Do we want what's familiar or what's different?
By
Arilou,
Posted on: 2011-09-02 04:38 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I don't really have much preference on the subject. All I ask is that whatever we get is entertaining to experience.
For example, I rather like the western half of "Eden." It is very inspired.
Missions:
Don't want different, just quick and easy.
Powersets:
Yes please.
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There are dozens of games out there that I have tried and did not continue to play. Many of those were different from CoH in very minimal ways, but those small differences were enough to make me not want to continue those games.
None of that means that I particularly want or don't want any specific change. That's not something I could know without judging each change individually, but the line between a game I will continue giving money to and one I will not is razor thin, and any major change has a chance of hopping that line.
As to characters, I try not to repeat powersets. I have a DP/storm corrupter that I just can't get into playing, because I already have another DP character. I remade the character with beam weapons and got further in beta with the character than I ever managed to get on live.
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On repeating powersets, I think that depends on how many characters you have. Right now, I have somewhere between 50 and 60. Considering I only really play Melee and Masterminds, there aren't 50 sets in the game without repeating them, so invariably some I'll have to use multiple times. I've used Broadsword at least five times just on its own |
Originally Posted by rsclark
As to characters, I try not to repeat powersets. I have a DP/storm corrupter that I just can't get into playing, because I already have another DP character. I remade the character with beam weapons and got further in beta with the character than I ever managed to get on live.
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To me, it's trying to never repeat a powerset combo within the same AT, if possible. Even then, I have two SS/Inv Brutes, but that was a special case.It's interesting that you should mention this, though, as I've often found myself having to choose between repeating a character build or essentially making a character into the "wrong" powerset. It's never an easy choice.
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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.
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That may be the case for you, but I doubt it is for me. I would more likely just quit playing the game if it ever got to that point. I have quit several times in the past, and it was always because there was nothing I wanted to play at that point. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
On repeating powersets, I think that depends on how many characters you have. Right now, I have somewhere between 50 and 60. Considering I only really play Melee and Masterminds, there aren't 50 sets in the game without repeating them, so invariably some I'll have to use multiple times. I've used Broadsword at least five times just on its own
To me, it's trying to never repeat a powerset combo within the same AT, if possible. Even then, I have two SS/Inv Brutes, but that was a special case.It's interesting that you should mention this, though, as I've often found myself having to choose between repeating a character build or essentially making a character into the "wrong" powerset. It's never an easy choice. |
That's not entirely powerset based, but if I don't think I would ever get to the point where I didn't know what I wanted to play. If the only "hard" character choice for me is "which character do I make first between two good choices. The choice you describe above is really just "do I quit now or stall and quit later after I confirm I'm bored."
I don't care if it is familiar or different as long as it is good/better.
Sometimes people make something different for the sake of being different but if that is its only point I will pass on it.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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No, it is nothing even remotely close to this. I'll give you an example:|
Originally Posted by rsclark
The choice you describe above is really just "do I quit now or stall and quit later after I confirm I'm bored."
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Years and years ago, I created Tyler, a scientist who believes humans have reached the peak of natural evolution and the only logical next step is to use science and technology to evolve ourselves further. When it became clear to him mankind wasn't interested, he realised that the "old" humans had to be removed if his "new, superior beings" were to have the space and resources to thrive. He has so far replaced nearly his entire body with cybernetics, transforming himself into a colossal walking juggernaut of steel.
For Tyler, the only AT/powersets that make sense were SS/Inv Brute. I HATE Tankers as an AT and wouldn't be caught dead playing them and nothing else has both Super Strength and Invulnerability. Nothing else really made sense for him since Tyler doesn't have any weapons mounted to himself, choosing instead to delegate those to other robots, and he is also both amazingly powerful and incredibly hard to kill or even move. Tyler is a giant robot (cyborg, whatever), and that's pretty much the core of his character. This essentially REQUIRES SS/Inv. He is defined by being too strong for anyone to resist and being too tough for anyone to really damage.
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Years before that, I created Crash, the unfortunate young woman who was mortally wounded in a war, and ended up having her entire body replaced with her genius father's cybernetics. She is from an alternate time line and is thus far close to 300 years old, she has an internal perpetual energy source of nearly unlimited yield, her body is made up of futuristic materials that are both flexible and yet almost entirely unbreakable, her skeleton is outfitted with an entire array of not just amazingly powerful actuators but also "kinetic projectors" for enhanced strength and stability, and her brain is shielded from any form of shock. To top it all off, she also has a nanobot factory for repairs of damage suffered in combat.
Crash is a SS/Inv Brute, because nothing else made sense. I hate Tankers, and I wouldn't want her to be a Scrapper anyway, because her key defining characteristic is that you plain and simple can't kill her. In fiction, I've had her descend from high orbit unprotected, making a very large impact crater, I've had her survive gunfire, explosions, collisions with speeding trains and entire skyscrapers collapsing onto her, all leaving no lasting damage. On top of that, I've had her BE the one to punch a skyscraper hard enough to cause her to collapse on her, toss tanks around like stuffed toys, snap giant steel girders like tooth picks and punch the ground hard enough to CAUSE a massive crater in the ground.
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Right now, I have two SS/Inv Brutes, one at level 50 and sporting a T1 Spiritual Alpha and one at I think level 42, and I love BOTH of them. Originally, Crash was a MA/SR Scrapper, made in I1 long before Brutes existed. When I sat down to reroll and redesign Crash, I went through a lot of alternatives so as not to repeat Tyler's build. Considering that she is probably THE most important character that I have ever made, more important than even Samuel Tow himself, I could not afford to compromise on her powers. A SS/Inv Brute is what she was always meant to be, and to do anything less would be to betray my favourite character. But then, I didn't want to delete or reroll Tyler, either, because he too only ever made sense to be a SS/Inv Brute. That's what he IS. So I now have two, and BOTH of them are reasons why I'm still here.
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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.
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I find I have to have 3 things to create a character: a concept (typically derived from a powerset or sets that I want to use), a costume, and a backstory. Which of these comes first varies, but eventually they all have to marry up into a single entity that I like and enjoy playing. I find a lot of what I've been doing lately is trying out different sets and archetypes and finding something I think will be fun to play, then I'll go through a couple of iterations of the character as I refine the costume, the powers I'll use, et cetera until I'm happy with what I have. I'm not shy about starting over, and have deleted and re-rolled characters simply because the costume wasn't quite right, or I wanted a different secondary, or whatever reason.
Because of this I find myself with a pretty eclectic group of characters that all seem pretty unique to me. I think I really only have 1-2 classic "spandex" character costumes, and no classic superheroes. I don't have any heroes that are heroes because it's the "right thing to do", more of a hero that is so because of the situation they are in. My characters tend to morph into something else as I go along, as I learn about the powersets, etc. But it's all a progression that fills in the third element of my character, the backstory.
As an example, when Kinetic Melee came out I wanted to give it a try. So I decided to to a Batman-type clone using Kinetic Melee and Ninjitsu. I came up with a costume for the concept that was my best representation of a Batman look. Not bad, I started playing. The character fleshed itself out as I went through the first few levels, my Batman clone becoming a former Praetorian military assassin / mad scientist type that had created a rogue's gallery full of experiments in an effort to discover the perfect combination of powers to allow him to complete his missions without relying on external sources or weapons. Kinetic Melee became his "perfect" expression of power, augmented with some of the small devices he had used previously. Upon learning that his "experiments" had escaped from his dungeon in the Underground of Praetoria, he decided it was time to move to Primal Earth to help Cole with the upcoming invasion, and of course to escape those he rightly thought desired to destroy him. At this point the character is only level 26, so he's moved fairly quickly from a sort of generic copy to a more fleshed-out and (to me, at least) original character. True, the story is surely not epic, but it does have my own spin to it, and I have had fun creating new characters based on his rogue's gallery of failed experiments, using them as vehicles to try out new archetypes and powersets I hadn't yet used.
So I guess for me I tend to start out with something "familiar", then I take that idea and morph it into something of my own, and use it to explore unfamiliar territory, whether that be a blaster, a different powerset, or Paragon City. While I'm sure none of it is truly original, it is original enough to keep me interested. I honestly never thought that I'd actually play a game for almost 5 years, but here I am.
We are shaped by media. That includes books, movies, TV and games.
For me I noticed an up tick in warrior women around the time of Aliens and Terminator 2. On TV it was Buffy and Dark Angel. So late 80s, early 90s in movies, 5 or so years later on TV. This of course skips over Red Sonja and Heavy Metal's Taarna and Valkyries of lore.
In this game for me, gender of my characters had more to do with costume parts or lore than traditional melee Vs support roles. For costumes I skew more toward Ironman than Spiderman. During the pre-CoV years I think I have only two characters that wore spandex out of the dozen or so I rolled, both female, one is a MA scrapper (2nd character I ever created). And that's because it fit the look I was going for (one to look fox like, the other modeled after an Anime character).
The one thing I do notice is race. I would end up making a robot, an alien, a wolfman or a lizardman before I ever thought about making a character who wasn't white or Asian. I thought that was an interesting blind spot in my thought process of rolling a character. I eventually did create one (Grav/Rad Defender) but he's languishing at Level 14 or so for many years now.
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