Captain_Photon

Unfortunately, it's that way on purpose. Supposedly the sets that do that are balanced around it. It's therefore not so much a repair you're proposing as a change to the design philosophy behind the whole mechanism, which is probably beyond the scope of the forum, as such...

Bah. Philistine.

Doc Bruce Banner, belted by gamma rays
Turns into the Hulk - ain't he unglamorous?

It's interesting how you and Innovator keep invoking the "I hope you never need anyone's help" rhetoric, as though what I said had anything to do with helping people in need.

I'm gonna go over this one more time, just because I'm an optimist, and then I'm done with you. We're not talking about someone who, in the course of a day, ran across a situation in which someone happened to need help, and who then rendered said help out of the goodness of his heart. That is heroic. I have no problems with that.

What we're talking about here is a guy who dressed up in a rubber superhero costume, acquired a camera crew, and went around on "patrol", ergo, looking for trouble. This is not the act of a good Samaritan doing the Civic Thing for fellow-citizens in trouble. This is the act of either a) a delusional fantasist or b) a narcissistic publicity hound. One is pitiable, the other contemptible. In neither case is he providing a valuable service to his neighbors (except possibly by accident) - he's just as likely to make any given situation worse. And in neither case has he anyone to blame but himself if he gets roughed up, locked up, or both. He's lucky he hasn't gotten shot up.

So, to recap: I'm not down on helping people who need help - on the average Joe becoming a hero by circumstance, by being the one who finds himself in the right place at the right time. I am down on people like this guy who think they can arrange their heroic moments themselves and then put 'em on YouTube. That's only one step removed from these rogue firefighters who set fires you hear about now and then.

Cave Johnson, we're done here.

Historically this has been left to the player to decide on a character-by-character basis (though this has eroded in recent years, viz. the various Praetorian missions that explicitly give you the choice of killing somebody because Praetoria Is Friggin Hardcore®).

I might add, "Though I'd shed a few if you made the kinds of enemies in the process who left you mourning your family's loss. For them. Not for you, you daft numbskull."

If they did that, someone else would complain about that. "Stop protecting me from the clipping! I'd accept some clipping in return for $DESIREDEFFECT!" If you're a designer, you can't win for losing when that argument comes up.

In general, I prefer the approach where the user is left to deal with that stuff. As they used to say about the relative lack of user error prevention controls in UNIX, "It doesn't stop you from doing stupid things because that would stop you from doing clever things."

Capes are animated. Just say to yourself that (e.g.) your Double-Sided Impervium Mantle is an anti-gravity mesh matrix and Bob's your uncle.

How is this conceivably, in any way, going to stay within the board regs? Plus one, as the young persons say.

Man, kids these days. No respect for the classics.

Come on, someone tell me you got the joke.

Well, put your mind at ease, then! Technically that's a saw that has some swords in it.

... Yeah, that doesn't actually help, does it.

A crossbuck with warning lights. Double awesome. (Though hopefully that's an unfinished texture; the lettering is missing. That's not to code. )

It's a shame the alternate animations for powers don't come with alternate sound effects. Not only do the lights on that need to flash, it needs to go CLANG CLANG CLANG when you're actually in the act of attacking (not all the time you have it out, that would just be annoying).

Missin' the point on purpose since 2004...

It's the law!

In fairness, Captain America also has his mighty shield, and as we know, all those who chose to oppose his shield must yield.

OK, um... I'm not sure where you're going with this. Is it your contention that none of that would have happened if Walter Mitty had been there with a camera crew? 'Cause we're not talking about police response, 911 operators' level of engagement, or citizens intervening of their own accord in a time of unanticipated crisis (you know, heroism) here. We're talking about a delusional and/or self-aggrandizing dude deliberately going out and looking to involve himself in as public a way as possible in situations where he doesn't belong, apparently without heed to the danger in which, by doing so, he places himself, his publicity team, bystanders, his family, etc.

The diamond-shaped yellow kind or an actual crossbuck? 'Cause the former would be cool, but the latter would be awesome.

The difficulty-setting NPCs have always struck me as a particularly egregious example of the more-than-a-little silly mania for putting metagame stuff on the wrong side of the fourth wall that gripped the development team in the game's middle years (Dr. Brainstorm, anyone?), so I agree with you that far. On the other hand, now that it's so firmly entrenched in the system, I'm not sure changing it would be worth the programming overhead required, and then there's the question of how the use of the new version (do you propose another Options tab or what?) would be taught to new players. The "go see the Hero Corps guy" mission is high up on the "can the older contacts please stop wasting my damn time, please" list for veterans, but the new kids have to learn how the system works somehow...

Or he did, by embarking on this daft personal crusade in the first place, depending on how you look at it.

Knowing that he has a family makes me facepalm all the harder about the whole situation. It's irresponsible enough to undertake a narcissistic, self-publicizing (how compatible is that with the whole secret identity thing, by the way?) costumed crimefighting career in the real grown-up world, where things don't work that way, if you've got nothing much to lose by doing it (apart from the structural integrity of your own fool head). Doing so when you do, and more to the point when other people have something to lose by you doing it, crosses some invisible line somewhere from "foolishly eccentric" to "criminally imbecilic".

And I'm not buying the "oh, he just did what any civic-minded citizen ought to do in a situation like that" line, either. He was dressed up in a mask and costume and had a camera crew with him on what he himself called "patrol". Ergo, he was looking for trouble, not reacting in a small-h "heroic" fashion to a situation which Just Happened to Arise. I call bullcrap on any defense of his actions involving the sentiment that "that's what anybody ought to do".

Look, I get that you guys think the whole "real life superhero" thing is cool and all, but this isn't about cool. Bow ties are cool. Fezzes are cool. Premeditated intervention in street crime without the proper training or credentials is not cool, whether you're dressed like Night Thrasher or just wearing regular clothes. It's stupid and dangerous. Full stop.

Also: Please do not change all these NPCs to use new, rather generic costume parts first, then offer those on the market and say, "By popular demand!" That would be a) cheap and b) lame. I mean, just imagine.

What challenge? It's just the same fight 45,000 times in a row.

Simple (note that I did not say easy) fix: Get rid of "kill skuls"-style missions. They suck anyway. Want to fight street crime? Go where it's actually likely to be happening. Not on street corners in the financial district in broad daylight, hello Outcasts.

I'd like to see that argument attempted at e.g. a bank.

The guy's wearing a mask and having people film him taking the law into his own hands. Hell yeah, they all get run in. Vigilantism is illegal, and it's illegal for a very good reason - this dude is going to get himself or somebody else seriously hurt if he keeps this business up. Even in Seattle, life is not a comic book. Guy wants to enforce the law so bad, let him join the force. 'Course, then he won't be able to wear the cool costume and put his exploits on YouTube, but you know what, that's life in the actual grown-up world.

Sorry to harsh your buzz, guys, but I have zero sympathy for these rubber-clad Walter Mitty types and their dreams of Batmanhood. Well, no, that's not entirely true. I have sympathy for them inasmuch as I'm sympathetic to anyone with mental illness, and if you're dressing up in a superhero costume on days other than Halloween and trying to break up bar fights for great justice - with a camera crew in tow - there is clearly something wrong with you.