Patteroast

A couple other travel tips:

If you zone quickly, it might be better to go into Brickstown from the south end of Indy Port and take the train from there.

In Steel, Skyway, and Cap Au Diable you can take one train/ferry to the other one in the zone without needing to load the zone again. (Also Mercy for the Black Helicopters and Port Oakes for the ferries, but those aren't as useful.)

If you're up by Portal Corps in Peregrine, the fastest way to Talos isn't south to the ferry, but directly east into the edge of the zone. Although there's been a bug since I19 that drops you outside the zone wall at the far north of Talos instead of at the ferry to Peregrine...

Not to sound like the old man grumbling about 'kids these days...', but traveling is so ridiculously easier nowadays that I don't see any reason to complain. I miss when knowing the ways the zones connected was useful knowledge that could get you to your mission faster. I still tend to jump to the gates and travel the old fashioned way when I'm not in a hurry. Moving through the city remains one of my favorite things about this game, even after all this time.

ETA: I'm also weird in that I really liked traveling around during Shadow Shard TFs... I knew the zones pretty well and usually got to the missions first with super jump and gravity geysers, and would be in charge of teleporting people (except in the Storm Palace, where recall friend was out of range so another teleporter and I had to set up a teleport relay...) Getting back to Paragon is easy... jump off to your doom and you teleport back to the zone entrance.

I really like my Earth/Sonic Controller, Lord Richter, especially how the sets go together for an earthquake theme (sonic waves, seismic waves... same idea.) Stacking the primary's -def with the secondary's -res is quite nice.

I really want to make a list of weird combos I have, but just about any combination is assuredly going to have someone reply two posts later saying something like, "Oh yeah, I have one of those, it's great."

Example that people have already mentioned: I have an Invuln/Ice Tanker, a Mind/Sonic Controller, Dual Pistols/Fire Blaster... no Earth/TA or Grav/TA Controller, but an Illusion/TA Controller (they're 50.)

But I'll give it a shot. Forgive me if these are actually some strange FOTM builds that I just am not aware of.

Stone/Willpower/Pyre Brute
Gravity/Storm/Ice Controller
Fire/Traps Corruptor (although Traps doesn't seem to be as rare anymore for Corrs.)
Mind/Force Field Controller (Also, he's a mime.)
Martial Arts/Invuln Scrapper
Katana/Fire Scrapper
Electric/Dark Corruptor (They're a robot... the Dark Miasma is smoke...)
Assault Rifle/Thermal Corruptor
Super Strength/Dark Armor Brute (My first Brute!)
War Mace/Super Reflexes Brute
Archery/Ice Blaster (named t3h Ub3rbl4st3r, an attempt to make the worst blaster I could think of... but then it ended up being fun.)
Spines/Electric Stalker (named Electric Pufferfish...)
Mind/Earth Dominator
Sonic/Dark Defender (named Elfis Lives, a recently undead singer who is also an elf)
Dual Blades/Dark Scrapper (named Atomic Lizard-Donkey)
Fire/Sonic Corruptor
Radiation/Ice Blaster
Claws/Energy Brute
Sonic/Storm Corruptor
Electric/Empathy Controller
Trick Arrow/Sonic Defender
Mercs/Force Field Mastermind
Dual Blades/Stone Brute

I think I went a little past the 'at least 30-ish' rule... how many of those aren't as weird as I think?

I tend to play my Force Field/Psychic Blast Defender as a Blaster who happens to spend a decent amount of time shielding people and managing my toggles.

I think the one that annoys me most is trying to choose colors for the aura on the ground around Triage Beacon... what you choose never seems to be what you get (I would like red! No, that's bright orange...), and not being able to even see it in the editor doesn't help.

I have a Gravity/Energy Dom that I think works rather well. I always thought that Energy was the closest Gravity has to a thematic counterpart (in the sense of Fire/Fire, Ice/Ice, Plants/Thorns, etc.)

My first character was a Claws/Invuln Scrapper, and I still have fun with them, even though I haven't bothered to really IO him out. I find in general that when I'm going at a reasonable pace, Dull Pain is recharged each time my health gets really low. Combined with not being stingy on Unstoppable when I need it, taking out problem enemies first, and using my soft controls (alternating Focus and Shockwave knockdown/back loop on nasty bosses ftw!), I find /Invuln to be quite nice for Scrappers.

Well, to be honest, I find taking out nasty enemies and using soft/hard controls to be a good idea on absolutely any character. So really, it doesn't seem that different to me.

I find when I'm just out looking to look, following streets gives me a good idea.

I guess after all this time, the parts that there aren't any real reason to see are the ones that interest me the most. The industrial plants and complex walkways of Mercy, the waterfront and drydocks of Port Oakes, following the Orange Pipes of Doom across Cap Au Diable, the actually residential-looking neighborhood and the Pit and Villa Requin in Sharkhead, the road tunnels among multiple levels of industry and the narrow alleyway full of body bags in St. Martial, all the hidden odds and ends of the Primeva temple complex in Nerva, and of course the tunnels and The Fab in Grandville...

There's lots of places to see! Maybe not so much in the same sense as what a real tourist would want to see, but to realize the detail the devs put into making the odd disjointed bunch of islands actually seem like it could sustain the weird criminal empire/functioning country that is the Rogue Isles.

I'm sure the NPC versions of the signature characters that you encounter as enemies and allies in various missions had bios at some point... strange that they would be blank now.

I don't think I should even touch the comment that everyone who has trick arrow or is a Stalker is a gimped concept character... geez. Will not argue as to petless Masterminds, though.

I can't guarantee the accuracy of this, since I wasn't around yet, but what I've heard is that in CoH beta there was originally only one starting zone, Atlas Park. Galaxy City was added in later, although still before launch. At that time, Kings Row's trainer was Back Alley Brawler and there was a gate to Perez Park at the spot you're talking about. Then they added in Galaxy, gave it the gate to Perez, moved BaBs there, and created Blue Steel for Kings.

If any old-timers can confirm, correct, or deny, that would be nice. This is the understanding I've had about it for a good while.

I like the thought of putting an extra Smuggler's boat somewhere in south Indy Port.

As for other zones, I think the easiest way to give the Rogue Isles better travel options would be to move some of the Black Helicopter locations to somewhere other than ten feet from the friggin' ferry. In those locations, they're useless. Simply move the one in St. Martial to a rooftop of one of the casinos, and the one in Nerva up by Primeva, and the Black Helicopter line is immeasurably more useful. Maybe also move the one in Grandville to the Fab? With them all linked, Mercy and Cap Au already are pretty good.

My SG drama has mostly been caused by cases of one prominent leader of a SG deciding that they hate another prominent leader, and everything going to hell. It's happened on about three separate occasions for me...

A friend of mine got me into the game. We originally made a tiny little SG with just us, but eventually we befriended some others in game and joined their SG. There were two main leaders, a girl and a guy. There had been other leaders, but they had stopped playing. My friend and I quickly moved up the ranks. Also around this time, an Australian couple joined our SG. We were all friends, and played a lot, and it was happy.

Then the original leaders came back. They started changing things without asking any of the new people, and taking advantage of the massive amount of prestige that we new members had built up. We were not pleased. So the six of us and some others all took our characters and made a new SG! Yay! We had to start over, but we all played tons, and soon everything was happy again.

Then, the girl and guy who invited me and my friend to the first SG had a falling out. My friend had become close friends with the girl, and there was a general feeling that the guy had been a jerk, so the five of us left, minus the jerk, left and made another new SG!

Somewhere around this time, we had all joined the Australian couple's redside villain group. So there were some good times again, for a while. We branched out over four or five servers, having SGs for our characters on each. Over time, the girl from the first SG and the Australian girl spent less time playing with us. Then the Australian guy and my friend had a fight over several things, and the result was that my friend was kicked from the villain group and the Australian guy took all his characters out of the hero SG. Not long after that he stopped playing. And then a while later, my friend drifted away from the game too!

End result: I'm in a crapload of SGs where most of the leaders don't play anymore. Yay?

ETA: Oh, my own worst point in all this... right... well, during the second big split up, I did some childish edits to the SG description, MOTD, and ranks, inserting random subtle typos, and then changing the SG colors to slightly off shades. Yeah, I'm such a rebel.

I just put this together because a freakish statistics nut. This is where I stand on all my characters for day jobs, as of right now:

28 Day Jobs earned: 0 characters (All on both sides at 50)
27 Day Jobs earned: 1 character
26 Day Jobs earned: 2 characters
23 Day Jobs earned: 1 character

22 Day Jobs earned: 14 characters (All on either side at 50)
20 Day Jobs earned: 9 characters (All available 25-34 [Heroes] or 30-34 [Villains])
19 Day Jobs earned: 19 characters (All available 15-24 [Heroes] or 25-29 [Villains])
18 Day Jobs earned: 21 characters (All available 10-14 [Heroes] or 15-24 [Villains])
17 Day Jobs earned: 20 characters (All available below 10 [Heroes] or below 15 [Villains])
16 Day Jobs earned: 1 character

6 Day Jobs earned: 4 characters (All available in Praetoria)
5 Day Jobs earned: 15 characters
4 Day Jobs earned: 4 characters
1 Day Job earned : 2 characters
0 Day Jobs earned: 1 character

If I stopped leveling or side-switching on all my characters, I would be done on 86 characters, and have from one to six left on the remaining 28 (including 17 characters which will be done next month.) But since I don't plan on doing that, I'll need to periodically get to work again on characters who get access to more (especially Praetorians coming to Primal Earth...)

Looking through the power descriptions in the manual is like opening a time capsule. Integration and Temp Invulnerability as clicks, Resilience as a toggle, not being able to move with Unyielding Stance and Rooted, non-stacking Stone Armors, Adrenalin Boost applying a self-stun, all the powers in Katana being clones of Broad Sword, Singularity still having the Fold Space icon...

'Updating' is definitely an understatement.

I think the biggest thing that makes the starting content annoying is doing the same missions, no matter how well-made they are, over and over and over and over...

After running around all over the place doing hunts and random generic door missions ten times in Paragon, it gets old.

After needing to run the far end of Mercy to beat up Snakes and Contaminated ten times in the Rogue Isles, it gets old.

After trudging through the Underground through a hundred ghouls to find a few PPD who immediately go rampaging into extra groups as soon as you rescue them... ten times of that in Praetoria, and it gets old.

I think Praetoria has some awesome writing that sets the bar higher than it's ever been in this game, and for the most part I love Praetoria, but I'm really getting sick of Praetor White's arc. More variety in the starting arcs would be nice in Praetoria as well as the Rogue Isles, and as for Paragon's starting arcs, they have the 'variety', they just need to make them good.

I use Skype when I'm playing with friends. Used to use Teamspeak with my supergroup a few years ago.

And when I don't want to talk, I don't have to.

Seems fine how it is.

You could reflect on the fact that at launch, Tankers only had four primaries (Fire, Ice, Invuln, and Stone). We can all be glad that those sad days are behind us.

Bugs of this sort seem to happen occasionally. I've never had it happen on a TF, but I once had a mission from a contact change from St. Martial to Recluse's Victory. I kept it just for the novelty of it until I switched sides on that character and my missions got cleared.

The only suggestion for expanding the anniversary badges that I've heard that I liked is making them account-wide. Purchasing them, I would not like. Attaching them to some new random activity I would not like. Wouldn't be too upset if they took 5th Columnist and attached it to something else, especially since the whole point of it being special was because the 5th Column weren't in-game anywhere else when it came out... and now they are again.

The bane of my existence as a badge hunter is the fact that the character who became my first level fifty and main badger was made about six hours after Celebrant stopped awarding. Argh.

I've got two characters that use the Dark sets to represent smoke. My Dark Melee/Fiery Aura Brute named Where There's Smoke, and my Electrical Blast/Dark Miasma Corruptor named A Blown Fuse.

Hmm. Even considering expanded areas and shortened times, the theoretical day-jobs-while-logged-in system mostly just makes me feel how I imagine people who vehemently dislike the logged-out system feel. I find a time and location based reward while logged out to be unobtrusive and efficient, but while logged in to be annoying and constrictive. I was thinking specifically of badges like the PvP zone, Hollows, and Shadow Shard ones, and as long as they're zone-wide they're not so bad (although I personally don't like PvP, so those ones annoy me... but that's my choice, and I feel that's not necessarily bad design.) For example, a logged-in day job at the market would take me much, much longer to get, even if it took drastically less time, because I always do my business at the markets quickly and leave.

I know it's immensely unlikely they'll ever change the system, but at the very least, thinking about it in that way does seem helpful to seeing the other side in this discussion.

As for shortening the day job requirements down to two weeks, I would fully support that. I've always felt that would be a better amount of time since they were first announced.

ETA: Oh, and I do wish they would fix the broken market day jobs in Praetoria, and perhaps add a few of the others that would make sense there, so below-twenty characters could get more work on them done.

Personally, I've found that the names I've used that I'm the most proud of tend to be evocative sounding made-up or foreign-language names. (Ex: Verlustoff, Fryhtu, Yetniy)

I am probably not the best example of creativity, though. I have 114 characters, and a large number of them have silly or nonsense names... (Ex: Explomadoza, Dr. Fejwol, Really Angry Man, Elfis Lives, Atomic Lizard-Donkey)

I've only run into a few situations where I've felt the need to do some odd things to a name I wanted to get it... two times when I deleted a character and later wanted to remake them, but the name was taken... Project 83 became Project-83 and I felt kind of bad, and then Bose Condensate became Bose Condensation. That one was helped by the fact that whenever I mentioned him to friends, they would sing 'A Little Less Condensation'. I'm still a little miffed that someone took that rather obscure physics term, especially since that one happened on Pinnacle. And there has been one time where I thought of a name and decided it was perfect enough that I needed to take it even with a period in the name: Canadian.Shield. I'm a big geology nerd, so sue me.

On the other hand, just the other day on Virtue I decided to make an ex-boxer with friction manipulation powers and got me first name choice, Ropeburn.

In any case, even though I don't think that the pool of good, available names will ever run out, I can definitely see the frustration of not getting the name you want, and I totally support doing a purge of names without globals.

The whole idea of Day Jobs is to have a small sort of offline character advancement. That was what they are designed to be. Patrol XP and some badges for logging off in certain places. We clearly differ on our feelings towards getting something while logged off... it seems there is no changing each others' minds that some people find it to be an abhorrent rebuke of what badging is supposed to be while some people find it to be a nifty bonus that enriches their game experience. I don't think there's going to be any agreement.

As for getting day jobs while logged in... it's funny, I would absolutely hate day jobs if they worked that way. If I'm logged in, I want to play. Also, you could only get one day job at a time with that system. I would probably write off the whole thing as not worth the effort, and just pretend those badges didn't exist.

A few years ago, some friends and I got to talking about the whole 'pimp' reasoning behind there not being female pets, and my friend Kathleen pointed out that she was free to have male minions that she objectified.

Thus was born a Thugs mastermind whose minions worked for her at her male stripclub.