Primal

You can "Play to Win" and still be nice about it, in my opinion. It's not a whole lot different than real-life competitive sports, there are good winners and poor winners. Naturally, if you have the misfortune to run across a poor winner you'll forget about all the good ones, and start to think that everyone in the sport is a trash-talking jerk. Now don't get me wrong, if you're in a competition don't expect anyone to hold back, they're not there to teach you, but there's never a reason to be a jerk.

On forums I have no respect or use for people who freak out about simple questions. Even if the question has been answered millions of times and the answer's obvious anyway, it's as simple as not responding if you have some sort of problem with the asking.

Yeah, "onus" is forever going to be a tough one to insert without drawing some snickers, methinks. Stinks, but what can you do.

Ahem. I see and can dig what the OP is talking about, but I believe CoH is VERY newbie-friendly in this regard, compared to some other games. Even though I am a vet, I have no ties to any particular SG or established group and very few (if any) in-game friends I can call on, yet I can create new characters and solo or PuG as I desire. I talk on some Global channels but I've never gotten a team from them at all, or even seen any of them in-game for that matter. (Well okay once I saw Zombie Man in the RWZ, but he was using Broadcast to fill up a team anyway, heh.) For team-centric content it's just a matter of making yourself available, personally I don't care much about T/SFs but I certainly see the Broadcasts looking for others to join and get the tells as well. Sure it can be more of an issue for smaller-pop servers and playing at odd times, but honestly if you're in that situation I'm not sure ANY community no matter how open could help you, hopefully the benefits outweigh the problems.

I've only moved one character, about a year ago. I have an entire family of characters, a mother, father, two daughters and a son, and such an RP-y thing seemed better suited to Virtue than the old server, Justice. (Plus Justice never seems active, maybe I have a rep there, or I play too early in the evening and it really is the Aussie server, whatever the reason, it's too quiet.) Four of the family were low-level or otherwise a good candidate for re-rollling anyway, but one of the daughters, a 24 Ice/Devices, was both well-chosen AND in posession of a pretty nice array of inf and badges, so I bought a transfer for her. 24's probably low-level to some, but to me that's several months worth, what with my terminal alt-ADD. I knew the name would be available, I have a tendency to pick funky names.

I have a few other characters I'd like to transfer to Virtue, but I'd have to buy more slots to accomodate them, an additional expense I can't particularly justify. Especially considering the inevitable wave of new characters that'll come with GR.

You know, Westley, when I see your avatar, I'm torn. On the one hand, it needs some sound to really appreciate that line. On the other, imagine an entire page of yelling avatars.

Has anyone mentioned Claws yet? Yeah, I know, they're a bit too Wolverine-ish for the aristocratic vampire Sam's envisioning, just throwing all the ideas out there. My vampire was a Claws/Dark Scrapper, using Fly along with the cloak for the mist form. As much as I loved C:SotN, my main influences were BloodRayne and Vampire The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Claws were not perfect, as the ones we have are all blaringly obviously NOT natural talons, but it didn't bother me much as the character wasn't really a fully-embraced vampire, long story, so I wrote it off as her being simply familiar with that fighting style although she lacked actual claws. However, when the Science pack allowed size changes, one of her "costumes" was a Gangrel-ish 8-foot Huge wolf-beast thing, and the claws on that model DID look more like talons, due to the clipping.

Sadly, as you'll probably note from all the past-tense usage, the character is no more. I don't like Dark Armor at all, sorry, not gonna slam it as I know it can be very good, but it doesn't work for me. I rolled up another Claws Scrapper, and now my sorta-vampire languishes as a name holder. (Never fear, I seriously doubt it's one you'd want.) I already have pretty much all the combinations mentioned so far tied up in other characters, or they're for Villains and she's a goodie, so she's waiting to see if GR brings any appropriate sets. If somebody digs /Dark though, Claws/Dark's not bad.

Hmm, perhaps the Flat Blade style claws? Not bad, but the Claws stance is what hurts the "elegant aristocrat" image.

I'm stealing some numbers here and adding my own.

Badly-accented English, "Queen's English", or fluent foreign with subtitles, it doesn't bother me what games or movies use for dialogue. I always think of it as being an effect of one of those amazing pieces of tech you see in the slightly softer variety of sci-fi: a magical translator. Have you read Timeline, by Michael Crichton? Don't know if it's mentioned in the movie version. Because the students are being shuttled back to 1357, and the language they'll be hearing will be unintelligible, they get fitted with these types of things, and are able to understand. Because we're dealing on the softer side of the scale, most people accept it.

Alternatively, to reference Crichton again, how about Eaters of the Dead/The 13th Warrior. In the movie it's dealt with in a single scene rather than gradually, but the idea is that because our narrator has been traveling with these Vikings for months, he's picked up the language, and by extension so have we. Of course you have to realize the narrator is from Baghdad, so we as English-speaking viewers wouldn't actually understand HIM either, but it's just sort of implied we're following along like he is.

Personally, if I have a choice, I prefer subtitles. That way the native language's sound, inflection, and all-important tone of voice comes across, and I can understand every word too.

Believe me, I can dig that not everyone is as willing to handwave as I am, and I can certainly empathize with someone objecting to what they see as mockery of their language by a foreigner exaggerating it. People can come off as real jerks, yet they think they're fitting in. I'm from southern GA, and when I hear someone drawling out every syllable and sounding like a parody, it irritates me. Even when they're going for parody, it's old and done and hasn't been funny in a long time.

The trailer for CoV with all the signature characters did a really good job on voices, in my opinion. Someone as big and as intimidating as Recluse you'd expect to have a deep voice as filtered through a mask, for example. Those were all voiced by various devs, as I understood it.

I'm pretty much by default, but I do add and change a few things. First thing I do is move Autorun from R to P, because that "feature" so close at hand inevitably leads to me pulling Ye Olde Leeroye. I also assign costumes 1234 to GHJK. I change the mouselook to flight sim style view.

I use no keybinds at all. I've set some up in the past, and never remembered to use them, so stopped bothering. Tray 1 is Offense, Tray 2 Defense, Tray 3 Miscellaneous and seldom-use powers. Slot 6 in Tray 1 is always a travel power, Slot 6 in Tray 2 is the prerequisite to the travel power, unless I've chosen to skip that (due to the Vet reward), in which case it could be anything.

My Katana/SR's layout is very typical. The inspiration tray is usually the same too, except all those blank spaces would be full of blues, and I'd use up that one out-of-place red to make space for another. (Character was on a team recently that provided everything except end recovery.)

Yeah, I guess I'm gonna be boring as well. Primal is my main Hero, third character I ever created. I liked the sound of it as a name, and it fit the character. I've run with various names here over the years, but chose that one as my Global, and now that it's quite difficult to change names here I've just left it.

I use other names on other forums, and there is a theme to them all, but to reveal that would reveal my account name here, obviously not a good idea.

Huh, interesting results. I may not be as nice a guy as I thought.

You Scored as Chaotic Neutral

A Chaotic Neutral person is someone who is self-motivated to the extreme. Thier actions may sometimes confuse others, due to their lack of moral affiliation. They have little respect for laws, and avoid both the temptation of evil and a feeling of duty to do good. These people can go along with either side of an argument- as long as they benefit from the result!

Chaotic Neutral 70%
Neutral Good 60%
True Neutral 60%
Lawful Neutral 55%
Lawful Good 55%
Lawful Evil 55%
Chaotic Good 50%
Neutral Evil 45%
Chaotic Evil 45%

We'll end up numb from playing video games
and we'll get sick of having sex.
And we'll get fat from eating candy;
as we drink ourselves to death.

We'll stay up late
mixing mix tapes,
photoshopping pictures of Golden Girl;
as we ********** to these pixelated images
of strangers ******* themselves.

We are very busy people,
We are very busy people.

There's crusty socks
and stacks of pizza boxes
leading trails straight to the bed.
And when we're done sleeping
we'll stay busy dreaming of the things
we don't have yet.

Well there's a long long list of chores and **** to do
before we play, oh let's just piss away the day.
Crank call the cops down at the station,
just for friendly conversation,
requesting songs they never play;
Let's hear the one that goes like:

We are very busy people,
We are very busy people;
But we've always got time for out-of-context threads that make you go "buh?".

So come on over and knock on our door,
it's open what you waiting for?
We may be sprawled out on the floor,
but we still make lovely company.
Pull up a chair, I'll pour some tea,
We'll shoot the ****, 'bout everything,
till you get sick of politics,
and flip on the TV screen,
we stare at the TV screen.

That Donnie Darko DVD has been repeating for a week,
and we know every single word.
I got an iPod like a pirate ship,
I'll sail the sea
with fifty thousand songs I never heard-
And all the best of them go
La la la la la la...
la la la la la la...

I am a big fan of Chaotic Good, for myself AND my characters. Of course in-game there's not much call to rebel or go around the law, and for that matter not much in RL currently either, but in theory. Even some of my red-side characters are good-intentioned, but they're a little extreme in their methods. I do have other characters from all alignments however. Some examples:

- Primal, MA/Regen Scrapper, Chaotic Good. By and large a hero who wants to do good, but she's just a little nutty too, and has no problem ignoring rules or the law.

- Retaliator, Dark/Kin Corruptor, True Neutral. She can only harm those who intend to harm her or her friends/teammates.

- Masrefah, Mind/Fire Dom, Chaotic Evil. She truly enjoys death and suffering, and especially loves turning friends on each other, then burning them all.

- As'aqa, Elec/Nin Stalker, Neutral Evil. Vicious and cruel, but only towards those she's been contracted to kill. She doesn't work for good ends though. (I have several of these assassin-type characters.)

- Buttered Cat, Gravity/Ice Dom, Chaotic Neutral. Nutty as a fruitcake, barely keeps from flying around like a loon. Has no earthly idea why those funny peppermint people are after her all the time, but they do make her giggle when they go flying. Doesn't actively think of herself as bad or good.

D & D style here, not necessarily Loyalist/Anarchist/Resistance, although they can go together. How would your characters fit into the "standard" alignments? If you have too many to list, what's the general trend, or where do your favorite/most played fall?

Do you yourself have an alignment?

The alignments, if you don't know: