Samuel_Tow

Wait... Are you sure that's 1060x1050? That's almost square. NO monitor has that kind of proportion. Are you seeing black bars on the sides or something, because at this resolution, things WILL be distorted unless parts of the screen aren't displaying.

The first pic you posted was squashed. Very much so. The second pic was exactly right, however, and this is indeed how things should look. I went through the same problem when I realised I had been playing at a squashed resolution for two years. You'll get used to it. Things are better that way

Here are a few important questions - what is your screen? What size is it, what is its aspect ratio? If it's an LCD, what is its native resolution? Let us know these facts and we can pick a selection of resolutions that would fit the aspect ration of your screen and ensure nothing gets squashed or stretched.

For reference, there are four formats that I've seen widely used.

4:3 - this is old tube TVs, old CRT monitors and only a FEW LCD screens. Native resolutions for these are things like 1024x768, 1280x960, 1600x1200 and so forth.

5:4 - this is for most modern-day non-widescreen LCDs. It's "taller" than 4:3, which will cause things to look stretched vertically if you're using a 4:3 resolution. The only resolution I'm aware of that's 5:4 is 1280x1024, but that's for a 17'' screen. Bigger ones will have higher native resoltions of the same ratio.

8:5 (or 16:10) - this is what most common widescreen LCD monitors will support. Correct resolutions include 1280x800, 1440x900, 1920x1200 and so on.

16:9 - this is common for widescreen TVs and some very large or very high-end widescreen LCD monitors. I don't actually know what resolutions are appropriate for these as I haven't seen many, but the one I have here at work is at 1920x1080.

Be aware that using a resolution not appropriate to your screen's aspect ratio will cause things to be distorted and not appear as they should or, in the best case, display black bars either above and below, or to the sides of the screen. As City of Heroes supports all kinds of aspect ratios (including such that I've never seen on any screen ever), you shouldn't have to do with one that isn't appropriate to yours.

[ QUOTE ]
I think this is what you're looking for Sam.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I do believe this is what I was looking for. Now I can finally see if my video card is overheating. Thakns!

*edit*
OK, my card is running at 61-62 degrees Celsius, which seems a bit much to my clueless eye. We're talking about a GeForce 9800 GT. It was around 50 before I launched CoH. How much should it be and how high does it need to go before I have to start worrying?

Also, I'm seeing heavy use of three of the four cores of my processor. I thought City of Heroes wasn't using more than two at a time. How do we explain the third one?

Because it's more interesting than enemies blindly running at you with the sole hope of knocking off a bit more of your hit points. It doesn't have to amount to something to be interesting. Enemies doing something other than standing around, punching their fists doesn't amount to anything. The crates the Council are standing on disappear and they don't use the rifles they were holding, but instead pull out shotguns and submachine guns. It doesn't amount to anything, but it makes them a little more interesting.

And patrols not guarding and ambushes not ambushing are things I LIKE.

I've found that the oldest, most basic keyboards are usually the most lenient about button lock. I have an A4Tech KB-720 keyboard right here and it only starts locking up at 5 buttons and over, and I can't find any self-locking groups of three buttons no matter what I try.

Then again, I haven't tried the new fancy LCD, split, wavy gamer's keyboards, so I don't know if those might be better.

That's a really annoying case of download packet loss. It will make your character stutter and some animations not play or play late. I'm seeing the same thing and I was convinced it was my ISP. Most common causes of this are either faulty hardware (say, deadbeat modem like I used to have) or ISP spazzing out. Mine tends to get overloaded at times, and some of my packets start dropping into the ether.

No idea how you can fix it, though, but if one comes up, I'll try it.

[ QUOTE ]
The game is on Limelight networks and they don't allow ping or traceroute (ICMP) so and 'lost' packets at the game server end are normal.
If i'm having connection trouble I try /neterrorcorrection 1 or 2
first, then I troubleshoot my local network, then i'll try to figure out if there is something going on with my ISP.

[/ QUOTE ]

I hear about this a lot, but what does /neterrorcorrection actually do? I'm curious, because I'm getting stupid-high packet loss, myself, though I suspect it's because of my unreliable ISP.

Here's a quick question about Dimension Shift from Gravity Control. I've looked at its real numbers and I've looked at Red Tomax's City of Data, and everywhere it says that the power makes targets intangible for 30 seconds. Every time I've used it, however (unslotted, all it has is an accuracy enhancement in it), I could swear it doesn't last more than 10 seconds, if that. About enough to launch Power Bolt, Power Push and Propel.

So... What gives? Is something causing my duration to be shorter? Does everyone resist intangible effects? Is my perception of time REALLY screwed-up?

I like the power. It's saved my bacon plenty of times, and I've saved my teams with it. But 30 seconds ought to be enough to do a LOT more fire off a few attacks and then suffer from overwhelming aggro.

Welcome to the boards, Gearspark, and I would like to extend a BIG "Thank you!" for registering to post this. A lot of us here on the forums are old, jaded vets, even if some of us don't want to admit it, and we so very often lack the fresh, unbiassed perspective of a purely new player. Or, at least as new as they come What you posted really is a very interesting, unique look at things that most of us here can pretty much just theorise about.

It's also more than a little troubling what you faced. It is, essentially, my biggest fear for the game. I've been an opponent to all of the fast-track ways to the top on a principle matter - they spoil the game. I quickly realised that this is what some people WANT, and have made it a point not to criticise the veterans who want to skip what they've done already. Their dime, their time. It has always been my concern, however, that this attitude is infecting the new players, those who haven't actually seen what the game has to offer, and presenting them with a vision of the game that is NOT at all appealing to anyone who's interested in playing a game.

City of Heroes isn't a game that's all about grinding and farming and getting to 50 so you can grind and farm level 50 stuff. It can be, sure, if that's what people want, but it doesn't HAVE to be. This needs to be the message new players get when they first log in, that this is a fun, exciting game that you can pick up at any time, log in for an hour, alone or with friends, get something done and log off satisfied. This is what the game IS and what brought many of us here in the first place. It shouldn't look like a Korean grindfest MMO just because that's what people turn it into after five years of continuous play.

With this in mind, I would SERIOUSLY move the Architect buildings out of Atlas Park, Galaxy City and King's Row, as well as out of Mercy Island and Cap Au Diable. This isn't to stop people from using them for whatever they want to use them for, it's to get the madness out of the eyes of all the genuinely new players until they have gotten at least SOME gameplay in and gotten SOME feel for the actual game.

First impressions count, and we can't support the game with just those of us here with 2004 reg dates. We need new players, and we can't afford to jade them right out the door.

[ QUOTE ]
How can you say the graphics are dated? Have you guys not played WoW? That came looks like it belongs on a supernintendo. This game blows that game away graphically. No contest whatsoever.

[/ QUOTE ]

The game IS dated. The engine is over 7 years old, it's fat and inefficient, it's lacking much of today's high-end technology, the models are relatively low-poly, our textures are rather small in many places, and the geometry clutter pales in comparison to many (non-MMO) games that came out in the last couple of years. It pales in comparison to the Unreal 3 engine, as an easiest example, and that engine runs FASTER on my machine.

I'm a fan of City of Heroes, believe me, but I'm not about to turn a blind eye to the game's faults. The question isn't whether the Cryptic Engine (which is what it's called) is dated or not. It is. It was dated back in 2004. The question is whether or not it looks good enough. And it does, for the most part. This is in no small part thanks to BABs and Jay (and minions) and their artistic talent and vision. A game's look is more than just the sum of its engine components. More than anything else, it's down to how good the designers and artists are, and I just happen to believe that ours are some of the best they are. They've taken this fat old engine and pulled off living miracles with it, creating both costume pieces and whole-sale NPCs with more style and punch than games with engines that were written yesterday.

City of Heroes looks amazing. That's not because of the technology the game is built on, but rather because of the people who build for it.

[ QUOTE ]
And now for the now intellectual rewards. The end result character was created during the closed beta that Pain Domination came into being. The character was literally just random choices that I made from costume to Patron Power Pool. I took the Mako Patron Pool. The spirits sharks and the chum spray are just plain cool looking. And the Shark Skin aura's color complemented the character's costume. So a character concept began to gell around that throw-away test character. I just had to recreate that character on the live servers. Now I'm nearing my rewards as the character is just about level 41. That will the down payment of my hard earned reward.

[/ QUOTE ]

As usual, different people play for different things. One thing I learned a long time ago playing RTS games may be relevant. I suck at RTS games, and this is crucial to this story. I suck at RTS games, but I love the building and unit designs, and I can kind of handle the infrastructure. So one of my favourite past times was to create a map without enemies and just build a base on it. In fact, I'd start with a single peon (or one of each race) and build up to full from there, amassing a huge army of the best units because... Well, there was nothing to stop me. I did that with a lot of games, and it was amusing, but always ultimately unsatisfying. Why were the better units better than the weaker ones? Which combination of troops was the best? I wouldn't know.

The truth of the matter is that RTS armies are made to fight, and they are only ever meaningful in battle. Building an army that is never going to see action is as unsatisfying as building a ship in a basement, or building a car without an engine. Or, as I later found out, as building a max-level character in a trainer/editor and never actually taking him into the game he was cheated into. I could literally have the very best of everything, but if all that was going to do was adorn a character who would spend his life in a bottle to be looked at... What was the point?

The true "worth" of rewards is found in using them. An army or a character, even when they are not the absolute best, are still a lot more satisfying when actually used. The point of being strong is to fight better, yet many people grow strong yet STILL avoid fighting. Yes, some rewards are so slow to obtain you really NEED to avoid actually PLAYING the game for a while to get them. This is where the question of practical worth comes into play. A reward may be worth a lot in and of itself, but after factoring in the "cost" associated with obtaining it, it isn't quite as worth it. This becomes really meaningful when you realise what kind of vicious circle the game can become - you choose to not play the game to make getting a reward easier and faster. But when you get this reward, it makes not playing the game to get the next reward over easier and faster still, until... You're no longer playing the game, you're just engaged in the rat race up the chain of rewards.

Personally, my own level of tolerance for grind can be expressed as two linear functions. My patience for boring gameplay is an ever-decreasing function while the tedium from boring gameplay is an ever increasing one. Where the two lines meet is the point where I say "Screw this!" and go play something else. Rewards are only worth the actual entertainment they bring from being used, and the sense of accomplishment from merely HAVING the reward (but not ever using it) is hollow and fleeting. When the grab for the next milestone overshadows the "joyride" of the previous one, this is when things hit rock bottom.

In a perfect world, there would be no grind for rewards. Gameplay itself would be fun, and each milestone would come JUST as the fun joyriding the previous one is starting to wane. In essence, the "work" that goes into earning each new reward wouldn't feel like work, because it would be the actual gameplay, and the rewards would come not as the result of unpleasant effort, but as a natural extension of the game's progress. I've made it a personal mission of mine to take a laid-back attitude and observe the game just like that. Whenever I start feeling that I'm not enjoying what I'm doing over the span of several days and catch myself thinking that getting the next milestone justifies it... I play someone else. Or something else entirely. The satisfaction of attaining a reward isn't enough to pad the days, sometimes weeks until the next highly-desired reward if I'm not enjoying the act of working for them, and if I don't enjoy the game before the reward, experience has shown me that I won't magically start enjoying it after the reward.

It's made me last 5 years with nary a day without at least a couple of hours of game time

[ QUOTE ]
Positional Perception needs to go. There are times when you can literally be beating up a mob's buddy right behind him and it will not react.

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea behind enemies being blind in the back is so that you can hide-sneak-up on enemies with higher perception who would otherwise blow your cover. Assassinating Rikti Drones, for instance, is possible that way, but more importantly, assassinating things OTHER than Rikti Drones when Rikti Drones are present is possible that way.

[ QUOTE ]
Patrols need to be more aggressive. Or rather just BE AGGRESSIVE. Often they will walk right by you unless you're directly in the line of their pathing, even if you're fighting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Patrols just need a higher perception radius and a slower movement speed, restricted to walking. Far too many of them super-speed or fly along so you have to CHASE them or wait around a corner and clothesline them as they come around. Agreed on that one.

[ QUOTE ]
Amubushes not only call out there approach, but don't search for their target once they reach the spot that target was at when the ambush was triggered.

[/ QUOTE ]

Having ambushes move around after arriving may not be a bad idea, but having them targeted on a PLAYER rather than on a LOCATION is NOT a good idea. Certain characters rely on stealth, and if an ambush spawns aggroed on you, it ignores stealth completely, shafting Stalkers very much. Other characters rely on the enemies not attacking them but their pets, so if an ambush spawns aggroed on a Mastermind, this is very, very bad. Doable, but very bad. Still others rely on first strike capability, lacking the survivability to fight enemies on their terms. I would definitely NOT want to see more ambushes targeted at moving players.

[ QUOTE ]
Runners! God, nothing says "I'm not really trying to win this fight" than the Runaway Code.

[/ QUOTE ]

When you eviscerate four out of five people, is it such a surprise when the fifth person decides it's smart to run? No duh he's not trying to win. He's trying to SURVIVE. Others run for a tactical advantage. Mook Hitmen and Longbow Eagles have barely any melee attacks, but they're fast on their feet and sport a few good long-ranged attacks. Their tactic is to back out to range and shoot, which is SMART. Annoying, but smart.

The AI could use some tweaks, but I just don't believe they should be in that direction. By far the biggest flaws in the AI is power use. Ranged vs. melee AI models, NPCs getting stuck cycling the same attack, NPCs getting stuck chasing to attack in melee and completely disregarding their wide array of ranged attacks, NPCs not using certain attacks at all but extremely unlikely situations... That's what needs to be fixed first and foremost, and the fix of that nature that Malta saw made them SIGNIFICANTLY more dangerous.

New gimmicks are interesting, but I'd like to see some old gimmicks reused, as well. The Hydra-style impenetrable forcefield powered by four generators is a good example. An AV rushing away behind a door that has to be destroyed while fending off waves of enemies. Those already exist in the game, they're just not used much.

A multi-form boss is a good idea, too. Either the boss getting serious and gaining more attacks or transforming into something else. Too bad it's not possible to do in the Architect as you can't cause bosses to teleport away or transform.

Something as simple as a boss protected by an immobile forcefield (that he can shoot out of) which needs to be broken is also a cool idea. There's a glowie protected like that in a CoV mission from St. Martial.

Generally, though, bosses that do stuff is the key. A mountain of hit points that you have to "rinse repeat" to death is boring, even if there's a cool story behind it. A boss who fights, then summons an ambush and becomes invincible, then runs away behind a locked door, then transforms, then gains a 30-second team-wipe attack that can not just be interrupted by breaking a specific device, but which leaves him vulnerable for a while when interrupted... It just takes scripting an encounter more so than just making a boss really hard.

Generally speaking, what makes a boss fight truly fun isn't the things that happen AROUND the boss, it's the things the boss DOES.

[ QUOTE ]
Some say we have one of the best MMO Dev teams on the planet. (Devs in orbit or beyond are disqualified.) Having read through some other games' forums, Dev interviews and news articles i think there may be some truth to this.

[/ QUOTE ]

I pretty much have to agree with this. As much as people want to accuse our developers of every crime under the sun (that's fans for you), the feeling that we can ask for something and have it at least looked at is something I have not gotten anywhere else on the 'net with any other game that isn't made by two people. Seriously, seeing these guys post and respond always gives me a sense of security that I'm playing exactly the game that I should be

[ QUOTE ]
Honestly, perl has always given me a headache. I don't mean its hard, I mean it literally gives me headaches: even LISP only abuses parentheses, perl abuses the entire keyboard.

[/ QUOTE ]

I actually have to agree with this completely. My head starts to spin just trying to memorise all the various sigils and special parenthesis for special cases and... Ugh! If it weren't required for my job (apparently Perl is just PERFECT for biologists, who apparently also believe in the divinity of Linux), I wouldn't even touch the thing.

I'm probably going to get laughed at, but I prefer the higher-level languages like Java, even though they're much less efficient than the lower-level ones. I like structure that's simple to follow, rather than the horrors of symbology that I have to out-and-out remember. I HATE remembering stuff (which is odd, given how much of this game's number I know by heart) and would much rather remember the basic logic behind them so that I can recreate things instead of remembering them, predict behaviour and even work out things I never learned before.

Plus, I can always use Eclipse to write Java code. Writing Perl programmes and weeding the bugs out is Inquisition.

*edit*
[ QUOTE ]
Larry Wall puts it very succinctly: "the essence of Perl is really context sensitivity." Contained within that one sentence is a thousand man-years of language debate. Factor in the additional underlying philosophy that the more common the operation, the less characters it should take to represent it (which is also not-so-coincidentally the colloquial definition of dictionary-based compression), and the general notion that structure should be optional whenever possible, and you have a recipe for a language that has the same utility as Darth Maul's dual-bladed light-saber: great if you are an expert, and suicidal if you are not.

[/ QUOTE ]

I just had to say, this quote simply made my day

A couple of very interesting points have been made, which I feel need to be addressed.

Firstly, where before the allure of "super fast levelling" was something that a player had to actually get off his butt and leg it to get to, now it's something that's literally within an arm's reach. It's gone from being relatively easy, to being a given. People are right - you're never going to keep people who want to fast-track to 50 from doing so. Ever. It's not possible, but you CAN keep people who aren't interested, are on the fence or plain don't know any better from being sucked into it by just locking it behind what is essentially only slightly more than token effort. Making the Architect so easily available to every new character (it's within sight of where you zone in for the first time) simply creates a culture where Architect farms are the status quo, not one where they're an option that you could go out of your way and choose.

It's like when you want a beer. If there's one in the cooler on the table, why would you NOT have one? But if you had to get off your couch and walk ALL the way to the kitchen... Eh, that's no longer as enticing.

The other interesting point is that, before, all the powerlevelling was happening in one place and people started in quite another. It wasn't easy for a new player to get from one to the other, but it wasn't exactly hard, either. However, it REQUIRED people to get up and go to where the powerlevelling is. The Architect Entertainment building in Atlas Park bridged the gap, bringing the powerlevelling all the way back to Atlas Park, and putting both new players and jaded veterans in the same place. Now new players are exposed to farms and powerlevelling and the general "gotta' get to the end" attitude that used to be restricted to higher level zones.

It's like being sat on a table of all smokers. Even if you don't cave in and start smoking, yourself, you're still breathing that stuff in and getting used to it.

Generally speaking, Bad is right. High-level players should be sticking to high-level zones, not congregating in the lowest-level zone of them all. What's more, they shouldn't feel like they HAVE to go to a low-level zone if they want to find a team. There used to be a time when hearing "lvl 45 def lft" in Atlas Park was an absurd oddity. And well it should be, but it isn't these days.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm fairly sure having them all with capped defense is a bug, guys.

[/ QUOTE ]

56% defence isn't actually capped on anything lower than +3, as player base to-hit is 75% against even cons, 65% against +1s and I think 58% against +2 enemies. It's not really so much a bug as a really nasty power, a lot like how Nemesis can stack Vengeance if you pop three or four lieutenants in quick succession, making them unhittable and their attacks autohit.

[ QUOTE ]
it's on the nvidia website. type in: Nvidia system monitor and download it. it is a good tool in helping find out what may be wrong with your comp.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting. I went to the nVidia website and it told me to download the latest drivers. I already have the latest drivers, though, so I assume it's a tool in the nVidia control panel that I can't find. Could you explain where that's located?

Sorry to be such an idiot, but I really can't find it

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, so it actually looks like it wouldn't be a bump map that would solve it... Although, the graphical part of it should be just as easy. They'd need to take the nipple-free torso and duplicate it for each top with skin option and overlay the top with skin mask as a new layer over the torso texture and then remove the skin color from the areas on the torso texture covered by the black on the mask. Then delete the layer the top with skin mask is on. It'd require doing this same thing for each Tops with Skin option, but shouldn't really take that long for anyone with any skill with Photoshop. Then it's a matter of changing the code to reference the new torso texture for each piece. Not exactly trivial, but shouldn't take much work.

[/ QUOTE ]

It sounds simple (and it probably is), but the stumbling block is that someone has to go down and actually DO it. As this falls under "reworking old pieces vs making new ones," I'd wager it's VERY low priority. Lower than it should be. As well, though, it seems making a pattern is a lot simpler than making a unique texture, which is why we tend to see so many more patterns than unique textures. Of course, I'm also guessing, so I could easily be wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
I started wondering... What would happen if they just made the nipple-free torso texture greyscale? We already apply skin color to it within the costume creator. Does it need to have a base skin tone for us to apply a skin tone to?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm pretty sure that it already sort of is greyscale, just some sections of it, most notably the darker sections, don't mask as well with other colours. I'm not sure it's specifically grey, but it likely works off the same principle. It's probably some shade of brown or cream, though. Changing the base texture would undoubtedly throw off existing shading, and these things tend to be unreasonably poorly received.

After the anime hate, I'm surprised to see this one go so well. Surprised and pleased.

And I have to agree. Call it what you will, we need more monster heads, preferably ones that don't look like a de-jawed hog. We have a pretty good cat faces, and cats generally having flatter faces, this tends to work, but people have been asking for an eagle head, an Anubis head, a lion head and so on and so forth. In theory, we currently have six heads. In practice, we have two - one relatively canine with a few options for it, and one lizard/dragon. There are plenty of other options we could use.

Monstrous legs are relatively good for what we have, but also severely limited. Limited, in fact, to only two options, three if you count robotic as "monstrous." We have cloven feet and we have hoofs. Even without thinking AT ALL, I can easily suggest canine/feline "paws" for the monstrous feet, even if they have to be oversized or overthick. Hell, half (exaggerating) of the higher animal kingdom have paws of some sort, at least those that don't have hooves, yet we don't have any options available for those. I'd struggle to think of more options off the top of my head, but surely we could have some more weird and wonderful stuff in there, say like the toe-walking aliens in Independence Day.

Aside from Monstrous legs, having monstrous "feet" (read: boot options) on regular legs would be really cool, and this includes robotic in that category. I've actually seen robotic claws on regular feet photoshopped as a suggestion for Jay, but hooves, claws and paws on regular feet would also be welcome, as would be bird talons and perhaps even frog fins. Just for variety's sake.

Aside from that, the only other thing realistically left to ask for is a few more non-human hands (something that makes sense, unlike those tentacle knots in that other game). We have ONE hand option that's pegged as "monstrous," but all that has is sharp fingertips and bulging knuckles over an otherwise normal hand. I'm talking about interesting things like hand-shaped paws (like you see in just about any cartoon) and more cloven hands, though lobster claws is perhaps asking too much. Thumb-less uni-tentacles might be interesting, as well.

Right! More tails. The ones we have are interesting, but I'd like to see them animated like Wings are, only obviously a LOT simpler. Just something to make them feel a little less like sticks glued to our butts. I kept a demonic tail on a character of mine because I thought it looked cute, but it really just looks like I twisted some bailing wire and stuck if there like some school play costume. Failing that, at least better tails would be in order. Lion tails are what comes to mind, and while I can't think of others offhand, I'm sure there are other good suggestions. Short tails are something interesting, as well. I've made good use of the bunny tail, myself, and being short and stubby, it avoids a lot of the problems longer tails which should swing but don't face. I guess asking for pitbull tails wouldn't be too far off the mark.

Ears are a good call, as well. We have a good enough selection of them, but a few more dog ears (anything other than German Shepherd ears) would be nice. Say, long fluffy Afghan ears, tall but floppy Lab ears, just to name a couple. Cat ears do reasonably well, though a pair of oversized fox ears might be nice. Obviously, if I can suggest an Anubis head, I should also suggest a pair of Anubis ears

Something less doable (as in, it ain't gonna' happen) is my desire to see "with skin" options applied not as colour-mask patterns, but rather as genuine overlaid textures with their own shaders and details. This would allow them to be used as Tights with Skin over textures OTHER than basic human skin, which would allow their use over things like scales, bio-organic, stone or even robotic chests. I'd assume a technological solution similar to what's already being used for chest emblems might be the solution. Interestingly, though, I can't think of another "animalistic" skin texture other than scales. It would be fairly simple to suggest fur, but even with that, there really isn't much else I can think of. Still, just being able to apply tights over things that aren't skin would be a MAJOR breakthrough in my eyes.

Finally, as to the taboo that is the term "furry." You have SomethingAwful and the other "mockery" sites on the 'net looking for an easy score to thank for this being cemented in a lot of Americans' minds. Cosplaying perverts and hideously grotesque fetishes are the easiest to make fun of, but the truth is that if you actually spend some time looking into this, it's more an art style than anything else, and is present in a lot more than just fan-made porn comics. Of course, that's all you'll ever find on the 'net, but here's an interesting thought experiment. Enter "draenei" in Google and see what you come up with. Now count how many female Draenei you see vs. how many males, and how many of said females are fan-drawn. It's a factor of the Internet much more so than a factor of any particular community, movement or franchise. Rule 34, as it were.

It's quite possible to use the art style for the good of mankind and for the making of truly kickass characters. Hell, people are already doing that, and have been doing that since the game launched, though some with more success than others. I absolutely agree with calling it something else (I wanted to say Fury Pack ), and Mutant does seem at least semi-appropriate. Beast Pack or Feral Pack would (should?) work just as well. As long as it keeps people from making a mental connection with their false and disgusting mental image, I guarantee the pack would be well received.

That would be interesting, if not for the fact that most people leaving comments on free-account video sites are idiots. I've made it a point to NEVER read user comments on GameTrailers, for instance. Either they're the uninteresting "look cool" or "meh, seen it" kind, or they're so low-brow and unintelligent that them make me shut down my browser.

Not to say how people not playing the game feel isn't important. In fact, a lot of my friends who've left the game hold much the same sentiment - the game is getting old and the graphics are dated. And they're right. I wouldn't hold comments on a trailer in very high regard, though. People have those reactions to EVERYTHING.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If we get a selection of power EFFECTS, I'm going to swap out Sniper Blast for something that doesn't suck, like a big giant fireball or a Zeus Titan beam of energy ala Blazing Bolt.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is such an epicly awesome Idea I don't dare hope we can have this. I have no problem with the current Energy blast snipe, but I love that Zues titan blue beam. (Same one that is on the Assault Bot for MMs right?) That is just such a cool blast beam. I'd swap that into my powers in a second if we could!
I don't know if we will get much more than colorization though. I have a feeling that making it so it would switch animations or effects would just be a huge over haul of the graphics system not to mention the costume editor where we would have to change all these things.
I've been wrong before, but I would be very surprised if we got that level of customization.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not expecting anything more than colour swaps, myself, if for no reason than because that's all I remember BABs ever discussing, but I've heard it called an "overhaul," so one can always dream Animations I seriously doubt would EVER be changeable, just because animation time matters for power strength balance, but I suppose different sprite effects may not be THAT far out of the question. As with anything, though, having to sit down and actually MAKE them all, hence probably doubling all existing effects, is where the real showstopper is.

As far as Sniper Blast goes, I always found it to be underwhelming as it looks like a single bolt from Power Bolt, yet isn't "precise" enough to be a snipe. It's essentially a blast, only smaller, yet deals more damage. Making it the Zeus/Assault Bot blue beam wouldn't make it much bigger, but it would definitely make it feel a lot more like a snipe, hence making it look like it doesn't NEED to be so obviously strong.

Again, Blazing Bolt doesn't look like a big giant fireball that explodes in a mile-high mushroom cloud, yet that doesn't stop it from "feeling" powerful because it's a concentrated piercing point.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How would that Praetorian thing work with people who are named things like... Names? Like me, say.

[/ QUOTE ]
Your name would remain the same. The thing that most people don't remember is that the Praetorian names aren't the opposite of their Primal Earth version. They're simply more villainous versions of the same variety. For some individuals (re: Infernal), it remains the same because it's already sufficiently nefarious. Praetorian variants still have roughly the same powers as their Primal Earth version (slight differences but largely the same), so they're in no way simply opposites.
I've always felt that it's better to say that Praetorian Earth is a world where supers took over and let power corrupt them rather than it being the "evil opposites world".

[/ QUOTE ]

That's actually a pretty good point. I guess Miss Liberty vs. Dominatrix is sort of going the "opposites" path, but for the most part, yes. They do sound like more sinister, more power-hungry versions of themselves, rather than "evil twin brother." Very good point.

[ QUOTE ]
A partial solution to this, in my opinion, is to remove AE buildings from lowbie zones. This eliminate most of the farm spam in broadcast, this will allow the newbies to enter the game in the traditional way, doing official content and getting real teams. They can then learn the game is FUN so when they finally get to a zone with an AE, they won't feel so inclined to farm it right away all the time.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can already picture the combined community shrieking at such a change like a thousand scorned banshees, but yes, I agree with this. Architect in newbie zones is a mistake, in my opinion. For those that must REALLY have access to the Architect as early as level 1, it's an easy trip even CoV-side, and its omnipresence as "the thing to do" would decrease significantly in the eyes of truly new players.

[ QUOTE ]
Pretty much, yeah. Rewards that allow me to make my character better at other content - content which may actually be a challenge. But more than that, the same thing you get when you accomplish anything ina video-game; or a real life sport or hobby or activity not direclty tied to your material well-being: an artificial sense of accomplishment.

[/ QUOTE ]

This kind of sentiment makes me cry on the inside and, in a very real way, has made it absolutely, positively impossible for me to do ANT TF ever unless I wanted to throw an hour or two down the toilet. I never understood this notion of an artificial sense of accomplishment, because, quite frankly, there IS no accomplishment to playing this game, or any game. Or doing pretty much anything, really. Real life aside, all you have at the end of a day of gaming is your butt in your chair and what good times you've had in the process.

Obviously, different people play for different reasons. But for me, personally, the only "reward" worth having is being able to look back on a play session and thing "Wow! That was a lot of fun! I want to do it again!" This could mean I earned a lot of experience, it could mean I knocked off a hard but important objective, but more often than not... It means I left with nothing more than the clothes on my back, only I enjoyed actually DOING what I did. Enjoyed playing the game for the sake of playing the game, as it were.

Please understand that I'm not making a value judgement when I say this, but to me this approach has been quintessential to a larger approach to life that has seen the past couple of years as by far the BEST time in my life... And I neither achieved anything during this time, nor really changed anything practically important. What I did was promise myself that, unless I really really had to (say, to earn money), I would NEVER do anything that I didn't really really want to and that I didn't enjoy doing from beginning to end. I didn't do anything because I felt I "had" to, not even with the promise of it bringing even BETTER things later on. Sure, it may not have made me a better person or let me do great things, but you know what? There has not been a day I have looked back on and thought "Man... Today was a bad day. I wish I'd done things differently." Sometimes I didn't get to achieve ANYTHING at all, but I STILL didn't regret doing what I did, because I had enjoyed it.

To me, reducing the game to a boring grind with only the glimmer of reward at the end, and with a notion that I'm going to "grind" the use of that reward anyway, is terminal. Very much so. Just about anything in this game that I can do on my own, I do on my own, because I'm sick and tired of people spoiling my fun by infecting me with their apathy and their rush to NOT play. Task Forces and Strike Forces I cannot do on my own, which has made me have to run them with the apathetic, unfun masses who only want to speed through them while having as little fun as possible. In other words, I can't and don't do them.

If people have fun by not having fun, more power to them. But it just makes it impossible for me to play anything that requires other people's help.

[ QUOTE ]
Yadernii Ogon -- "Nuclear Fire" (Fire/Rad Controller)
Stal'naya Deva -- "Steel Maiden" (DB/WP Scrapper)
Ledyanoy Kulak -- "Ice Fist" (Ice/EM Tanker)
Ogon Moroza -- "Frostfire" (Fire/Ice Blaster)
Tenevoy Krik -- "Shadow Scream" (Dark/Sonic Defender)
Tenevoy Ogon -- "Shadow Fire" (Fire/Dark Corruptor)

[/ QUOTE ]

Just be careful with Russian words as names, as a lot of people tend to speak the language and inaccuracies tend to show. Your names here are quite good, to the best of my grasp of the Russian language (though Ogon Moroza is more "Frost's Fire," as in fire that belongs to the frost), but I've seen quite a few people use Bablefish to come up with names and even chat binds that don't actually make a lot of sense Even saw a poster for a SG once that had several sentences which had absolutely no meaning in Russian, though I could sort of infer their meaning by translating them into English word-for-word and parsing the English sentence.

Generally, I've found that the best way to find foreign names and make foreign binds is to actually ask someone who speaks the language to make or translate them for you. I'd offer my services, but my command of the Russian language is limited. I can give you Bulgarian names and chat binds, though, and written the two languages look so completely indistinguishable no-one who doesn't speak Russian will ever be the wiser

And I'm pretty confident I'm the only one who speaks Bulgarian here.

*edit*
Forgot to mention, it's often really cool to borrow name names from other languages, provided you can spell it in English. Some slav names, in particular, are really cool if you like to be different. I specifically like Czech names or Gruzinian names, as they have very specific sounds and structure, but Serbian and Macedonian will usually do. It's cute, because these names are usually trivial to spell in their native languages' alphabet, but require lateral thinking in English. I used to have a character called "Yaroslav Brejnich," for instance, but the concept itself wasn't interesting enough, so I scrapped him. I still like the name, though