Generic Characters

Long story short...

My Girlfriend is a closet gamer (caught her playing Counterstike while I sleep). I wanted to introduce her to CoX in hopes we could play together. She's only ever played Shooters on Steam and I wasn't sure how to ease her into MMOs. Me being somewhat of a Veteran and not so great of a teacher I wanted to make this as easy as possible.

I was going to sit down after class tonight and instead of watching a chick flick she and I were going to sit down and roll out some characters. Now I don't know much about most of the ATs and Powersets. In the past I've had my MA/WP Scrapper and a Bots/FF Mastermind. Not much there.

I wanted to keep this simple. Is there any way to dumb power selection down a bit. Are there any "generic" options? I was hoping to get some basic options she can play around with the find out what she likes and learn the game without being too overwhelmed. I was going to at least get her going on one Melee character and one Ranged character. Not sure which powersets to choose. Are there any other roles that can be put into perspective easily. I imagine things like controllers and dominators are a hard concept to wrap your head around when you are new.

you can get a description of each archetype on the wiki here.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Archetypes

and here are the powersets

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Powerset

just click on the highlighted links for the details.

For a new player, I would recommend something that levels quickly in the lower levels, but still has some flashy and powerful attacks. How about a Fire/Dark corrupter? You get a heal (Twilight Grasp), two AoEs (Fireball and Rain of Fire), and a good slow/debuff (Tar Patch) all by level 6. Superspeed and Shadowfall by level 16 gives you full invisibility. It's a powerful and fun combo.

Well, if she has been playing shooters, then going with a Blaster, Defender or Corruptor are the obvious choices. Ice Blast is the safest blast set I've played so far (note: I haven't tried everything yet) and is very team friendly.

A wise man once said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silas Make a Corr and nothing bad will happen.

Thank you, Champion.

Normally I'd throw the general advice of "Make a Scrapper and call it a day" but there's something to be said for her shooter experience.

I'd recommend a Blaster simply because it doesn't carry the expectations from team mates that comes with any AT that functions in a support role. As long as she's pew pewin' no one'll be concerned. Try setting her up with Assault Rifle. The look and feel of the set are similar to what you'd find in an FPS. Pair it up with something that has Boost Range to get even more coverage with the various cones.

Ice/ice blaster, or DP + Traps would be options. I like Traps over /dev for something to pair with DP for more natural shooter. Ice/ice still ranks as my favorite blaster. It's a safe and solid build. It adds in control aspects with a shooter class and it would be a good way to ease her into the idea of a controller as well.

Okay, blaster. Sounds pretty straight forward. Only one job "If it moves, shoot it." Sounds like something she'll like. We were on the test server earlier looking at the new Steampunk pack and I was able to sweeten the deal by throwing that in with the game when it comes out. Heck, I like the pack, I think I may try to swing matching characters or something.

So, onto what I looked into. From what I have read on the wiki and what is said here Blasters do seem like a pretty good choice. It's a toss up between AR and DP for the primary, both of which get new toys in the upcoming pack. My question now is: What's the difference? How does the playstyle of the Rifle differ from that of the Pistol. I think that may help a bit.

As for a secondary I think we're going the /Energy route. Doesn't have anything complicated. She'll have access to some melee attacks when needed and she gets some nice buff in the form of Boost Range and Conserve Power. At the same time she doesn't get some of the additional nuances of something along the lines of, let's say, /Ice.

If I am wrong about any of this, please let me know.

One bit about blasters is that they are *best* with the AoE damage, which is fantastic for helping your team deal with swarms of enemies.

Yes, Energy Manipulation has good boosts and fun attacks. Definitely want the Build Up and Power Boost, with perhaps Boost Range.

-Johnny

Without repeating myself too badly, I did write a Blaster Survival mini-guide. Because as they used to say, "If the Blaster screws up, they die. If anyone else on the team screws up, the Blaster dies."

I'm going to put in a vote for Fire/Ice blaster- it's not exactly what she's used to visually, but it's got some ability to defend itself a little bit, and Fireball/Firebreath will drop ten even-con minions in the first four seconds. If you're going to hell anyway, might as well show up with a bunch of new friends.

Hey, do a Invul/Super Strength Tank in blue tights and red cape with a red S on the chest and you will have a generic character in no time at all!

Well AR is your basic multipurpose boomstick. Take all of the standard FPS weapons and instead have a power for each one. Shotgun (Slug, Buckshot, Beanbag), machine gun (Burst, Full Auto), grenade launcher, flamethrower (Flamethrower, Iignite) and sniper rifle. Animations are rather basic. At least now you can customize away the Frankengun for something that isn't a supersoaker on crack.

Dual Pistols is another kettle of fish. Besides flashy gunkata / Equilibrium / John Woo style animations, you have the ability to change the secondary effects based on the ammo you are using which are represented as toggles (Tier 4 power).

Having played both sets quite a bit, I'd vote for AR over 2Gun. Both have their advantages, but a large part of 2Guns advantages are playing in melee to use the PBAoE nuke, which isn't a great plan for new blasters, and it's multi-ammo. And I really don't think worrying about the subtleties of ammo types is high on the list of priorities for a new player. I'd think at that point it's extra complexity that really isn't worth it if you're brand new. AS someone else said, most likely you'll end up just picking fire ammo and never changing it.

All that said, the biggest thing is keeping interest. If pistols are more appealing to her, and if she's got any interest in gun-fu, the dual pistols may be even cooler for her than FPS could ever be in a lot of ways. That extra cool factor may be a great extra selling point for the game. That's all up to her tastes, which of course, we have no way of knowing..

By the way, if you want ultralite support: Force Field/Sonic has its pluses and its minuses.
The plus is that it's DEAD FREAKING EASY. The minus is it can make for a boring game.
1) Take everything in Force Fields except Detention Field, Repulsion Field and Force Bubble. Slot Deflection and Insulation with three Defense, slot Dispersion with one end three Defense, slot Force Bolt 1 acc/no damage [it literally does a lot less damage than brawl] and slot Repulsion Bomb 1 acc/3 dam/1 or two recharge.
2) Start with Shriek, Scream, Howl, and Shout for attacks. 1 acc, up to 3 damage as you can spare the slots. Siren's song for an "oh s*** power", only needs 1 Acc.
3) Get Maneuvers and slot it 1 end/3 defense, like Dispersion.

MACROS:
Set up the following binds once, on your character:
/bind numpad1 "say I'm a Force Fielder. For best results keep arms, legs and tentacles inside the big bubble; if you don't have the little bubbles, yell at me."
/bind numpad9 "/t $target, your bubbles are expiring soon."
PLAYSTYLE:
At the start of the game, turn on Maneuvers and Deflection Shield, and hit 1 on your numpad when you join a team. Put a little kitchen timer on your desk. Set it to three or 3.5 minutes. Bubble all your teammates [shift-1 targets your teammate.] I have the bubbles on 6 and 7, so it goes something like this for me (if I'm on a 6-person team in slot 4): "shift-1,6,7, shift-2,6,7, shift-3,6,7 [skip me], shift-5,6,7,shift-6,6,7" and then you go back to what you were doing: SHATTERING PEOPLE'S SKULLS WITH SOUND. When the timer goes off, reset it and rebubble your team. If someone's out of range hit 9 on the numpad and go to the next person.
Other than that: Shoot badguys. Try to not jump around TOO much so people can find the big bubble as needed. If someone is being obstreperous, use Force Bolt to put them on the ground, shoot them a couple times, repeat until they stop bothering you. If you are about to die, turn on Personal Force Field and leave. You can't help the team from inside PFF, but you can't help them lying on the floor either. You _might_ want a bind that says something like "Hiding in the fortress of solitude. Good luck out there."

You don't have a heal. You don't have a rez. Those things are for people who are not in the big bubble. If people are still getting killed and they're up next to you, either they're up against one of about six enemies in the game [Ruularuu, I'm lookin at you] or they're trying entirely too hard. If someone wants a heal pass them a green and say "Be your own damn healer."

I heard this advice from someone else who was getting thier wife/girlfriend into the game that sounded very wise.

1. Give them the toon that does the killing. It may seem cool to have your wife buffing your toon who goes in and does all the work, but she may enjoy it more the other way around.
2. When things go bad.. do everything you can to make sure you die before her. If your toon sacrifices his life to save hers, that's a good thing. If she dies and you clean up the mess then give here a wakie... not so good.

I guess really what I'm saying is, what you pick to level up with here and how you play it is probably more important then what she picks.

You might also want to consider making a leveling pact between your toons. That way if she sneaks off and plays in the dead of night, you'll still get XP

also of note, for when you need assistance ingame in realtime: the Mentor Project can assist (link in my sig).

Join the "N P C" channel for when you're not available to help her. There is quite a number of knowledgeable folks in there.

My wife used to play a fire mage with me in GW several years ago, but is just not comfortable back in a MMO. I made her a Fire/Fire/Pyre Tank and leveled it to 50 plus 1, got the alpha shift with a T3 cardiac. No Taunt.

My idea is to give her something that just won't die while she gets used to basic game play mechanics again. Movement, positioning, camera management has been giving her fits, target selection and changing targets, running ST and AoE attack chains, inspiration use, getting used to the various maps so you don't get stuck, etc.

We will take this toon into the various fire farms with different maps where it will be just about unkillable, and will still do plenty of damage. So she can earn while she learns. Once she gets the basics of driving a toon around down pat, we will go back to our level-pacted lowbies.

Teaching someone to drive, and how to build the car at the same time, may work for some people, but seperating the new skills into modules may work better for others.

Jak