Weird rules you make for yourself

What are some weird rules you make for yourself? For me:

1. All of my characters have to carry a Luck Charm in their salvage inventory. I know it makes no difference but I do it anyway. It started because the very first piece of salvage my second character ever received was a Luck Charm so for giggles I had the character keep it and have since done that for all subsequent characters (for my first character, prior to doing this I had sold a bunch of Luck Charms but the next one that dropped after I made the rule I kept).

2. I won't have a character go to Ouroboros until they hit level 30. It gives me a goal and something to look forward to as I work through the 20s.

3. I won't repeat a power set within the same AT. At one point I didn't want to repeat power sets at all but that didn't last long. I may end up having to break this hough as I find I am running out of secondaries.

I always walk back to Ms Liberty once I hit 50. From where ever I am. No flight, SS, SJ or teleport. I do use sprint, but nothing else. I figure it is nice to slow down and just look around and remember where you've been with that character.

USAce (the Human Fighter Jet!) never touches the ground unless forced to.

Every time my hyperactive speedster Headlong stops, he has to go into the waiting emote.

Virtual Lad is MA-only and must never ever fight "real" enemies (his mom says it's too dangerous). If he gets too close and someone fires at him while he's zipping over to WW, he has to run away. He is never allowed to set foot in any "Hazard Zone" (including the PvP zones), and there are several Day Jobs and other badges he can't have because of this. The first thing he must do after zoning anywhere, including into missions, is to spawn H.A.R.O.L.D. (Human Adolescent Restriction Of Liberties Device), the clunky clockwork babysitter robot his mother makes him take along with him.

The Knight-Watchman is currently suffering from a Council-induced "lycanthropy" and must transform into a giant man-bat thing when it's dark out (:25-:35 and :55-:05 of every hour).

EVERYONE does the cape and aura missions, whether they're going to use them or not.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

1. My characters have two Fs in their names: Fury Flechette, Field Factor, Freedom Fury, Flame Fencer, etc.

2. Every character must be influence/infamy self sufficient. No transfers or gifts accepted. Every character I've created since I came back has had 10M by level 6 or so, 20M by level 20 which is my measure for self sufficiency. If their build calls for purples, each character earns enough to get those themselves. I don't transfer from a farm character.

3. Every character is leveled solo until they can get the first temp travel power from a mayhem/safeguard. I don't partake in sewer/bank runs. Not that I have anything against them, but I think it's important to get a feel for your character early on. The initial experience determines whether or not I keep it long term.

Most of my rules are about character creation:

1. Never use numbers or deliberate mispellings to get a name (ie. Frosty Lad 2 or Fir3 Girl or Robotronnn) I cringe every time I see someone else do it.

2. Lay off certain costume parts. Large robot gloves, the Ampule belt, the spiked pauldrons. They start to feel like design crutches after a while.

3. Roll defenders... I think about it, but then i sober up.

4. Take teleport- what a hassle that power is! Especially with any kind of lag.

5. Get to at least level 2 before jumping on a sewer team. Not having rest in the sewers is a major pain.

6. Always log off in a day job location. If I have to quit quickly because of some RL emergency, I'll always log on later to move the character. I even log into old characters I never play to move them around once in a while.

I don't really have any rules for playing, weird or non-weird

Weird rules I make for myself? Dear lord...

1) All characters are played in order once per round for a minimum of 2 hours; although this minimum may be increased if a special "bonus spin" for time comes up indicating more.

2) All characters must record practically every little thing that happens to them, from how many missions they succeed/fail at to defeats to what powers are slotted and with what. All this information is applied to a complicated scoring system by which the characters' "performances" are compared.

3) No Training Origin enhancements, No Dual Origins, No Single Origins shall ever... EVER... touch my characters anywhere other than the inventory dump. Only Invention Origin shall grace the cherished precincts of their power slots.

4) No Invention Origin enhancement shall be created or slotted unless it was found as a recipe drop first; unless a special "Bonus Spin" at the beginning of that character's turn indicates they won a "fabulous prize!"

5) Each server will start out with only ONE character. New team mates will be introduced to the server when the preceding character has reached 40th level.

6) At no time will a newer character on a team (server) out level an older character. If they reach an equal level they stop there until the older character advances. Considering that new characters don't join until the older one is 40th level I don't see this is as a problem, but still... it's a rule.

7) ALL rules are written down on stone tablets and brought down from the mountain top... okay... well... maybe not... but they ARE written down on a spreadsheet.

8) Upon reaching 12th level Thou Shalt go thee unto the University and verily fill thine coffers with the bounty that is Invention Origin enhancements. Know thee that the Invention Tutorial must be completed ere thine reward be granted.

9) Thou shalt not bear any IO Set Enhancement until thou art at least 27th level, neither shalt thy slot any IO Set Enhancement of less than 30th level power.

10) Before thou step foot into the Character Creator, verily even before thine barest toe doth touch the sign in screen, thou shalt establish upon the Character Spreadsheet the entirety of powers and slotting chosen from first to 50th level for that character. Thou shalt also produce a list of preferred Set Enhancements for those powers so thou canst plan ahead most effectively.

Actually, I have a much... MUCH longer list of rules, requirements and standards by which I play the game... but 10 seemed like a nice, round and somewhat appropriate number to me.

Oh, as an aside... I recently deleted all my characters and revamped all my spreadsheets with new rules for the upcoming Going Rogue release. My original Character Sheet spreadsheet for the last set of rules was 4,832 KB in size.

The one I finished making yesterday is 8,668 KB.... and that's just the blank character sheet... without any actual character data loaded into it...

::Sighs::

Yeah... counselling... really need to invest in that.

Well, as long as you're having fun, then that's the main thing

I wouldn't call them weird, but I have a few rules, chief of which is:

ALL characters need to toe the same line. That is to say, I share the exact same difficulty setting between all my characters, both so I can compare performances (and spot weaknesses or excess) and so I know they're levelling at roughly the same pace. This invariably means that some characters have it too easy and some too hard, but them's the breaks.

Beyond that, I try not to repeat powerset combos unless I HAVE to. If I have a Fire/Fire Brute, I won't make another Fire/Fire Brute, or a Fire/Fire Scrapper, but I will make a Fire/Fire Blaster. However, when powersets are sufficiently different, that doesn't apply. Even if I have a Katana/SR Scrapper, that doesn't mean I won't make a Ninja Blade/SR Stalker.

Quote:

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.

On and off this year, but more and more lately, I've started becoming a "bracket completionist." I turn of xp towards the end of each level bracket (1-4, 5-9, 10-14, etc.) and do every bit of content that is available to that character. Not really a problem in the first three or four brackets. But higher up it takes more patience.

The 30-34 bracket blueside is honestly downright painful. I think it is the poorest crafted batch of legacy arcs and single missions. To add injury to insult, a lot of those original hunts and mini arcs repeat themselves once (and in a couple cases twice) over different contacts (renegade robots for example, but there are nearly a half dozen other multi-mission mini arcs that do this). IIRC this was a stopgap introduced in a patch between issues 1 and 2 to make certain there was enough "content" available to carry characters through the steepest part of the irregular leveling curve before Positron introduced xp smoothing.

I don't know why I do this at this point to be honest. I think its a sign of larger mental problems. It originally grew out of a desire to thoroughly see and do what was available in game (as not every mini arc or one off becomes available via flashback). But now that I've done it on one character or another for every single range blueside and over half now redside, I think it has just become some sort of perverse OCD habit. Maybe I need to just go out and ask for someone to "PL meh" till I feel dirty, take a shower, and get over myself...

I try to not repeat power sets, but that's slowly eroding away...

My namesake stalker (when I play him) has to completely clear a map before he clicks the glowies, because he's just that mean and thorough. This rule obviously applies to soloing only.

These days, using the bolero for a female toon is admitting defeat for new costume ideas. It still happens.

Anyone who reaches 30 does not get deleted, even if they never get played. Having altitis makes this a bit hard as I'm starting to fill up my two prefered servers, but then again I have fun on occasion hopping back to someone I haven't played in ages. Just this last weekend I took out an Ill/Emp troller I still had base salvage on and had an absolute blast once I refreshed my memory of how she works. One reason I stick to htis rule is because my lay time is limited, so if I get a sudden urge to try out a widow say, I already have one past the "let's go fight snakes, for hours!" stage.

I think that's it for me.

Pretty much the only ones I have are:

1. I train every one of my 50's at Ms Liberty for their 50th lvl. She got me started in my levels and she see's that they are complete.

2. Always try to log off in a day job spot ( sometimes having to log quickly prevents this )

3. I always leave their original costume intact that I started them with and use the other slots for new ideas or variations .... I think I have one toon that does not have his original costume.

SteelClaw I gotta say .... if I had to play by your rules I would never play this game lol. You need therapy lol :-P

Paging Steelclaw to this. . .



oh. Carry on.

No unfinished contacts. I don't mind missing a contact, but once I've gotten one, I have to fill up their progress bar. Even if it means turning off exp. Dunno why, it just really bugs me to see those empty bars. To make it really wierd, I'm perfectly happy with empty bars on the detectives/brokers. In fact, I make sure they're empty...

No non-sensical powerset combinations. I'm not an RPer, and while some of my chracters have a background, many don't, yet their powersets have to make sense together. No matter how fun a, say, Fire/Psi dominator might look, I can't see any reason for the character to have both fire and mental powers (beyond something generic like "they had two mutations!"), so I won't play them. Power customisation has definately helped me here, but there's still some that I won't play.

No repeated powersets within an AT. Same drill as usual.

Log off at day job locations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaHaBone23 1. Never use numbers or deliberate mispellings to get a name (ie. Frosty Lad 2 or Fir3 Girl or Robotronnn) I cringe every time I see someone else do it.

There's a few mispellings I use occasionally like "y" for "i" or "k" for "c", but in general, I agree with this. Numbers (unless theres a story reason for it, eg a Mark 2 robot), double letters or even worse punctuation marks (though hyphens can be OK) are horrible. And don't even get me started on xxDARKLORDxx...

(Though I did try to have a double-letter mispelling once. I wanted to create a character who was a clone of one of my mains, albiet with some different abilities, and doubling the "n" in her name seemed a good idea. Except it was taken. Which is odd, as my characters name is not something I made up and I certainly have the correct spelling of it )

I won't make an alt unless the concept/back story are solid.

I try to keep my number of Alt's down to 100 at all times. Otherwise, I look like an altoholic.

Currently I look like an altoholic.

Weird Rules eh.... Hmmm.

Nothing overrides theme. ex: My Brute is just really tough and strong and subservient to no one. So, even though a Ranged AoE would be really beneficial to her performance, none fit her theme. All those Patron AoEs... Unh Uh... She won't suck up to some idiot Arachnos Pawn just to learn a power...

Minor Weird Rules: never stand around in the Ninja Run crouch. When idle/not fighting, Ninja Run gets turned off.

Almost Never use any Jumping Power on Water. I can suspend most disbelief, but jumping on the surface of water pushes it. I'll Jump around bodies of water if I can, but if I have to cross water, then I will usually just swim. I say *almost* because if I'm in a hurry (like keeping up with team going to a mish) I'll sometimes go ahead and jump on water, but then I try to rationalize it be thinking I'm really swimming and launching out of the water like a porpoise or something...

If playing a higher level toon and traveling thru a lower lever zone, and some lower lever mob that can't hope to defeat me nevertheless dares to attack me, pop of a shot as I go by, I'll stop, turn around and smack them into oblivion for their temerity.

Generally, I'm an immerser, so I'll do lots of little things like the above as the situation calls

not much of one for self imposed limitations, but I do have my 'normal human' themed ninja/willpower stalker (with power graphics disabled) who has no travel power but Ninja Run and who has to navigate the game rooftop-to-rooftop whenever possible.

it makes getting to missions an engaging mini-game.