Lord Mayhem

"Most Kitty Pryde wannabes found the new Phasing powerset somewhat difficult to use, with disastrous results."

Zzzzzz

So, any theories as to who (or what) the RAT are? What are The Council called in the German translation? Maybe we can make up an amusing name that fits the acronym: "Repugnant Archvillain Team" perhaps, or "Rampant Army (of) Twits".

Some of my friends and family are what I would call casual gamers - they play videogames maybe a couple of times per week, for 1-2 hours at a time (at most). They all avoid MMOs completely because MMOs generally require too much time commitment to get anywhere - and as my cousin's husband once said to me, while watching me play CoH, "that looks too complicated to be fun for me" (yes, really - we're so immersed in videogame culture we lose sight of how unintuitive even MMOs with good UIs are to the layman).

As for in-game limitations in CoH such as SO-only, no market engagement, no L50s... sure, you can make those decisions for yourself if you just don't care for individual systems or can't help it because you're an altaholic - but to have all of those things imposed on you, well that could only happen if you don't play that much - so I still think the main determinant of whether you're a casual gamer is how many hours you play per week.

On that basis I'm not sure anyone playing an MMO can term themselves a casual gamer, unless they're an edge case who only plays for less than 5 hours a week - and tbh CoH is so casual-friendly it's probably one of the few MMOs where you could do that and still make notable progress over time.

I haven't seen a lot of anime, but I'm happy to +1 the ones that I've seen, enjoyed, and in many cases own:

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 1stGiG/2ndGiG/SSS (+1,000,000)
Ghost in the Shell 1 & 2:Innocence (+1)
Trinity Blood (+1)
Full Metal Alchemist (+1)
Street Fighter: The Animated Movie (+1)
Crying Freeman (+1)
Battle Angel Alita (+1)
Fist of the North Star (+1)
Akira (+1)

I have a few other old-school anime movies from the late 80s and early 90s (like the latter half of my list) on VHS somewhere, but I can't recall the titles - if I can dig them out and find time to watch them again then I may +1 some of them as well.

My Bane Spider, Night Widow, Warshade and Archery/Energy Blaster - all very strong at what they do.

For teaming my Fire/Rad Corruptor feels very strong, and my Illusion/Rad Controller feels ridiculously strong already at just L30 (hasn't been defeated at all yet). My various /WP Brutes/Scrappers hardly ever get defeated, so they feel pretty strong too.

It's not that difficult to make strong characters in this game given the right powersets and enough inf.

Praetoria certainly isn't the evil goatee dimension - it's the evil pornstache dimension, as proven by Marauder (first below). BaBs has the goatee (second below), so maybe Primal Earth is the evil goatee dimension... I mean we know Statesman is a bit of a dictator, and Longbow look/act more like the henchmen of a supervillain than a peacekeeping force...



I thought I was above the shallowness of "goatees = evil", but when I made a claw/invul brute version of my L50 claw/wp scrapper this week I couldn't resist giving him a goatee... and cyborg parts... and a darker colour scheme... yes, I'm living the stereotypical dream - AND I LIKE IT!!

Many of my heroic characters on Defiant already have evil opposites on Union (in most cases the villains came first, and I made the heroic version later), so I'm already playing the alternate universe card - Praetoria will just add a lot of potential (confusion) for more alternate versions of my existing characters.

I've never PL'd in this game (levelling is so fast anyway compared to other MMOs I've never felt the need) - about the closest I get to it is abusing double xp weekends - my friend and I usually try and get a few new characters to L20/Stamina during dxp (3 new duos on the last dxp weekend - including a Tanker on my part, an AT I've always struggled to get past mid-teens playing normally).

Good post though - I can understand where you're coming from. In the original EverQuest I dual-boxed (playing two characters at same time on two separate PCs) - mainly because I found playing just 1 character a bit dull in that game (especially melee classes with just 1-2 click abilities you pressed every 6-10 seconds) - but also because some classes just couldn't solo, so when I had times I couldn't get groups (which was often, as an EU player on a US server) I could at least run a same-level duo on my own (an Ogre Shadowknight and Troll Shaman combo).

Then during my summer holiday in 2000 I decided to use my dual-box set-up to powerlevel a new character using my main character (L55 druid at that time), just from curiosity really. Back then (Kunark-era) it could take 50+ days played time (i.e. 1200+ hours) to hit level 50 on your first character through normal grouping. Using my druid's formidable buffs/heals I PL'd an Iksar Monk (Iksar had a 20% xp penalty, I think monk was 20% xp penalty too at that time) to L50 in 4 days and 8 hours played. I enjoyed it and felt a sense of achievement, but I felt no connection to the Iksar character at all and I played him very little after that (I seem to remember parking him somewhere in Velious later for corpse-dragging for raid wipe recovery - Kael Drakkel I think).

I think you know when you're cheating yourself out of fun and/or a sense of accomplishment. It's the only reason I avoid serious farming and all AE-PLing here - I don't want to make myself get too jaded with this game. I want this MMO to last me as long as possible, because tbh there are very few other MMOs around now or forthcoming that interest me in the slightest.

So I think that while your AE characters served their purpose (short term enjoyment and powerset curiosity), you did the right thing deleting them.

I logged in a few (dozen) characters in the week just to customise their powers (as I can't play atm - I've injured my arm) and had my first blind invite in ages.

I must have spent 15-20mins customising my Dark/Sonic Defender - afterwards, when I exited the tailor screen, there was an invite window up, but no /tells. My character was hidden from global channels and searches (inviter was hidden from search too) and she was already inside Icon for the dayjob so it's not like anyone saw her outside.

That means someone must have come inside Icon (presumably to change their costume/powers), seen my character stood next to a tailor, then decided to fire off a blind invite

I guess some teams are so desperate for Defenders they'll try anything. Or maybe they thought there was a fashion-based Task Force inside Icon

I think a CoH movie is very unlikely, but if a live-action one was going to be made then I think the first movie would have to go with a low-to-middling budget to test the waters, as CoH isn't a well-known franchise with a massive in-built following (like Transformers or the big Marvel/DC heroes). That pretty much rules out masses of CGI’d Rikti (the CGI budget would be taxed enough with handling all the superpowers), so I’d leave them for sequels if the first movie is profitable.

Also as this is the introductory movie that establishes the franchise for the mainstream you'd need to keep the number of characters small - you don’t want to confuse the norms - and too many characters means too little time spent developing each one. And lets face it, studio executives would want the film to focus on Statesman & Recluse, as their faces are on all of the advertising and merchandising for CoH and their stories are central to the lore of the franchise.

So within these limits - i.e. that this can’t be a mega-budget ego-trip based around player-characters - I’d probably do a pared down adaptation of the Web of Arachnos novel.

Intro/pre-credits: Late WW1 trenches - establish Marcus Cole and Stefan Richter as friends. Mustard gas attack, Marcus affected, but Stefan gets gas mask on him and drags him to field hospital. Marcus ill, so Stefan bolsters his spirits with mythical stories he’s heard from other soldiers about the Well of the Furies granting immortality. Ridolfo Uzzano, then a priest, is visiting patients in the hospital - meets Marcus & Stefan - hears their story and tells of a rumour he has heard about the "Path of the Dark" as a route to immortality.

Act 1: Post-WW1 Marcus & Stefan seek and find Well of the Furies and gain their incarnate powers (1930 in lore), while Ridolfo meets Arakhn, joins her in Arachnos and follows the Path of the Dark to become Requiem (1926 in lore). After the Well collapses Stefan washes up ashore in Italy, meets Uzzano/Requiem again and is recruited to Arachnos. Marcus doesn’t know if Stefan survived so he goes back to the US, begins relationship with Monica Richter, and starts to fight crime as Statesman (Monica joining him as Maiden Justice, plus Dark Watcher and 1-2 others from pre-WW2 Freedom Phalanx). Possibly show Brass Monday’s Nemesis attack (1932) as the climax to Act 1 if the budget stretches this far (unlikely).

Act 2: WW2 era, Arachnos scheming has put Mussolini in power, Recluse & Requiem have become valued lieutenants of The Weaver. Requiem's ambition causes him to break away and create the 5th Column for the Axis, then lead the WW2 sneak attack on Independence Port. Meanwhile Recluse has The Weaver assassinated, takes over Arachnos, pushes out Arakhn/Nictus and moves to the Rogue Isles. Requiem fights Statesman and loses (Act 2 climax), but recognising him he tells Marcus that Stefan isn’t dead, before escaping. Statesman goes on to help win WW2 (gratuitous Nazi-bashing and tank-throwing montage to segue into Act 3) and while in Europe looks for Stefan to no avail.

Act 3: It’s the 1950s/60s, Recluse deposes President Marchand and takes over Rogue Isles. Statesman starts to feel less relevant and a bit "out of place/time" with his old fashioned values (especially in the 1960s) - plus he hasn't aged leading to tension in his relationship with Monica who has. When he hears about this "Lord Recluse" supervillain who other heroes cannot stop he decides to go sort things out, just to prove he is still relevant/needed - emotional impact as Marcus realises his “friend” Stefan is Recluse and the movie ends with a Statesman vs Recluse showdown.

It’s a pared down version of the lore, but the movie needs that - you can’t fit everything into 2 hours. Then if that film makes money the second and/or third movies could tackle the modern era Freedom Phalanx in the Rikti War with Hero 1, or the war on Drugs/Superadine (plus Superadine link to alternate realities leading to Dr Webb’s expedition and the Reichsman invasion as climax), or the Praetorians, or anything else that would prove too expensive and too big for the debut/origin movie.

I was unable to sleep last night so at 3am BST I logged in and I wanted to create a new character, but I have 12 slots filled on Defiant (+2 empty slots) and 20 slots filled on Union (+4 empty slots), so I couldn't even enter the character creator on both English servers. Just logged in now (12.30pm BST) and still the same situation. Not overly impressed tbh.

I'd like to see more dev-created content - the long-ago-promised moon zone, the rumoured underwater zone (vs Coralax and their Cthulhu-like sleeping alien goddess Merulina), the Rikti Homeworld, plus some more hazard zone revamps (especially Boomtown and DA) - and definitely more map tilesets and layouts, because I'm rather bored of getting 1/3rd of the way into every mission and being able to predict the entire layout of the other 2/3rds of the map. Oh and lots of new powersets. Plus some more invention sets (Targeted AE needs more sets, and purple sets for Fear/Heal/Defence/Resist & most debuffs/buffs)

In fact if the future of CoH/V after Going Rogue was just new story content (new Dev-created zones/tilesets/contacts/missions/TFs/enemies), new and proliferated powersets, more invention sets, more costume sets/pieces, and minor QoL tweaks/changes then I'd be blissfully happy with that.

I'm sure it's more interesting for the Devs to add loads of new major systems, expanding the core client in ways they wouldn't have dreamed a few years ago, but a lot of us are here for the gameplay and I think it's time the Devs focused on providing more storyline content for that for the next year or two (and yes, Going Rogue should be a very good start), as it seems to have been rather neglected of late.

I'm male - I have only played 3 female characters in MMOs in the last ten years.

In 1999 in EverQuest I made my first female MMO character, prompted by my guildmates, around half of whom were male and half female, but most of them played female characters exclusively. Back then, with characters starting on different continents, it wasn't always easy to meet up with friends at low level, so generally you did pick-up groups to L20ish in newbie dungeons then you could survive the long dangerous journey to meet up with friends/guildmates.

Maybe I was asking for trouble - I made a female gnome rogue with blonde pigtails named "Lollypop" (ironically a few years later I met a petite blonde girl in real life named Lolly - woah!). In 20 levels playing that character I experienced so much sexual harassment in pick-up groups, from unwarranted cybering to stalking, that the following happened:

1) I actually felt ashamed to be male;
2) I felt so much sympathy for female players with female avatars;
3) I swore to myself I would never play a female character ever again;
4) I deleted poor little Lollypop;
5) I took a lot of showers and almost resorted to mindbleach
6) I created a male troll shaman instead - ironically he was never sexually harassed, despite his rather fetching moob cleavage and lovely swamp-green complexion.

For the following nine years I played mainly male characters, the few exceptions being robots or gender-less monsters of various kinds.

Then CoH/V gave us VEATs. I love lore and a male Night Widow just felt wrong, so I risked it and now I have a L50 female Night Widow - and it doesn't feel weird to play her - mainly because CoH in 2009 isn't a testosterone-soaked pit of neolithic sexism like EverQuest was in 1999. So I also made a female Dark/Sonic Defender because the concept I had in mind (a banshee) also called for a female character, and she is L20 now.

In future I'll still mostly play male characters - most of my concepts are male and I associate with my characters more closely when they're male, because I'm male - but at least when I have a concept that demands a female avatar I won't be too freaked out to play it

Here's my experiences of being ebil.

I've hit the 2 billion inf cap (from around 100m starting capital) on 4 characters now (3 redside, 1 blueside), with 2 more characters over halfway there, mainly from marketeering schemes (though I have spent a lot of it on my VEAT + Blaster builds). I don't feel that ebil or that rich, tbh. Inf just seems stupidly easy to make nowadays - inf is almost meaningless to me except for the few occasions when my ambitions have outpaced my rate of earning, but luckily I can be patient - that is what separates me from the players I make inf from.

I've only been seriously marketeering since late Feb 2009. Before that I didn't feel ebil when I did arbitrage (mainly buying L50 Acc/Dam/Rchg/EndRdx/Heal recipes and vendoring them). I didn't feel ebil because I was just removing surplus recipes from the BM/WW that people were selling below vendor value (and probably giving them badge credit in return) - I wasn't creating a scarcity because you can always buy those recipes from an invention table. That was before I realised my 5m per night total net profits across 3 characters for 30mins "work" was rubbish compared to what I could be making from other schemes

I don't feel ebil when I'm buying set recipes and salvage cheaply, making up the IO and selling it on for a decent cleared profit. Most of my inf earnings for the last 7 months have come from this (usually at least 5m per-slot every 1-2 nights, preferably 10m, 20+m rarely). Best overnight ever was 190.5m cleared profit from all 20 slots on 4 April 2009 (though I've made more in one night from selling looted purples, but that's not too often as I don't farm).

On average it takes me 3-4 weeks to make 1 billion inf cleared profit per character doing this on redside and a bit longer blueside. I find redside more profitable as scarcity makes for eager customers and higher prices, and somehow wider margins (I guess because the redside market is slower to react to trends as it has much less traffic than blueside).

I don't feel ebil doing this because I'm offering a service to extremely lazy people with too much inf who can't be bothered to make their own IOs I use the daily price differentials between the EU and US peak-times (and balance volume and margin so I can shift 5 IOs per night in each of 4 niches per character I'm marketeering with - the key for me is to stay diversified and not get too greedy) - some people aren't that patient, so I can't feel guilty profiting off them while providing them with what they want now (that I stocked up on earlier). I list below historic prices to ensure that my stock shifts - heck, I'm a saint!

Yet I always bid patiently for bargains in advance when buying IOs to use for my own characters - anyone could do that - so I can't feel guilty for those that don't.

The only time I felt slightly ebil was when I tried flipping salvage, just from curiosity. I didn't find the returns were worth my time investment, but I did feel guilty because I was moving historic prices upwards by a large margin (and thus trending the equilibrium price upwards with it). By comparison my buy/create/sell schemes tend to move IO prices downwards over time (as I list lower than equilibrium to shift stock) without too much effect on recipe prices (I don't get too greedy and tend to use mid-to-high traffic niches), so it almost feels like a public service

One case of flipping made me feel especially guilty. Before the I14 patch I bought 18-20 slots worth of rare high level salvage on each of several characters (3-4, I forget - I didn't keep records for that as it was always going to be a one-off bonanza) at 60-100k per piece in a stack of 10 over about a week, then flipped it all back for 1m+ per piece post-patch. That felt pretty ebil, but I got over it - it's just a game after all - and high prices aren't always bad - you can sell at those prices as well as buy at them - and 1m is a popular equilibrium point for most rare salvages at high level (prices return to that level often).

But on the whole, no I don't feel ebil and I don't think other marketeers are ebil except perhaps the flippers who so dominate a niche that they force it into unnatural scarcity to boost prices (for their eventual flip), because they do noticeably inconvenience players. I don't think farmers are ebil either - they supply the market more than they draw from it, with a lot of stock it wouldn't otherwise have (especially redside, and especially purples when they're not in the AE), which more than balances their inflationary effects imho. I do think gold/inf sellers are evil because of their disruptive advertising, the mudflation they cause, and because they don't use the game for its intended purpose (having fun). But the really evil are still the rude players, the argumentative braggarts, the gankers and the griefers, of which this game has relatively few in my experience.

Myth: Lord Recluse is named after the recluse spider.
Truth: He's just very shy and likes to avoid public attention.

Myth: Strong heroes/villains must always be ugly (Hulk, Juggernaut, Thing, Soloman Grundy, etc.)
Truth: It is possible to be both strong AND pretty!

Myth: Miss Liberty carries the sword of Hero 1 in that sheath on her belt.
Truth: It's not a sword, but it does take batteries...

Myth: Blue Steel is the most powerful hero in the CoH world.
Truth: He just has better PR than Statesman - the whole playerbase, basically.

Myth: Ghost Widow is a ghost.
Truth: She's just a goth with a stealth IO slotted in Sprint.

Myth: Not everything is a Nemesis plot.
Truth: You can't handle the truth!