The_Hegemon

Sorta-kinda on topic:

I'm a fairly social roleplayer, and I have interacted with a large number of players in a number of groups I've been in. The number of these players that were actually female surprised me when I first started the game - I used to think that women would never bother with video games, and have since been proven wrong. The player gender split in my group has been roughly 50/50 over time, with maybe slightly more males than females. The group has had around 20 or so active people at any given time, with some leaving and others being recruited.

I've noticed a trend* with regard to character gender over the years.

Male players will go all over the place. Some of them make mostly male characters, some make both, and some populate their character stables with females. It's not that unusual for a guy to play only girls, in my experience. Female players seem a bit more rigid. I find that they're more likely to stay within their gender, with one or two token males if they've been playing the game long enough. Obviously, there are exceptions. I'm friends with one woman whose main characters are male (though she does play both genders). But I find it more unusual and unique to meet women who play male characters than vice versa. I find it especially rare to meet females who play only males.

Anyway, the result of this is that while the group as a whole has a fairly even gender split, the characters made by this group don't share the same split. There are way more female characters than male characters.

I am a male player. I play a mix, but trend toward female characters. I've got around 30 characters at current, and the mix is 50/50. But the characters that actually get played, loved, and recognized by others in the group are more often female - I'd say probably 75% of my 50s are female.

* 'Trend' is based entirely on anecdotal evidence, which is not really evidence at all. I could be completely wrong.

Really digging this thread. A lot of these are very good.

I find that SGs in general add little to my enjoyment of the game. I can belong to a group with a tricked-out base with all the teleporters, storage bins, and whatnot and not be aware of this fact for several months. I just don't find myself making use of the perks of SG membership.

So, with that in mind, I tend not to notice or care what SGs other people are in, either. I could team with the same person several times and like hanging out with them, and if you asked me what group they were in, I might not be able to tell you unless it were a multiple choice question. By the same rule, if someone really irritates me, I might put a note on them to warn me about them in the future, but I probably won't even remember their group.

My Fire/Fire Dom. This is a build I'd recommend to anyone who isn't afraid of IOs and likes high risk, high reward characters.

Hard to level at first - I almost dropped the character, but kept at it because I knew how good she would get with IOs at 30. Gets okay past 22. Gets pretty damned good at 32. And it doesn't stop getting better all the way to 50.

Now, with a completed build and hours of experience spent piloting her, this character rides like a ferrari. She's blindingly fast, ridiculously powerful, and totally unforgiving. She's impressive to watch and play, and she makes a very clear difference on a team. I get more amazed reactions playing this character with strangers and friends than any other in my stable, because she can lock down almost everything and frequently deals the most damage on the team.

But she's fragile. One mistake, one bit of bad luck, one accidentally-aggro'd spawn, and she's a smear on the pavement (unless I see it happening and can move just right in the few seconds I have to react). As a consequence, this character makes me feel like my personal skill level makes a huge difference in the outcome of a fight. Sure, I have fully-equipped Brutes, Scrappers, and a Mastermind that can dish out almost as much damage and can take it, too, but I could play those characters in my sleep. On my SS/WP Brute, I could literally jump into a mob, put Footstomp on auto, go get a drink, and still expect to be alive when I got back.

I don't have that luxury on my Fire/Fire Dom. It's fast, furious, and unforgiving - totally scratches my Nitro Junkie itch. And it's a build capable of confronting and overcoming top-tier challenges, like soloing AVs and such. I love it.

Done both versions a couple of times, and the new version is vastly superior to the old version. Still, I don't really have much interest in the encounter.

Hamidon's rewards just aren't enticing enough to get me into the Hive. I'd rather just run an STF or LRSF with my friends. Roughly the same rewards, only I can actually run one myself with the group of folks I regularly play with instead of advertising for participants and later dealing with leechers.

If Hami were instanced and could be beaten with 8-16 players using equal mixes of all the ATs, I'd be all over it. They'd need to up the rewards slightly to make me actually want to join up to a Hami raid as they currently are.

Of course, others may really enjoy the social and tactical aspect of herding 25+ players like that, and that may be enough for them to have fun with it. Not me, though - different strokes, I suppose.

I always begin the IOing process around level 30. This is when I know whether or not I'm going to keep a character. If I like them enough, I'll start accumulating IOs and keep playing. If not, they'll stagnate and won't get much play time until I eventually lose interest and delete to make way for a new character.

Occasionally, I know a character's going to be great before then and will have IOs pre-purchased for them to grow into. Usually, however, 30 is the level where characters become 'keepers' or get discarded.

I have just over the infamy cap and two 'no expense spared' characters - a purpled-out Fire/Fire Dominator with some PvP procs and a purpled-out DM/Ninjitsu Stalker.

I used to think I was rich, and then I read this thread.

I'd say that 'Obscenely Rich' is 'can fully kit out a character with purples and PvP IOs, paying Get It Now prices, without significantly affecting your overall wealth.' Evidently, some people can do that. Not I.

I'm likely to skip anything that features an AV or the words 'Extreme' unless I'm playing a max-level character with a completed IO build. I find that enemy factions made by other players are frequently way, way harder than things I'll fight in the main game, which can lead to an incredibly frustrating play experience. I don't really trust most authors to balance their custom factions well and I prefer to play arcs that I can complete without fine-tuning my normal difficulty settings.

I ignore anything with 'Challenge' or 'Bring a Team' in the description for the same reasons. These arcs are usually frustrating and not very fun. There are exceptions, but these are rare.

I also judge the book by its cover. If I'm not at least mildly interested by the opening text, I'll give it a miss. Similarly, I'm not likely to play an arc or even start the first mission if there are grammatical errors or weird formatting choices in the contact's dialogue. The introduction phase is pretty important.

I use word of mouth to pick arcs, for the most part. A recommendation from a friend makes me want to give an arc a shot, at least. Mostly, I'll just stick to the ones that have been Dev Choice'd or Hall of Fame'd.

The truth is, I tend not to enjoy arcs made by other players. Most that I've attempted have been frustratingly difficult, boring and forgettable, or just plain confusing. There have been a few gems, but in my experience, they're really hard to find.

Oh, except for lowbie-friendly arcs. I'm skeptical of stuff designed for the maximum level, but I find that arcs designed for the lowest levels tend to take balance considerations into account. Maybe it's just me, but I find I have better luck with arcs specifically made for 1-20 characters.

I use AE for story sometimes. My general policy is that I won’t use AE at all unless I’m either farming, or teamed. I won’t use AE for stories while solo unless an arc is specifically recommended to me by a trusted friend.

This is for a couple of reasons, many of which have already been mentioned:

Good arcs are hard to find. The ratings system is not at all helpful. Anything that doesn’t have 5 stars isn’t immediately visible, anything that doesn’t have 5 stars tends not to get played. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that a 5-star rating isn’t necessarily a guarantee of quality. A lot of surprisingly bad arcs have 5-star ratings. Some of the stuff in the 4-star pile is pretty good, but then, a lot of it isn’t. It’s hard to sort the good from the bad. So hard, in fact, that I find it's not really worth my time to try.

I can’t play through many AE arcs on my normal settings. Player-made enemy groups tend to be overpowered. This is a sweeping generality, and there are a few shining exceptions to it, but I find that it’s true more often than not. The system makes it far too easy to crank up the difficulty well past the max you’ll find in a dev-made arc. I find it incredibly frustrating to come across groups and encounters in AE that make it impossible for me to progress without lowering my normal difficulty settings substantially. I especially hate it when I’m actually enjoying the arc and the story, and then have my fun brought to a screeching halt by an Extreme/Extreme Elite Boss who is both a required mission objective and unsoloable with my build, AT, sets, or skill level. This kills otherwise enjoyable arcs for me – instant ragequit.

The rewards system as is encourages farming and punishes playing through a mission normally. Rewards are based on map size, not risk or enemies defeated - ticket caps get larger as map size increases. Thus, the best way to maximize your reward is to farm on an extra large map until you’ve got half the required tickets, then click the glowie to get the other half. If you’re on a small map, the maximum number of tickets you can get is far smaller. This makes zero sense since they changed the difficulty options, since you can now always choose to fight the number of enemies required to hit the largest ticket cap, even on the smallest map. This means that if a story arc has maps that are smaller than extra large (i.e. most story-based arcs), rewards are going to be much smaller, even if you fight the same number of enemies.

Having Ticket Caps scale with map size is silly, because enemy count no longer has a lot to do with map size. Technically, larger maps mean a larger total number of enemies, but that's a bit academic when the largest cap would still be reachable on the smallest map type if you're fighting at x8. I would absolutely love to play through story arcs as they're meant to be played in order to get my tickets. Unfortunately, the rewards system discourages this, and the stories themselves tend not to be so excellent that I'll play them even without the reward carrot.

This last point might have been changed since I last looked – I haven’t bothered to solo with AE for a few issues, now.

Likely my Fire/Fire Dominator. She's the only character in my stable for whom I've pulled out all the stops, where money is no object, etc. She is also one of the only 50s I have that I will consistently return to and play just for the hell of it.

That said, it really depends what the system is like. If she'd get little benefit from it relative to the costs of getting Incarnate levels, I'd find it hard to justify the time spent earning them. I'll know for sure when we learn more.

I'm hoping for Energy Aura for Scrappers, to go with Kinetic Melee. To me, it seems like the most thematic secondary option for KM. I really want to roll a KM/EA Scrapper to run around Praetoria when Going Rogue hits. If it's not there in release, then I'll probably just roll her as a Brute. EA is pretty important for my concept. I know further proliferation hasn't been confirmed (or even mentioned, to my knowledge), but hey. Wishlist.

Also hoping for color-tintable epics, as has already been mentioned.

Fire/Fire Dominator. It's my favorite by a mile. My DM/Ninjitsu Stalker is in second place.

That said, I do like me some variety in playstyles and sets. Other favorites include anything with Kinetics, my Shield Defense scrapper, and basically any Brute combination.

All three are fairly low on my list of fun things to do. It would probably look something like this:

MA > PvP > Badges.

I like MA, but the rewards system incentivizes farming over using it as designed. Ticket caps that vary by map size, specifically, was a really bad idea. It is also my experience that arc authors tend not to playtest their arcs much and the system makes it way too easy to crank a custom group's challenge level up to unplayable highs, so I never solo in AE unless I'm farming. Or if I'm in the mood to play a fully-IO'd level 50 character alone, which is rare.

But out of the three choices, MA is still the one I use most simply because I use it at all.

I used to care about PvP and would do it once in a while, but haven't been bothered since they changed the system. I used to understand it fairly well and could perform at mediocre levels against experienced players. I tended to win against other newbs. Now, I just don't get it any more and haven't yet decided to figure out how the new system works. I've PvPed maybe twice since the system's been in place and haven't really enjoyed it much.

I don't care about Badges and never have, except accolades.

I'd guess that the whole of the City community splits something like this:

Badges > AE > PvP

Most of the players I know have at least one character that is their dedicated badge collector. Even I care about changes to accolades and their requirements. Most people I know will at least try AE, even if they don't become completely hooked on it. I'd guess that PvP caters to a smaller niche of players than the other two communities, but that's just a guess.

The Merit Rewards system is fairly well established at this point. It’s been around for over a year, and aside from a few reward payout adjustments, it has changed little since its release. The intent of the system was to replace the old, pre-I13 system of ‘one completed TF = one Pool C recipe’ with a system that more accurately rewarded players for the time invested in completing a task, dishing out Merit Rewards which the player can choose to spend on a number of different rewards according to his or her personal taste. The number of merits awarded was dependent on the average length of time for the task, with longer tasks yielding greater rewards.

The basic gist of the system is this, for those unaware:

Merits are awarded for Task Forces, Trials, and Story Arcs, and the rewards formula is designed to give players one merit for every 4 minutes spent running a TF, 3.5 minutes running a Trial, and 12 minutes running a story arc. These figures extend to 20, 24, and 8 merits per hour.

You get two merits for helping to defeat a Giant Monster.

You can redeem your merits for almost any of the game’s loot. A basic summary of prices:

Large inspiration: 1 merit.
SO: 8 merits.
Random rare salvage: 20 merits.
Random rare magic salvage: 30 merits.
Random rare tech salvage: 30 merits.
Common IO recipe: 12 merits.
Uncommon Enhancement Recipe: 50-75 merits.
Rare Enhancement Recipe: 125-275 merits.
Random Rare Recipe: 20 merits.

(Those numbers are pulled from the paragonwiki Merit Rewards page.)

Merits are not tradeable.

Discussion questions are these: Is the Reward Merits system working as intended? Is it even functional?

Reward Merits are not a viable alternative to the markets. Whether or not a ‘market alternative’ is the intended purpose of the system is not clear to me, but I think this basic point is beyond dispute.

In theory, you can kit out a character using nothing but Merit Rewards. In practice, the cost of doing so makes it basically impossible. Let me explain.

Merits are basically a measure of time. The whole purpose of the system was to provide rewards for in-game tasks that are proportionate to the time it takes to perform them. Not all Task Forces are created equal – some take significantly more time to complete than others. Merits even out the rewards, so that if you run a TF/SF takes hours and hours to complete on average, the payout will be a lot higher than one that only takes an hour. You get the idea.

So, assume that the time numbers above are correct – that it takes 4 minutes to earn a merit in a TF, 3.5 in a Trial, and 12 in a Story arc. As mentioned before, these extend to 20 merits per hour, 24 merits per hour, and 8 merits per hour respectively. Already we begin to see that it takes a huge amount of time to earn a single enhancement – if you wanted to earn a LotG: +Recharge recipe just using merits, you would have to spend 10 hours running task forces, 8.3 hours running trials, or 25 hours running story arcs to get it. Which is not a huge amount of time to spend earning one of the better enhancements in the game, really – over the course of a character’s journey to 50, you can expect to spend far more than 10 hours playing unless you powerlevel a lot.

But a character build requires more than just one enhancement. Let’s use an example:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Twisted Blaze: Level 50 Magic Blaster
Primary Power Set: Fire Blast
Secondary Power Set: Energy Manipulation
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Flame Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Flares -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 1: Power Thrust -- KinCrsh-Dmg/KB(A), KinCrsh-Acc/KB(34), KinCrsh-Rchg/KB(46), KinCrsh-Rechg/EndRdx(48), KinCrsh-Dmg/EndRdx/KB(48), KinCrsh-Acc/Dmg/KB(50)
Level 2: Fire Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(13), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(27), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36)
Level 4: Energy Punch -- C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(5), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(5), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 6: Fire Ball -- Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(7), Posi-Dmg/Rng(7), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(15), Posi-Dam%(40), RechRdx-I(46)
Level 8: Fire Breath -- Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(9), Posi-Dmg/Rng(9), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17), Posi-Dam%(46), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 10: Bone Smasher -- C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(11), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(11), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(21), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23)
Level 12: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 14: Build Up -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(15), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(48)
Level 16: Aim -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(17)
Level 18: Blaze -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(19), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(29), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 20: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 22: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(23), P'Shift-End%(37)
Level 24: Rain of Fire -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(25), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(25), Posi-Dmg/Rng(43), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43)
Level 26: Combat Jumping -- Krma-ResKB(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(40)
Level 28: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 30: Blazing Bolt -- Mantic-Acc/Dmg(A), Mantic-Dmg/EndRdx(31), Mantic-Dmg/ActRdx/Rchg(31), Mantic-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(31), Mantic-Acc/ActRdx/Rng(45)
Level 32: Inferno -- Erad-Dmg(A), Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(33), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(33), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33)
Level 35: Boost Range -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(36)
Level 38: Total Focus -- C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx(A), C'ngImp-Dmg/Rchg(39), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), C'ngImp-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(39), C'ngImp-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 41: Char -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(42), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(42), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(42), Lock-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(43)
Level 44: Fire Shield -- TtmC'tng-ResDam(A), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx(45), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(45), TtmC'tng-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 47: Bonfire -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 49: Rise of the Phoenix -- RechRdx-I(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Defiance
Level 0: Ninja Run


This is my Fire/EM Blaster’s build (enhancement levels are approximate – I’m cheap and won’t shell out for max-level stuff if the slightly-lower stuff is much less expensive). I designed it to be a Budget Build by my standards – I spent 150-200M on her to obtain all of these enhancements, with the exception of the LotG: +Rech, which I purchased using the 200 merits that I earned playing normally from 1-41. There are no purples or PvP IOs, no expensive uniques, nothing like that – the priciest object on it is the LotG, which I purchased using merits.

Time cost to me was minimal. It wasn’t nonexistent – I had to use the market intelligently, be patient in selling my drops for the best possible price, use any tickets I had well, exercise extreme patience with low-ball bids, that sort of thing. I started leveling the character with this build in mind and spent her career working on it, but the point is that I had all of her enhancements just before I hit level 50 by using the market and using my non-market resources (merits and tickets) wisely.

The merit cost of the recipes needed for this build is 7560 – an absurd sum. Remember the intended time cost of Reward Merits – the cost of this build in Time, assuming the above numbers are correct (4 merits/minute for TFs, 3.5 m/m for Trials, 12 m/m for Story Arcs) are as follows:

504 Hours spent running TFs.
441 Hours spent running Trials.
1512 Hours spent running Story arcs.

Wow. You would have to spend 21 days running back-to-back Task Forces to get all of these recipes just relying on the Reward Merits system. Can’t find a team? You could spend 2 months and 3 days in Ouroboros instead, running story arcs. No sleeping allowed, slacker. Alternatively, I suppose you could hunt down and kill 3780 Giant Monsters…

Remember, only TFs, Trials, Story Arcs, and Giant Monsters count – if you want to PvP, Badge hunt, design/play AE missions, street sweep, run newspaper missions or anything like that, you’re out of luck.

I’d be willing to bet that I haven’t spent 504 hours running TFs in total, across all of my characters on both sides of the game, throughout my entire career playing this game – and I’m a 75 Month veteran.

This also does not take into account the 680 merits worth of rare salvage you’d need to craft all those recipes, but don’t worry. It’s only another 45 hours spent TFing.

If you want to get those Common IOs, you’ll need another 156 merits. Just ten hours to go and the build is done.

(This is a fairly conservative build, too. I used a lot of Uncommon sets like Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact. Imagine how much worse it’d be if I used more Rare sets, which can be up to four times the price of Uncommons!)

Now, obviously, this example has reached the point of being ridiculous. I can’t imagine even the most diehard anti-market players would spend that much time farming just to avoid market PvP. Indeed, while running 504 hours of TFs, you’d probably amass the price tag necessary to buy this build at Wentworths several times over with enemy-kill infamy and drops.

But that’s sort of my point. Reward Merits are simply not an alternative to the markets – not a viable one, at least. I might as well claim that a teaspoon is a viable alternative to a steam shovel.

In practice, you have to either use the markets or forget about planning your character around IO sets at all.

Is this working as intended?

Maybe. If the intended purpose of the Merits system is to provide players with an alternative to the markets, then it’s clearly flawed. But this isn’t necessarily the intended purpose of the system – when I started writing this post, I was convinced that Synapse directly stated this when I13 was in its early days, but I can’t find the post to prove it. It was either mentioned in the now-defunct beta forums, it got lost after the forums were upgraded, or it was never said at all and I imagined it – I’m not perfect, and stranger things have happened.

Perhaps an ‘alternative to the markets’ was never the point of the system at all, then. In that case, the Reward Merits system may be working as intended, as it certainly does a better job at providing fair, proportional rewards for the lengthier tasks in the game than the pre-I13 system. I find that most people just random-roll away their merits, finding little point in saving them for specific purchases, because the cost of a specific purchase can be up to ten times the cost of a random roll. The overall effect of the system on the markets has been positive, in my opinion – you can get random rolls while soloing, now, and you can get multiple rolls for certain long TFs. It means a larger supply of the rare recipes heading to the market, which is, in my opinion, good. But if the intention is to make the purchase of specific IOs so expensive as to be completely unattractive to players so they’ll random-roll with their merits, why give them the choice at all?

While I do obviously have an opinion, I’ll concede that I might not be seeing the whole picture here. I would really like to hear what others think.

Thoughts?

(Apologies if this has gone up in the wrong forum.)

If you really never team, then don't bother. If you do team, but only do so infrequently, you can still do without. You might get some raised eyebrows once in a while, but that's it. If we were at 30+, I was dead, and you were playing a character with access to a rez but hadn't taken it, I'd probably grumble with mild annoyance at the screen... and then I'd combine inspirations to make an Awaken once the fighting was over, and we'd continue on our merry way without a second thought. Unless you're in one of those rare situations where the rez is consistently the difference between survival and teamwipe, this shouldn't really become an issue. And if someone throws a hissyfit over it anyway, that's probably your first hint that this is a team you don't want to be on. City of Heroes isn't such a difficult game that a few 'sub-optimal' power choices makes a team unworkable.

Unless you're heavy into IOs, just make a second build for teams where the rez is desirable.

Personally, I always take my resurrect powers, though I usually don't take them until the mid-to-late 20s. They're great power picks - really useful with just the base slot, meaning that I get two free slots to put in powers that actually do want them and don't need to worry about underslotting them as I plan out my build.

On the general assumption that you have the right and ability to take and skip whatever powers you want... well, yes. That's obviously true. But it's also obviously true that other people can and will make assumptions about your intelligence and skill level based around this. You can't control what people think of your choices for the same reason that they can't control your choices. Whether that bothers you or not will depend on the thickness of your skin.

Interesting topic. I'm a roleplayer, and I play mostly redside because I find the ATs more interesting and fun, and I am generally more interested in playing the antagonist. I did try to run a redside hero once.

I had a redside hero of sorts around CoV's launch. She was an ex-Longbow agent, captured by Arachnos and used as a human test subject for experiments in cybernetics. She wasn't expected to survive, but survive she did, and after her escape, she decided to stay in the Isles and work with Longbow there. She saw it as the front lines of the little war between Longbow and Arachnos, and that's where she wanted to be. She got going with a small group of likeminded people, and for a while, we had a great time with the concept.

But it fell apart for a couple of reasons.

The first was the atmosphere. As has already been mentioned in this thread, the CoV game is written for a very different style of character - you are assumed to be a sort of thuggish mercenary with powers, not a hero. You have to handwave away a whole lot of the missions you're in, and pretend the NPCs are saying things that they're not actually saying. This happens blueside from time to time, too, but it's just way more frequent if you're trying to play a hero on villains' turf. Mentally find-and-replacing the word 'kidnap' with the word 'rescue' for like half the missions on that side of the game got pretty old after a while. Trying to come up with a reason why my Longbow agent kept getting jumped by other Longbow agents was similarly annoying.

The second was the other players. It was fine when I played with others in my group, because we were all playing the same player-altered version of the content. But I am a social player - I like to team with others - and if I wanted to play that character, I had to convince others to play my way or just play the 'official' version. Because the difference between the two versions of what we were doing was so extreme, those conflicted quite a bit.

The third was SG drama. The small group I was in broke down, and after I lost access to those other likeminded characters, my interest in that character faded pretty quickly.

So it didn't quite work for me. I enjoyed it a bit, but not enough to try it again. I broadly agree with the assertions that the redside content doesn't support that sort of character very well. Still, I wouldn't try to convince other players doing this that they're doin it rong, or try to explain to those players that they're not actually having fun. It can work, in my experience... as long as you're willing to discard a lot of the content in favor of your own explanations, and as long as you're willing to put up with the fact that most other players on that side of the game won't subscribe to your altered version of events - at least not right away.

Shield Charge on a Scrapper. I took my BS/Shield Scrapper out last weekend for the heck of it after a few months of inactivity on that character, and I feel like they buffed Shield Charge while I wasn't looking.

Depends what you're after. If you want to use the most expensive stuff - purples and PvP IOs - the infamy cap is not enough by itself. Some purples regularly sell for 200-400M these days, and some PvP IOs sell for more than a billion. If you want a high-performing build that uses some expensive stuff - the kind of build that would have been top-of-the-line before Purples were added to the game - you can achieve it for a whole lot less. I find that I can afford the bulk of my character builds for less than 100M, and it's just a few particular IOs that push that price tag higher.

The difference in performance between a purpled-out, no expense spared character build and a pretty good build with a unique or two is not proportionate to the price, in my experience.

What was optimal pre-purples is still pretty darned good today. Most of my character builds cost around 200-300M, and apart from my rule of 'stay away from the most expensive loot in the game unless this is a character I intend to keep playing again and again after 50,' I don't make many compromises on price. There are some exceptions to this - if I want to use a lot of LotG: +recharge enhancements, for example, I know I can expect to pay a lot even if I avoid purples.

1M might be chump change these days, and prices for IOs might have gone up, but one noteworthy consideration is that prices for rare salvage have gone way down since I14.

Kick, Jumpkick, and Flurry. Jumpkick gets extra failpoints for its ridiculous animation. None of these are very good attacks. I don't expect them to measure up to real damage powers from sets, but I do expect them to be at least as good as boxing.

Group Fly, Group TP. In my opinion, useless, unless you're trying to grief the team you're on.