AmazingMOO

Ligers are the largest known feline. They're huge.



In the real world, Ligers can weigh in at more than 50% more than a lion and are generally about 3m/10ft long.

In game, Ligers and Male Lions are the same size. Can we get a %30-%50 size increase for the Liger, please?

Someone else worked out that 750k Paragon Points would cost about $9400. Somehow I'd be willing to bet that wouldn't really cover the cost of developing a new powerset, but everyone on Victory got a nice chuckle out of the gag.

But then I got to thinking that there's a real opportunity here.

In all seriousness, auction the opportunity to help design a new powerset off for charity. I could not at the moment personally afford $9-10k, but I'm willing to bet that there are a few who could. I can also think of a few great game and Comic-book charities that would benefit immensely from such a donation.

The first two that come to mind are Child's Play and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Set the reserve fairly low, say $5000, and if the charity auction reaches the reserve, Paragon studios takes the cash and donates it to the charity in their name and the bidder's name. Then they work with the bidder to create the new powerset.

Place some restrictions on it, so that it's not ridiculous, like a buff-bot power-set, and works within existing technical limitations. Rule out ahead of time a few things that are completely impossible or that terrify Positron. You can also rule out blatant copyright violations or things that would kill the T for Teen rating. However, keep it fairly open so that if bidder wants something fairly off the wall, but doable, it can still be done.

Specifically rule out 'Spiderman's Wall Crawling', but then allow things like, say, 'I want living armor made of fungus' or 'Let's build a powerset with a cannon that shoots toxic glue at enemies.'

(Hmm... I can see how the latter might be abused.)

Depending on budget that NCSoft and Paragon are willing to kick in to the donation, you can either fly the bidder out to CA for a day to sit down with concept artists and power designers, or work via phone and video conferencing. Then Paragon Studio works on the new powerset and releases it an issue or two later.

Paragon is going to be working on new powersets ANYWAY, so what they're really donating here is not money, but the effort of working with a non-professional game designer.

Thoughts?

Praetoria's great... for VIP soloers.

Yeah, I have to agree that it's time to open it up to Free players. Also, the restriction on leaving until you're 20 needs to go away. It only impedes grouping.

Mender Silos/Nemesis has a number of hints about him that explain how he traveled back in time past the 'carbon law' limit.

1. We know the the 'current' Nemesis is really just a data pattern at this point. All the organics have aged and died. He brags about uploading himself into the Rikti Psychic Network and possessing the entire Rikti Race in Dark Watcher's arc.

2. The 'Carbon Law' limit doesn't seem to impact the flow of information... just the flow of matter. Mender Lazarus can give you information and then send you further back in time than he can go for a mission.

A future Nemesis who's decided that he genuinely wants to fix the crap he messed up can travel back in time 5k years at a time with only the Crystal of Ice and Flame with a fabrication lab (the internals of Oroboros' floating steam-powered time machine) and use that fabrication lab to duplicate itself, any extra components, and a Fake Nemesis body from 'local' materials. He then uploads his data-pattern of consciousness to the new Fake, making it 'Real' and turns off the old body.

Rinse, Repeat, until you've arrived in 20XX AD.

For extra points, once he reaches the 21st century he can make use of any of the several cloning methodologies that exist in-game in order to build an organic body for himself and imprint the data pattern of consciousness on its brain, Revanent Hero style.

tl;dr Nemesis is not subject to the Carbon Law because he doesn't really have a body

Now, there's a lot of hate for Male lions because they seem so lazy, but male lions are important too.

First off, a male lion's job isn't to hunt, but he doesn't get to just lay around either. He has to protect the females while they hunt. He has to run interference with other predators, scavengers, giant stampeding things and the like.

Second, if there are too many male lions in any given pride, they're forced to take off and try to either woo females to make a new pride or kill the male lions in another pride and try to take it over. Assuming that they're successful, the Male lions then instinctively kill any cubs in the pride so that the females will start ovulating and bear new cubs... theirs. So even if a Male lion makes it all the way to the top and is able to breed, he doesn't necessarily get to pass on his genes unless he manages to protect those cubs until they're adults.

Being a male lion is a thankless job, and the only reward they get is great hair.

A buddy and I realized we were doing our Alpha mission at the same time on freshly leveled 50 characters. We decided to team up for the last couple missions and then went to Dark Astoria to start Heather's arc. We started duoing it, but broadcast in a global channel for more. In short order, we got a 3 more, one of whom wasn't quite 50 yet, but still quite able to contribute since we were at +0 still.

Five folks, saving the world from evil and earning exp and incarnate progress for it.

This is what it should have been like from the VERY beginning!

Very nice work on Dark Astoria. The Faultline revamp was pretty awesome, but the DA revamp is now the gem you have to outshine.

Is 'frisbee' trademarked?

Oh yeah. Guess it is. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_disc

It looks like 'Flying Disc' is the preferred term used by people who actually play with them, so I'm willing to bite onto that one.

The 'With Skin' version is not available with Magic Bolero on Beta.

Also, it's got 'Dirty Chest' like some of the other sets.

I'll wait until the fixes hit live before I purchase.

Melee, Money, and Costume Equality

I don't get the excitement that the newer melee sets have generated. People were so excited when Street Justice and Titan Weapons came out that it seemed odd to me.

I much prefer ranged damage and 'blast' attacks to melee attacks. That's a personal preference. I wish there were more ranged sets in game.

Currently, if you count the number of ranged damage sets in game, not including control sets, pet sets, EATs or VEATs, there are 12 distinct powersets. If you count the number of melee damage sets in the game, there are 16 distinct powersets, not counting Katana and Ninja Blade twice. Brutes have access to 15 damage sets whle Tankers and Scrappers both have access to 14. Blasters, Defenders, and Corrupters each have access to 12.

Melee-types have another power set on the way in Staff melee, which will bring the total up to 17 sets. Ranged types are going to have to wait a while, and our power proliferation is petering out. Blasters might get a 'Body Mastery' type secondary, but that about cleans it up for easy ports. Frankly, the Control-types are well overdue for their new Darkness Control set that will bring them up to 9 total control sets.

Poor Masterminds!

Even though I wish the developers would spend more time working on ranged sets, I understand why melee sets tend to get more priority. It's good business. More players want to get up close and personal with their enemies and deliver either Justice or Evil with their own two hands. Fewer players want to hurl Justice or Evil across the room at their enemies. If you're going to make what sells, and NCSoft is CERTAINLY in the business of selling things to players, they have to cater to player WANTS. They get more money by prioritizing melee development.


Now let's talk about costume sets. There's been a lot of argument lately over what's FAIR for the NCSoft developers to deliver in the way of costume sets. Some players get irritated if male characters don't get the same number of options as female characters. Other players get irritated if female characters don't get exact duplicates of the male-oriented costume sets. I personally don't think either of those are good options. I much prefer female characters to have a wide array of attractive, feminine costume options.

But does that make good financial sense?

I can't personally attest to the ratio of female characters to male characters in the game. However, I believe Noble Savage has indicated that Paragon Studios receives something like an order of magnitude more costume piece requests for females than males. I can't immediately find the post mentioning this.

He's also stated that there's been a lot of grief given to developers over this.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=279252

Minor spoilers ahead. You've been warned.


So the events of Faultline in issue 9 happened 5 years ago. Issue 9 was really released in 2007, so I'm willing to give that bit a pass. I'm not asking for consistency in comic book time, certainly, so I'll let a RL five years be an in-game five years.

However, if you view Penny's info, she was 18 at the time of the events during the whole Faultline arc.

I have trouble with this. Her actions and dialogue were more like an exceptionally level-headed 12 year old's. I'd be willing to go as high as 14.

Her actions and dialogue in this arc were more like a very slightly overconfident 16-18 years old. (And why shouldn't she be? She's got signature powers.)

Seeing that she's supposed to be 'In her early twenties' is a bit much of a stretch and seeing that she was 18 in issue 9 is just completely unbelievable.

It's so much of a stretch that it yanked me out of my willing suspension of disbelief.

Something that I've noticed crop up from time to time is that lots of people have no clue how the human body is put together. The character creator, for the most part, keeps people from creating oddly distorted characters. (This is in my opinion, a negative thing, since I think players *SHOULD* be able to create characters that run the gamut of beautiful to deformed.) However, there are some common mistakes that people make when adjusting proportions. For example, I can't count the number of female characters I've seen that have very broad shoulders and very narrow hips.

I am a VERY amateur artist, so I thought that I'd share some of the things I've learned:

It's important to remember that males and females have differently shaped skeletons. If you're trying to create a certain appearance, it helps to keep in mind that what makes a man look one way does not necessarily make a woman look the same.

Take a look at the following Wikipedia pages. (Note: These pages contain images from certain classical artwork pieces that might get the viewer in trouble in very puritan situations.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_shape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_body_shape

You'll note that, in general, men have shoulders that are somewhat broader than their hips. Women generally have hips that are somewhat broader than their shoulders. Musculature, bodyfat ratio, and total weight don't really do a lot to change those proportions.

If you're trying to make a very lean male character, you should consider keeping his shoulders a bit wider than his hips.

If you want to make an exaggeratedly muscular male character, minimize hip size and broaden the shoulders in addition to boosting the physique slider.

If you want to make a very muscular female character, do your best to keep her hips larger than her shoulders, and add muscle solely with the physique slider.

If you're working with a very feminine character, boost her hip size and minimize her shoulder size. You can do a lot to visually indicate femininity this way, even if you have the chest slider minimized. Read about "Hartman Hips" for an example of how some artists use this to indicate femininity and even motherly-ness.

You can also use these ratios to make characters that suggest cross-dressing or transgender appearances. A female model that has shoulders that are wider than her hips is perceived as more masculine.

Just a few thoughts. Share your variations if you have them.

If you're going to give us baseball cards, why not actually have them BE baseball cards?

You already have the resources for hundreds of NPCs, including graphics and bios. Pick one for each of the cards and let players browse through them as they are obtained. Better yet, have a contest and allow players to appear on new ones.

Me: *botch the ritual for the sake of my character wouldn't cut unless nothing else was working*

Me: *Beat up Carnies and Julianne*

Me: 'Wow, these Arachnos are kinda kicking my *** today. I'm having to use a lot more purples. I must be playing at +0 too much.'

Forums: 'WHARLGARGLBLE 20 HOUR DEBUF OMGQUITTINGSOHARDPOSIWONTEATDONUTSANYMORE.'

Me: 'Oh... I did get a bit of a debuff there. Neat!'

I'm mostly happy with the 80's style club-wear in the Spring Fling pack. As posters noted during the beta phase, the geometry on the ladies' boots is... odd... to be kind.

To be unkind, well, they didn't shape the foot correctly. Foot fetishists, leg worshipers, podiatrists, and others are all crying out, 'My god, what is that THING?!'

So, ETA on a geometry fix for das boot?

-- Edit --

ETA Supplied!

A got my vote simply for its retro goodness. I hope there's a 'cute' female version.

When I think of 'Retro Spacesuit', I immediately think of Ulala from Space Channel 5:

http://www.wallpaperpimper.com/wallp...6-1024x768.jpg

The glows are nice, but do not make a costume. I like the boots and gloves from C, but prefer the entirety of A to the 'armored' look of C.

David, thank you for engaging us on this.

I spend a lot of time in the 'with skin' options for tights. What I'd really like to see more of is more options that allow a wider array of creativity and matching for partially there pieces.


- More sheer and partially sheer pieces. Think of things like nylon hosiery... thigh-high stayups, stockings and garters, pantyhose, novelty tights, but also of sheer parts for the rest of the body.

For example:


Note in particular that the figure skater here has not only semi-sheer hosiery, but also that her costume consists of a dress over the top of a body-stocking like-piece that's sheer over parts of her back, shoulders, and arms.

(Also, note the gorgeous cutout over her back. CoH characters have wonderful backs, and back cut-outs are great to see!)


- More options for covering both lower-legs and forearms with gloves and boots and also tights or sheer tights. I think someone else brought this up with the gloves, but it goes doubly for boots.

It's not really possible to get a look like:


We have very few 'shoe' pieces and short boots. Those we do have don't allow for any textures other than those that are baked in. A good example is the wedding heels. You can't mix them with tights. The mesh and garter texture they have doesn't even really match well with the fishnet texture.

I'd love to put a character in, say, ankle boots and then have a pair of tights or hosiery underneath.


- More cutouts, keyholes, and sheer lace

Patterns like


and


are awesome!


- One of the problems that really griefs me is the mismatch in color between 'with skin' patterns and tights patterns. The 'with skin' patterns are usually overlayed with the skin color, so that they appear very slightly sheer. If you use a 'tights' pattern on a facing body part, that is NOT blended with the skin color. It creates noticeable seams and mismatches.

Here's an example:

Note in particular the disparity between the arms and sleeves and the thighs and calves. You can see where the pieces meet because they're different colors, even though they both have the brightest white color applied.

I'd very much like for those seams and mismatches to go away.

The Death of Statesman:

I really enjoyed the arc. It was well done. I was actually quite pissed at the end of the arc.

Carnival of Light:

This pack fulfills a number of my standing costume requests, particularly the boots and masks. It's also pretty nicely free of bugs.

PLEASE DO NOT TIGHTEN THE FLARED BOOT TOPS! I've been wanting these for a while!

Edit: On Gender Disparity:

Yay! More parts for female models! There should be lots more packs like this, focusing exclusively on females.

I know you guys who want costumes for your male characters don't feel the same way, but I am QUITE happy with this pack and would like to see more.

This pack fulfills a number of my standing costume requests! It's also very nicely free of bugs at first glance. I'm really quite pleased with it.

5 Stars! AAA! Would buy again!

I complain a lot. I pay money for the game and whine and kvetch like it's a big deal.

That said, Paragon/NCSoft devs often LISTEN TO and IMPLEMENT player suggestions and requests. It's not always quick, but it does happen. With the i22 beta going into testing, the list of things I've personally requested has gained a few more items. Of course I'm not the only person to request many of these, but sometimes I was among very few.

Some things I've asked for and subsequently gotten:

A Faultline revamp
Fairy Wings (And subsequent adjustments to drop rates on said wings)
Carnival-themed costume pieces
Power coloring
Electric Armor for scrappers
The ability to play a heroic mastermind
A ray weapon set for blasters
Darkness blast for blasters
Solo and single-group content for Incarnates
Quadruped models (Not PC models... YET)

I22 proves yet again that It DOES NOT HURT to tell the developers what you like and what you don't like. It's great to ask for features and fixes, because NCSoft understands where their bread is buttered.

No Flappy option for Phoenix wings? What gives? Can you not use the same rig that's in use for the Celestial wings?

Also, the waterfall backpack/cape thing appears to have some rocks or bones or something jutting out the back of the character's shoulders. Is there any way we can get an option to remove these?

The Gunslinger 02 belt for females-- the ribboned bustle with a train, the lacks an interior color selector.

It can be colored manually by editing a .costume file.

If you fix this, please DO NOT fix it by disabling the interior colors. Rather add the interior color selector. Otherwise, please leave it broken.