Bad_Influence

QR:

Before we go any further with talk of unnatural poses, here is the original picture used as positioning-reference. I usually do work from a reference like this, unless its something so basic I can get it by positioning myself in front of a mirror. The pose IS seated and yes, her legs are bent at odd angles:

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL17/.../367670221.jpg

Yes her left leg is going to be absolute hell to get to look anywheres near correct. This is because I hate foreshortening.

will post further progress this evening....

I have had a huge fangirl crush on Vanessa DeVore since I first saw her picture way back when I was new here. I have never actually "met" her in the game, mostly because Maylor is not offering me anything these days but "hunt 50 Carnies."

THe MA has offered me the opportunity to finally get the reference screenies that I need, and I am going to indulge my whim to capture the dangerous yet fascinating Vanessa on watercolor paper. I'll be posting my progress as I go along here, if you care to follow along.... and you probably don't, just sayin'

The pose is out of my pose-file, mostly culled from fashion mags over the years. Setting will be the infamous Carnie Warehouse o' Fun. The main source of light will be the crystal ball at her side. I cant decide should it be pink, green or spectral blue.... all would work. I wanted to show all the detail of her costume and show the whole thing at the same time, which isnt easy trust me.

These are the first pencil roughs, have just begun inking. Day #1:

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL17/.../367604409.jpg

Paper size is 12 x 18" so naturally the whole thing won't fit here.

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL17/.../367604440.jpg

To see more of my art, go here:

http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/1824570

Nothing too fabulous, but just in case anyone is curious. I use a combination of pencil, pen, ink and water-based paints.

I hate foreshortening:
Bad

QR: Seen tonight on a team...

We're all standing around waiting for the MA mission to start. On the team: a level 44 Blaster of some kind. Dare I say a DAWGGY kind...? Hrm.

Leader: All of you will be hanging around until we get done with this mission, right?

Snoop DAWGGY DAWG [not his real name]: If this team dies more than twice, then I'm quitting! it aint a you thing, its a me thing!

I check his badges and he's allegedly a 48-mo. vet. Oh great.

rest of team: ......

Snoop DAWGGY DAWG: If this team dies more than twice, then I'm quitting! it aint a you thing, its a me thing!

TM #1: So, if you're a Tank is it good to have Tough and Weave? What do you guys think, I hear both ways.

Snoop DAWGGY DAWG: If this team dies more than twice, then I'm quitting! it aint a you thing, its a me thing!

By now, Bad is already in a bad mood. Leader: Mish is up, let's do this.

Spawn #1: SNOOP is down for the count! Hosps.

Spawn #2: SNOOP is down for the count! Hosps.

Spawn #3: SNOOP is playing Blaster Area Rug yet again! Damn, he's good. Hosps.

SNOOP: My AoEs are getting me into trouble. It would help if the Tanker had Taunt, dayum.

[Bad pulls up Tanker's stats: sure enough, there's Taunt.]

Tanker: I AM taunting.

Spawn #4: You got it, its a beautiful Blaster Area Rug in your choice of colors! Hosps.

Spawn #5: Wash/rinse/repeat. Blaster quits.

At this point, Bad dies. Hey, it happens. I hosp and while running around to the tp-beam to reenter, I see:

SNOOP DAWWGY DAWG: Level 54 Boss farm forming! All Tankers must have taunt!

I successfully resist the urge to shout for all the zone to hear, "YOU ****ING MORON!" I want to say this; yet my good side triumphs.

.... this game is good for epic lulz, if nothin' else.

[ QUOTE ]
Last time I check Castle ask a few select Dom players and this was the fix that they ask for and said was good.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh that is just lovely news: we will all be adjusted on what only a few players want. Neato.

I didn't ask for this crap, and they can take it somewheres else.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What I think/would "love" to see happen is to have more maps/map textures in this game....it's sad when you enter a mission and are like, "okay follow me, I know this map and the boss is here."

[/ QUOTE ]

This should be sole focus of a whole issue, mission revitalization.
Sure we get fancy new power looks, but then we get to use them to fight Hellions in the same warehouse that we'll be fighting Malta in, 50 levels later. We've seen some additional maps with the Rikti and Cimerora releases, but the general maps really need some new life breathed into them.

I have high hopes for Going Rogue, and it appears that both power customization and graphics improvements are part of it,crossing my fingers that map love is included also.

~MM

[/ QUOTE ]

After 3 years in CoX, I finally got to run the Eden Trial the other night.

AWE. SOME. MAPS. AWESOME.

Those are some of the coolest maps in the whole shebang. Its like jumping down a snake-hole, x 1000! You actually jump down a ginormous hole and you have no idea what you'll see when you get there. You get there and behold! A bunch of stuff you've never seen before.

That happens way too infrequently in this game[s].

We really, really, really, really need some new maps in the non-TF game; becasue that office-map, sometimes I think I'm going to go postal just from sheer boredom if I see that thing one more time.

[ QUOTE ]
Sorry to drag up this thread from the second page of the forums but...

...There is one contact Redside who rather obviously IS a Carnie with their mask removed, Vivacious Verandi, her will has been replaced by that of 'the carnival mistress' (according to her info).

So that does raise questions, are the masks important to controlling Carnies, since Verandi seems to be equally under the carnivals thumb yet obviously doesn't wear a mask.

[/ QUOTE ]

I always thought of her as a Carnival sympathizer at least, and more likely than not an active member. Perhaps she removes her mask in order to better connect with her marks.... she's remarkably flirtatious, whether your character is male or female.

So to me, the masks are important but does the wearer have to have them on 24/7? Given the strength of the Carnival's Mistress' powers, I doubt it.

I think Vivacious doeswhat she does because she LIKES it, though, not because Vanessa or whoever is forcing her to. Carnies are naughty

[ QUOTE ]
I know that sounds like a line from a beer commercial, but what are your thoughts if the days were shorter in the COX world and the nights were longer?

Perhaps it is my liking Batman over Superman that this idea comes to mind, but patrolling the night has greater appeal to me than wearing tights in the daylight. Perhaps if the nights were twice as long as the days that might fix it for me.

Am I the only one who likes crimefighting at night?

[/ QUOTE ]

No you are not, and I might add that my villains prefer evildoing by night to top things off

I like night in the game for much the same reason that I like it in real life: I like seeing pretty lights. Childish, perhaps, but there you have it: I think buildings are prettier lit up at night.

Plus if nights were longer in the game, getting the Haunted badge would be a lot easier; particularly on busy servers with a lot of people hunting the same ghosts that you are. They might be amenable to forming a kill-badge team, but not always.

Still want to see my Black Shuck Warwolf with eerie red eyes running around Croatoa at night. Well, one can dream. Scary things in the dark FTW!

Halloween event/30 days of night rules:
Bad,
sneakin' around in the dark since.... whenever

[ QUOTE ]
x2 XP is probably gone

[/ QUOTE ]

I think so too.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I was talking to a SoA the other day, lvl 50, and I faceplamed myself so hard, I think I got a brain tumor.

"Why don't you have your toggles?" I said.

"What toggles?"

"Your team toggles, you know, the maneuvers and assault"

"Oh, those don't help me, and they cost way to much."




[/ QUOTE ]

I hear ya. Last night i decided to join a 52 AE farm in Atlas because it was late and no TF or stuff was going on... I figured i could make some quick tickets with that team until i started reviewing the team composition:

- A level 44 rad/rad defender with no Radiation Infection, no Enervating Field and no Lingering Radiation.

- A level 28 invul/ss tanker with no Unyielding.

- A level 20 BS/Shield scrapper with Jump Kick and Acrobatics.

- A level 33 Archery/Device blaster who kept complaining about RoA saying it sucked because he couldnt obliterate a pack of 52 bosses with it...

- Add other oddities i noticed but do not remember enough to type here...

Well, i said nothing, NOTHING at all. Im done being patient and polite with players that seem clueless ( even on Virtue which isnt looking like the Virtue server i remember ). I simply clicked Quit Team mid-mission. I was done with them.

[/ QUOTE ]

.... Reminds me of the night I was on an MA team with a level 50 Fire/kin who would hit Smoke, then teleport herself into the middle of a huge mob of 52s - I am talking a pack of at least 20 level 52 NPCs. *INSTANT HORRIBLE DEATH!*

She did this repeatedly, then: "Man this build sucks!! I'm deleting this toon!"

It evidently never crossed her mind to adjust her strategy, or even consider that she was not doing it right - no, it was "this build sucks!!"

She did ask a friend on the team to review her build for her later, so maybe somehow later on he gave her a talking-to about how things are done. But honestly, the whole thing was so sad. That person honestly had no idea what to do with her character.

Its like turning a 12-year-old loose with the keys to a Lamborgini. Can that kid really drive that car?! I doubt it!

Little red Corvette:
Bad

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Edit: Worse, it's not intuitive. If the editor equired you to enter markup to get carriage returns that would be one thing. But it looks like it's silently converting them after entry, meaning the only way most people will ever figure out how much of the storage they're using is by trial and error.

[/ QUOTE ]

So we're back to the editor truncating the last 10 symbols of bios that skirt the symbol cap? Great. Welcome to four years ago!

Still, if this means line breaks, I WILL MANAGE! I'll gladly trade some limit bloat in return for my bios not looking like a brick wall again. THANK YOU!

[/ QUOTE ]

This. I have small bios anyways, so this does not really effect me. And I am sorry for those it does effect, but we really, really need those line breaks back and I am willing to take a step backward to get them. Trimming ten characters off of a bio shouldn't be the end of the world, anyways, really.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
our largest racial[?] subset in the game is indeed Asian characters

[/ QUOTE ]Well, of the canon characters (NPCs), it's pretty much Americans, people from alternate dimensions, and Hmong (the Tsoo are Hmong), which encompasses China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Burma.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not talkin' 'bout NPCs, Willis, I was referring to player-created characters. Among characters created by players, I see far more Asian folks than any other non-white subset.

I think this is great and have no problem with it; I have two Asian characters myself. Just sayin' about that developer-time-spent equation, and all.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
THIRTY TO FORTY PERCENT INCREASE in END and Rech.

[/ QUOTE ]THIRTY TO EIGHTY PERCENT INCREASE in DMG



(Maybe if I shout back B_I will listen?)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I am aware of a damage buff. My point is that I think the END and RECH punishment in return for that is a little extreme.

Doms are not a damage-heavy AT to begin with. Buffing our damage 40-80% [or whatever the percentage was] WITHOUT hamstringing us END or RECH-wise would have brought the AT up to a fun yet challenging thing that perhaps many others would have liked to try.

As this stands now, I don't see this being really popular with new Doms, unless they just go to the MA building and get PLed to [at least] Stamina. If one has to stop and wait and stop and wait and stop and wait and stop and wait, why play a Dom? We could just roll a Brute and have all these issues PLUS more damage and less end-game gimping on top of that.

Yay, Brutes.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"There is not enough love in the world to squander it on anything but human beings."
-Scheler

[/ QUOTE ]

Human beings deserve love the least; sad but true. 98% of them, anyways.

[/ QUOTE ]

you realize that you just said you dont deserve to be loved, dont you? thats even pretty depressing to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all what I said.

[/ QUOTE ]

see that kind of answer only works on the internet, my own fault for trying to have meaningful discussion. continue talking about how fun the chest and [censored] sliders are to adjust.

[/ QUOTE ]

..... And with that uneccessarily hostile answer to my neutral response, you have proven that you're not worthy of all that much love from me, amirite? Its not often that someone illustrates a point so handily! Thanks!

Love, er.... no.... wait...:
Bad

p.s. the only sliding my bust-scaler does is downward; nothing looks stupider to me in this game than maxed-out bubble boobs. But continue on with your loveable generalizations that have no relation to reality!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"Dominator Buff/Nerf in i15"

Buff?

I play a Plants/Mind Dominator. I have no buff. In fact, from the looks of things, as soon as this goes live I will become fairly useless.

[/ QUOTE ]

So an overall damage scale increase ACROSS THE BOARD for Dominators totally isn't a buff if individual powersets are tweaked?

I presume you have tested this, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

If we pay for the Damage with a 30-40% increase in recharge and endurance useage [and mind you, those numbers still make me boggle], I don't call that a buff.

See, now my smoothly-running little Mind/energy has to stop and wait for her END bar to rebuild, unless Domination happens to be up. I am one of those who prefers not to pop Domination unless I am fighting the mission boss or whatever... Domination is a +Damage tool to me, not an END recovery system.

Until now!

I hate stopping and waiting and stopping and waiting and stopping and waiting with ALMOST the same intensity that I hate people using knockback without regard for others. If you love stopping and waiting, then you'll love these changes.

THIRTY TO FORTY PERCENT INCREASE in END and Rech. Wrap your head around that, it still boggles me.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

I also call a 30% increase a pretty damn punitive change - but that's just me.

[/ QUOTE ]

You missed the bit where that was 30% increase over a permadom.

[/ QUOTE ]

A 30% increase in what exactly, over PermaDom?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The thing is, all this complaint about Energy and Psi using more Endurance is because they are doing more damage.

[/ QUOTE ]
They're doing enough damage to warrant a 30-40% increase in END usage?!!! We're doing the damage of Stone Melee?! I missed that during my experiment on test, I guess...! This is the problem, and I call it unacceptable!

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you figure that 30-40% increase in endurance usage? For Energy, damage per endurance remains the same for most powers (Whirling Hands got a range increase, rather than a damage boost) and I'm not seeing an increase of 30-40% to begin with. The increase, as I pointed out before, is a little under 15% total, while the damage increase is a little over 30% total if you compare to Live Permadom, or up to 85% if you compare to Live standard. So yes, enough damage to merit the change in endurance. Very much so.

Of course, if you're talking about Psychic Assault, that set may not have been as improved (or improved at all, I haven't looked) as the others, but it's pretty clear that it's very much a special case. As mentioned, not all sets were altered, but aside from Psi, those touched were improved even before we consider the base damage increase.

[/ QUOTE ]

My understanding is that /energy [on test] is using 30% more END and that /psi has had its END usage upped 40%, due to this "buff." This correlates with what I've seen on my /energy on Test; the END problems are just horrible now.

I don't play /psi so I cannot speak from experience there. I am not and never have been "permadom." I don't think that requiring PermaDom to overcome these changes is either right nor fair.

I also call a 30% increase a pretty damn punitive change - but that's just me.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
"There is not enough love in the world to squander it on anything but human beings."
-Scheler

[/ QUOTE ]

Human beings deserve love the least; sad but true. 98% of them, anyways.

[/ QUOTE ]

you realize that you just said you dont deserve to be loved, dont you? thats even pretty depressing to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all what I said.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah... not much more to add to this other than "hurr... AE babies are stupid"


[/ QUOTE ]

Not AE limited, of course, viz. the guy who faceplanted a few nights ago and stayed put asking for a wakie, in a Kings Row mission (so we were all lowish) not 50 yds from the hospital.

[/ QUOTE ]
Had someone do the same in a skyway mission about 200yds from the hospital... but with the added stupid that the mission had completed, we'd cleared everything, and the team were now exiting.

[/ QUOTE ]

Leader: Hey, deadguy.... we're out of the mission. Can you exit so we can pick up another one?

Deadguy: [complete silence]

TM #1: GO TO THE HOSPITAL DEADGUY, WE NEED A NEW MISSION!

Deadguy: [complete silence]

TM#2: Dude. Go to the hospital.

Deadguy: [complete silence]

Leader: Let's wait a few minutes for him to get back from AFK.

[Bad says nothing, to delay incipient aneurysm cause by inability to kick Deadguy so high, wide and handsome that his GRANDCHILDREN would feel it....]

Ten minutes go by....

TM#3: Hey Deadguy, exit the mish dude.

Deadguy: [complete and total silence]

TM#4: Leader, kick him so we can move on.

Leader: Nah, he's just AFK a minute. We'll wait.

Bad: Wait, SG is calling me. Thanks for invite Leader, I've got to go. Good luck, people! *quit*

[ QUOTE ]
"There is not enough love in the world to squander it on anything but human beings."
-Scheler

[/ QUOTE ]

Human beings deserve love the least; sad but true. 98% of them, anyways.

[ QUOTE ]
Is actually pretty catchy

Hell Forge in Sharkhead is particularly catchy.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who actually occasionally listens to some of this game's soundtrack, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope: my personal favorite can be found in the RWZ in Heartbreak Ridge. Its so tragic and.... really cool.

For some reason I also like the Bell Point music in IP; unfortunately IP music seems to be disabled these days. This track can also be heard in PI, but I forget the exact neighborhood.

Most hated: that thing you hear right after you get off the tram in Talos. I guess because that is the main WW I use, I hear this WAY too much.

I'd really like all of the music in the game avaliable with each track in its entireity.

[ QUOTE ]
Worse yet (this was ina regular mission in Skyway City, so hospital-to-mission travel time was an issue):

Most of the team wipes in a particularly difficult mission; people go to the hospital. Most of the team wipes on the next spawn; people go to the hospital. A few people wipe on the next spawn; leader announces that he will grab awakens on the way back from the hospital.

One player lays defeated in the mission, and doesn't go to the hospital; everyone assumes s/he is waiting for an awaken. Leader returns with awakens and tries to give one to the defeated player. Defeated player's insp tray is full.

Leader: "Hey, 'defeated player,' make room in your tray for an awaken." ... "Hey, 'defeated player.'" ... "Yoo-hoo, 'defeated player.'"

Other player: "I think s/he's afk."

Multiple aneurysms ensue.

[/ QUOTE ]

[sigh] seen it a million times. I need to quit PuGing so much

[ QUOTE ]
I would have just ignored him and let the team move on. By the time we are finished the next spawn, he would have been rezzed.

Unncessary rant.

[/ QUOTE ]

You'll get over it.

In this particular case, he did keep rezzing as he gained levels. But, as he kept dying every 30 seconds and as he started having to wait a minute for the magic "ding," it became our responsibility to keep him up, not his to go to the damn hospital.

He entered the mission as level 3. However, I could just as easily use an example starring a level 35, 45 or 50. People just refuse to go to the hospital, because it is the responsibility of strangers to keep them on their feet, not thier own responsibility.

I call shenanigans.

The problem here is not confined to this one person, but is increasingly widespread amongst the population. I find myself ill-inclined to keep rezzing these people, even on an AT that can do it, because this enables their laziness and sense of entitlement. I usually do it anyways; but still.

This is not really a rant against one person. It is a hope that someone new, somewhere, will get the idea that perhaps this is NOT the thing to do. It may get one quietly one-starred; it certainly creates a bad impression and makes certain that I will not be adding the leecher to my friend-list.

That's it in a nutshell - this is not friendly behavior.

[ QUOTE ]
Have you been convinced that PLing to 20 wont get your characters rolled back? Or are you worried about that with these characters and doing it anyway?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't feel a need to get to 50 in 30 minutes or whatever, so I doubt I will suffer a rollback. But never say never.... What I want to do is get past the levels of deepest pain on really hard-to-level-solo characters. MA allows me to do this.

For instance my Fire/kin is now level 24 and really just beginning to cook with fire. She is mostly an MA baby and I feel no guilt about it. She's just now seriously leaving the MA to see if its too late for her to get the O-portal in Faultline.

But if so, no biggie. She'll just wait till she's teamed with someone who has it.

[ QUOTE ]
this is a deep thinkin thread for my lil brainz.

What is Terra Volta? a moon crater???

[/ QUOTE ]

Terra Volta is a seperate little hazard-zone in the middle of Independance Port. The respec trials take place in there.... but not much else.

[ QUOTE ]
The thing is, all this complaint about Energy and Psi using more Endurance is because they are doing more damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

They're doing enough damage to warrant a 30-40% increase in END usage?!!! We're doing the damage of Stone Melee?! I missed that during my experiment on test, I guess...! This is the problem, and I call it unacceptable!

Plus the mere idea of having to try to get PermaDom in place makes my head hurt... *looks at topmost storage shelf....*