MartyRallner

Ok, so I was discussing potential sprucing up of areas like Boomtown, and hit upon a potentially easy way to make Dark Astoria more interesting and a place worth playing in aside from the odd time a mission takes you there. Here goes:

A) Scale back the darkness just a bit. Sure the oppressive fog and gloom give it that Silent Hill look, without other ambiance (like sudden, unexplained sounds and "What was that?!" moments) it just becomes a navigation hazard as heroes fly/jump/run/port smack into a skyscraper they couldn't see until it was right in front of them. Thus, an improved vision range could improve the area's popularity.

B) Villain diversification: Right now Astoria is a one-note town, and that note is Banished Pantheon. Worse, the Argo Building in Talos is a much better spot to hunt for spirit masks for the Banisher badge, so players don't even have that reason to wander into the fog (they may have changed this, I wouldn't know). In order to spice it up, here's my proposal:

The Circle of Thorns have made a power play into the area, possibly because an Oranbegan tunnel under the area has just been excavated. The Circle and the Pantheon start tearing into each other, with fighting spilling out all over the zone. In response the Legacy Chain has gotten involved, performing front-line recon of the situation and skirmishing with both sides. The Midnight Squad is assisting the Chain but taking a less confrontational stance, waiting for the Thorns and Pantheon to try something really drastic before getting involved. Finally the Tsoo and Warriors, knowing they're out of their depth here in matters arcane, are content to skulk around, looking to swipe anything potentially useful they can find. It's even whispered that some of the witches from up north are quietly scouting the zone, looking to examine magic other than their own.

Already we've livened up the zone, but players will likely want to get more involved than just picking off CoT or BP spawns. Perhaps a Task Force assigned by, say, Star Rose (remember her?) or someone is in order. Teach the Tsoo to behave, keep the Legacy Chain from sparking a full 3-way war, stop Circle or Pantheon attempts to exploit other magical groups (Fir bolg and Igneous come to mind), then culminate in a showdown with Leguheubu (gesuntiet) and the other Banished Gods. If the powers that dev are feeling especially frisky, they could turn it into a series of story arcs like the Faultline arc.

So, yeah, that's my idea: Make it easier to see in there and give it more activity than just having the Pantheon standing around. Any thoughts?

!!! There she is, break out the web grenades before she escapes!

In all seriousness, looks great and glad to have you around here =D And yeah, the new forums can take some getting used to, but just give it time.

*is currently being gobsmacked by your rendition of the Horned King*

Wow. Please grace us with your presence more, milady

Yes, dA has been a real embuggerance lately. For me it likes to overlap comments and refuse to show updates (so if I haven't replied to a comment anyone's made to me, that's because I can't bloody see it).

And Battle, you got the reference pic I sent, right? *can never keep track of these things*

I wouldn't mind hanging out with everyone on the Test server, so count me in. Main reason I didn't sign up with the Envisionaries is that I can never seem to find anyone online to invite me...

"It's not what you think! She's just appreciating the detailwork on the tattoo I had done on my inner thigh. Honest."

Needless to say, I look forward to more, more, and even more more. And moar.

...

Sorry, brain overloaded by awesome. Please wait a half hour to reboot and try again.

Only one way to describe that, and it needs a black Scottish cyclops to say it: http://www.tf2wiki.net/w/images/4/42...lization01.wav

While this proooooobably isn't the forum for it, my heartfelt thanks for posting this.

Criticism is a tricky thing: in order to be effective you can't sugar-coat it, nor can you tie it to a brick and aim for the recipient's head. You have to be firm without being condescending. Blunt and tactful. Ecetera, ecetera. But you also have to cross your fingers that the recipient of your critique is mature enough to see it for what it is and not mistake it for a personal attack.


In most cases when an artist responds poorly to honest critique it's because they're young, not fully mature, and are high on the ego buzz of having people praise them for their work. It only gets worse when they acquire a fanbase, which will pump torrents of sychophantic praise directly into the artist's ego, causing even more swelling. In these cases a simple statement such as "Not bad, but your foreshortening here is a little wonky" will cause the hive to erupt, as the artist and her leigons will attack the person viciously, using everything from "I don't see you do anything better!" to unflattering descriptions of the person's mother. The best defense is to simply ignore the rabid assault (as taking it personally is the same mistake the artist did in the first place) and move on.

It has been a recurring nightmare of mine that this forum turn into one of these ego-hives. It's not likely to happen (too many wise and mature people here) but the nonstop tides of praise many posted pics recieve still makes me nervous. Call me paranoid, my new meds have made me a bit twitchy.

Again, constructive criticism has to strike a balance between sugar-coating and brick-delivery. If someone tries to be fair but ends up falling a bit toward the brick side, it's not a reason to break out the tar and feathers. We're all mature enough here to survive something like that, right? Of course we are.



For more information on artists who totally flip out when given honest critique, consult your local Google for Encyclopedia Dramatica's deviantArt portal. Please bear in mind the site can be dangerous to the health of the easily offended, and it is generally not safe for work. Viewer discretion is advised.

Insert your choice of lewd pirate metaphors rightchere.

But seriously, that is the hottest tapdancing zombie pirate I've ever seen. An appropriately awesome gift for a talented artist. Good on ya, Ed

Oh those two and their kinky bondage games. What will the little scamps come up with next?

I checked my keymapping, but it said R wasn't being used for anything other than my attempted rotating bind. Guess that rules that one out...

Okay, so you're playing the latest of your many alts, and you're feeling good. You just leveled to level 15 and now your contacts are all introducing new ones, ones you've never really worked with before with previous characters. So hey, a chance for something a little new, right? And you still got that one that offers that badge mission, so even better!

So you fly/hop/jog/bamf over to your new contact, introduce yourself, then hit "ask about available missions"... and get this:

"Speak with Longbow Liaison for Bloody Bay
Briefing

I'm sure you've heard about what's going on in Bloody Bay..."

GRRRRRR!!!

It isn't just Bloody Bay, though. There's Jim Temblor, Stephanie Peebles, Gordon Bower, the other PVP zones, and the Hero Corps representitive too, if my memory serves me. And all these missions do is make you drop everything you were doing, swing out of your current stomping grounds (possibly dodging too-high level badguys along the way), make a total of 2, maybe 3 mouseclicks (including the one to close the dialogue box you've read countless times before), then hoof it all the way back to the contact to be able to actually do anything with them. Annoying, isn't it?

Back in Issue 12 (I think), the devs came up with a lovely way to avoid repeating the same rigamarole with Ashley McKnight and Montague Castanella: they called you instead of vice versa. That means you don't have to waste time with a boring errand to meet them, and you can start their story arcs when *you* want to.

I suggest that these older contacts be given pop-up messages as well, to update older content and save veterans (and rookies) with dull fetchquests. You already centralized the contacts in King's Row (a very welcome change), and I believe players would be equally grateful for this.

As for the PvP Liasons and Hero Corp rep, give them popup windows as well without making them actual contacts. Just have something like "Hello Hero, I'm calling to inform you you've been given clearance to operate in Bloody Bay. Look for me on your map the next time you're in Skyway to learn more about PvP and Bloody Bay". And the Hero Corp rep... seeing as there's no equivalent redside, it just looks really extraneous. Perhaps drop it altogether and add a "So what does this do?" option for HC/Fateweavers to fill new players in on how it works?

All in all I think trimming these extra missions will cut down on pointless errand-running and do a better job of introducing new areas to new players. Any thoughts?

Hmmm... *goes to check* Well what do you know, there was an additional line feed (Thanks Kat for the translation!) *fixes and fires up CoH to test it*

...

Nope, still getting the "Unable to read in keybind file: C:\CoHKB\bash1.txt". Anyone know the exact character limit for a bind, because I suspect I'll need to do some editing...

Okay, did everything you guys said and entered all four binds into the chat... but when I hit the key, my character's stuck on bash4 and the chat answers "Unable to read in keybind file: C:\CoHKB\bash1.txt" Still doing something wrong here.

Okay, created 4 individual .txt files for each of the lines I want to use. So from here use /bindloadfile for bash1.txt then use /bind for bash2-bash4?

(Dumb question: does the file name for the text file have to be "bash#.txt" or will "bash#" suffice?)

Okay, further testing yeilded partial success. The bind worked, but now it's stuck on the last /bind in the cycle because it's "Unable to read in keybind file: C: \keybinds\bash1.txt". If I had to guess it looks like it didn't recognize the first one I put in ("I didn't mean to hit ya...") as bash1.txt. Any non-guess suggestions?

And by the way, it gives me the warm fuzzies to see that I can post a question and people are so quick and willing to sit down with a thicky like myself and help. Thanks so much =D

In the few days I've decided to revisit the forums I've managed to rack up -11 rep with just two posts: one a lighthearted ribbing at people taking the I16 MA xp changes way too seriously, and the other a geniune request for help with something. The fact I can apparently induce indignance so effectively is something I'd (almost) bear with pride, and it's hard not to feel smug when the only rebuttal someone can throw at you is "shut up moron". Plus, mousing over my red dot to read "Marty Rallner can only hope to improve" is rather amusing, too.

This talk about rep-farming is more unsettling, however. It sounds way too much like the pageview addicts on dA who honestly believe the amount of traffic their page gets is an indication of their talent and status as a superior individual (a hilarious example can be seen here, and no this guy is not a troll ). If anybody thinks an arbitrary and easily-manipulated scoring system is good for their ego or impressing others, said scoring system better be taken away before the insufferability and obsession spreads to infect newcomers. Heck, keep the anonymous "j00 scukz0rs" message system so that the easily indignant can vent their displeasure, just remove the E-go buffing setup.

And to move back off that personal tanget and get back to the OP, report garbage like that ASAP. Idiocy like that needs to be dealt with extreme prejudice (Irony!)

Okay, initial attempt at bind-making failed spectacularly. I input /bind_load_file R "local I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit ya... Oh, wait, yeah I did$$pow_exec_name Bash$$bind_load_file C:\keybinds\bash2.txt" and got:

Usage: bind_load_file takes 1 args, you gave 2.
Reads a list of keybinds from a file.
bind_load_file <string>

Obviously I am doing it wrong. Any advice?

Hi everyone, long-time player here with a bit of a problem. See, in all my time of playing I've never bothered with keybinds. Over time I've thought of a few funny things my characters could do using them, but they didn't justify wrapping my right-side-dominant brain around the smooth, cold, and logical language of Programmese to make them. Except now I have a joke character that really, really needs keybinds so he's spouting off with almost every click in order to be complete. Thus my dilemma.

I tried looking through the keybinding guides in the guide forum, but they just left me more confused. Sure they offered templates for toggling binds (which is what I want to use), but I'm not sure of the /commands needed to input them or if they need to be saved in a folder or something. Thus, more confusion than a room full of mind doms.

If anyone's willing to help walk an easily confused computer-illiterate schlub like myself through the process of making these keybinds (preferably using very small words), I would be in their debt.

BAB: "... okay, best three out of five then..."

As usual, Brandon delivers. The expressions tell pretty much everything at first glance, though looking at those claws makes me hope that Power Customization will someday produce a new animation set for fingernail claws instead of those big clunkers...