat some arcs if the mood hits me or they are just arcs I currently enjoy playing on that particular toon.

On my more team-oriented toons, I just log them in and find a team--or start one if I am in the mood to run one--and go with the flow. When running a team myself, my preference is either find an arc that everyone (or almost everyone) has or to rotate between peoples' missions so everyone gets a chance to work on that mentoring badge, get merits, or whatever.

Since the addition of Super-Sidekicking, I don't much care about the level of teams I join, or the level of the people I invite to teams, provided they can hold their own in the team. I do attempt to make sure that we are running missions that are no more than 5 levels below the highest level person in the team. That way, no one loses access to any powers.

If it's a Double XP weekend, I run out to store during the server maintenance to pick up a generous supply of Dr. Pepper, order some pizza, and lock myself in my computer room with a sign on the door that says, "Do Not Open Until Monday Unless Someone is Dieing or the House is on Fire". Then I proceed to torture myself with sleep deprivation for next three days.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".