That *was* pretty silly...
Liberty folk were usually pretty polite, but did I get the occasional "Why are you playing THAT?", particularly with my Peacebringers and my Ninja and Zombie Masterminds. It wasn't a mean thing, exactly... more like the people in question just couldn't understand how anyone could possibly enjoy playing something "sooooo terrible" and/or "under-powered" when I could have had a MFing Warshade or a Demon summoner instead.
I also had the occasional power-player try to "helpfully" correct my "sub-standard" builds, even after I explained that I wasn't really playing the game with Ultimate Power in mind. I was a Dirty Casual. I wasn't interested in uber-builds... I think some people found that very hard to understand, too. As long as my toons could do what I wanted them to, I was happy.
I always built to a concept. I never attempted to create an *uberbuild* (tm). I would start with a base, some comic book superhero archetype and build based around that. Even if a power was available, if it didn't fit the build, I wouldn't take it.
For example, I wanted to build a super-speedster. (I know that seems silly in a game where *anyone* could have super speed, but...) Note, this was prior to Street Justice, or Kinetic Melee. So, I picked Super Reflexes as a secondary, but was stuck for a matching primary. I tried Martial Arts, but it just didn't fit. Finally, I chose Dark Melee, because it looked the most like just normal punching.
Then, I maximized speed on everything. And, did NOT take the Dark Melee Noodles of Doom power.
I had a hard time justifying Dark Consumption and Soul Drain, but took them because of a dearth of other options. But, it never felt "right" to me. I also did not like the dark "clouds" that appeared around the use of the Dark Melee powers.
Then, two things happened around the same time that finally made the toon "click" for me...
They added powerset customization and I read the origin of Zoom in the Flash comics. And, it inspired me.
First, I re-colored the power effects. Then, I added a jewel to the toon's belt, colored the same as an Ouroborus crystal and re-wrote the guy's origin to say that he was a scientist working on time travel when there was an accident so that now when he is in contact with even a piece of one of the crystals he falls out-of-phase with this dimension so that he appears to have super speed, and that when in that state, if he touches another person he would actually steal "time" from them to boost his own life-force.
Still no noodles of doom, but, I finally had a concept-worthy explanation for most of the powers, and that toon went from languishing around level 15 to getting played through all the way to 50+. He went from one of my least favorites to one of my favorites, just because I thought up a worthy backstory.