Dr_MechanoEU

Heh just noticed, there's a thread for being a superhero and now one at the other end of the scale, being a henchman/Henchwoman/Henchperson(?).

Yeah there's pretty much only 3 options from what I can see, if you're willing to accept that your boss is a ********* anyway and will likely throw you at Batman to get away (which I imagine is pretty much a 'comes with the job' territory for a career Henchperson).

Penguin (who tries to be legit atleast), The Ventriloquist (Mobsters usually reward loyalty and hard work) or Rupert Thorne (also mobster in B:TAS).

Ok had a weird dream...well not weird but...surprisingly coherent.

Probably had something to do with the Batman: The Animated Series marathon I just had.

You see in this dream I was what can only be described as a 'mook', one of those nameless henchmen that usually just gets their backside kicked by Batman without a second thought. The 'gang' consisted of me (as the fairly intelligent but general skill wise fairly useless muscle), some young Chinese guy with all the actual technical know-how and Harley Quinn as 'The boss'.

From what I can remember from the conversations both myself and the Chinese guy are career henchmen, as in we move from employer to employer looking for work (apart from one which will be raised later).

Now before you start chuckling about 'dreaming about Harley Quinn' I distinctly remember her annoying me more than anything else.

Crime was to steal a painting, this was a 'to order' crime as in we had a buyer already lined up, I remember snippets of the conversation.

Me: Yeah boss you go have fun, me and my friend here will do the hard work.
(Harley leaves)
Me: I say we got five minutes before she breaks something and sets off an alarm.
Chinese guy: I say we don't even have that...lets get the hell on with this.

So as the Chinese guy is disabling the security systems for the area another conversation crops up.

CG: Why are we working with her again?
Me: Nobody else was hiring.
CG: Yeah but surely we can do better than her...I mean she's like Joker lite and you know our policy on working with the Joker.
Me: Well who else we gonna work for? I mean Bane ain't exactly needing in henchmen, the guys smart and tough.
CG: Poison Ivy?
Me: She hates men...hell she hated people period.
CG: Penguin?
Me: Didn't he retire to run a bar, you know me and bar work don't mix.
(Smash, alarms going off)
Me: Heh four minutes and thirty seconds, when we get out of here you owe me a drink.
CG: Fine just grab the damn painting and run before 'he' shows up.
Me: Alright, alright the cars parked out back...which floor we on in the car park again?
CG: Second.
Me: Just great...BOSS WE ARE LEAVING!

So it got me thinking. There really is nobody in the Batman universe I can think of that would either a) Need henchmen or b) Anyone with half a brain would want to work with, especially career henchmen.

One of my favorite comments on this on the actually website discussing this is something along the lines of.

"Seriously, all you'd need is a Helicopter and some Goats, have it hover above the Roman Commanders tent and drop said goats on it, they'll think it's the work of the Gods purely on the basis of this strange flying thing just killed their Commander with Goats. To be honest if I was a Roman and my commander was killed by 'Skygoats' I'd be a little conscerned."

Agreed...some moderators will let minor infractions (silly things like simply saying the name of another game in passing) pass while others are very 'by the book' and will stamp out any mention of any game if they see it.

This has begun to lax off, since we can now mention NCsoft MMOs at the least, Wildstar and Guild Wars 2 namely, especially since the CoH team (devs and mods) have been heavily tweeting/promoting Wildstar and letting that topic slide for WEEKS. I tested the waters and made a thread about Guild Wars 2 (mentioning that if we're allowed to talk about Wildstar, well deleting a topic on a different NCsoft MMO would smack of double standards) and while it didn't get a lot of replies, it remained undeleted for several non-weekend based days.

Erm...you do realise there was a good...what was it...six months after the release of the Alpha slot before we actually saw anything that used those locations right?

That's six months of planning to make the two new trials. So yes, it was a design descision to pull the Incarnate content they had planned in order to delay to add raids and then look at what they could use to make raids from, so they pick the BAF, which actually does look like a raid zone (big, sealed off from eveywhere else etc.) and then Lambda which was just background scenery for the most part until it was given a fully fleshed out story by the raid.

Infact I wouldn't be surprised if originally it was all based around normal team sized content and not huge multi-team raids.

Now it was pointed out to me by someone (I think Arcanaville) that my 'theory' as to why we're going the Freemium route now, which was that Going Rogue failed to pull in the numbers expected, was dismissed because the devs have been planning Freedom along with Going Rogue.

Fragmenting the player base for a THIRD time was a silly move and like others I honestly believe Praetoria was meant to be a 40-50 Expansion when originally designed. It fell short because it WAS unfinished, Going Rogue was meant to have the Incarnate system in place.

Judging by what appeared on Test during a muck up where Beta players could access the 'closed' Test server and see the Incarnate powers up to the ones we have now (Alpha, Lore, Judgement, Destiny, Interface) well before they were announced that they system itself was ready to go but a design choice at the last minute decided they wanted to be more like other MMOs and include endgame grinding of certain raids.

The Praetorian mobs are incredibly poorly tuned for low level, as mentioned, mobs with mez protection while Controllers and Dominators still only have access to single target holds and little else, huge AoE damage well before things like Super Reflexes gets its AoE defense. Psi users out the wazzoo well before sets with a weakness to Psi have the HP to soak a few attacks before slumping to the ground.

The mobs are blatently tuned for endgame and then scaled down, badly.

I will say that even the endgame content feels rushed, releasing with only 2 raids was a pretty poor idea since now everyone and their dog has mastered those two raids, why bother doing the more difficult Keyes and Underground when you can do a BAF and Lambda with ease. It's all very well going "Oooh these are HARD, yeah, for teh hardcore elites playas yeah!" but when you've got 2 other trials that have been out long enough for the general population to have all it needs to know burnt into its memory, its not going to matter how 'hardcore' you make the 2 new raids, most won't do them more than once accept for badges.

You know its telling, when asked about the fact we're not getting new Incarnate slots for what seems like quite a while now and the person who has tier 4 in every slot sees no reason to run the trials anymore, Zwill and Dark Watcher responded simply, "haven't you unlocked everything? Go unlock more stuff!"

Well I'm in that boat, I have ONE character I'm making an Incarnate, I don't WANT to unlock more stuff, I'm perfectly happy with the tier 4's she has. It was a big enough pain in the backside to get her to that stage, you can bugger off if you think I want to go through that 20 times to every single tier 4. I got what I wanted out of the costume rewards in the very first day they were released, I have no interest in grinding out content for the Ascension armour so that means I'm simply not playing the Incarnate content, adding new trials does absolutely nothing for me.

Issue 21 as a whole is a 'meh' for me, it's not got new Incarnate slots, it's got 20-30 content in it which I may run...twice...if I'm levelling up an alt since I know that they're using Praetorian mobs and thus they will be a PITA to fight due to overtuning. The sets I want either aren't ready yet (Titan Weapons) or are being held back from some odd reason despite being ready to go (Street Justice), which leaves Beam Rifle...which I was very 'meh' to and Time manipulation...which is a buff/debuff set when I rarely play ATs that use that.

Issue 21 brings me, personally, nothing.

I definitely think the series suffers purely for being more 'Americanised'. I can't really put my finger on it but it seems a lot different to your standard UK series or rather it feels like a UK series made purely to be sold to Americans.

Children of Earth was just right at running only 5 episodes, it didn't outstay its welcome and gave the story arc time to flourish while keeping it fairly snappy. Miracle day seems over stretched and would probably have been better if it had stuck to the 5 episode limit.

As someone else in the thread said, Story arc seasons only really work if not EVERYTHING in the season is about them, reference them here and there in other episodes otherwise it just drags along. I watched the entire run up until episode 5 on the BBC Iplayer and I just wanted the plot line finished with, I don't know it just kind of bored me, definitely not going to bother watching the rest of the series.

Agreeing with Marsquake on the Oswald Dane character, if they even attempt a redemption arc with him (not having watched the last 3 episodes) then that was just a waste, the man is, put simply, a monster. He enjoys what he did and is unrepentant for it, the guy doesn't deserve redemption.

Definitely not Davies best by far, while he is not Steven Moffat I still enjoyed Children of Earth.

Ok watching it and watching Episode 3.

Did any else think the 'translation' scene (explaining the British to American) was put there specifically for American audiences...it seemed really out of place.

All very interesting answers.

Durakken's questions first.

The Races in this case are humanoid, Giant Spider and Slime with their own set of animations, breaking it down into the 'basics' of walk, run, attack and idle.

In most games Giant Spiders are usually limited to three basic attacks.
1) The lunging jump.
2) A kind of fang swipe.
3) Curling the Abdomen under themselves and firing webs.

Now these are fine for basic monster characters, after all you don't need that many animations for what is usually a 'mook' creature. However to make them a player character I imagine you'd need more than just those three attacks (or would you?).

Slime allows a LOT of leeway since...well Slimes aren't real, Humans and spiders have recognisable and well known movement patterns but Slimes don't. Slimes can stretch, congeal, form tentacles to lash at enemies or even the good old fashion 'run into the enemy' style attack to cause damage.

Both the Giant Spider and the Slime have...well..very little to grip with, neither has hands, the Spider COULD grip with the fangs but a Spider holding a sword like that would be silly. Now the Slime allows leeway once more because, well, it theoretically could hold the sword in a kind of tentacle grip and then lash out with it. Slimes, by far, at the most versatile purely

Attack animations definitely are something of a stickler, especially if your going for a melee based one. Just swinging the arm would look weird, using examples I know, CoH and a fantasy based MMO based on a popular Paper and Pencil Roleplaying game.

CoH handles the problem of movement by having 'rooting' animations that glue you to the spot and CoH has a wider variety of animations going on. However the 'hit stuff hard with medieval weaponry' powersets (aka Broadsword, Axe and Mace) all share animations with Broadsword being the odd one out and having Parry which has its own unique animation, War Mace and Battle Axe only differ in effects, otherwise the animations are exactly the same.

Now that's fine when all your people are humanoids, you can use the same rig and have them preform the same attacks without much hastle but when the races are so different from each other it represents a real problem.

Hope I've explained myself sufficiently enough, been kind of a long day.

Which is harder to animate?

By this I mean, for example, a walk cycle, a run cycle, an 'attack animation' cycle and an idle animation cycle.

Humanoids have the obviously easy reference material (ourselves) but also slip into the uncanny valley if the animations aren't right, meaning people will notice if something is wrong in the animations.

Spider animations, more limbs to control but lacks the problem of Uncanny valley.

Slime (the type with a smiley face on it)...now slime I imagine is probably the easiest to animate (especially if you make it a cube) and would merely involve stretching said cube to have it ooze along.

Now lets say they're all in the same game, all player characters and are all meant to be customisable. For the sake of ease we'll say they all use the same loot (there are other options, like having the game go 'if X race uses chest they get X loot but then you need to design items that are functionally identical but are designed for the three races anyway). This presents quite the challenge to overcome and I'll ask a couple of questions.

1) The races are incredibly different to each other so it effectively means designing 3 sets of loot per item. Is this a similar problem to CoH's current rigs? Since we're often told that Male, female and Huge all need to be accounted for and designed for seperately but obviously to a lesser degree since all are humanoid in that regards. However CoH has the sliding scales which I imagine would add even more work instead of a static 'race' with no sliders.

2) Two of the races don't even have hands...how would you animate the other two races utilizing weapons?

3) One race has no way of wearing armour, how do you got about representing the armour on that race (a suggestion was have the slime 'swallow' the armour so it floats around inside).

So thats my questions for you people with knowledge of these matters.

Hmm reminds me of my attempted MAN build though yours is more MANLY than mine due to the fact my only restriction was power pools only from level 6 onward.

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.942
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Science Brute
Primary Power Set: Electrical Melee
Secondary Power Set: Electric Armor
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Medicine
Power Pool: Leaping
Ancillary Pool: Leviathan Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Havoc Punch -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(3), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(5)
Level 1: Charged Armor -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-EndRdx(5), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(7), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(7), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(9)
Level 2: Jacobs Ladder -- M'Strk-Acc/Dmg(A), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx(13), M'Strk-Dmg/Rchg(15), M'Strk-Acc/EndRdx(15), M'Strk-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), M'Strk-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40)
Level 4: Conductive Shield -- RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(9), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(11), RctvArm-ResDam(11), RctvArm-EndRdx(13)
Level 6: Boxing -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(17), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(17), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(19)
Level 8: Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(19), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(21), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21)
Level 10: Hover -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(23), DefBuff-I(23)
Level 12: Fly -- Empty(A)
Level 14: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), RctvArm-ResDam(25), RctvArm-EndRdx(25), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(27), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(27), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 16: Aid Other -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Aid Self -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(29), Heal-I(31), RechRdx-I(31), RechRdx-I(31), IntRdx-I(33)
Level 20: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(33), DefBuff-I(33)
Level 22: Jump Kick -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(36), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(37)
Level 24: Acrobatics -- KBDist-I(A), KBDist-I(37), KBDist-I(37)
Level 26: Weave -- RedFtn-Def(A), RedFtn-EndRdx(34), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(34), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(34), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(36), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 28: Air Superiority -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(39), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(39), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(39)
Level 30: Stimulant -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 32: Resuscitate -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 35: Group Fly -- Empty(A)
Level 38: Super Jump -- Empty(A)
Level 41: Spirit Shark -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(42), Dmg-I(42), Dmg-I(42)
Level 44: Arctic Breath -- ImpSwft-Acc/Slow(A), ImpSwft-Dmg/Slow(45), ImpSwft-Acc/EndRdx(45), ImpSwft-Rng/Slow(45), ImpSwft-EndRdx/Rchg/Slow(46), ImpSwft-Dam%(46)
Level 47: Summon Guardian -- SvgnRt-Acc/Dmg(A), SvgnRt-Dmg/EndRdx(48), SvgnRt-Acc/EndRdx(48), SvgnRt-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48), SvgnRt-Acc(50), SvgnRt-PetResDam(50)
Level 49: Bile Spray -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(43), Heal-I(46)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(40), EndMod-I(43)
------------
Set Bonus Totals:

• 2% DamageBuff(Smashing)
• 2% DamageBuff(Lethal)
• 2% DamageBuff(Fire)
• 2% DamageBuff(Cold)
• 2% DamageBuff(Energy)
• 2% DamageBuff(Negative)
• 2% DamageBuff(Toxic)
• 2% DamageBuff(Psionic)
• 29.3% Defense(Smashing)
• 29.3% Defense(Lethal)
• 5.81% Defense(Fire)
• 5.81% Defense(Cold)
• 8% Defense(Energy)
• 8% Defense(Negative)
• 3% Defense(Psionic)
• 21.8% Defense(Melee)
• 7.38% Defense(Ranged)
• 8.63% Defense(AoE)
• 5% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
• 3% Enhancement(RunSpeed)
• 3% Enhancement(JumpHeight)
• 3% Enhancement(FlySpeed)
• 3% Enhancement(JumpSpeed)
• 112.4 HP (7.5%) HitPoints
• MezResist(Confused) 2.75%
• MezResist(Held) 4.95%
• MezResist(Immobilize) 21.5%
• MezResist(Sleep) 4.4%
• MezResist(Stun) 6.6%
• 10% Resistance(Smashing)
• 10% Resistance(Lethal)
• 12.2% Resistance(Fire)
• 12.2% Resistance(Cold)
• 10% Resistance(Energy)
• 10% Resistance(Negative)
• 10% Resistance(Toxic)
• 10% Resistance(Psionic)

Hmm if I'm remembering correctly...the footage is from the Cowboy Bebop movie.

Still Cowboy Bebop has my two favorite episodes of any animated series in it. Namely Toys in the Attic and
Pierrot Le Fou.

Yeah there's a lot of spin off material.

Heck I OWN one of them which I picked up at a bootfare (that would be a Garage sale for ye Americanas) and its...well...kind of awful...

Absalom Dakk: Dalek Killer.

Thinkg gritty mid-90's antihero meets Dr Who (literally...one character is the antihero and the other is the Doctor..),

Curious what class your girlfriend plays and whether she does dungon runs and high end raiding or not?

As the 'ranged DPS/Pet class' in that game doing raiding I was constantly watching things like shot timers to make sure I was doing good DPS, seeing which buffs have just procced to fire off what ability etc. All that along with watching for boss abilities etc. I would say that CoH is far LESS frantic than the big Gorilla of the MMO world especially during the raiding scene.

Keep in mind Dr Who has been running for a VERY long time.

Let me put it this way...the first episodes with the very first Doctor (William Hartnell) are in black and white...yes before the invention of colour ever reached TV...

As mentioned above, the Doctor regenerates, he is the same person but different personality traits will get brought to the fore along with his new appearance.

Sadly you won't find a very large chunk of the older stuff because the BBC, in their infinite wisdom, threw out most of the masters in order to make room (this was the norm back then, older shows were sent to be destroyed since they didn't plan on re-broadcasting them).

Whilst a large chunk was actually saved by a Dr Who fan at the time, more still is now lost forever.

And damn it I want the Planet of the Spiders arc on DVD!

Ah so it was you in the Brad tries video.

I saw the patch and went, "where on earth do I know that modified Ghostbusters patch from..."

And Brad is somewhat of a conniseur of that kind of beverage so if it takes like Ecto-cooler then it will damn well taste like Ecto-cooler.

Ok first off... we're allow to talk about Wildstar so I'm assuming that we're safe to talk about NCsofts other big hitter in the MMO market, Guild Wars 2, after all, the smack of double standards would be audible from space. After all...it is still an NCsoft game.

So having heard from various peoples play through of the starting areas in PAX the responses have pretty much being 'awesome'. Yup...from all the people I regularly watch which were bringing in the PAX news this year (The Yogscast, Totalbiscuit (who is notoriously hard to please in the MMO genre after burning out on the Big Gorilla of fantasy gaming) and even the dudes on Blistered Thumbs website) have pretty much said that the game, from what they played, looks awesome.

Heck in the Charr tutorial area (the bit BEFORE the starting zone) alone you get to fight a big boss battle.

Now despite never having played the original, I'm looking forward to this, it seems to do a lot of things right from what I've seen. Looking at the skills videos alone made my jaw drop (one of the classes has an awesome anti-spell reflection bubble which visably pings all spells cast at it, another can go into a shield stance where they drop to one knee with shield raised an at angle, demonstrated infront of a Dragon for the classic 'knight deflecting the fiery breath' moment with the fire flowing around the shield).

So yeah, personal first impressions from watching footage from PAX and the skills videos generally has me going 'oooohh boy...wantnowwantnowwantnow!'.

Hmm crossovers...interesting.

Dr Mechano has been many things.

A silly character (an insane old man proclaiming himself super villain)

A vigilante hero (his vigilantism actually got him re-arrested in the end and was a blow to any villainous reform schemes running at the time)

A downright dangerous villain who even other villains didn't want to risk teaming with (he was considered 'the joker' of the Unionverse for a while...and often still is by the people that knew him back then)

Now he's mellowed out to be a more Lex Luthoresque villain, content to merely be in the background, operating his highly illegal genetic engineering operation for profit and I will be announcing, very shortly, his next money making scheme.

The nature of the Unionverse allowed Dr Mechano to rise from obscurity, be considered a major villain and then slowly slide back into the background. There are still heroes and villains out there who hate his guts though. He can be as silly or as serious as I want or need him to be.

There a parts of the silly nature which have been kept throughout his career (he still employs a cybernetically enhanced Shivan named Steve...who wears a tie and has a blog called "Shivan Steve types!" which is part advertisting blog for Dr Mechanos company and part metahuman gossip column).

As for plot references, there are some of the past 'major' Unionverse plotlines labelled out on the wiki. From the huge 'everybody involved' plotline of Zero hour aka the Rikti second invasion to the smaller plotline of 'Dr Mechano screws with people on both sides of the fence' (harmless pranks on the three biggest Supergroup and Villaingroups in the unionverse but it didn't affect everyone).

As people have mentioned, sometimes the best thing is to walk away, if the plot or other characters aren't to your liking, don't get involved.

I have genuinely silly characters though, Lord Horace Hattings is one, he's a victorian pulp action hero who wrestles alligators, punches out Llamas, braves the deepest darkest parts of Africa all for the search for treasure to sell to the British mueseum to keep up his globe trotting lifestyle.

Heck, here's two of his adventure stories (done in the style of diary entries) I did for him.

Union has place for all sorts of characters but not everyone will want to RP with them.

Wonder if the Abomination will sound anything like this.

That's just it though...tweaking Forcefields isn't a long the same lines as making an entire new powerset...sure it might be about making an entire new power (because screw Detention field...people may love it but 90% of the people you team with will hate you for using it...ever).

When you have a set which does everything that Forcefield can do AND provides utility aka Traps...what's the point in ever taking Forcefield?

Things be said by the devs to be crap and in need of a revamp but left to linger for years to come because they just can't be arsed to do it since 'new shiney' is new and shiney and sparkles like a Twilight vampire doesn't speak well of the dev team. As Memphis Bill mentioned, it shows them to be like a dog in a ball park, chasing one ball only to get bored of it the moment they catch it to go chasing another ball, it shows they have the attention span of a small yorkshire terrier..

You can push the new shiney without cutting off all avenues, just slow down the rate at which you push the new shiney.

Heck they've got Street Justice ready to go but are delaying that so the next powerset is already done and is probably 2 months away, instead of having the team work purely on the powersets they want people to pony up cash for perhaps give them some time to tweak the sets that aren't all that great before moving on to Titan weapons and Staff melee.