BrandX

Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex

What I sometimes wonder about some types of roleplay is whether some groups prefer not to acknowledge being one of many thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of heroes living in Paragon. Not that that's enough to handle the crime problem--anecdotal evidence indicates that villainous minions outnumber Earth's ant population.

Anyway, in this sort of world, it would only be so long before Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Manson, John Waters, the Octomom, the cast of Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire, and this girl ended up with super powers. Look around any major city, picture what would happen if 1 out of every 20 people turned supe, and soon you'll have a whole worth of costumed crazies trying to out-promote each other.

And that's just talking about the humans. Let's be real for just a second here. We all got to this message board via the internet. We know that technology can be used for many wonderful things. But generally speaking people who hide in their basements building robots would NOT be building war robots. What they would be building cannot be posted here but is imminently linked to the statement about the internet.

Even the "mainline" super hero comics get this and showcase it from time to time. X-Factor has a hero named "Strong Guy."

Overall point: being a hero loses its dramatic-sunset-posing when the whole population are heroes. Suddenly even regular people are running around in overtight spandex (luckily our secondary mutations also make us all smoking hot!) If you want to ignore that very realistic consequence of a "city of heroes," that's fine, but don't throw out insults about stupid names or concepts just because everyone doesn't want to throw their shoulders back dramatically while a lamenting lost planets and murdered parents.

Originally Posted by Smersh

1) You're making the argument, you have the burden of proof. Not me.

2) **** is ****, regardless of the victim's gender. It's the sort of trauma that needs to be dealt with on an individual level. Resources exist for individuals who have been victimized, in various different forms. The shaming of victims of **** is reprehensible, regardless of gender. No professional who helps victims will trivialize ****, regardless of gender.

It may be more difficult for men to locate aid, but that's a matter of statistics. 91% of **** victims are female, and 99% of attackers are male. That does not mean that there are not resources for male victims, just that they are not as widely available, because of the relative rarity compared to female victims. If there are 10 support groups for women compared to 1 for men, that is not sexism, that's demography in action.

Here's one for you, Dur - one in six women will experience an assault in their lifetime. Only 16% will ever be reported. And only a quarter of assaults are by strangers. Most are by someone a woman knows. And women are ten times more likely to be a victim than a man. Those aren't hypotheticals, those are statistics from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics.

3) Acknowledging that sexism exists, and that the primary victims of it are women, does not make me a sexist. No more than acknowledging that racism exists makes me a racist.

Originally Posted by Premonitions

I am sooooo glad you posted this nonsense, because I've been wanting to use this for SOOOO long
Comics are sexist in much the way the entire rest of our society is sexist/hetero-centric.
Men and Women are idealized differently in comics to represent the ideals of their creators.
Men are idealized and represented for their strength and character, women for their appearance. It'll be equal when every male character is represented the same as every female character, *** and package first...
LIKE THIS!

Originally Posted by Smersh

1. If you can't cite your source, you can't use it as an argument.

2. "Oh, won't someone think of the poor men!" No. You're just denying that you have male privilege.

3. I am, in no way, glorifying war in my post. Not at all. That does not change the fact that there are women who volunteer to serve in the armed forces and are denied certain postings because they are considered front-line combat positions. Postings that some women would otherwise actively seek.

I'm not glorifying war. I just see the military as a place where the ability to do the job should trump gender.

4. You are claiming to be suffering under the burden of male privilege. Oh, woe is you.

Male privilege exists to support sexism and discrimination against others. It is not sexism in and of itself. It's the ability of a male to challenge the masculinity of others, because that which is feminine is weak and undesirable.

Originally Posted by Starflier

I'm looking forward to Fast Five a lot more than I really should.



To be fair, the nerd community that really gets worked up over stuff like that is pretty small, albeit vocal, so it'll probably do okay. The general audience doesn't care. Whether it's good is an entirely different issue.

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

This, for the most part.

When I'm referring to a character I see in the game, I refer to them based on the gender of the character. If the in-game character is female, I say she. If it is male, I say he. The gender of the person playing the character is irrelevant.

Kinda funny that the OP goes on about roleplaying, and insists on using gender neutral pronouns. Any roleplayer I know of would prefer to be referred to by their character's gender while playing said character.

Originally Posted by MajorDecoy

English is not the only language with homophones. And neither sie or hir is a homophone.

It causes no harm to use sie or hir, and if it keeps people from getting upset, I don't see the reason not to.

Just because something doesn't upset you, it doesn't necessarily mean that someone who is upset is upset over nothing.

Originally Posted by Silver Gale

OOOR, it's much easier to go "I don't think of myself as sexist, so nothing I do or say can possibly be sexist in any way and anyone who thinks so is oversensitive" than sit down and examine what deeply-rooted assumptions might be hiding behind the way you communicate in any medium.

Originally Posted by Red Valkyrja

QFT

The same here, Forbin.

Originally Posted by Silver Gale

Using "he" as the default means that a man will never have to experience being referred to with a pronoun he is uncomfortable with, while a woman who is referred to as "he" has to choose between shouldering the discomfort or go "actually, I'm not a 'he' " and risk the discussion being derailed.

Using "he" as the default, you're not using "a gender neutral 'he' ", you're assuming everyone to be male unless they say otherwise.

Originally Posted by PoisonPen

I hadn't expected quite so much in the way of response, so I'm not even going to try to multi-reply to all of you. Thank you to all of you who gave me advice, even the ones who think I'm a pretentious grammar-Nazi troll who should suck it up and stop flagging down the whaaahmbulance.

To respond to a few of the specific points:

* Thanks to those who recommended Virtue as a good roleplaying server. I plunked my ten bucks down and transferred my main character there. Time will tell, but already I'm seeing a lot more people who have characters with backgrounds, which is a good sign. (Sometimes I like to just stand near the subway and read people's backgrounds as they pass. This game really needs a spectator mode.) For the record, the servers I tried previous to this were Liberty, Victory, and Protector.

* As others have already pointed out, sie and hir are gender-neutral pronouns. I think they make good sense, and I've used them for decades. I think "their" is ugly, and using male as the default is clearly sexist. I can't do much about the ingrained sexism of our culture, but I can at the very least make sure my own language isn't sexist. I don't know what the sex and/or gender of the person was to whom I was referring, so I decided to play it safe.

* To those who have expressed preferences for alternative comics outside the capes and leotards variety, I like those too: Sandman, Maus, the Invisibles, anything by Robert Crumb, the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Promethea, and so on. It's just that, like a lot of folks in the alternative and independent comics scene whose work I respect, like Grant Morrison and and Alan Moore, I also have a nostalgic love/hate relationship with the Golden and Silver ages of comics -- Superman + red kryptonite = Ant-head Superman! (Read Grant Morrison's brilliant Flex Mentallo for his psychological explanation for the weird, psychedelic nature of that Red Superman/Blue Superman stuff from the Silver Age.) Morrison in particular loves to deconstruct the Golden and Silver Ages, but always with respect.

* I didn't realize it was against etiquette to point out typos for people. In most contexts people regard it as a courtesy. I know I do. I had no idea that it was verboten here, and I'll certainly stop doing it. I've been filing bug reports on typos and grammatical errors in the game text too; should I stop doing that? Am I annoying the devs?

* A lot of my disappointment, I think, comes from what I realize now were unrealistic expectations. I've played all kinds of pen and paper superhero RPGs over the years (including GURPS, Champions, TMNT, DC Heroes, and -- my favourite -- Villains and Vigilantes), and I guess I thought CoX would be like a computerized version of that. I had also tried Champions Online before I decided on CoX instead, which has a much more Silver Age feel to it, so I assumed CoX would be more of the same. I think what I expected was a multi-player version of Freedom Force (since that's what CoX resembles on the surface if you have only gameplay videos by which to go). Collecting "treasure" and backpack management weren't what I had in mind when I joined.

After all those complaints, I think I should also list some of the things that I think CoX does right. Top of the list, absolute bloody first, is flying. The sense of flying in CoX is utterly thrilling and feels exactly the way it does in dreams. Sometimes I just fly around the skyscrapers in Steel Canyon and feel mellow. I think if the game consisted of nothing but that, I might still pay money to play it. Also on the list of top things (which is odd, since it's also on my list of complaints) is the costume system. I'd really like to see more body types (where are the Blobs, where are the Gigantas, where are the Doll Mans, where are the She-Hulks?), vehicles, a lot more hats, better conforming for chest props, and, and, and... but I suspect I could (and would) do that no matter how many options that gave. The variety is pretty impressive, and I'm sorely tempted to purchase some of those expansion packs.

I'd also like to say that while some of the missions are annoying and frustrating. the vast majority are fun, and there are a small group which are so absolutely delightful to play that I'd tip the designer if I could. In particular, one mission where I got to say, "Ah, screw it" and burn an organized crime kingpin alive instead of saving his sorry *** made me laugh with enjoyment. The whole Protean storyline on both the Hero and Villain side is a lot of fun too, even if Protean himself is a little cheesy without exploiting the elevators.

PS: If any of y'all are on Virtue, say hello to Union Power, the One-Man Picket Line, when you see me.

Originally Posted by Arilou

The WoD isn't a superpowered setting now? Marvel and DC doesen't have vampires?

Heck, VTM is, if anything, clearly an adaptation of a horror setting to superhero tropes ("secret identities", etc.)



That's... Really silly. You're NEVER going to be able to cater to every character. Heck, even PNP occasionally has trouble with that, and they don't have to bother with animating it. Really, anyone who came in and expected to be able to create EVERY possible kind of character is just, quite frankly, stupid. It's impossible to code a game that way, and I can't see ANYONE expecting it.

Which is not to say that there aren't combinations that couldn't/shouldn't be added.

Originally Posted by BrokenPrey

Honestly I don't see the need for 2 Ranged blasts for a Scrapper, even running a LGTF. I also run all Scrapper LGTF and still don't see the need for them.

I'll admit, I just don't like the attack at all it has a long cast time, 2 sec , and I just don't like the look of it. It was easy for me to skip and I haven't look back. I can't even think about skipping QS or BB I like them too much.

Originally Posted by Cyber_naut

I agree that ITF's and large groups of cim's create serious problems for wp toons, moreso than SD's, but SD isn't surviving indefinitely in a mob of cim's without a heal of some kind either.

I also prefer SD, because being a scrapper lover, I enjoy offense and killing things, and SD is clearly superior in what it brings to that table. But for pure survivability based on the powerset alone, I would still argue that wp edges sd by a bit from start to finish, all things being equal. But the argument that once fully io'd, both sets are virtually unkillable except in extreme situations, so why not take the set that is clearly superior offensively, is certainly valid, but then you might want to consider the recent trend of the newer high level content containing more than average defense busting enemies, which makes sd's survivability drop faster than wp's.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

I don't think I've ever seen an ogre barabraian here - or even a normal ogre

Originally Posted by Obscure Blade

True.

One of the nice things about a superhero game is that pretty much anything can fit in. An undead necromancer wouldn't fit in well with a sci-fi setting; a robot doesn't fit in well in a fantasy setting; but in a comic book setting like Paragon they can both team up and fight a psychic brain in a jar and it works.

Originally Posted by Zombie Man

Indeed. "Singular they" is perfectly standard English except amongst those stuck in 18th Century Latinist Prescriptivism, which is unfortunately what elementary school grammar teachers teach as the norm because... who the heck knows why people with a college education can't recognize that these rules are antiquated.

But you can end a sentence with a preposition, split an infinitive, begin a sentence with a conjunction (cf. this sentence), and use 'they' as a gender-indeterminate singular pronoun. Searches of English usage show these are all *common* and have been part of the language for centuries. That makes them *standard English*, despite the protests of people promoting rules for no reason except that they were taught those rules by people who had no reason except they were taught those rules and so on and so on until you get to some idiot who decided that the grammar of Latin needed to be imposed on English to make it proper.

Originally Posted by Obscure Blade

Infernal and the Circle of Thorns are displeased about your opinion of fantasy characters in a superhero game!

Originally Posted by Beelzy

I found that with Trapdoor I could overpower his regen until he pulled the third bif, then I didn't have enough. When I figured that out it was easy, keep hitting him until the third bif, then run around and quickly kill all three before heading back to take him down... (the mission briefing stated that his bifs help him heal...)

With Kin I can take down anything up to an Elite Boss faster than on any other toon I have, but getting to AVs I find that I lack the sustained damage capability and survivability that is needed to take them out...

Originally Posted by BrokenPrey

Well the next one on my list to skip is Focused Burst. With taking the fire Ancillary you don't need it because you can take Fire blast for a range attack.

Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards

I'm waiting on an SS/Fire Scrapper.