You know, there’s one thing that always bugged me about CoH, and it’s still a problem- the hoarding of good superhero names. It’s worse, now, in that accounts are free and you get a thousand or so slots. Even obscure names I used back in the day aren’t available.
I know they’re working on a way to clear up names for future use, but it can’t get here soon enough. This was one way in which Champions was superior, in my opinion- names were per-account instead of per-server, so technically everyone had names like “bob”@“foo”, but only the first part was shown. I wish they could switch over to that, but I realize that would likely be non-trivial.
One one hand, my Homecoming character, “Teardrops”, was just plain “Teardrop” back on live, but I had to tag the S onto it because somebody beat me to it on Everlasting. She is, surprisingly, the only one of my many resurrected alts that had to alter her name.
On the other hand, I was able to get “Captain Apple” for my 71st alt, a name I couldn’t get back on live. He’s a superhero I created “on paper” nearly 30 years ago as a “small-town local hero” for my hometown of Wenatchee, WA, “The Apple Capitol of the World”. He technically has no superpowers, so I gave him Staff Fighting/Willpower, Natural origin, which actually isn’t too far off from my original concept. I did go ahead and give him Flight, though, because the game won’t let me make him ride a bicycle
I haven’t recreated him (since I don’t really care to play a tank), but I was able to get “Regular Joe” as a name for my Natural tank on the live servers years into the game’s life. You’d think someone would have taken that, especially on Virtue.
On the other hand, despite creating Balanced right at launch, I had to stick the “d” on the end, because “Balance” was taken. I’ve never had to resort to numbers or random characters, though. There are lots of fun names still out there, though some take a combination of creativity and downright weirdness to find.
Regular Joe’s flight was from rocket boots he scavenged while helping clean up after someone else’s super-battle. You would expect to find all kinds of leftover bits of super-gear in Paragon City in the wake of the Rikti War, even if no one can figure out how most of it works. I had another character, Heir Power, who had a bunch of heroes in his family and inherited all of their alphatech and magic gear when they died in the war.
I kinda like the names being unique. Marvel Heroes was plagued by the reverse issue – you could have teams composed entirely of the same hero. Or mixes like 5 Hulks and 3 Dr. Stranges.
I agree that it’s frustrating when you want a specific name though.
I haven’t experienced anything malware-related and I downloaded in April.
Recently been dabbling in my Tanks, Brutes and Scrappers, but last night I fired up a couple of Stormies (Storm/Dark Defender and Grav/Storm Controller) and was reminded just how much fun Storm is. In my case, I think it’s because (unlike Mastermind or Controller pets) it’s hard to personify the Storm pseudo-pets (Lightning Storms and Tornadoes and Freezing Rain patches), so it feels more like I am doing the power and not watching a minion do it, but it upticks my action economy (I blast at the same time my Lightning Storm(s) blast and my Tornado whirls and my rain beats down and my previous damage-over-time blast also ticks). It feels like multitasking effortlessly.
You haven’t played enough Night Ward missions, then ;).
And I have a crazy idea-- A character who does no damage, at all, nor teams up with anyone else while they’re doing damage. XP would come exclusively from badges, and from the rare occasional mission that doesn’t require any kills. I’d still allow control powers, as long as they did zero damage. Obviously, such a character couldn’t get very far, but I’m curious to see how far they could get.
Where I’m hesitating is in picking an archetype. I’m thinking maybe Tank, to survive badge-hunting in high-level zones? Or maybe something with Forcefields, because this is a perfect job for Personal Force Field? Or Stalker, for being somewhat tanky but also having Hide, or maybe I should just get that from the pool powers?
Illusion Controllers can get Superior Invisibility at level 8. It’s the closest you can get to being truly undetectable. Depending on how you phrase your self-imposed stricture, you can also use the Deceive power at level 2. It confuses an enemy to attack its friends–and you get no xp from any they defeat.
This would mesh nicely with an idea I had recently: a parody of Captain Obvious called “Captain Oblivious”. Stand on a corner in, say, Steel Canyon totally oblivious to the ambushes that run by.
I don’t think it’s possible to completely avoid having attack powers (after all, you have to have at least one power each from your primary and secondary sets), but I’d never use any of them, and since I wouldn’t be using them, I’d be picking as few of them as I can.
And I don’t think that Deceive would fit the concept, either: If he doesn’t want his teammates killing, then he won’t want his enemies killing, either. But I am actually planning on this character being a Rogue, based on the backstory I’m thinking (a fallen angel who is in the process of un-falling). He’d have to be either Rogue or Vigilante, anyway, to get all of the explorations and day jobs.
Can you click shinies while Superior Invisible/Hidden/Concealed, without giving yourself away? That might enable a few missions.
I wasn’t sure. I thought if it was possible it would be really difficult. If I remember correctly, every character I’ve made starts out with at least one offensive power you have to choose at the beginning, but I haven’t explored every power set so I thought it might still be doable.
