Samuel_Tow

Me too. I like weapon packs. I want to see many more weapon packs. A weapon for a weapon-based character is arguably as important as the rest of the costume combined, if not more so.

What job do you work where you get to wear space suits with fishbowl bubble helmets and where do I sign up?

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And, no, that's not snark. I, myself, am wholly uninterested in "everyday" clothes. I'm much more interested in monster parts, power armour, military gear and so on - things people don't generally wear around the house or when they go out for a drink. The problem is that the "sexy" is starting to cut in on this. It's pretty hard to make an airtight space suit that shows skin.

There's only one mission which points to Galaxy City specifically - the mission to read Galaxy Girl's history, and even that one I might remember wrong. All of the other missions of the "random" variety, which is to say they could spawn anywhere on any zone of the appropriate level range. They could just as easily have spawned in Galaxy City.

There are a few delivery missions to specific NPCs, yes, but those could be moved just like the old ones were.

Yeah, I didn't think I'd like it, either, but surprises never cease. I really like the absurdly over-the-top style the game has, and I think I fell in love with it when I found out that Resist Bullet Damage 4 says "You will not take ANY damage from bullets." Ha!

I say "hidden meaning" because you attribute meaning to something the person didn't mean to say seriously. I will often joke that I have no sense of humour or that I hate fun not because I really don't, but rather because I'm aware that I often come off sounding like this, even when I don't mean to. In fact, most of my "jokes" are exaggerations, hyperbole and outright fabrication. Trying to interpret my attempts as humour as something I actually mean is a big mistake, because if I mean something, I wouldn't joke about it.

I have an example, actually. My friends generally regard me as an honest person, so when I tell a friend of mine to, for instance, not leave money on the table when he walks away, he'll say "Yeah, but I know you wouldn't take it." And I'll respond with "Are you REALLY sure?" with a wink and a nudge.

You're correct, we got to replay uninteresting and unmemorable missions. But that was, in my eyes, the brilliance of it - what was interesting in the game wasn't so much "the game," it was the character I put into it. The original five contacts (and the Atlas Park and Galaxy City ones had identical missions between them) aren't memorable, because they're not meant to be. They're not meant to be actors in a play or characters in a comic book. They're "the people," the civilians in a comic book that need help. All of the original contacts are. That's what "contact" usually stands for - someone on the street who knows something. It's the garbage collector, the hustler, the courier, the young cop - the people who know something, but lack the power to do something about it.

I appreciate cinematic storytelling and complex, involving narratives, but those just have the tendency to usurp the story and craft a very... "Specific" experience. That's good for a single-player game with a set story, but not as good in what is essentially an open-world sandbox, and at one point that's exactly what City of Heroes was. Moreover, that kind of content is easier, simpler and above all FASTER to make. Yes, Habshy and company undoubtedly have better writing, but they have a much smaller volume of content, and that's a problem. No, the old ones weren't memorable or even very good, but every time I started a new character, it felt like I was doing something new and thus the repetition felt less. Now it feels like I'm doing the same thing over and over again even more than before.

For a long time, after having seen the consequences of more complex content, I've simply wanted more content. It doesn't have to be stellar, it doesn't have to be complex, it doesn't have to have lots of dialogues and plot twists. Just as long as there is lots of it, I'm fine with it. Crimson is my favourite contact. The guy has something like 40 missions, and I couldn't enjoy them more. They're simple, they each have just about one objective and lots of stuff to kill and the narrative is not all that complex, comparatively speaking. But I'd take one Crimson Twinshot, Graves, Cooling and Ross.

Heh, welcome to winter in my home I'm constantly dressed in one of half a dozen thick hoodies with a padded vest on top around the house. I think it looks pretty and it saves a bit on my power bill.

That sounds very unfair since not everyone puts hidden meanings in their jokes. I, personally, try to find clever ways to make stupid things appear believable enough to be taken seriously, and then rely on logical dissonance to make people laugh.

Things that are stupid yet still make sense in their stupidity are the most amusing.

Now, what I'm about to say is either profoundly philosophical, or just means I'm messed up, but... Yeah, I kind of do see it as sexy Yes, the rotting flesh does detract from it somewhat, but WoW's undead are not exempt from Rule 34 (to say nothing of World of Porncraft) so "undeath" in itself is not a complete roadblock.

I personally have a mentality which is capable of finding hugely unattractive concepts in general and costumes in particular if I like enough about them to be able to overlook the parts I don't like. In some instances, I like an aspect of an otherwise ugly or questionable costume so much that I begin to enjoy the costume's apparent drawbacks as ironic positives. The undead saloon girl is just amusing enough as a concept and inspiring to write about AND pretty enough if you look past the rotting flesh that she does actually look pretty good.

Well, to me, anyway.

I didn't mean to criticise you with my post, but more so to point out that it's difficult to me to tell parody from unorthodox tastes. And we exist in a playerbase with some god damn unorthodox tastes, lemme' tell ya! A parody takes a serious concept and plays it for laughs by emphasising the flaws that fans typically overlook due to suspension of disbelief. That's difficult to keep straight, however, in a game with this broad a range of acceptable concepts. That undead zombie prostitute that Voltair sings about as dark humour could very easily be an actual, serious character if someone were to take it seriously. And I just might, since weird design is sort of my "thing."

Believe me, so do I. I honestly wish we had the tech to layer patterns on top of patterns, or otherwise the ability to have tattoos without clothes under jackets and shirts. Men kind of sort of get that since they can have bare chests (but not legs), but even then, very few pattern options actually look like tattoos, and very few are asymmetrical.

The one in the pic has tattoos on her upper and lower back, lower chest, upper left arm and whole right arm, plus a couple on her legs that you can't see. I would kill to have that in-game.

*edit*
More pics.

And that's a mistake, as far as I'm concerned. I get being treated like my character is weak. That's a prerequisite of the powers system, and I can come up with reasons for why he's lost his powers temporarily.

I don't get being treated like I'm stupid, or "inexperience" as is the excuse. Being a newly-registered hero does not mean you haven't seen action and you can't think for yourself. It just means you're weak, and that's only because of how our powers system works.

I only need one - "go into mission, kill everyone inside" - then repeat that a hundred times with different explanations for why I'm doing it. It's far better than the runaround waste of time that is Matthew Habshy.

That's the point. I DON'T remember them. There were enough of them that I never ended up running the same missions twice in a row, and I didn't and don't make that many new characters, so every time I started playing the old missions, I'd forgotten what they were about. Because I didn't remember, I was inspired to read the mission text and experience the missions anew.

I remember Matthew Habshy's dialogue almost by heart, because when Freedom hit, I made a couple of new characters and they all ran the same content. When I was a child, my literature teacher had us memorise poetry. The way I did it was to simply read the poem in question again and again and again until I could repeat it off memory. I don't quite know the starting content word-for-word yet, but I know its plot with pinpoint precision.

Here's how I see it - my VIP subscription buys me convenience. If someone wants to buy a month's time of VIP subscription just so he can buy the costume sets, let him. When he drops down to premium, he'll keep the costume, but he can never edit it again unless he goes back to VIP. So suppose that two days after his VIP subscription runs out, he realises he has the wrong colour belt, or he forgot to do his face sliders. SOL. You can't edit the costume or you lose the pieces you no longer own. He who is no longer VIP simply has to accept an imperfect character, or else buy more VIP time to fix it. On the other hand, I as a VIP can alter my costumes at any time I want and not fear losing parts. That's worth paying for.

Again - I don't want free stuff to be the sole benefit of my VIP subscription. I can afford to buy things off your store. I want the benefits of my VIP subscription to be comfort and convenience. I know you have to do some pretty unpleasant things to get people to pay in a F2P game. Yours won't be the first game to coerce its players. I get that, and I would be willing to pay a monthly subscription to be exempt from that.

To me, anime has a few interesting concepts, though how many of those can work here or we don't already have is debatable. The one I can think of off-hand is the "big but also fast." I seems like in Western stories, strength and speed are inversely proportioned, either as a shot at balance or because greater strength usually equals greater weight and size, which hampers speed and dexterity. In a lot of anime, that's not really the case. Because "power" is either spiritual or down to inexplicable tech a lot of the time, the overall most powerful character is both the strongest AND the fastest.

Where this most usually comes up (at least for me) is in terms of weapon size and weapon selection. Anime weapon choice can often be very unorthodox, and I don't mean things like Final Fantasy 8's wrist-mounted dog launcher. Things like cutting wires, double-bladed swords, awkward scythes and more are often seen being used as melee weapons despite their high degree of impracticality. To some degree, you could argue that that's style, I'm really not referring to any specific weapon type in particular, just the concept of characters who, through exotic fighting styles and unorthodox super powers, are able to use an awkward weapon proficiently.

In generally, though, you are correct. There isn't all that much in terms of concept that's wholly specific to anime, and not just because much of anime apes Western animation anyway. That's kind of why I don't think the genre deserves the stigma it gets from people who I swear have only ever seen the horrible dub of the padded DBZ show and probably seen some of the weirder hentai dubs, like those of La Blue Girl. There isn't all that much in anime that we haven't seen elsewhere, so if I happen to like the hat that D wears in Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, I really don't want to be afraid to mention the anime by name.

Honestly, I actually like that pic of Bishop. About the only real problem I have is his hands are too long (they look like they'd come down to his knees), but everything else works for me. I mean, yeah, it looks like he'll pop a vein in his heart any second now, but that's kind of the point, I think, at least judging by the caption box saying he should relax for a change.

That's part of what I try to correct people on. "Anime" is not any one style, theme or approach. Trying to describe what "anime" constitutes is as futile an attempt as trying to describe what "Western animation" constitutes, when it can constitute anything from Tom & Jerry to the Lion King to Heavy Metal 2000 to Felix the Cat: The Movie. Avatar: The Last Airbender and Teen Titans borrow from chibi and otherwise exaggerated comedic anime that is, to be honest, nowhere near as bizarre or exaggerated as something like Ed, Edd 'n Eddy. Transgender stories and tentacle hentai are less a function of anime and more a function of Japanese culture being both more obsessed with fetishes and more open to them, but that's really not restricted to the Japanese. Plenty of Western artists are just as eneamoured with unusual sexual themes, Jay Naylor being the first one that comes immediately to mind as one of the more prominent and more skilled.

But that's not all there is to anime, however. Actual dramatic works that draw on folklore and philosophy also exist, and their artwork is rarely exaggerated. Ghost in the Shell is an easy example, as most of that movie is about two steps removed from being photo-realistic despite the stylised artwork, and which deals with much more erudite themes. Almost anything by Hayao Miyazaki has a distinct, somewhat realistic art style and manages to approach even fantastical problems in a grounded, believable way. In fact, something like Grave of the Fireflies is probably closer to a war drama, despite being animated. Yeah, there's also a lot of crap like Mad Bull 34 and Angel Cop, to say nothing of Legend of the Overfiend, but then no genre is without its schlock.

What I'm trying to say is that anime is not a genre so much as it is a medium. It's impossible to "know" anime like it's impossible to "know" live-action movies. That's not a knowable collection, it's just a basic description. There are, in my opinion at least, many elements and themes that City of Heroes can borrow from many anime movies, series and OVAs without actually turning City of Heroes into an anime. Titan Weapons are, to my eyes, a very good example of this. The basic concept of a giant weapon is primarily an anime trope, yes, just because most fictional animes operate on less stringent laws on believability. But that doesn't mean that City of Heroes can't have giant weapons if done properly and in keeping with the rules of the art style chosen. And having seen Titan Weapons on Beta, I can safely say that the team did a great job. Obviously, the set won't appeal to everybody, but that's true of pretty much every set ever added. What it most certainly WON'T do is turn City of Heroes into an anime. We might see a rush of Cloud Strife clones, but that'll die off as fast as it starts, just like the fear of Drizzit clones with Dual Blades and the fear of Green Arrow clones with Archery and so forth.

Anime in general is not the problem. It's an innocent source of inspiration. It's how you adapt this inspiration that defines whether or not drawing from it will work, because you really can't just take chunks of other people's work and hammer them into your game. That just never works, but that's also never really what people do when adapting foreign inspiration.

I think Bishop is about to pop a vein. Or an artery. I wonder what made him so mad?

I just want to point out, just for the sake of trying to be constructive, that I personally don't see any costume options added at any point in the game's existence that I want to remove. More options is always better, regardless of what the options are. My beef is that I want more options of a different kind and feel we've had enough "sexy" to last us another pack or two.

What I find objectionable in terms of the "attitude" that these packs exude is the apparent belief that women can't go even a single pack without getting something sexy and provocative, or else someone messed up. The problem with that is it simply butts out "everything else," and I still maintain that female characters have a LOT more themes they can fill than just "the girl." Having costumes to play "the girl" isn't the problem - the more the merrier. Not having costumes for much anything else is what's causing this.