Party_Kake

As an addendum, sometimes you just mess around with villains, add one, and see if they like it. Because sometimes you're wrong and the fans are right.

This character in particular was created completely as a costume experiment. The "blast" effect to me looked different, and I tried turning the negative space of the costume into something else. Rather than it being tights ruined by fighting, I made the overall costume into paint or slime or frosting or something that was sorta slapped on.

And the idea of a character wearing vanilla frosting as armor (since blast is semi-transparent on the back, it looked like it was simply thinner in certain sections) created the persona. The character's bio evolved from that and it became my favorite character.

It wasn't until years later that I had the ability to change the colors of my secondary and dark miasma became vanilla frosting colored (well it still looks odd, but it's supposed to be mutagenic, so...)

Point is that you HAVE to experiment with new ideas. Nothing ever gets done right by doing what someone else already did. If you can't put your own spin on it and twist it around so that it's seen from a new angle, you've failed!

And that goes for villain design too. Good thing there will always be new ways to do villainy.

A quick note to the OP:
reading your original post, I can't comment on your argument - you present zero examples of villains. I have no basis on which to begin analyzing your arguments because you've presented no support for your case.

But yes, villains you can like and villains you can hate all have their place.

Where would we be today if Captain America hadn't punched Adolf Hitler in the face?

You DO realize that at the time, Hitler was popular? This is comparable to a comic book character punching the face of [insert political party here]'s most recognizable figurehead? I suppose the most appropriate analogy is with the recent sacking of a certain football coach who covered up the atrocities of a colleague. Even though those acts are universally detested and reviled there are people defending the guy that protected the monster, and they were rioting in his name.

It's important to realize that to properly create a villain you have to give the villain some really evil characteristics and also SOMETHING that they can use for political clout. For example, "He made the trains run on time." For many people this is so important that it excuses some evils, and they themselves get caught up in a slippery slope of "oh, what's a few more dead babies" kind of thing, where adding atrocities to a list that's already huge doesn't seem to change things, even though it IS a horrific situation.

You see the true best element of a villain is this: To fear a villain you must be convinced that you, in that position, with those powers, with that upbringing, would be that villain. To truly scare someone you must create a link between them and that villain that they are deeply affected by, something that makes them afraid of themselves.

Why is Magneto a good villain? because we know that we would do what he does if we were in his place.

Why is the Joker a good villain? Because he's so close to Batman's story that Batman sees a little of himself in the man.

Why is Lex Luthor a good villain? Because he is capitalism incarnate, a symbol of every single man that gained power and used it just to gain more power. We don't have to visualize ourselves in the man because we KNOW him!

Why is Willy Pete a good villain? Because there are some of us terrified of what we would do if there were no physical restraints to stop us when we're horny and if we were physically denied any kind of release. He represents the true horror of a world in which a character with that kind of power was surrounded by sexual tension and denied any form of satisfaction. Side note: warning! HIGH OCTANE NIGHTMARE FUEL!

For those of you who have read or watched the song of ice and fire, you can name nearly every character and characterize part of them as villainous. And that makes for an EPIC story.

Me? I think Heroes are defined by their villains. You START with the villain and go from there.

Whoa, there's a vorpal judgement power in-game? I have a new goal!

I bolded the names of the badges that I thought of. I can see the difference clearly on my end, though I apologize for the confusion.

I'll go back and highlight them better so that my rational/organized thoughts are more clear.

Also as an addendum, I'm not going to attach effects to the suggested names for day jobs because the stuff people have suggested in this thread is ridiculous and overpowered.

If you simply must have something after a colon before you're willing to read it, then simply add this:
Day job here: Logging out at this location grants you the "Superamazing" day job power, which lasts up to a total of two hours. While this day job power is in effect, you just lost the game.

Athlete seems simple and generic enough, but be careful not to label it "Pro Athlete." There are rules against players gaining unfair advantages on the field, etc. Seeing a juiced up freakshow character in a baseball uniform with the title "Pro Athlete" would turn more than a few heads. (admittedly, this is hilarious)

Sometimes I wonder why my character can't just grab a flyer from the girl outside the university advertising her sorority. Student or Grad Student or Sorority Girl would all fit. And if you're talking about the Midnighters, I think just about everyone who likes them would love to get the day job of Muggle or Squib. I always saw the Midnighters as the college that Hogwarts kids go to to get a real degree. "Defense against the dark arts" pah! I want to see a class on Psychology of Super Villains.

Simple jobs might also lend themselves to some rp opportunities as well. Groundskeeper (for logging in on a stadium ground level) or Janitor for logging in in a broom closet. And maybe if you get the Shoveler and the Public Speaker badges, you can run for office! lol...

in regards to the person requesting that the dj badges have shorter requirements, allow me to say I disagree.

21 days is not a full month of logged out time. Day Job badges aren't meant to be something that you constantly get, nor are they meant to discourage playing your character or to encourage NOT playing your character. But there are plenty of us who have tons of characters that we love, and we like the idea of our little trophy collection getting us cool stuff while they're logged out rather than just sitting there collecting dust. Day Job Badges are for those of us with alt-itis to get something out of the characters we can't play on account of the cruel cruel reality imposing time limits on how much we can physically play in a given day.

I think a powerset named "Chemical Warfare" could be very cool.

Given that the purposes of chemical warfare in the past have been primarily to kill opponents through debilitation, which sounds very appropriate for a dominator, I think you make possibly the strongest case for a powerset that would fit for a dominator and virtually nobody else. Since that might not be desirable, they could rename it to "chemical control" and make it more generic.

the attacks could have varying animations: possible a choice between a gun that launches canisters of gas, or a grenade that when thrown delivers the chemical agents.

It could be very interesting to see a variant gun or grenade belt customizable in the costume editor.

It's not a question of whether I'm willing, hasn't been that way for a while. It's a question of whether I can afford it. And since it falls under the category of research towards my Master's degree... I can justify using financial aid money towards it! >

Are you a sad, desperate hero struggling to find employment in these tough times?
Have you been described as a D-lister, and are eager to prove all those many, many, many critics wrong?

Most importantly, are you willing to work for the sheer satisfaction of a job well done? We're really stressed on funding here, sorry bout that.

The FPI wants YOU!

After the recent (assuredly temporary) disbanding of the Freedom Phalanx, (really, no need to panic, we're sure this is just a temporary thing) Maxine Lady has gathered up a team of well, mostly sad and pathetic loser wannabes, but a few decent heroes too, to continue the good fight, this time to take the Freedom Phalanx International! That's right, it's not just the Freedom Phalanx of America anymore, and we're proud to serve the entire world (even though most of us are from Rhode Island of all places).

To apply, or more importantly to donate, please please donate, please contact a representative on the Exalted (VIP) Server, and have your credit card ready.

((Out of character info follows))
Back in the eighties, DC comics had a storyline in which the Justice League disbanded, after Aquaman was infuriated by people constantly joining and leaving, with nobody else caring to stick around for the long haul. The JLI (Justice League International) was a group of mostly B-listers and C-listers (and I'm being generous) who ended up being the most hilarious group of crime fighters ever. The issues are worth picking up for those of you who want to check it out, but it inspired the hilarious idea of applying the idea to the CoX games.

So I've created a Supergroup on Exalted, and to join, you have to do a few things:

1) Your character has to be a hero, (I know, right) with a TERRIBLE costume. And a backstory that doesn't instill the slightest bit of confidence.

2) You gotta roleplay a little bit of your character every time you log in. I'm not expecting you to go all out, and breaking the 4th wall is just fine, after all everybody's got to have their shtick.

3) Remember how I said your costume has to be TERRIBLE? I hit the random button until I saw something I could give a name to. (some of those things... eesh, it'd keep me up at night) You can do it that way if you want, but hey, I can't force ya.

4) You gotta be approved, see, by someone in charge, so no munchkins.

5) I'm currently debating this, but what would you guys say to a group of characters we lock at low levels? I'd love to have access to those going rogue enhancements forever, and hell, leveling past that point is a pain in the hoozyflatsis anyways, so win win.

If you guys come up with some other hilarious ideas, this is supposed to be one of those "log in every once in a while" characters, so maybe we could have an event every 21 days or so? Just in time for a new day job every time we log in? food for thought. I'll be back online tomorrow after class to meet with anyone interested. It's the exalted server, so surely you haven't filled up those character slots yet. ...Right?

My first MM character was
<- Party Kake

A character I created for the costume alone. I hadn't played a Mastermind yet and was interested to see how well they'd be.

COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT I created a Bots/Dark Miasma one, and at first I was kinda frustrated at the occasional "miss" when using my heal power, but the frustrations I'd experienced with the class were trivial compared to how much I was doing and how fast (omg!) I was leveling. This character's been my favorite for a very long time, only surpassed (shortly) by a tanker who (omigosh) can solo missions meant for a team of seven (it's a prime number! no I won't do 8) who also has a cool backstory.

Can you tell I'm a flagrant Vorthos?

Yeah it's sorta weird that my Mastermind is one of "those" class builds that's so wildly awesome, overpowered, and dare I say it broken, but I love it for all the right reasons and that makes all the difference in the world.

I made a Dark/DP defender with the same look and style and backstory and everything just to try it out. Since the tar pit is a targeted ground aoe, I figured I'd be a conniving little jerk and get teleport foe. Since I love long range teleport anyway it seems to work out great.

In the sewer task force it's just crazy how hard it gets for the enemies to hurt anyone and deal any damage while I'm around. assuming the debuffs and buffs are up that is. Thanks for pointing out that crazy combo, it's turning out to be just as much fun as the other was.

Though I am very tempted to use another respec to put all those going rogue preorder enhancements into empty clips just to wipe the floor with all the bonus damage lol.

Hitting level 22 or so is going to hurt so bad.

What level do you get your third build? I only see two available when I go to the trainers...

Is there a list like this for red side?

When dual pistols first came out I think it was the same time that Defenders got a 'boost' that would help them solo, giving a boost to damage output while solo so you didn't have to feel bad about not finding a group or something.

Well anyways, I made an Empathy/Dual Pistols Defender, and as soon as I had access to Ninja Run, I had my most favoritest character ever. I was jumping around enemies, dodging attacks, taking down thugs with badass looking pistols, I looked amazing, and I was having loads of fun. No trouble to speak of on the soloing front.

At some point enemies started getting really tough - and I don't mean that I was ending fights at low health whereas previously I wasn't. This was me burning all of my inspirations, some of my temporary powers that I had crafted for fun and effect, resting, running away, ending fights where I was empty of endurance and health, hoping that I'd dodge those last few hits so I could get in one more shot, and sometimes making several runs at the guys to finish them, only to be even more frustrated that this was nothing more than a group of 4 minions that just happened to be too close to each other.

So I figured maybe I should revamp my character to be team friendly and just give up on the whole solo idea.

switching to spec 2, I realized very quickly that I was going to have 3, maybe 4 of the gun-related powers and the rest of my character was going to be team based stuff. cool I thought, until being in a group for a while made me realize I was never going to be able to use my guns anymore and the other half of my character was taking over.

It's been a while since I played her, but I figure rather than shelve her or delete her I should ask for advice because there might be a way to get the concept to work. I don't mind respeccing and changing secondary powersets, and she's already gone redside for the buff that might help damage output (though hardly enough).

So I'm asking the defender community, is it possible to create the character I had at levels 3-20? Can that character exist past that level range?

It's not a measure to control your spending habits.
It's an effort to curb the power of an identity thief to drain your account. You can set a spending limit per card, to ensure that you can't have your credit card drained - keep in mind that temporarily overriding this limit is okay, but I (and I imagine NCSoft as well) strongly encourage you to use this to keep your account and your credit cards secure.

Thanks! I was hoping that would be the case.

if I purchase $15 worth of paragon points I get a reward point for the new rewards system.
How many points do I get for purchasing more than $15 at a time? There's no indicator for how many points I'd get, and the bulk options are NOT multiples of $15.

How about something off-kilter, like an arachnos invasion or worse: Longbow attacks!

I had City of Heroes installed to my D drive for various reasons including space concerns.

I recently (like everyone else I assume) had to "upgrade" to the new launcher. It didn't tell me that it was going to install to the C drive, and now I have 7 mb free on my c drive and 277 gb free on my d drive.

How can I fix this? Is it as simple as copying the files over and editing a few registry entries?

Don't mean to be picky but...

Any chance we villains could get one small favor? Can you enable us to have our hands backwards? Now with the ability to have animal heads, I could create a Rakshasa, and that's just too awesome. I suppose the alligator head I'd prefer might show up someday, but I'll take what I can get.

No, I don't play other classes lilke tankers. but they routinely end up one-on-one against minions and flatline because they're resistant to hold powers or maybe I don't have a choice but to fight three at once and their dps is just too much to handle.

It's just crazy that my tanker hits harder, hits more often, and takes less damage, and heals for more than any other character. I know I'm doing something wrong when my other characters can't even approach this.

I have a mastermind for example, you may have heard of her, her name is Party Kake. She has robots and dark miasma (but colored to become vanilla frosting!) and there are a lot of powers that I took because I had no idea what to take. she has leadership, and super speed, but there are powers she's got that I took because I didn't have anything I wanted to choose from, and regularly candles (her robot with rocket launcher and flamethrower) just takes way more damage than expected and not even the amazing heals can stop that. every other bot gets one-shot in tough fights. If she gets targeted at all it's over but I usually avoid that.

For her the game is difficult, but I wouldn't ever run her up against x2 missions because there's no way I could handle that much while solo.

And I avoid doing anything at +1 or higher because there's no way I'd ever be able to beat an elite boss if it was above -1.

And this was my most powerful character before I saw what a tanker could do.