Random Acts of Kindness

So last night I was lost in the middle of The Hollows looking for the area named "Four Seasons". The map was blacked out and I was unable to tab out to find a map, so I asked in JSFA2010(?) if anyone knew where it was. Someone gave me a good indicator so off I traveled. When I finally get there, this dude shows up and offers to run with me. He stuck around for a few missions and then showed me the AE missions (what a blast those are!), explained how to access them and then dropped 20mill influence in my pocket outta nowhere.

Have any of you encountered (or caused an encounter of) a random act of kindness?

If I spot a lowbie getting pounded, I'll throw longdistance healing on him/her (so I don't aggro-steal). I've routinely dropped excess lvl 50 IO recipes on low level characters so they have funds to get started. I also have our SG occasionally troop through the sewers randomly buffing and healing the low level teams to give them a hand as they head through. I sometimes port people to badges if they're having a really hard time finding a particular one, or I'll toss someone a piece of salvage if it's the last piece they need to get a recipe done.

They're quick and easy things for me, but for a low level character, it can mean a lot. And it's just me repaying the random kindnesses *I* was shown when I first started, and the general goodwill of the COH community.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

The guy that introduced me to the game paid for all of my enhancements up to level 25. Back then (2004) that was a lot of inf.

I do my best to pass that along. Earlier during the winter event, a poor newbie wanted to team with me and my currently SG-only team. I gave him a pretty big sum of money to ease the sting a little.

In my SG we're known for grabbing random lowbies and taking them through our missions just so they can get a few levels and some easy Influence and drops.

If I'm on my WS or character with Taunt or Confront, and I see a lowbie getting pounded on, I'll taunt the mobs to me and stand there and take the hits so they can kill them off and get the xp without having to faceplant.

Also done the healing/ tanking thing for low level teams through the sewers, invited people to my team just so they could use my base teleporters, dropped random amounts of Influence on lowbies, and even did taxi duty in the hollows.

And I do this because it was done for me when I was coming up. That's one of the great things about this community.

I like to keep an eye peeled for costume contests. If I see a spectacular costume that didn't win, I dump a couple million on them.

I've run through the sewers as well, healing and buffing.

My favorite pasttime, however, is to hang in Atlas and look for awesome characters with no vet badges. Then I drop a ton of influence on them. Especially if their costume or bio makes me wish I'd done a better job.

After I reach level 22 I will often get random SO drops in the 20-24 range, I will save those up until I get 6 or 7 and then do a search under origins - level 18-21 and send a tell asking if they would accept a gift?

Then I email or visit them and drop off the SO's - it really makes a difference if you are level 18 with 4 resistance SO in your shields

From my own personal, albeit limited, knowledge so far, I think situations like these are more common as the community is smaller and tends to police themselves in-game better than most. Where one would expect rude and elitist behavior, you find a stranger dumping currency/enhancements in someone's lap just because they can. There may not be a hardlined motivation behind it, but I think it reinforces good-natured behavior in a non-obvious way.

The best I can do right now is click and drag spare insps onto a player. I do this all the time now. I play in a certain way that allows even my squishies to avoid most damage and wind up with excess health, so I send them off to whomever is closest or in the process of dying. Every little bit counts, right?

I like to fly around Atlas Park on my Empath and buff newbies as they street sweep.

I also help lowbie sewer teams on my Tank by taunting mobs and letting them pound on me while doing 0 damage. (this doesn't work any more since I slotted Perfect Zinger... killing people with taunts is so embarrassing )

I give the 50+ SOs from TFs to anyone I see with no vet bagdes - plus extra Inf, Halloween salvage and an escort to Croatoa and Steel Canyon if they need a new costume slot before 20

Right after the Market went live, I was in Steel and had a new player ask me for help finishing a mission. I joined his team and saw he had a timed mission with 15 minutes left, but a different mission selected. I asked about this, and he said, "Oh, we won't have time to finish it now." "Nonsense!" I replied, so we finished his timed mission with 5 minutes to spare.

During the mission, I got a sweet drop (rocket boots or something like that, I think). I sold it for about 25 million at WW, then gave the newbie 5 million. He tried to refuse, but I said, "Hey, I got the drop in your mission. Plus...welcome to the game!"

I've also randomly gifted INF to no or low-vet badge lowbies who have a nice costume, name, and/or bio. I think it's fun.

I've never had anybody gift anything to me though. I guess I just don't make interesting enough characters. Plus I'm now a 48-month vet, so people looking to gift newbies rightfully pass me by.

When I started my first villain about a week after upgrading from the trial version, a Widow asked to join my friend and I as we stood cluelessly looking out from the Fort on Mercy Island.

When he found out how new (and broke) we were he bought both of us a full set of training enhancements and kept them upgraded for two nights and 7 levels of play. He explained a lot about how the game worked red-side (sadly we were too low for mayhem missions so we didn't get to that lesson - we had to learn them the hard way). We had a ton of fun culminating with the final mission in Mercy vs the snakes in that cave with the huge snake idol. It was a freaking awesome experience. Sadly I haven't seen that Widow since.

I try to pass that along when I can but probably not as often as I should.

A few weeks after I started playing, I was in Outbreak on a new scrapper. I inquired about badge teams and got invited to one. Once we'd all gotten our badges, the leader invited me to join his SG, I figured I had nothing to lose so I agreed.

He then showed me around the base along with another member of the SG and then they each gave me 500,000 influnce. Being a newbie, I thought 1-million inf was a HUGE amount, and told them I couldn't possibly accept. They just laughed and said they had multiple lvl 50s, each with hundreds of millions of inf.

Three years later, they have both since left the game, and I inherited the SG. I now occasionally do as others mention and hang out in AP or on Mercy Island and gift excess inf, or other shiny things to newbies. Oddly, folks in Mercy Island refuse my trade offer about 25% of the time. I guess they think because I play a villain, I must be trying to rip them off some how.

I wonder if the commonality of generosity has to do with the fact that this is a superhero game, and it just attracts the types of people who are willing to give and be a part of a community.

Yes, City of Villains counts since it attracts the comic do-gooders as well as virtual hooligans.

Before global email, my lvl 50 MM would go to Mercy and offer free jetpacks to lowbies. To help them get to Grandville and buy the jetpack, I invite them to team so that they can use my base porter to Grandville.
I would also team with lvls 1-10. In one case, I responded to a leader's broadcast:
[Lowbie lead] lvl 9 team lf healer
[Me] /tell Lowbie lead, I'll go
[Lowbie lead] What level r u?
[Me] 50
[Lowbie lead] I think ur too hi
[Me] I am lft here and I can heal

After I got hired on the team, I look for players with no vet badges. In between missions, I gave them 10 mill each.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gehnen Yes, City of Villains counts since it attracts the comic do-gooders as well as virtual hooligans.

Don't think that my ebil MM was being do-gooder by giving away infamy. In effect, I'm spreading ebil by I'm encouraging newer vills to go forth and do nefarious deeds.

When bored I use to hang out in The Hollows fighting Darwin by healing (and rezing) blasters who can't handle their aggro yet, up near the Atlas gate. Now that there's a "hospital" in the zone as well as the redesign of mobs and mission doors, I haven't felt the urge to hang there.

Also use to hand out inf to lowbies during Christmas. But that was before the market, now 10K per level is looked at as being cheap.

I try to be as charitable as I can, and often ask the recipient "pay it forward".

The night I first started playing, a player spent quite a bit of time trying to help me learn the ropes. She gifted me 50,000 inf (which I thought was an extraordinarily huge sum!) to help me with enhancements.

I had been terrified of playing an online game, thinking that it would be open-world PVP, and thinking that everyone would immediately ignore the new player, and point out how terrible I was. Having someone do something generous shocked me, and made me immediately appreciate the community, and made me want to do the same for others.

I recall once, a costume contest on Champion. The organizer had recently won a contest a few weeks prior, and was using half of his newfound wealth toward a contest. He accidentally traded 50mil (which was intended to be the entire prize lot for 1st through 3rd) to the 3rd place person, instead of 5mil. Immediately, the organizer said "oh, I sent you everything by mistake. Can you send it back?" To which the person said "lol your loss" and logged.

I saw the apologies from the organizer in Local, and the prizewinners were understanding... so I gave 100 of my 120 million inf to them.


I haven't been able to be as charitable lately. A Forumgoer a little while ago accidentally lost a rather large sum to an email blip. Replacing the funds for him (her?) took out a large chunk of my onhand influence

Thank you, Champion.

A while ago, somebody in AP opened a trade window with my lowbie, and randomly traded me 1M. He was a 3 month vet and said he had 35M so he could spare it.

I'm a 78 month vet with several billions in the bank, but that toon was skint, so I took the inf and a note of his global.

A couple of days later I emailed him 10M and said he was welcome to it, or if his conscience wouldn't let him keep it to make 10 lowbies happy.

Last Christmas ('09) I was hanging out RPing in the ski chalet on Union one night, and someone randomly dropped a Pangean Soil on my main as a Christmas gift. Now, my main doesn't exactly need inf (though if anyone wants to give me some, feel free!) and I had no need of that salvage at that time (my standing policy is to only hang onto salvage if I have a recipe that needs it), so I made myself a promise:

"I'm going to hang onto this Pangean Soil until I next meet a newbie that's not on a trial account. That newbie gets it."

(The trial account thing was because, let's be honest, that salvage would be totally wasted on one).

Over the next month, I met a fair number of newbies, but it seemed that all of them were on trials, so I just topped off their inf reserves to the trial account limit. And then, finally, I met a newbie who had the full game. So I gave it to him, with a brief explanation that it was worth a few million inf if he sold it at the AH, or he could save it for when he got to a higher level and needed to use it for a recipe.

He offered me inf in return, and I just said "That piece of salvage cost me nothing. Not even time. I didn't earn it. I don't need it. So I'm giving it to you, just to say hi, and welcome to City of Heroes."