True. But some of the half-assery grows on you after a while.
For example, Dangerosa and I have a standing joke that every single architect in Paragon City is either barking mad, on serious drugs, or both, because the offices have floors that cannot be in the same building, the same exterior door will lead to more than one interior (including swapping between office, underground lab and warehouse), and there are hallways that seem to exist for no purpose other than to have a water fountain around a corner at the end of them.
It could be irritating, but it’s actually kind of pleasant once you get used to it.
And the awesomeness makes up for a lot. I love the fact that it’s both a fun, four-color superhero game and a home for some serious number-crunching optimization. Understanding how the rules work makes a really big difference in how your character performs, which I enjoy.
When I was a much more active player, my mates and I used to claim that ‘No Sane Architect’ was the firm that designed 99% of the urban structures we did missions in.
Well, I meant more along the lines of interface issues and bad meshes, myself.
Edit: So, do missions all level with you? because I’ve having a devil of a time with Dr. Graves mission in which I have to fend off my fellow villain’s plans (where I’m the “Hero” and the target.) It’s nasty, and I’m having to face down multiple liutentants a level above me.
The interface at least has a fair amount of customization available, between the options menu and keybinding.
No, they remain at the level you take them. Also, at the difficulty contacts (“notoriety contacts” on your minimap, make sure that option is turned on; the last Issue screwed it up somewhat) can adjust the mission’s base level from -1 to +4.
While we’re talking about Dark… there’s a little secret I used to use in PvP that nobody ever figured out.
Dark Servant, or ‘Fluffy’, as he is commonly called, is a wonderful, wonderful pet. He heals, he tentacles, he even holds. But what you might not notice his that he has a -To Hit aura.
Right now I’m trying to find enough wiggle room to level up to 11. Slow going, since the missions I don’t get splattered on are few and far between right now, even with Darkest Night.
You can adjust the difficulty of your missions, as noted above. At the lower levels, the hit on XP is not too bad, and since you start getting debt for defeats at level 10, it may be worth dropping down a level; you’l earn fewer XP but avoiding faceplants will avoid the 50% xp penalty for eliminating debt.
You also get patrol XP (CoX’s equivalent of WoW ‘rested xp’) that gives a 50% bonus to earned XP for time spent offline. This is one thing that encourages altitis - one character builds up patrol XP while you play another.
Yes, it’s tough. We’ve had exactly two characters reach 50, neither of which spent a lot of time teaming, so they might have been facing smaller spawns.
I currently have a level 46, played largely on teams, but I should caveat this achievement by pointing out the character is a Stone/Stone Tanker, and prodigiously tough. It’s worth noting a previous attempt at the same build died somewhere in the 20s from massed tommygun fire against the Family – I believe it was a rare case of “despite high defense, everyone rolled hits on me” bad luck, it happened blindingly fast.
My previous high was 44 on a Broadsword/Shield Scrapper. Parry is awesome. He died against 3 Carnie Master Illusionsists – I think Parry didn’t help against their powers, and he couldn’t kill them rapidly because they phased. It wasn’t my idea to aggro all 3 at once.
I had some success with a Fire/Dark Tanker…rebuilt him 3 times, each iteration lived into the 20s or mid-30s.
Wasn’t me, but one person got a Blaster to 44.
Currently I have some alts in the teens and 20s – we do have a casualty rate that varies but seems comparable to real warfare, and we’ve had teamwipes at times (shudder).
My best character name is one I have on a couple of servers: Scraptacular.
I have a lot of others I like - Thermocline, Attack Vector, Illusion of Security, Bot Smash, Doctor Livingstone, Truck Driving Elvis - but Scraptacular is just so perfect.
Nice ones, Der Trihs. I think my favorite of yours is Deus Ex Machinist, but you have lots of great ones.
I forgot one of my other favorites, which I think I got from an SDMB suggestion in this very thread: Suspended Animator. Ice/Ice dominator in the Urban Legends villain group on protector. He’s Walt Disney, of course.
Nuclear-Winter
Thunder Snow
Terawatt (tried for Gigawatt first and it was taken but decided I liked Terawatt better anyway)
Red Wood (Redwood was taken)
Bleeding-Edge
Treble Clef (a Sonic, of course)
Ice-Pick
Something I have seen is people who have generic costumes while out in the world but then as soon as you are with them in a mission they change to something stolen. Seems dumb to me. The whole point is to be creative and make up something.
Okay, I went into Options, but I’m just not seeing any such option. I’d love it if I could find it, because some people like to stand around Ms. Liberty with their bigass auras (from their powers, not costume auras) active, and I can’t get within a hundred yards of her without my graphics locking up to the point that I can barely even turn my character.
Though speaking of those costume auras, I gave Flaminatrix a fiery aura (though not the one named “Fiery” - I picked a different one and gave it fiery colors). I gave her the full-body job, but it was just … too much. So I switched it to a fists & eyes aura that only activates when she’s in combat.
