Grower

These costumes are a huge improvement over the last incarnation we were shown.

The Circle of Thorns is the ruling body of a dead civilization stealing back their lives from the descendants of their ancient enemy, while trying desperately to outmaneuver the forces of Hell that they unleashed trying to defeat that enemy. Their people were defeated so long ago that they barely remember who or why they are fighting.

Before this war Oranbega was peaceful, the pinnacle of knowledge and magical power on the planet. The Mu were merely tribals who were more or less conscripted by divine powers to destroy Oranbega for their audacity to be independent. But they had to have known they would eventually have to fight - they would have been prepared. So having intimidating, ornate and battle ready looking costumes makes sense. I like these costumes. Their style makes sense for the group.

Except for one thing. The highest echelon of Oranbegan power is incapable of walking past a chair or chandelier without turning sideways. Ornate is great, but having six foot wide pant legs is impractical. The Death Mage looks very intimidating, but he also looks like a pufferfish who just got startled. Does he have any idea how low the ceilings are in Oranbegan tunnels these days?

These costumes would look perfect (Life, Agony and Death) with the minor modification of moving the spikes on their pant legs closer to the ankles, and lifting the other vertices on that piece so that they retain their spikiness, but with a less horizontal flare.

However I make this minor criticism with the emphasis on the fact that I REALLY like this version, a lot. My first reaction was "Oooh! Now this I like!" I am okay with this version replacing what we have now, I simply have the kind of mind which will always see the impracticality of the costume as an immersion breaker, so I must mention it.

First, an introduction. I am not a PvPer. I am a veteran PvE player, started in 2005. My personal view is that the success of any build is 90% playstyle and only 10% gadgets, and I pride myself in being able to take on content that I really shouldn't be able to take on with a mismatched, undersized or nonexistant team. My main is a Controller. I have dabbled in PvP both before and after "The Change", and have found it generally undesireable in both cases. But I WANT to PvP - I want the PvP in the zone descriptions and literature where fighting is fun and challenging, and danger lurks around every corner. In short, I am the *potential PvPer* that everyone seems to be waiting to start PvPing.

Second, a disclaimer; this post is not written by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the details of PvP. I don't play it much, so I might make mistakes in a few things I state. I know the PvP community values verbal combat as much as pixellated, and I am eager for constructive counterposts. What this is, is an explanation of what I expect out of the PvP I *want* to play, from the mindset of someone who never really enjoyed what we had, pre or post The Change.



There is an idea that seems to be popular, where every archetype should be able to fight every other archetype and stand a reasonable chance. The idea is that my controller should be able to go into a PvP zone or an arena match and fight on an even playing field with a brute, scrapper, mastermind or stalker. I used to think I liked this idea. But today I realised that this idea is what is wrong with PvP as designed. CoX was designed as a team based game, with limited solo options. Stupid stupid AI has allowed those solo options to grow, and now people expect them out of PvP as well. This is wrong.

If the PvE enemies were player controlled, my controller would not stand a bloody chance without a team. This is what PvP should be like. I do not expect my controller to go to RV and stand toe to toe with a brute and take him down in a reasonable amount of time. I expect to hold that brute for a really long time until his friends come and kill me, and maybe get him down to half health before that happens. He can't hurt me, or move. I can't kill him. Pointless for both of us without a team. If I had a blaster teammate, he loses. If he has a dominator teammate, I lose. The world spins on, and on and on.

*I do not expect to survive most PvP solo, with any character or build*

*I want any character or build I play to be able to do their job on a PvP team, and not be muzzled to enable half *****, artificial feeling solo play*

Besides intelligent tactics, the primary difference between what is possible in PvE and in PvP is the use of inspirations. If Malta had breakfrees, they would have already taken over the earth. Therefore, the way PvP should be balanced is not through making all the powers do different things for no reason, it is through changing inspirations and the way they work. I would like to see PvP specific inspiration functions, or inspirations be removed from PvP. If I can hold people and they can't just shrug it off over and over and over again, I don't need some wierd *** artificial damage and HP boost to be competitive - I just need a teammate to actually kill the people I hold before I get counterattacked.

*I want the people I hold who have no mez protection, to stay the $@$# held for more than two seconds*

*I do not expect a controller to stand a chance in PvP without the ability to lock down any more than I do in PvE, that's why she's a controller*

In short, you can't redesign a team based game into a one-on-one game and still retain any of the original design elements. So don't try. CoX is a team game. Play it that way. Build it that way.

This means that the controller vs blaster match in the arena is going to be a really boring 4 minute long fight where the blaster uses their first two attack powers over and over while the controller tries to slowly crush the blaster with rocks - very slowly. Yes, that is silly - so don't play controller vs blaster matches. Don't redesign the whole damned game and add a bunch of wierd stupid alternate power functions to make that match kind of fun after you read the PvP specific game manual. No one wants to read the manual. Just let us play the game!

I used to avoid PvP because I wanted to solo it and win every battle, and I couldn't. Now I avoid PvP because I can solo it, but my character plays like a broken copy of everyone else's character, and every power is either just a damage power with different graphics, or pointless. Let the archetypes do what they do. Stalkers gank, controllers mez, etc. This is the way of things.

Us PvEers need to stop trying to solo PvP for the badge and street cred, find a buddy and dive in.

I really hope that we are given a PvP worth diving into in the next couple of issues. And not one we have to relearn the game to play.

Just found this thread tonight, and I wanted to say that you are amazingly talented, and produce some of the best art I've seen.

Your talent for posing and setting a character is top notch.

Halfway through the thread when it gets to the HeroCon costume contest, I realised that the Vahz costume that I and everyone I knew loved so much was you. You should've placed higher.

If only I had money to spend, I would be honored to comission you. As of now, you've gone to #1 in my list of people who I want to buy art from.

Now that I have your attention, I'd like to announce the first Iron Maidens Giant Monster Hunt! (And salvage giveaway)

On May 31st at exactly noon PST, the Iron Maidens will be out in force looking for giant monsters, flaming buildings or any other zone-wide calamities which need solving. Anyone who notifies us of an active zone event, joins the team and stays to complete that event gets a free piece of salvage of their choice - you can pick any salvage piece you want.

Of course, this reward is in addition to the swanky badges available for keeping our city safe from uncommonly large opponents. So even if you haven't found something to call in, join us anyway for the XP and badges!

Even if the City is having one of its rare days of peace and quiet, we will find something to do and some rewards to give out, so show up, call in and have fun!

Contact Grower or Glacial Gal for team invites or to report a disaster in progress.

I tried to ressurect the concept of this myself, but there was absolutely zero interest in mine. I'd still like to participate.

[ QUOTE ]
They are humans exposed to a mutagenic agent, suggested to be the same mutagenic agent that was used to create the Rikti subspecies in the first place by whatever Alien race did it to them.



[/ QUOTE ]

I always assumed they did it to themselves, in a quest to "better" the species. It sounds like they were a small group who eventually took over the whole planet, wiping out or converting anyone who didn't believe in the Rikti way.

Am I missing some snippet somewhere that points at it being done to them?

Those have been there for two issues now. I've been wondering myself.

DOORS to put in the doorway rooms. Please! Like the sliding airlock doors in tech maps, or the giant roll-up doors from warehouse maps, or the council doors...

Doors. An object with an openable doorway in the center, which is large enough to completely consume the width and length of a Doorway room.

These can be made targettable and destroyable later for raids. Or they can even automatically be destroyed whenever a raid member appears in the doorway, if that is going to still be the way it's done in future.

In the immortal words of the baddest of the strong.... HOLY CRAP!

Woops... that's my fault. I will make the next palette image differently, but the grey beige is actually not part of the palette. Only the ones circled in red and shown at the bottom are, the one with the in-game selector highlight is just an artifact from my screenshot.

Like I said, my fault. I will edit that out next time. Sorry.

That would still be Devil Nurse .

Hm... no interest eh? I'm going to spice things up a bit then, by offering a Non-No Prize.

I am now offering a free pencil drawing of the character of each winner's choice, starting with Gata!

These may take a while to produce, but I will guarantee each winner a drawing, in due time.

The current round will continue until the Iron Maidens meeting on December 14th. Speaking of which, here is my overdue contribution: Solstream!!

Very sorry to hear that. I hope he gets well soon.

I would be honored to be included in this with a sketch of my favorite character, The Grower!

Kimberly Elen Bowne, daughter of Howard and Leana, has always had mystic ability. As a child possessed of the second sight being able to read auras, see the flow of energy through the world and seeing ghosts puttering about were all normal to her. It was not until she entered public school that she realized not everyone had that gift.

The daughter of a physics professor and librarian, Kimberly was raised to be a bookworm and that has stuck through her whole life. Always eager to analyze a situation thoroughly before acting, a long study of tai chi and other forms of martial art has given her the drive to act swiftly and decisively once she has determined the proper course.

The sudden Rikti attack forced her to employ her mystic talents in battle. Having previously only studied magic in recreation, she now had to learn to fight with it, and quickly. She chose to employ weather magic to strike down her enemy with tempests of thunder, lightning and freezing cold equal to the emotions she felt as she watched the attacks. In the years since these abilities have become her specialized weapons, creating a sorceress with extremely powerful control over moisture and temperature, able to create ice and minor weather phenomenon, from delicate ice sculptures at a party to coating an entire park in frost and pelting it with golfball size hailstones swung around in a cyclone of fierce wind. But even without her magic, she is a skilled martial artist and fighter, sometimes preferring to close with her enemy rather than finish them from afar simply for the satisfaction.

Looking great!

Ooh, ooh! Go with 5, but add more white. Try white gloves, and white straps on the bottoms?

I'm going to vote for concept 3, but would suggest trying to find something to put on her legs for protection and color.

That is actually one thing I didn't expect anyone to do. An old lady with a baseball bat. Nice! I like it. And, since you are the first person to enter after the deadline, you win by default! I will concoct a no-prize at once!

Somehow the veil on your second actually makes her look more nurse-like... which is unexpected, but pretty cool looking.

Since no one has entered anything by the deadline, the first person who does will be the winner!

And, in the spirit of the season, here is the next palette:

Devil Nurse

You could always wait for shields, and use the ice themed elemental shield.

Never actually filled it out for this character. I like to write all mine in character, and then I end up not playing them often enough to build up the motivation to do that. But I can tell you the origin story:

The Instrument is actually the daughter of the real villain, who plots behind the scenes. He was a technician working to improve an advanced mind/machine interface device. The Gold Brickers raided the lab to steal the technology and killed him in the process of a test, at which point his mind was still within the test computer. With his body destroyed, his mind within the machine was all that was left.

His daughter came in to find him as he was late getting home, and found the scene of carnage. Being a Rogue Isles resident she was no stranger to death, even that of her own father, and instead of panicking her first instinct was to find security footage of the raid with the intention of hiring one of the many local villains for revenge. Instead, when accessing the computer she finds her father speaking to her.

The problem is the technology was still far from perfect, and his mind is now far from intact. He is in fact quite insane and bent on not only revenge for his death, but for his mediocre place in life. He tricks her into using one of the MMI devices kept in storage which was not taken in the raid under the pretense of saving his life. In reality, he reforms her mind to make her the perfect tool to act out his will since he lacks a body of his own. Under his control, she downloads his mind into a portable computer system and makes off into the night with that system and the device.

Under this control she and what is left of her father go into hiding, where for the next several years she is slowly trained as a deadly assassin. Obsessed with destroying the Gold Brickers who caused his death, he makes her get gold metal implanted in her skin and even gold metal tattoos, creating not only innate armor but also a way to 'fight fire with fire,' with a weapon against the Gold Brickers in their own image.

Excellent work on the skin texture. Translucence is just about right, hard to pull off.

For that matter... the leather textures are pretty freakin awesome too. Lighting as well. Very nice work.

I fixed the image, so now it's big enough to actually see.