Am I doing Something Wrong?

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to post the great advice in this thread. I've got a lot to think about, but I embarked upon a little exploratory project to see where it goes. I'm still trying to think up something grand... maybe this will get there.

I don't know when the idea began to form. I have too much free time to daydream at work. I think it came about after one of my muscular twitches. Nothing serious, but kind of confusing if you've never seen one. I'll shudder for no reason, and always at the most awkward of times. What if I could harness that into something constructive? I thought for awhile and developed something along the lines of boots and gloves (maybe a suit, who knows) that can focus this energy (or something along those lines) in a Drunken Boxing kind of way. Speed Spasm was born. It also gave me an excuse to try out the new Kinetic Melee set. The one thing that's tripping my up is origin. I was born with this, so it could be mutation, but I use technology to harness it. I'm not sure which way to go with this one.

In matters of origin, ask yourself "If I didn't have the suit, would I still be effective?"

If anyone could wear the suit and do something close to what you do, call it tech.
If you could lose the suit and still be more effective than a regular person, call it mutation.

For game mechanics reasons, of course, origin barely matters at all so I ultimately wouldn't sweat it too much. I know some people pick mutant for anyone from a martial artist to a wizard to a power suit fighter just because the Mutation Enhancements are more clearly named.

Here's what I do to create far too many characters:

1) I'm always thinking of names and writing them down. A great name like "Black Cat Jynx" just suggests everything to me - cat-look (paws for the lower legs, tail, ears, etc) villain... then I sit and ponder the power sets (Ill/Rad btw, nothing spells "bad luck" more than an Ill/Rad coming after you). Oddly enough, the look for his face was influenced by an animated film from the late 60s about a bunch of cats in France, title escapes me... Anyways, I ramble.

2) I have on occasion just sat and clicked the random button for costumes. Somewhere in there I'll see something I like. It might just be the face or a couple of costume bits, but it gets me started and I'm off to the races. The above-mentioned costume threads are great places to steal ideas from too.

3) Sometimes I just want a toon with X power sets and so I start from there and ponder how that would work out, what it might look like etc. Again, the random button can help here.

In regards about the costumes, I have a couple of toons that are named something generic enough ("Space Fire" or something) that I set out from the beginning to have no set style or look. So if after I make him look like an alien, the next costume might look like a cowboy, the one after that might be all steam-punky, etc. depending on what costume idea I have bumping around in the back of my mind at the time. And sometimes I start off just thinking "I don't see people use the rhino horn that much, I wonder what I could do with it?"

Once I get a toon that has a good look and idea behind it, I have trouble keeping my hands off it - until the next one comes along anyways. :P

One other thing I'd suggest, I think the game is much more interesting played with teams. In the best case, you make progress a lot faster on the team, in the worst case you have some great disaster stories to share with the forums. People LOVE reading about other people's bad PUGs.

So look for a supergroup on your servers forum, and make sure you are on the globals for your server. The globals are where a lot of game activity and team and TF forming goes on these days.