Samuel_Tow

Which isn't what I mean. You can't stab with a mace, but you can thrust a heavy mace head into someone's gut and it wouldn't really look wrong. Even if you stabbed the mace far past the person's chest. It's artistic liberty. But stabbing someone with a scythe just doesn't work for me, because it looks ridiculous. To me, that's like taking Dual Pistols and adding dual frying pans as pistol options. The set would still work mechanically, but it wouldn't make sense visually.

Again - that's not me bringing up realism. It's me pointing out that Titan Weapons, for as much as I love the basic concept, has a really terrible set of animations that are designed to be used with swords by virtue of having been taken straight out of Katana more often than not. A set which uses many different classes of weapons should have had animations that work for all those classes of weapons, which means brand new ones that are basically two-handed smashes.

For instance, take a look at Tera's Berserker. That's a large axe wielded in a way that makes sense. It also points out something very important - there's a world of difference between long-halfted weapons like large axes, scythes and polearms, and short-hilted but still giant weapons like Titan Swords. It has to do with hand position and what you can do with it. Sure, the Razor Sword hilt is made absurdly long to account for a wide hand stance that would be kind of applicable to long-hafted weapons, as well, but the animations done for the set just don't play to that. They're quick, nippy sword animations that just have a long pause at the start, and that borrow too much from existing fast light sword animations.

Personally, I expected to see the "slow" animations just being longer, more elaborate animations with the fast ones being completely different, but what we got was slow animations pulled from existing sets with a pause at the start. And the thing is... We don't have any two-handed weapon sets that aren't swords, and drawing animations from those makes them sword-specific.

It's one of those arguments which, at this point, isn't about the Skulls at all, but rather the broader aspect of whether continuity should even be followed or not, which only tangentially relates to the Skulls redesign in terms of whether the redesign should have anything to do with the original look.

The answer to the specific is actually pretty simple: The new Skulls look enough like the old ones to be recognisable as such. They lack some specific detailing, but it's not enough "break" their design. About the only thing objectively wrong with them is the octopus hair. This is in contrast to the CoT redesign, where their new design more resembled some kind of coral reef on legs that had nothing to do with the robe-wearing wizards of old. The CoT were controversial. The Skulls are not. They're pretty much like they always were, just more diverse and different in fine details.

That's actually a big problem I have with "dialogue" not just in video games, but in movies, as well. Recently, I've been trying to figure out why Darksiders II doesn't impress me as much as the original, and a lot of it comes down to the sequel playing out most of its dialogues like Mass Effect, with just two people facing each other and talking. This works if you have solid voice actors and a strong script, but the original got around this by making the characters in these scenes much more "animate" as they talk. Better, more precise lip-syncing, more natural motion, more gesturing and moving around, that sort of thing. I still miss seeing Samael hunched over and stomping around as he spoke.

That's even worse in live-action movies, when your entire conversation consists of two people basically standing relatively still and talking. It's at that point where a movie stops being a movie and becomes an audio book. A REALLY good actor can still pull it off just via facial expression and tone of voice, but I've found the best sort of dialogue scenes to be the ones where characters do more than just stand around and occasionally loop an emote.

This, to bring it back to the game, is why I don't like cutscenes in City of Heroes and why I don't feel like Mass Effect style conversations can work here. It's boring to sit through and misses the point of having these things show up on-screen, rather than in plain text, though be it narrated. If you're going to give something its own specific cutscene, it can't just be people standing up and talking with the occasional emote. Either you need an ACTUAL cutscene, or you can deliver it through text.

As with most parts of game design, nothing grants a benefit without also having a cost entirely separate from development time and resources. Cutscenes have the cost of halting the action and forcing people to sit idly by while they play out, and this is only really worth if the cutscene is worth watching for its own merit. Which none of ours are, sadly. And that's not a dig at our "cutscene makers" - the game just doesn't have the tool or the budget to make custom cutscenes.

The British police service, I'd wager. It's a common police call box, the Tardis simply happens to look like one. If you'll notice, the Drudges are written like Cockneys and they have a sort of Victorian English social structure. The police call boxes around the zone are a reference to that.

Granted, I'm sure Dr. Who making that call box design so common is part of why they were specifically added, sort of like how the Optimus Prime truck used to be the Black Market. I guess the Tardis and Optimus Prime swapped colours, since the Black Market truck is blue while the call boxes are red. Point is, this makes sense to be there since Dr. Who didn't actually invent that design.

Could you elaborate on that? I can see Howling Twilight being made auto-hit as it's a rez power which would be a dick move to have miss, but how is Mind Control simpler if it's auto-hit? And what edge cases are we worried about? And no, I'm not being sarcastic. This is a genuine question here.

Oh, no! We must fix Fury immediately!

Some of them do. Damage buffs, for instance, do scale with level and most are pretty much the same value at level 1. Self damage buffs, however, do not scale with level and their value should therefore not alter as the character progresses through the levels.

My initial snark aside, I have a hard time seeing this as an intentional change. I've seen things scale when they should before, so I'm thinking this damage buff is taking something else into account.

Nothing wrong with the Orks. I just don't think they fit the Batallion as described in pre-existing fiction. Of course, given how often "pre-existing fiction" is entirely disregarded... Who knows?

Pure guesswork here, but this wouldn't actually surprise me. Real-life video captured into a digital format and interpolated between pixels should hold a lot of information from that interpolation between the various frames, because the more detailed real world can flow between those more seamlessly.

Unfortunately for this thread, that doesn't really work on computer-generated animation that's pixellated at creation. Maybe if an original scan existed somewhere and that were rescanned in higher detail, then that could work, but as the character model textures stand right now, to make them more detailed we'd have to create that detail from whole cloth.

You're quite welcome, Dink I try to pitch in with stuff I know whenever I can, but don't worry about correcting me when I say something terribly wrong.

It's not just about what looks better, but what a costume piece actually "is." For instance, the old-old Gladiator shoulder was quite low-res, leading to some people using it to represent metal, others leather and still others carapace. When it was up-rezzed and made to look like beaten iron, most of those "other" designs no longer worked. That's what I mean when I say you have to invent information where none exists.

Low-res textures are a bit like a Rorschach ink blot test, in that they often look like splotches and each person who looks at them sees something different. My "uprezzing" them, you ARE making better textures, but you're also making much more specific textures at the same time. The more detail you add to an item, the more specific and particular and unique it becomes and the more uses it can no longer fill because it's obviously not what the low-res version might have looked like.

Uprezzing old textures is a lot of work, since an artist would basically have to make brand new ones with the added burden of having to keep to a very strict look. It's like tracing over 320x240 graphics in Flash (which I've done), in the sense that sooner or later, you HAVE to start making your own details because the resolution is so poor small details turn into blotches. It's a lot of work, and at the end of the day, you're creating something that has a very high chance of not really being what people thought it should be. Again - look at the Medieval shoulders and tell me what pattern that is on the sides. I'm told it's a Celtic weave, but what kind? And is it really? Because it doesn't look like one to me.

That's why David made the decision he did - keep the old pieces, update whenever possible and leave both pieces in. He even wanted to work on a toggle button to hide "old" costume items in the editor, and tech for that already exists with the button which hides all items that aren't owned. That is, to me, the safer approach. Add "better" versions of old items, but don't remove the originals. Just hide them.

What I mean is that they're not the sort of invading force that forms a great empire and plots great strategies, and they're DEFINITELY not the the sort of invading force that's so technologically advanced as to put even the Rikti to shame. The Orks are really more like the Shivans, as far as I can tell.

The thing is that this shouldn't really cost anything to accomplish, or at least not cost much. Even if our writers aren't as knowledgeable as rabid lore hounds and can't quote contact dialogue off memory, that's what ParagonWiki is and, worse come to worst, that's what Beta should be for. Seriously, why not post a storyboard for an upcoming arc and run it by Beta-going players to make sure you haven't gotten any of the canon completely wrong?

Why I and others are so galled at crappy canon discontinuity isn't because it's somehow a huge crime and a travesty against art, but rather because these are usually very simple mistakes that would have been cleared up by even a basic understanding of the game's existing canon. Again - Reichsman. His bio is on the site. How do you make a TF about him without so much as reading THAT?

To me, canon discontinuity is a lot like that warehouse bug where walls are intermittently green and white by sections because the textures are messed up and swapped around. Sure, it doesn't make the game unplayable and many people probably don't notice it at this point, but it makes the game look cheap, rushed and unprofessional. And it's not something that's monumentally costly to get right the first time.

I had to track back a page to see what I actually said, but thanks for taking a note of that I wonder if I should be proud or ashamed that I have a list of woes with you guys...

And that's the big thing - they wouldn't. Arc of Destruction is a really awkward, silly animation to begin with. Ask yourself this question - if you're making a set tat has a variety of non-stabbing weapons, why would you make your ultimate attack a ground STAB as opposed to a ground smash? It would make sense for all the set's blunt weapons, it would make sense for all the non-stabbing weapons and, best of all, it would make sense for swords, too.

I don't get why this set is using the animations it does, is my point. Not unless it really did start out as Titan Sword but got retconned into Titan Weapons-of-all-kinds later in the process. That would explain a lot if it were true.

Just to be clear: I'm not blaming Castle or saying he was wrong. That said...

What I suggested was an AT designed around not what role it was supposed to fill, so much as how it was intended to be played. As I was suggesting an AT with a mix of melee and ranged attacks, I had to come up with a way to encourage players to NOT just fire their ranged attacks point-blank, which is where my idea for debuffing ranged attack damage for using melee ones and vice versa came about as a means of getting players to switch between range and melee.

I don't know what role this AT would fill on a team, because what this AT is intended to do is be able to use a combination of melee and ranged powers in such a way that neither feels like you need to compromise the "best" playstyle to use. Blasters will usually avoid using their melee attacks more often than not and Scrappers will just shoot their ranged attacks in melee anyway. What team function the AT serves is, to me, secondary to how such an AT would even work at all, because my reason for suggesting any AT isn't because I feel a new role on a team can be fulfilled, but rather because I feel powersets can be combined in ways they haven't already.

Also, there's this. I don't disagree with you, but I still feel that combining powerset categories that no AT shares right now is "unique" enough in terms of experiences, provided it actually works. I know I tend to downplay how the game "plays" in favour of concept, but I'm one of the people who believe Brutes and Scrappers don't play very similarly in actual practice, and I feel that a Ranged/Defence AT would play drastically differently from all other ATs in the game so far.

Look at Masterminds, for instance. Yes, they have roles... None of which they're the best at, but why people play them isn't because they can tank or support or deal damage. In fact, ask around and to this day you'll get people argue over whether Masterminds can tank or not. But what makes the experience unique is that this AT plays like no other in the game BY FAR. I don't know what role they fit on a team, nor do I feel it's terribly important to the question of whether they bring something to the game that's worth keeping. Yes, they do, because the way they work is different from all other ATs. That's "unique" enough.

Of course not. What possibly could? Frankly, the rocket hammer - for as good of an idea as it really is - is probably the worst of the Titan Weapons simply because the set seems purpose-designed to ruin it with inappropriate animations. Again, with the concrete chunk, you can kind of say you're thrusting a great weight into someone's stomach. But with the hammer? Yeah, smashing your jet into the ground looks horrid.

As for the scythe... I just don't think Titan Weapons are just a bad call. Hand positions are limited to just the "hilt" area even on long-hafted weapons, and the Rend Armour animation reaches so far forward it sends most of the weapon through the enemy. Honestly, I don't think that set's animations are good enough to cover as wide a range of weapons as the animators are trying to make do. It works great for swords, less well for axes and maces, and pretty badly for everything else.

Won't find me arguing there, it's just as confusing to play it as it is to watch it. Darksiders II is an objective lesson that while you CAN make a game that's style over substance successful (the original Darksiders was still fast and frenetic, but you could still tell what War was doing), you very much can go overboard and create a game where the player can't tell what the donkey is going on. You get used to it after a while, if only because most of the combos are redundant anyway, but with Death switching between dual wielding weapons and a two-handed weapon mid-strike, even I can't tell what he's doing half the time.

Frankly, most of what looks pretty is his executions in Reaper Form where his scythe is a lot bigger and his strikes are a lot slower, so you can actually follow the action.

Animations are the trouble. You can't stab with a scythe so it's an ill fit for Titan Weapons, and it'd be just dreadful for Staff Fighting since any time that set "slashes," it's with the side of the blade. That, and I believe that a scythe type weapon is so unique in its implausibility, that it needs its own stances and animations to make it believable. At this point, I've learned that a talented artist can make any ridiculous weapon look ridiculously cool, so I don't doubt that ours can make a scythe look badass... I just don't think it's as simple as a model swap, but I also don't know if there's a harm in trying it.

Your parenthesis is where this stops being a role, that's what I'm saying. When people ask for a role, what they're really asking is "Why should I invite this character INSTEAD of that character?" and this is a question that City of Heroes very rarely has an answer to. The simple fact of the matter is I haven't seen a team that turned someone down for not bringing the right AT. The usual answer to "What should I bring?" tends to be "Whatever you want."

Now, you can argue semantics about what a "role" is, but the fact of the matter is it simply doesn't come into play in the game as it stands right now. Yes, characters can still serve roles, but in practice anyone brings anything and people simply assume whatever roles seem to be appropriate at the time. And most teams work. The simple truth of the matter is that most any AT can fill most any of your two "roles." To different degrees, to be sure, but unless you're going for "elite" content, most people can fill most roles well enough to keep a team going. That's the crux of it.

As such, I firmly believe that at this stage in the game's development, "doing the same thing as everyone else but in a different way" is role enough. We already have most of the super powers covered. All that's left is to think up new ways to combine them, even if those new combinations aren't necessarily better specialists than the old ones.

I keep bringing up the Power Armour Gatling Gun Guy not because I want a character who's better than Blasters and Tankers, but just because I want a character with a gun who's also designed to not be squishy. What role would that serve on a team? Kill stuff. Ain't that good enough?

He speaks in sentence case later on, so I infer that this is just Mot speaking in a garbled voice through whatever barrier is holding him in, not because he enjoys randomly hitting Shift.

Those are my couple of reasons. A team will not always be available, thus a character who needs a team all the time cannot be played at my leisure if I can't play it by myself. Since one of the things that ruins my fun faster than anything else is having to play to someone else's schedule, I can only ever play characters that I don't expressly NEED others to do anything with.

It would help if you quoted smaller portions of my post. It's hard to tell what you're referring to

You're right, you can say the same for a lot of MMOs, but most aren't designed to work with any mish-mash of characters. WoW raids still don't let you go unless you have people commit to play tank, healer and damage dealer and even ******* Tera tells you to get a tank, someone to heal and someone to deal damage. What's wrong with the Holy Trinity is that it's strict with its roles and if you don't fill those roles, you fail.

That's not true in City of Heroes. You can play on a team of just Scrappers, you can play on a team of just Blasters and a team of just Defenders is outright evil. People COULD try and fill roles on a team, and the team will probably do even better... But they don't have to. So if you create a character without a defined role on a team, there's nothing wrong with that. He can still help out kill stuff. It doesn't matter if he's support, control, damage or stealth or what have you. Any character that's reasonably powerful - think baseline - will help a team even if that character doesn't fill a specific role.