SablePhoenix

Frankly... this event is a disappointment. I was going to say it sucks, but that might be unwarrantedly harsh. Regardless, I've seen a Deadly Apocalypse event by pure chance once upon logging in this morning. The banners went down so fast that I missed getting one of them. Since then, nothing.

And that's just on one character.

So yeah, seems like the entire design of the event has been snafu-ed, and it's been a big yawn so far.

Personally I love the IDEA of the MA. The execution is sorely, sorely lacking.

I'm all about good stories. That's why I prefer redside to blueside, the writing and story arcs are far superior. However, with the MA, the options given the players actually do not allow them to create anything more interesting than what already exists elsewhere in the game, and let's face it, the writing on almost every player-made mission is, to put it kindly, sub-par. Additionally, despite my heavy focus on RP and story, I don't play the game exclusively for the story, and I would wager that nobody else, despite the protests to the contrary, actually does. A big part of the game is the accumulation of rewards and profits for your time spent. The rewards of the MA need to equal that of regular play, otherwise it feels like a waste of time.

Until the rewards of the MA are commensurate to the risks of fighting the custom enemies, or equal to the rewards you'd get from regular missions... I don't see the point to it. Once you're at 50 and, theoretically, have already acquired everything you want to on that character, and provided you have friends who are great writers that will make high quality, engaging content... I suppose it would be fine to do a mission purely for the story. Even at that, however, the MA still feels like you are accomplishing nothing, which really kills its appeal.

Making tickets more common/valuable, or changing things around to make rewards equal to regular mission, is critical if it's going to have any long term use beyond a tiny, exclusive fraction of the already minority segment of the playerbase that RPers represent.

Alright, I16 has killed the AE. It is now Mostly Dead, and unless we find a Miracle Max somewhere, which seems unlikely, it will probably remain that way.

I don't particularly care. I didn't use AE for anything XP related. I did use it for tickets, as they represent a huge savings when it comes to buying salvage. Unfortunately, tickets have undergone just as heavy handed a treatment as the rest of the AE.

Since tickets are ONLY usable in the AE and are not tradeable, and as such can only impact the game in a very limited and specific way, two things need to be done with them. First remove the ticket cap. It's highly unlikely, on a map mostly populated by minions, that you'll be able to reach the ticket cap now just through defeats, but the mission reward is very often diminished by the cap, which has always felt like a slap in the face and even moreso now.

Second, increase the ticket drop rate. At least double them for each enemy rank. The only respectable ticket drops come from bosses, especially considering a rare salvage piece costs over five hundred tickets and you can't carry enough to even buy ten at once. Minion ticket drops are utterly pitiful, hardly worth the time it takes to defeat them. Lieutenants are... just okay.

Alternatively, you could make every single enemy, without exception, always drop tickets. And, it would be nice if they always dropped the same amount of tickets per enemy rank. Such as, 25 for minions, 75 for LTs, and 120 for bosses, or something similar.

I loved AE for the availability of salvage that often takes multiple millions to purchase, if it's even available. Now that there's going to be a serious shortage of rare salvage again, AE is the best way for a casual player who doesn't have several hundred million Inf to throw around to acquire these. At least, it used to be. Please fix it so it still can be.

She's pretty, but, uh, where's her left arm?

When an appendage is occluded by the body, it's good to show at least part of it, otherwise, the subject looks like an amputee.

A left hand would suffice. Ideally, an elbow as well.

So yeah. Put together a portfolio and submit it to the comic companies. It's professional level. Maybe not tip-top professional, but that will come with time, experience, and more projects. It's still professional level, regardless.

Thanks, you rule.

I love this skin. So much better.

Is it possible, in any way (please please please please say yes) to display all the forums within the categories on the front page of the forums, like in the old ones, WITHOUT having to click once to open up the category. I liked being able to just log into the forums and click directly on the Virtue forum, or the Comic & Hero/Villain Culture forum. Now, I have to click to open up For Fun! first, THEN click Comic & Hero/Villain Culture, then if I want to leave and go read the Virtue forum, I have to click the Back button twice, or the City of Heroes Forums link directly, then open the NEW section of forums... it's a ton of extra clicks that's very annoying.

The overall perspective is really good, I can see the grid you used to lay it out. I also like the slight curve you gave to the verticals, very nice job on that. Although, not everything has the same curve, such as the refrigerator being rigid straight against a slightly bending wall, so keep an eye out for that on the next piece you do. Also I really like the curtain, you have a very good grasp of cloth folds and drapery, which is a tough thing to do convincingly.

A few nasty problems that nobody's pointed out yet. You seem to have trouble with circles in perspective. The clock over the door would be a lopsided oval if looked at face-on, like an italic zero. The overhead ceiling lamp would have sharp corners. The bowl of fruit is actually tilting towards the viewer, as is the top of the trash can. I'd suggest spending time drawing pages of circles in various stages of foreshortening (it's boring, I did it more than I would've liked, but it'll help you tons).

My other main suggestion is to work on your rendering. This drawing is like a cross between a technical illustration and a rendering; I actually think it would be stronger without shading. Rendering is an art all its own and requires an intimate knowledge of how light behaves, probably the single most difficult thing an artist must deal with.

Perspective is one of the hardest things there is, I still have problems with it myself and there was an entire class I took in art college that dealt almost exclusively with perspective in all its forms. You've got a good handle on it to start out with, though, so just keep practicing!

I had a love affair with my very first tanker. Invul/SS. She was my first 50 and ended up being the only one I spent time playing. The idea for her backstory was basically stolen from Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Shadow, although with a bit of a twist, but the character took on a life of her own.

Then ED and the GDN hit, they changed Rage... and all the joy went out of the gameplay. She was also the first character I ever deleted. I also haven't gone back to those sets since.

Still my favorite character I ever created for anything ever.

This is unacceptable.

I thought I might look at AE again after I15, but not with this stupidity. There needs to be complete customization of enemies, besides 1-3 basic powers. Anything less is just not going to work, especially since they DID have that kind of a setup before.

The AE looks like it'll remain a huge disappointment. It should have had two more issues of development time.

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As I said: The Rogue Isles wouldn't be nearly as fun as a tightly controlled police state or rather decently run dictatorship. It's meant to be a supervillain's paradise, and the world is built around that.

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But that itself is a self-defeating idea, because there isn't anything for villains to DO if there aren't heroes to fight. And there aren't. The game doesn't feel epic. It feels incredibly petty as villains fight each other for whatever scraps are left to be had. There is simply no place for a world-conquering villain with a vision and the power to pull off amazing schemes. We're all punks and thugs that off people for little reason more than getting the next meal.

I sincerely hope Going Rogue returns to the CLASSY villains that City of Heroes made famous. Villains like Requiem, Nemesis, Tyrant (obviously), Countess Crey, Vanessa DeVore, Hro'Dohz or whatever bastardisation of Herodotus they picked to sound Rikti and so on and so forth. With all due respect for the Soldiers of Arachnos, I don't want to play a soldier of Arachnos. I want to play the LEADER of Arachnos. Obviously, that's not possible as that's a canon enemy group, but having my own to lord over would have been really cool. Except we can't even invite our own alts to our own SGs and our leaders keep getting demoted for stupid reasons. Eh!

CoV is a big giant dump with everyone scraping by. That is NOT classy or impressive. It's sad and pathetic.

Even if it's just a farce, much of City of Heroes plays out like you are THE hero. You save a thousand world, you stop Dr. Vahzilok, you rescue the Statesman, you prevent a Rikti Invasion (that's already happening...), you prevent the Banished Pantheon from trapping a full-blown goddess. In City of Villains, on the other hand, you are A villain, just one more of many. All you ever do is get paid and that's pretty much it. Time After Time is, obviously, very impressive, but it is about the ONLY arc that's actually about you being THE villain of the story. Everything else is just mercenary work.

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What you want is impossible in an MMO.

The heroside is false, as well, because what you've done to "save the world" is the same thing everyone before you has already done. You are, in practice, just a hero, one of many.

The nature of the MMO requires it to be static and unaffected by the actions of hundreds of thousands of players. In that, CoV actually succeeds better than CoH.

[u]Blueside arcs:[u]
1. Meet contact
2. Streetsweep 30 to 50 enemies
3. Carry clue back to your contact, maybe get phone number, otherwise repeat step 3 after steps 4-6
4. Travel across 2 to 4 zones, defeat all
5. Travel across another 2 to 4 zones, defeat all
6. Carry clue to a different contact 2 zones away, even though you've done missions for them already and have their phone number...
7. Travel across yet another 2 to 4 zones... at least this mission has a specific objective, not a defeat all
8. Another mission, hunting glowies in a cave
9. Repeat any or all of the above until done
Note: Insert "Talk to Azuria" at any point in this sequence, especially if there is more than 2 zones of travel time between your current location and Atlas Park.

[u]Redside arcs:[u]
1. Meet contact who has an actual personality
2. Go to a mission in the same zone with a specific objective
3. Carry clue back to contact, get phone number
4. Go to another mission in the same zone with another specific objective
5. Repeat step 4, with the objective being an annoying glowie hunt on very rare occasions, 1-3 more times until done
Note: For almost all contacts, bypass streetsweeping and defeat alls.

I know which one sounds less boring.

Get to Grandville and do Westin Phipps' story arcs, especially Miss Francine the Freakshow Teacher. They will make you feel like a right proper heel.

HAHAHAHAHA!

That's fantastic.

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Mission Architect Changes

-Custom enemy groups now require at least one minion, lieutenant, and boss creature.

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Um, no. There are things that can only be accomplished in the MA by creating a group with a single character in it. Altering this would destroy a number of story-based arcs I've played. I have barely touched the MA since the last patch, the very last thing we need is to remove yet more flexibility and functionality from it. The farm potential is a small price to pay for this; it would be a significantly more damaging blow to good stories than it would farming.

Also re: the costume pieces unlocked by badges. Bad idea. There are already too many costume pieces that have to be "unlocked" in this game. From now on any new pieces need to be available to all players at level 1 with no prerequisites.

Tricky Tacky's piece has the most coherent, artistic feel to it... I'd go for that one.

The Coming Storm ran into a tropical inversion and was downgraded to The Coming Low-Pressure Area.

The LRSF absolutely needs to be changed. The chain aggro alone is the game breaker. Remove that and it would become doable. Now? Not so much. You need to employ very specific powersets or a buttload of temp powers to win.