Arcanaville

I've done the race both ways: get there without dying, and get there as fast as possible period using only what is (was) available to a level 2 character (which basically meant Sprint, and not much else).

Remind me again when I either replied to one of your posts, mentioned you in one of my posts, referred to you in one of my posts, quoted you in one of my posts, or attributed anything to you in one of my posts. I'm a little fuzzy on when I ever specifically mentioned you or your opinion at all. I was replying to Jophiel and something she specifically said.

Now, as to what you actually said:

It must be harder than you think, because its a trend I'm finding difficult to find, and it gets harder to find the more I look.

What we have to look at are the costumes in the Steampunk pack, and the Animal pack before that, and Mutant pack before that, and the Martial Arts pack before that, and the Superscience pack before that, and the Magic pack before that. And when I take them in total, I don't see a trend I find disturbing. Perhaps I'm looking at too many things to see the trend, and I need to focus only on the things that exhibit the trend to see it.

I would tend to disagree, particularly when its also perception being debuffed. For me, Flash Arrow is a tohit debuff in teams, and a -perception power while solo, for the most part. -perception is only situationally useful in teams, and the situations are specialized. But -perception is much more useful solo, and it does mechanically add a significant increase in options. Particularly at lower levels I found it made divide and conquer much easier. Aggro isn't as simple as its being described here. Flash arrow can significantly delay critters detecting and choosing to shoot at you. It can make pulling and single target isolation temporarily easier. Because the power's design has to be viewed across the entire leveling spectrum, the devs are extremely unlikely to dismiss either the autohitting nature of the power or the perception debuff out of hand and I don't see an obvious way to convince them to do so.

Most of the other suggestions I'm still working through, because I still don't see where the "balance" part is coming from yet: I'm having to reverse engineer the thought behind why things are being set the way they are. One rule I think you're attempting to follow which may cause problems for you is that there actually is no rule that says every variant of a power must be similar or identical to all other variants. That is *sometimes* true and sometimes deliberately false. The devs tend to balance powersets as sets first, and tweak the individual powers second.

For example, using an out of domain example, there is no rule that says SR passives must be stronger, weaker, or identical in strength to Invuln passives. Those powers serve different purposes in those sets. Applied to defender changes, Flash Arrow has the strength it has for a number of overlapping reasons: its mechanics, its place in the set, its effects combined with the other powers, its intent relative to the powerset's overall intent, constraints placed on it by other balance concerns, etc. Saying its safe for Flash Arrow to be in the neighborhood of, say, Fearsome stare, is dangerous. Fearsome stare only provides an example of a power with arguably stronger effects in certain areas, which only means such a power isn't totally unacceptable to the devs. But the devs may decide its unacceptable for Trick Arrow.

My question is still: do all these changes bring the primaries in closer balance with each other, or do they just buff individual powers that appear individually lacking. The latter is something the devs are cautious about, because without powerset constraints it promotes power creep.

There are so many changes in here it may take days to untangle them all. Part of the problem is that they are essentially all buffs. This means even if I think powerset X lacks relative to powerset Y, that prior knowledge is inapplicable here because both X *and* Y are being altered, and I'm having to compare altered sets to altered sets and then to the rest of the game.

To actually do this correctly in the first place would have almost certainly required a much higher polygon count. Breasts only look round because of eye-tricking shading, not because they actually are round. Look at the Witch tops: all that cleavage comes from shading, not from actual geometry. Those tops don't alter the actual shape of the model at all. I think female breasts currently have less polygon count than a twenty-sided die.

But to actually get a top to drape, wrap, or otherwise constrain the body with any sort of accuracy requires a much more sophisticated modeling and rendering engine than I think our client has.

Barbed wire is a lot more revealing.

I will concede that the corsets are intended to be sexy even if they can't really be called skimpy on their own because they are intended to be placed over another actual top. Not just intended: required to be placed over another top is more correct. To see the corset and only the corset as your top you have to specifically go out of your way to use a top that fits completely under it. At that point, its not the corset that is skimpy.

If you want to make the argument that the artists consider "sexy" to be a significant component of attractiveness for the female costumes, the corsets are in play. But if you're attempting to make the argument that the costume editor is full of skimpy outfits, the corsets shouldn't count any more than bandoliers.

I should warn you you're more likely to get Freezing Rain and Sleet nerfed. One of the biggest and not well understood reasons why FR and Sleet are stronger than DA is almost certainly a bug.

I notice, though, that one thing you don't seem to give credit for on things like Trick Arrow powers is the fact that some of them are autohitting. For example, -18.75% tohit and -perception on an autohitting and non-alerting Flash Arrow seems to have a very low probability of happening.

Well, this is well-traveled ground, but having a bunch of sliders to cover the wide variety of possible shapes of breast might be overkill for a game where we don't actually have fingers. And the game doesn't do complex sophisticated draping algorithms that allow clothes to properly interact with bodies. Clothes are either painted on or rigidly encasing us (or sometimes not encasing us: some of the female bottoms still have that funny intersection at the hips) because that's the current limitation of the game models. To make it all work with geometric sliders that currently do not much more than linear scaling (if anything) severely limits the options available for how this can currently work.

It wouldn't be difficult in theory to, say, have Poser-like graphics and animation, but to be able to do that in real time would probably then place the game outside the limits of most people to run. The difficult part isn't figuring out a way to do it, these days its figuring out a way to pretend to do it within the computational budget you have on the client. More detailed and realistic busts have the same requirements as more detailed and realistic everything else: a higher-precision model, more complex rigging, more complex dimensional sliders. All that complexity is difficult to keep under control, particularly for a customer base not composed of three dimensional modelers. Its one of the problems that afflicts that other superhero costume creator.

I see. So you say that things I said were not skimpy are things you think are skimpy, but asking which ones is getting nit-picky.

You know what: there's the ignore button somewhere. Find it and use it.

Hmm, if my memory is correct - its been a while - my preferred path that I settled on back then was Atlas to train, train to Skyway, Skyway to the Talos gate, Talos gate to the PI ferry, get sniped in PI, exit PI hospital, swim north, swim north east, head southeast to the west portal building, and down into the courtyard (the race usually ended in portal court).

I don't remember a path that involved getting killed in Steel, although there were multiple ways to get there.

Please be more specific: which things that I said did not look like "strippers and fancy underwear" appear that way to you. I was pretty careful to specifically write off the entire "tops with skin" and "bottoms with skin" as being possibly within that category, even though there are obvious exceptions as I noted. But what did I say was not skimpy did you think was obviously so.

I have no idea why I love those 7-11 spam musubis. I sneak them into theaters in lieu of hotdogs.

Hmm, I just look straight up and in the general direction of California.

I'm not. If you're doing that, its by choice.


As to what I want from the next incarnate slots, I'd like less actual click powers and more character differentiators. There's four different Judgment powers, but the bottom line is it gives everyone a gigantic AoE. Its far more homogenizing than differentiating in a capabilities-sense: its more cosmetically diffrerentiating.

There are lots of things you could play around with. For example, the Vitae slot could muck with archetype-specific attribute caps. Suppose that tankers had the ability to increase their res max or their health max by small amounts with different Vitae powers. But blasters would have options like damage cap increase. You'd need to come up with a carefully designed matrix of stuff for people to mess with and carefully control the buffs. Maybe tankers get health max and res max, brutes get res max and damage max, and blasters get damage max and movement caps, just for example purposes. How you make enough options to fill at least four trees of Vitae powers per archetype I'm not sure yet.

But I DO NOT want something like this to allow for any buff for any character. I don't want blasters buffing health and res max and turning into pocket tankers. That's the exact *opposite* of what I want to see in future slots. We have five slots where everyone can take the same things and homogenize capability. I'd like to see at least *some* future slots have abilities that *amplify* the differences between different archetypes, powersets, and powers rather than mute them. Sometimes you can get away with giving everyone the same thing, and sometimes not. I'm not sure if there's enough cleverness to allow everyone to slot the same Vitae powers that buff archetype attribute limits and have it not be homogenizing. For example, you could make a Vitae power buff resmax by 3 percentage points. So that would push blasters to 78 and tankers to 93. Clearly, that's a more desirable and powerful buff for the tanker. But health cap is trickier and Damage cap is trickier both because they are more linear benefit effects.

Oh, I know you can play around and the pencil skirt is the closest thing we have to a dress bottom for the most part. I liked Sam's outfit when I first saw it; I actually mocked up one myself when I first got the chance to play around with Steampunk: I have one actually sitting in my costume folder waiting for a character concept to need it:



Its still pretty tricky to get just what you're thinking of, though. For example, that outfit above I was thinking of making with a somewhat shallower v neck, and the steampunk jacket doesn't *quite* line up the way I want with the top: you can see a tiny bit of square-off before it slips under the jacket. Just to break up the very deep and wide neck line I added a bolo as the closest thing to a pendant just to draw the eyes slightly upward.

I think that comes close to a sexy dress that isn't slutty. You could almost fight crime in it if you didn't need to run, jog, kick, jump, climb, block, reach up, bend over, or twist. I suppose I could make her a mind controller. Then again, given what I make my martial arts scrapper jump kick dressed in, I could just as easily make her an axe tanker.

I distinctly saw some naked thumbs there.

One thing I know to be true is that the devs get quite a bit of feedback from players asking for "female/feminine" costumes that aren't "stripper/slutty" and this is crosswise to the feedback asking for gender parity (i.e. having the same items available for both genders). So I know for a fact that the designers have a specific customer driven motive for adding things like corsets without specifically having a sexist motive.

Whether the art team is *also* a bunch of sexist pigs is a completely separate question. They could be and I wouldn't be in a position to know. That's a joke, by the way. What isn't a joke is that were I in a position to make art decisions, I would probably be looking for opportunities to make costumes that appealed to players looking for female-specific items, simply because there just aren't very many of them that aren't overtly sexual. Dresses, for example, and other kinds of separate pieces. Recognizing that some of these kinds of things create animation issues and aren't very utilitarian, I wouldn't flood the system with them, but I think the system could stand to have a few more of them. I suspect that far from being just more of the same, the Steampunk items probably appeal to certain players that feel those items fill a gap that is currently very sparse.

I don't think I would be doing that for sexist reasons, which means at the moment a sexist and a non-sexist motivation for doing what the devs are currently doing seems to be an indistinguishable distinction.

This isn't a perfect inventory, but I'm just looking at the costume editor for females now, and this is what I see:

First of all, 14 different upper body primary styles: tights, tops with skin, shirts, baggy, robe, sleeveless robes, jackets, sleeveless jackets, trench coats, magic bolero, armored, and the three robotic arm types. Setting aside the robot arm types, that leaves 11. Tights seems reasonably close to the male version: the only remotely "sexist" thing I can see at a glance is the insectoid hybrid pattern which doesn't seem to exist for males and has a sort of a keyhole thing going on. None of them really say "stripper or fancy underwear" except insofar as they say the same thing for males (again: not an expert on male costumes: this is an informal look-see).

Tops with skin are, of course, tops with skin showing. Its probably the most "sexist" costume selection option, insofar as the option doesn't even exist for males per se. *Some* are rather risque ("Eden" comes to mind). Lets say I write the entire section off as "stripper or fancy underwear, even though there are costume items in there I wouldn't classify as such (i.e. "Monstrous Fur," "Tanker").

Shirts seem safe. Sure, they don't have perfect coverage, but three of the four are tame almost casual wear (student shirt, baseball shirt, vest). Only one (student short shirt) could be considered even remotely close to "stripper" (certainly, its one strong breeze away from a wardrobe malfunction). But shirts are basically all very reasonable attire (I use student shirt and vest a lot, actually).

Baggy is nothing if not covered. Not sure why Enforcer is in there, except I guess its baggy at the elbows. But the entire Baggy set is neither stripper nor underwear, unless its really really cold where you are.

All the robes are fine except for shredded martial arts. And the males get that one also. And guess what: Paragon City females have had nipples bred out of them, but not males. Actually, I score robes for the boys: they don't have to cover up under this one. I use a few from here also when I want something that says functional costume. Martial Arts 1, Warrior Fire, and Terra Fire particularly. Same deal with sleeveless robes: nothing overtly sexual there, except for the one version that looks like you just came from the set of a special episode of Mythbusters.

The jackets are all fine. Even the steampunk ones I think are fine, at least in this context. The jackets are all worn over something, so in and of themselves they aren't overtly sexual. Sure, if you combine them with Eden you have something that's very very ... lets just say very. But that's more of an issue with Eden, not the jacket itself. Ditto sleeveless.

The trenchcoat seems basically the same as the male version, and not stripper or underwear, unless you have a Matrix-themed bachelor party.

Magic Bolero is another unique female option, but I don't think its a stripperish one. My main confusion about this option has always been that it actually has a "Shoulder Fur" option, and that option has only one choice: "Fur." Well, ok.

No stripper armor. That would be interesting, but no stripper armor. No bikini chain mail.

For Lower body, you mostly have bottoms with skin again, and skirts. The mini skirts are mini, but there are other options. The flared skirts are *a tad* too short, but not stripper short. And every skirt has the option to wear something under them, including things with pant legs (my Katana scrapper uses Martial Robe 1 + Mini Skirt + Tights. The skirt kinda blends into the robe so I want it to be kinda short, and I have tights under it anyway.

I make a lot of female costumes, and I've spend probably hundreds of hours in those closets. There are some really funky things in there, particularly in "Tops with Skin" but I wouldn't categorize the female options as "stripper or underwear": it seems actually only a small percentage of options can really be described in that fashion. Most new costume options, particularly sets, have been much more functional pieces: Vanguard, Praetorian Police, Alpha - not a stripper in the lot. I think the problem is that people *remember* the overtly sexual options more than the other ones, not that they dominate the selection.

If anything, the problem isn't that there aren't enough non-stripper costumes in there, but that, ironically for this thread, there aren't enough costumes that are in between "stripper" and "uniform." I can be Girls Gone Wild or Hillary Clinton. Joan of Arc is in there also along with Samus. Where it gets tricky is when you want to make a character wearing a dress, say. Things like the magic bolero are probably there specifically to address that deficiency (actually, I kind of like the lines in the combination of Bolero + Steampunk skirt + Savage bottom).

Because one of the actions of one person, its always true? I specifically stated multiple times that I am not saying its impossible for the devs to make a sexist decision, I'm saying its unfair and incorrect to assume that all gender-influenced decisions are sexist, or alternatively that this should be the default position until proven otherwise.

If you don't believe that *all* gender-based decisions are automatically sexist, you don't have a disagreement with me. On the other hand, if you do believe that then a single anecdote isn't probative, yet you are using a single anecdote as if it were.

Its no less extreme than saying all gender-specific decisions are intrinsically sexist. That if a male *or* female designer said to themselves "the male characters are getting a new suit in the next issue, but I think there's a lack of long dresses for the females so I would rather work on that than porting the male suits" that's not just a gender-influenced decision, its a sexist decision. The only question is whether its a consciously sexist decision or just an unconscious one.

I know a lot of people think this axiomatically, but I'm not one of them so I have no obligation to accept that axiom in support of anyone's arguments. In the absence of that axiom, the charge of sexism has to be justified each and every time its asserted independently of each other.

Perhaps because they have males and females on the art team, and those people can relate to male and female costumes. There aren't any huges on the art team**, so no one is applying their experience to influence those costume sets.



** Nate is a producer, not an artist

By "this case" I meant the case we're talking about here, not the case you mention tangentially above.

In any case, I would consider that less sexist, and more silly, because kilts are actually worn by men.


I didn't argue against all perceptions of sexism, but rather the notion that its so obvious its fair for it to be considered the default position. That *any* gender-specific decision is automatically sexist by its nature. That whenever an artist says "I don't want to copy that piece from male/female to female/male, I want to do something different" its fair to accuse them of sexism, and they are guilty until proven innocent.

You really can't talk about artistic decisions being sexist without ultimately pointing the finger at the designers, and ultimately at the specific one(s) that made the decision and the artwork, and call them sexist explicitly. If you're going to do it, do it. I'm not fond of the vague cloud of sexism style assertions that seem to want to declare a bloodless war on chauvinism. Decisions aren't sexist; artwork isn't sexist. People are. If we're getting sexist artwork, its only because that sexism manages to survive and thrive from artists to designers to producers. A lot of people have to explicitly say yes for something to eventually get delivered to us in-game.

Also, I would have to live near Mountain View and treat all of you guys nicely on the forums. Inconceivable.