Biowraith

Off the top of my head there's:

Pants
Biscuit

The others I can think of are perhaps veering away from keeping it clean (not sure how strict the moderation would be).

For me it depends on the nature of the journey and what's waiting for me at the destination (which in an MMO tends to be a new journey). Some journeys are inherently fun and enjoyable and become the reason I'm playing. Others are a tedious chore that I'm only enduring because the destination is just that appealing. And of course, sometimes the journey is a tedious chore *and* the destination isn't that appealing, so I bypass completely if possible.

Examples of what I mean:

So long as I run it all teamed, I enjoy the combat and pace of levelling in this game. Even the pre-20 levels. I like going into a mission and bashing heads, the variation of which character/build I'm using, who I've ended up teamed with this time, and so on. There's relatively frequent sub-destinations along the way (i.e. new powers and slots) that mean I'm not usually thinking about the ultimate destination of reaching 50. That there's all the IO'ing out (which you can do earlier, but I tend to leave until 47+) and now incarnate stuff waiting at 50 is great, and I thoroughly enjoy that too once I get a character there, but I'd be enjoying the 1-49.99 game even if the 50 stuff wasn't there (as evidenced by the fact I did enjoy it before IOs etc were added). If you gave me a button to insta-level to 50 I'd not use it.

I'm actually at the point now where I have enough characters at 50, and such a wide stable of alts, that I can happily log a non-50 char in for a few missions with almost no thought of even getting the next power, much less getting to 50. And to be honest, there wasn't ever a time that I wanted to get to 50 just for the sake of getting to 50 - it was never a destination in its own right, only in terms of what there was to do once I got there.

But sometimes the journey sucks. Unlocking Viridian's arc for example. The destination is cool, it's a fun arc and I enjoyed it once I unlocked it. But the journey to get there was just a tedious grind and I hated it. Yet I endured it to play the arc. To be honest, I'm undecided as to whether it was worth it - I've not unlocked it again on any new chars I've gotten into range so far. If I could skip the "journey" on that one, I'd unlock and run it on a lot more of my characters.

And then there's things like the old zookeeper badge, or the old healing one, where the journey was pretty much the opposite of enjoyable for me, *and* I didn't much care about the destination. So I never even tried to get them, even now that the requirements are more reasonable.


Now as to the wording of the question, "that the game should be about the journey" the way I interpret that, I strongly believe so. I hate when game designers decide we need to slog through tedium to finally get to the fun part - where the destination may be awesome, but only once you've undergone a test of endurance/tolerance to get there. If the journey isn't enjoyable then I'll probably not try to reach the destination (and if I do, even if the destination turns out to have been worth it, I'll still resent whoever designed it that way).

I enjoy it on single target attacks, and on Nova. On AoEs and other PBAoEs I'm conflicted - one part of me takes a certain amount of glee at sending everything flying like that, while another part is irked that the followup AoE isn't going to be as effective now that the spawn is scattered (and lining up so terrain and angle mitigates the scatter is detrimental to the glee aspect).

Oddly, it doesn't bother me quite as much on my melee characters.

I'm maybe a bit more encouraged to play my 50s, rather than pressured. Before they were characters I enjoyed playing (or they'd not have reached 50), but there wasn't much further progress to be made on them so they tended to fall to the wayside in favour of characters I also enjoyed but still had levels to gain. Now there's further progression to make, so I bring the 50s out more often. And yeah, when I19-19.5 came out I tended to play them almost to the exclusion of all else to get those shards and notices, but now that I have those on my absolute favourite 50s I'm not quite so focused on that area.

With regards finding teams for my lowbies, I'm not finding things too much different. At the times I play redside has always been close to dead, while goldside was much the same after the initial GR release surge (the people that *are* around goldside now seem to be mostly soloers, with the rest sticking to small private groups). Blueside, eh, still teams going and still non-WTF activities being advertised. Possibly less than before, but not such that I notice much impact, at least on the busier servers (I gave up actively looking for/forming non-TF pugs on Victory years ago).

So yeah, I'm playing my 50s more, but more through encouragement than outright pressure, and I'm not experiencing any big changes in availability of lowbie teams.

There's a few that can slot all 10.
One example that doesn't have to opt for a power's secondary effect anywhere (e.g. stun in Fissure - my first thought was Plant/Earth Dominator) is Sonic/Mental/Mu Blaster:

Ranged - Shriek, Scream, Howl, Subdual
Immob - Subdual, Electric Fences
Targeted AoE - Howl, Shockwave, Psychic Scream, Static Discharge
Melee - Mind Probe, Telekinetic Thrust
Sleep - Siren's Song
Stun - Screech
Confuse - World of Confusion
PBAoE - Dreadful Wail, Psychic Shockwave
Pet - Summon Adept
Hold - Electric Shackles

Sure, if you prefer to team.

As much as I'd like to play CoX at work, the PCs are too crappy and even if they weren't IT has user rights and internet access severely restricted, so I doubt I'd get it running even if the pcs could handle it. I can't even get on the forums at work.

I do however play Dwarf Fortress at work since it doesn't need "installed", nor a net connection

Yeah, I was gonna add a sentence about Range, but figured it's more another "nice bonus" aspect - great if you're going that route anyway - rather than a reason to pick Cardiac in the first place.

I'll set the flags when I'm looking for a team, but I'm under no illusions that it really makes much difference anymore, people setting and searching on the flags appear to be very much in the minority.

I do wish people used the flags more often - I'd be a lot more inclined to start my own teams if I didn't have to send out tells to the entire list of unteamed players in order to find out which ones want to team.

For my Mercs/Traps I found slotting Lady Grey proc and Achilles Heel proc in both Soldiers and Spec Ops made a noticeable difference to kill speeds; if you're only putting them in one of the above, I'd go for Soldiers - they may get slightly reduced values due to their relative level, but they get more attacks that it can proc from, including a cone. I frankenslot the rest of their slots for accuracy, damage, and a bit of end reduction (at 50: 2 acc/dam, 1 acc/dam/end, 1 dam/end) - I think only the Commando really needs the end reduction, but that's my standard MM pet slotting.

Picking up the Medicine Pool and Provoke helped smooth things over in the survival department too.

Other than that I'm mostly just looking to get lots of recharge to throw out as much of the awesome that is Traps as possible.

Used surveillance on hami while pylons were up, no negative modifiers to any of his stats at all (including perception and range).

The explanation I was given by one team leader was the pylons reduce Hami's range (it wasn't clear whether they meant attack range or perception/aggro range, and I didn't ask). No idea whether there's actually any truth to that, but the rest of the team seemed to agree.

It can be coloured. Mine is dark blue and fuschia.