Lord Mayhem

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lol the Question. If you read the stuff at the top it tells you haha

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They're slacking though - when they do the "multi-choice quizzes for gullible idiots" (TM) on TV they usually have one answer that is plausible (if you know absolutely nothing about the subject), the correct answer, then something totally way out for the third option.

For this one the options should have been:

a) Mexico City
b) Paragon City
c) Your mum's kitchen

Though I guess as they're not trying to rip us off with crazy text message charges on this one, they decided to make it a challenge for the mentally impaired.

You can socialise continuously in an MMO without ever teaming with people - some people like to solo while at the same time being able to chat to their friends (who may or may not also be soloing). I know tons of people who play like that - I do for about 10-20% of my online time.

Or don't chat channels count for your narrow definition of how MMOs should be played?

I suggest you look back at the root of the MMO genre - MUDs - before you answer, just to avoid looking silly.

Entered - whatever is inside that box can't be any worse than my 2 year old PC has, plus Wildman's art = /drool.

Geographically/politically where I live is not part of the UK for anything except IDD and post codes, but hopefully that will do for this

TA/Archery - reached L16, got sick of being booted from teams for not having heals/buffs, remade as a blaster

Storm/Psy - reached L20, but then the Devs answered my prayers and added Psy/ blasters and /Storm corrs and ... well, I wanted to re-use the defender's name/concept for the blaster...

Ice/Stone (at very low level)

Most of my I5 tankers got deleted and remade as brutes in I6, I'm afraid - and that AT has been delivering most of my tanking/melee'ing thrills ever since.

Fire/Kin

Don't look at me like that! I made him back in I8, got to L16, and haven't got back to playing him since (mainly because my friend deleted the Fire/Rad troller I was duoing him with). I tend to be drawn into playing control sets on doms and the debuff/buff sets on corrs - sorry!

I have a Mind/Psi at L30 and it has felt noticeably weaker than almost anything else I've played (see my sig for some examples) with the exception of certain low level defender and controller combos I've tried - but apparently at 38 when you get Psychic Shockwave a /Psi dom turns into a god among men. Just know that the /Psi set is a very slow starter.

I actually took Mind/ as primary not just for concept but also for some extra damage cos I knew /Psi started slow, but it was still very slow and I felt like I was being "carried" by my friend's Plant/Thorn dom which I duo'd most of the 30 levels with. With Earth/ primary (a fantastic set - I have a new Earth/Fire dom that rocks... excuse the pun!) you'll have even less damage at the start, so expect Earth/Psi to take a long time to mature, but when it does you'll be mighty.

If you want a secondary that starts off with better damage than /Psi then any of them will do that, but /Fire is especially good, and /Elec and /Ice are great too (though I found the latter rather end-hungry at low level, like all Ice sets seem to be).

Yeah it looks good - MA is a set I've wanted to play since way back - ironically ever since I got a good few minutes watching the cool animations on Phil's scrapper in RV while he was kicking the hell out of my fire brute

I wonder if this is the end of MA changes though - a damage boost might be nice (hey, I'm greedy!).

Yeah 5 seconds sounds about right. That's about how long it takes my blaster to fire off BU + Aim + Rain Of Arrows. On an ITF recently our Spines/Regen often went charging into a fresh spawn of Cimerorans just as I hit BU... and was dead from their alpha strike before my arrows fell

Funnily enough 5 seconds was also how long it usually took the granite tanker to catch up to us and TP into the spawn to take aggro. And that poor spiney hadn't even taken his self-rez. If only he'd known how to wait 5 seconds...

Though I guess he could have been working on his debt badges.

Admittedly I've been guilty of failing the 5 second rule too, but only on my brutes and usually they survive (oh and on my blaster and warshade too, but then the spawn doesn't usually survive). Besides I've taken taunt on my brutes, mainly so I have an excuse for my impulsive behaviour

Claws/WP - L50
BS/Regen - L17

The BS/Regen is the first character I ever made in CoH/V back in I5 and the only hero I have on Union and hasn't gained a level since I6. If I wasn't a sentimental fool I'd probably have deleted him by now (tbh I'll probably remake him as a Broadsword/Shield scrapper in I13). The claw/wp was made during the last double xp weekend and hit 50 a few months back.

Recently made an MA/SR, and I have a DB/SR kicking around at low level that I may be deleting as a result of that. In fact I've probably deleted at least a dozen low level scrappers over the past 3 years because I usually end up preferring to play the powersets on brutes and stalkers.

Archery/Energy - L50
Ice/Ice - L20

I recently deleted an Energy/Energy and an Elec/Elec at low level to make a Sonic/Energy and a Psychic/Mental, but I can't really declare them until I get them to L20+ (which is when my characters usually reach safety from deletion).

Blaster is the only non-Epic hero AT that I enjoy as much as the villain ATs, so doubtless I'd be playing my blasters if I wasn't so wrapped up atm with getting my stalker to 50 and playing all my new spiders/widows/doms/brute/corruptor.

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This, I can get behind. But if it's unfeasible due to coding restrictions, I'll settle for the Dual Pistols.

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I doubt its unfeasible - some Rikti already have gunblades.

I'd rather have the Dual Pistols though - I never did like Final Fantasy much

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And I'm not playing yet - the forum gets zero attention once I've logged into CoH/V

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It's quite possible to multitask

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With my connection and playstyle alt-tabbing is not always wise - that way lies lag and debt

And strangely enough I find the game more fun than the forums

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You're obviously not playing the game right then

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Touché I'll get right onto that.

Or maybe I actually mean "waaaaahhhh stop telling me how to play the game!"

Now, do you think any potential flamebaiters have had enough time to calm down? Maybe it's time one of us tried to say something constructive and on-topic... nah, I'm going to go log-in and play - characters don't level themselves!

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This is obviously how the game is supposed to be played - nonsense on the forum between missions

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I guess some threads are just destined to go off-topic - usually I hate that, but in this case I think it might be for the best before the inevitable flame war starts hotting up

And I'm not playing yet - the forum gets zero attention once I've logged into CoH/V

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You're waggling your eyebrows all night long?

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Whilst playing the game... it's very tiring.

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Have you tried not doing it? Or just waggling one for a bit when you get the urge, you know like Roger Moore used to do when trying to act?

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Expression: Frustration. Subject: these oedipally-conflicted Snakes. Location: This oedipally-conflicted spaceplane.

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Madam, I applaud you.

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But why are Rikti/Lost on the plane? Are they the cabin crew?

<Tries to imagine Angus McQueen, Tim Raymond, Honoree and U'kon G'rai as trolley dolleys>

<head explodes>

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doing anything tonight Myopic?

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Yes. *waggles eyebrows*

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You're waggling your eyebrows all night long?

I like this idea, but...
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For example, grabbing a skull purse snatcher could lead to a mission where the skulls try to fence their stolen goods to a fence. Rewards could be fun missions, extra prestige for those missions and or new badges to hunt.

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I like this idea far more - it's something I've wanted for a long time. Missions triggered by chance in outdoor zones based on your actions.

What if the Hellion-caused fires in Steel were expanded to all zones with Hellions - defeating any Hellion in the zone could have a small chance (1-2% maybe) of you finding out their plan to burn down a building in the current zone. A timer starts, something short like 5-10mins, before the fire starts so you can go and try to stop it (instanced mission), but if you fail the building catches fire as normal and the instanced mission becomes one to rescue trapped civilians inside and then put out the fires from the outside.

What if Police Station raids and Bank robberies could happen in outdoor zones? Defeating any villain in the zone could give a chance to reveal their faction's plan to carry out a raid/robbery, unlocking the instance for you to go in and stop them, again with a timer. Perhaps the instance is locked to you and your group for the first 5mins, but after that it becomes a free-for-all and any hero can zone in to stop the bad guys (alarms could go off in the building and PPD could spawn outside the door as an indicator it was being robbed/raided - this could happen randomly anyway). For CoV-side perhaps defeating a RIP or Arachnos outdoors would give you the access codes to a bank so you could go rob it - you could do the same with Crey for a warehouse robbery, or Longbow to go in and steal information from one of their bases to sell to Arachnos.

There are tons more things they could do to add more variety to street-hunting and make both heroes and villains feel a bit more pro-active about their character's place in the world, rather than just being reactive or under the orders of a contact.

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5th Column. Nazi Super-Villian "Spear Of Longinus" Worshiping, Rocket Launcher Wielding Mask Breathers. Im sure they will always be involved somehow, even though they seem to get replaced with others quite often.

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I must have missed the in-game Spear of Longinus reference - where was that from? Something pre-I3 before the 5th Column missions were rewritten to accomodate their takeover by The Council? I didn't start playing til I5 sadly.

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Smacktalk for RP purposes .

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I'd go even further and say that should be saved for between friends and preferably not on public channels. If a friend gives me smacktalk then I assume there is humour behind it (same as in RL) and give them the benefit of the doubt (and a hefty dose of smacktalk in return), but if a stranger does it then I just assume they're an inveterate moron looking to wind people up and start arguments for their own amusement, i.e. the kind of person I don't want to mix with.

I always try to think the best of people when working out what they meant, because plain text can't be as nuanced as a real conversation (lacking tone and body language), but the lack of judgement involved in using smacktalk in a public channel viewed by people you don't know all that well just speaks volumes. I sometimes wonder if some people have been around so long they see the public channels as their own private chatroom - that can lead to perceived cliques too, another bad thing for a community that wants to grow, imho.

Honestly too much smacktalk in public is going to put some newbies off the game, and/or off certain parts of the game (whether that's PvE PuGs/TFs, PvP, RP, or whatever). We all know how bad the WoW community looks from the outside through their forums (and from the inside through their global channels, I'm sad to say) - I'd hate to see this game and community being seen in that way by some people, just because of the actions of a few bad apples, spammers, idiots etc.

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Slideshow of our hero base on defiant. We're finishing up on our base redside, once that is done I'll screenshot the lot of it and put it here. (It has the big workshop room with 2 layers in it, which was a LOT of work )

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I like your rec area and the TV area - they look very homely and realistic. I was trying to do something like that in parts of the teleporter room in our villain base (but I think the room is too big to carry off that cosy feeling).

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who's betting that the Coming Storm will attempt a beachhead on the Moon - hence the Moonbase thing - and we may have to team up with the Rikti to get... stuff... done?

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I am. But we know the 5th Column are involved, so I'm just a teensy bit biased - I mean, just imagine beating up fascists IN SPACE! Really, who wouldn't love that?

I think Rikti, Shivans and Nictus being up there is a given (wearing sealed armour/spacesuits, or don't need to breathe, and already tied into storyline).

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And that the space shuttle used to get there will be infested with snakes?

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Alternatively:

"Enough is enough! I have had it with these Rikti-frakking snakes on this Rikti-frakking spaceplane!"
- attributed to Back Alley Brawler during the maiden flight (allegedly)

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have fun but don't intentionally ruin other peoples fun.

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Well said - I think you've summed up my ethos in far less words than I used (I'd even extend that ethos beyond gaming into real life - that's probably where the jello would come into it for most people ).

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GG is right on a lot of things, what scares me is only I can see it.

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I see it too. Admitting to that is what scares me

The short simple answer is to play however you want to, and within the rules of the game as stated in the EULA etc, as long as you're not affecting other players negatively.

Of course "negatively" is open to interpretation and some players will lash out at anything they perceive is at fault for their own in-game problems and shortcomings, but being abusive is by far the biggest example of affecting players negatively that I've seen in MMOs.

I can't be bothered to give a long complex answer, you'll be glad to hear

Honestly I couldn't give a hoot what "playstyle whiners" think at all, as long as: a) they're not in my face about it while I'm playing, b) they're not paying my sub, c) I'm playing within the rules set by the Devs/Publishers (which of course includes not being abusive to other players), and most important of all, d) I'm still having fun. If I stopped having fun, but the majority still were, then I'd know it was time to find a new game to play.