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I want to comment on the notion that taking powers is a "cost." This is just backwards design. Levelling up is a MAJOR part of the MMO reward system. It's when we get new stuff, grow more powerful and are, above all else, the most excited. New power picks should be things we WANT. To make taking a new power a cost is to take the fun out of training up, and THAT can take the fun out of playing altogether. I've burned out on this game many times, and every time it's been just after levelling up and taking something which fails to impress me. Maybe I lost patience for 32 and the T9 primary power, or maybe I got to a place where the next could of levels of slots aren't that important, but the point of it is that without the "morale boost" of levelling up, the game grows stale, and fast.
I don't disagree with tiering powers and locking them behind each other. That's part of the path of progression. You start with smaller powers and proceed on to the bigger ones. But this doesn't mean those powers are "costs," so much as they're just a step. You want each step to be meaningful so the player can be motivated at every step of the way. If that means skipping a step people hate, then what it really means is it's a gate you shouldn't have put in the first place.
Boxing and Kick are powers that are primarily a cost and almost never a benefit. They're not good enough to slot heavily, but the actual strong powers of the pool are locked behind them, so we waste a power pick to get these. But it's the game's own design that makes these powers bad. With so many sets having internal gimmicks - Momentum, Combos, Forms, etc. - pool attacks that don't benefit from those and don't contribute to them are that much less useful. Yes, that's also true of some Epics, but I've yet to see an epic that forces me to take an attack before I can take anything else. -
Basically, I'd say that if I need to be familiar with the source material in order to "get" your character, you're already stealing. I say this because you're using as a necessary basis material that you don't own. If you can make the character work as its own, standalone creation without requiring me to know anything about the original - which is to say if you can make a character which resembles the original without lifting anything directly - then you're pretty much safe. The character works without having to know the about the original, and the reference to it is just a benefit (or irritation) to those who do get it.
I, myself, have taken and reused many concepts, but I take heed to jam many pieces of many concepts together into the same character such that he or she at the same time does not resemble the original and doesn't require any out-of-character knowledge to "get." It's still plagiarism for which I'm sorry, but if it's done well enough to where you can't really see the connection, it's not a problem. -
I would personally prefer to have Boxing and Kick merged into the same power, with either a punch or a kick animation available via power customization, and something added to the set that's NOT an attack to serve as a gate for the toggles.
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Something occurs to me, and it ties back into recent problems in writing that people have expressed, and that's the writing of people who are supposed to be friends or at least supposed to be close. Simply put, the characters who are supposed to be this don't act like it. And to keep this discussion grounded in the game, let's look at an example - the Freedom Phalanx, that poster child of "what's wring with the writing."
Now, I myself am a fan of SSA2.1, which is the latest arc to feature the Phalanx heavily, yet even there the Freedom Phalanx don't act like friends who have been together for years and saved each other's lives repeatedly. However, it's SSA1 in pretty much its entirety that is the biggest culprit here, with the way the various Phalanx members interact with each other. I believe I called them "incompetent, horrible people" at one point, but "horrible" is the key word here. I don't know how it is in the novels, but in SSA1, the various Phalanx members are complete jerks to each other, and this doesn't make sense to me.
Now, my problem may be that I'm biassed, but I consider friendship to mean something more than just cooperation. Friends aren't simply people who do favours for each other. A friend is someone you can trust, someone you can depend on, someone you would do things you normally don't want to for. A friend is the person you turn to for support in your darkest hours, not the person who CAUSES your darkest hour. A friend is someone who will understand you and support you when you fail, someone you can simply... Talk to. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just a clingy person who gets attached to people too easily and is too lenient of friends' failings, but I still don't think that friends should be jerks to each other just as standard practice. Not if it's played straight.
The Freedom Phalanx, thus, really don't come off as friends. What they come off, if I have to be honest, is contestants in Survivor or Big Brother or some other such low-brow show that thrives on pitting people against each other for the sake of petty drama. They act without a feeling of any real closeness, of any real... Bond. It never feels to me like one of them would offer comfort to another who is grieving, it never feels like one would abandon pride and dignity for the sake of another. At no point does it feel like these people will stand up for each other when the chips are down. Even Manticore and Psyche fail to sell me on this, because while the angsty drama and the "NOOO!!!" are all there, the actual quiet affection simply isn't present.
It's been said before that SSA1 is all payoff and no setup, and no - it wasn't me who said it first. This contributes to the story really not having any quiet, introspective moments in which we can observe the bonds of friendship we are told exist between these characters. Instead, we're simply told they exist and are then shown these bonds breaking, and that just doesn't work. This, to me, is what's missing from the game. A long time ago, I asked about what "tender" moments this game has, and the list we came up with was depressingly short. To me, this undermines the drama, undermines the friendship and outright sinks the story that was meant to be told about the freedom phalanx. Because when we're allowed to see the tenderness, care, understanding and friendship between two characters, then we have a reason to care when those bonds are tested. But the story never stops to examine this. We chase the plot with great speed, leaving no time for establishing the setting.
There is a "thing" in contemporary writing that I really don't like. There is this notion that a story involving functioning adults who get along is somehow boring and not exciting. If there isn't internal conflict within the group of heroes, if most of the problems don't stem from the heroes acting like jackasses, then the story would have solved itself immediately. After all, if Manticore were not an idiot, much of SSA1 wouldn't have happened. But this, to me, is just backwards writing where the ends are determined and the only possible way to get them is to make the heroes incompetent and jerkish.
I like scenes of people getting along. I like scenes where the going gets tough and the heroes band together. I like scenes of a character opening up to another and reaching out. I enjoy stories of functioning, emotionally mature adults acting like functioning, emotionally mature adults, and it's entirely possible for these stories to have plots which test these bonds and this maturity nevertheless. Because that is the only way for me to care, and that is the only way to make it feel real. -
Now I'm sorry I didn't celebrate my 30 000 posts...
Congratulations on getting your own forum title, Arcana. You deserve it. The avatar is a nice touch, too. Would not have called that -
Quote:Serum IS terrible, and that's coming from the guy whose only 50 Mastermind is Mercs/Traps. Serum is next to useless because it doesn't do enough, it doesn't last long enough, it recharges too slowly (17 minutes? Really?) AND it crashes the henchman it's applied to. To borrow a line from SomethingAwful, that's like saying "You can have this sack full of rats, but only if you let me kick you in the groin 10 times." It's a power that makes things arguably WORSE when you use it and at best does nothing meaningful, and which has a ridiculous cost associated with it. I would sooner use Detonator on a henchman that's in a position to need Serum than use Serum itself... And I took that waste of a power and slotted it for recharge, God help me.Serum is the worst Mastermind, unique flavor power due to the crash, yes. But there are more than a few powers that are worse than that.
I know there are crap powers in this game (I still consider Repulsion Field to be a shockingly bad idea for a power), but among Mastermind uniques, Serum is by FAR the worst, and it's on a set with pets whose powers suffer the same problems. Spec Ops controls, for instance, are nearly pointless since they don't do enough, don't last long enough and take too long to recharge. I'd say Mercs are about workable right now, but that's only because their AI was fixed to let the Commando use his Long Range Missile Rocket at any range and the Spec Ops to use their snipes at any range. That helped damage significantly.
And to this day, I don't get one thing - why the sugar do Spec Ops get Stealth? Let's ignore for a minute that Stealth is a terrible power and admit that it offers good utility as a means of avoiding unexpected aggro or stealthing past most of a mission. How does that help henchmen for whom "stealth" is pointless? Even if this were complete invisibility - and it's not - you still have four other Henchmen (and yourself) who are plainly visible and will get attacked, and when those get attacked, the Spec Ops will retaliate. It's not like they get a Stealth Strike capability out of it. The only effect Stealth has AT ALL is... To slow the Spec Ops down so they fall behind over long distance.
Once again, Mercs are saddled with a power that does more harm than good, and this one you can't be smart enough to dump for something better because it comes packaged in with your second upgrade. When people complain about Mercs, it's not always a question of performance, though that does enter into it. It's that the design of the whole set is just confusing. It's like all of my mercenaries, including the Mastermind himself, got issued one of these:
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I have a request: Dink, is it possible to port the Robotic Arms 3 Fire and Ice pieces to both Robotic Arms 1 and 2, as well as to port the glove portion to gloves for regular body types like Tights, Sleeveless Jackets, Armoured and so forth? At the time of their release, we were given some kind of incompatibility explanation, but I'd like to offer the following as evidence:
Those are Fire and Ice 1 and 2. I haven't listed 3 since we were told the problem with that was transparency. But look at 1 and 2 and, more specifically, look at what's in the red circles - seams. Not just any seams, but the exact same seams that are only any regular Smooth/Bare glove, because the actual gloves are Smooth/Bare with a plate attached. These should be usable with regular bodies (Tights, Tights With Skin, Shirts, Sleeveless Jackets, Sleeveless Robes, Armoured, Robotic Arms 1 and Robotic Arms 2) without any additional work done. The plate might clip with some shoulders but that shouldn't be a problem. The upper arms should also work with any of the other Robotic Arms tops, because it's designed to connect to a Smooth/Bare glove, which all glove options under Robotic Arms 2 are designed to also fit over with no gaps or clipping. In fact, the upper arm of those hands is no different from the mesh of the regular Tights upper arm, just with an extra shoulder detail attached, so it should be usable separately.
Moving on from that, I have a personal request: Can we please not make any more Robotics Arm 3 only pieces that only exist as a combo upper and lower arm and can never be used separately? This violates one of the costume creator's greatest strengths, which is versatility - the ability to use items in ways they were not envisioned to be used, and in so doing create costumes that are uniquely our own. Recent costume content that has had Robotic Arms in it has been dangerously prone to just add them as a Robotics Arm 3 option and never add them as separate pieces, and this can't go on. Please, do what you can to ensure that at least Robotic Arms moving forward are not designed as whole pieces.
Finally, I have a clipping-related request. A long time ago, large gloves were banned for use with long-sleeved clothing, specifically Jackets, Robes, Trenchcoats and Boleros. Could you please see about lifting that ban? I know this will open the door to some potentially ungainly clipping, but it will also open the door to the ability to create one of the game's strongest costume designs - The PPD Interrogator. Part of what makes Kang, Washington and the other Interrogators so awesome is the fact that they're able to use large gloves over long-sleeved jackets, specifically the trenchcoat. Right now, we have a decent selection of large gloves which are large enough to cover most of the sleeve, and we have sleeve options which aren't as long, most notably the short police shirt sleeves. Would it be possible to do something with those gloves?
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And finally, a bug report: Resistance Gloves for women are still bugged. Here's a pic for evidence:
Note what's in the blue circle. Resistance gloves are basically Tights gloves with two extra props attached - a "pipe" on the forearm, and a bulge on the back of the hand. These two are not supposed to be connected, and for Male and Huge characters, they aren't. In fact, they aren't connected on the female RIGHT hand, which in this pic is concealed by the pelvis. However, on the female LEFT hand, polygons attach the pipe to the bulge, causing them to stretch as the wrist rotates away from idle. Because these polygons have also inherited a texture that glows from somewhere, they're INCREDIBLY obvious when they stretch. From my limited understanding of 3D modelling, it looks like part of the glowing band towards the end of the pipe has somehow become attached the the bulge on the back of the hand and are stretching the glow in a really bugged-looking way.
I've reported this before, I'm pretty sure, but I want to put it here where you can see it directly. -
Quote:I really can't afford to spoil anything from the future of the story, but SSA2.3 and SSA2.4 are on Beta and I encourage you to try them out. They'll give you a bit more perspective about it. All I'll "spoil" is that Sands' appearance really is incidental as I've said. Which is part of the problem: I get what you're saying about a "foil," but Arbiter Sands just isn't used like that. In Faultline he is, I agree absolutely, but that's because in Faultline, he has a major leading role and he has a lot of screen time across multiple appearances over which to build that rapport. That's not the case in SSA2.2, where he shows up to fill a spot on the roster, more or less. Why I say it's a bad idea to use him is Sands has about as much to do with that story as Darth Vader has with to do with Soul Calibur IV. The story called for a named boss, and instead of using Bane Spider Summarsby or Fortunata Worrington or Magus Mu'Tarkin or some other made-on-the-spot boss with a standard description, we used Arbiter Sands because he's unique.I think that the mission writer was shooting for an emotional reaction based on that perception of Sands rather than considering whether casting him in that role made a lot of sense from a story perspective.
I can't really say the same for Nocturne but you'll notice that SSA2.2 is a bit of a "Faultline Saga" reunion. The only primary character missing is Jim Temblor and he gets a mention even if he doesn't put in a personal appearance. This gimmick alone might account for the choices about which NPC's made guest-starring appearances.
I'll refer you to another place where reusing characters comes off as a bad idea, and that's Vincent Ross' final mission where your villain fights EVERYBODY. At first it's just a lot of Legacy Chain, then it's Longbow, but THEN it swaps to heroes that got pulled out of a list with no concept of who's where at this point and who has what alignment. They're just heroes who happen to show up in some placed. There's Agent X from Praetoria, Leo Knight from somewhere, I think Ms. Shock and a whole bunch of people that just seem thrown together, kind of like when American cartoons take a fighting game roster and try to split them into "good guys" and "bad guys" even if the game doesn't really make that distinction.
Basically, why I feel Sands and Nocturne are a mistake to use here is it does nothing for Sands and Nocturne. They exist for the player to beat up and for them to drop back into limbo, and that's a bad way to use characters. To me, characters need to be written as though they have lives outside of the game. When we're not seeing them, they aren't in stasis. They have lives, they have jobs, they advance. The worst thing that can be done to a character is for him to be reused as though life for this character paused the last time we saw them and they're picking up exactly where we left off. That's damaging to the character in the sense of kayfabe - it's harder to see them as real people.
I could see using Sands if it showed character progress of some kind. Maybe his failure in Faultline caused him to be demoted, maybe he's lost his patience with heroes having seen it take him nowhere, I don't know... Just something to indicate things have happened in his life that we haven't seen, that life for Sands moved on while we weren't looking and he isn't just frozen forever into being the "Let's sit down and talk" guy who's an arbiter whose title apparently means nothing. I firmly believe that every aspect of a story should happen for a reason, and cameoing Nocturne and Sands to show they have progressed could have been this reason.
I'm one of the people who has repeatedly argued that old concepts should be used where they fit instead of new ones being invented. I'm very happy to see the FBSA used instead of being replaced by SAM. But the thing is that this isn't intended to tie our writers' hands and force them to only ever use existing concepts even when they gain nothing from being used. Sometimes, it's safe to make up new characters. Sometimes, new characters are the only thing that fits. And it is my opinion that it's just bad form to use established character if all you need is a jobber to get stomped for one scene and never show up again. That's the job of the name-swap boss, for he has no dignity and no story to ruin. -
Yes, yes, but I mean conceptually. If a Dark Controller can take over an enemy and use that enemy as a pet in concept, then an NPC spawning a dopelganger of the player isn't so out of the the question.
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Quote:Not quite. Masterminds are very strong against some enemies, but almost useless against others. Extreme levels of shock damage, such as what comes of the Wyvern EB in the Respec Trial, can one-shot most henchmen, and do so repeatedly, while even moderate levels of AoE damage can tear them to shreds. Mako's Fonts of Power at the end of his second Patron arc are, at least as far as I'm concerned, nearly impossible to beat. They fire off a custom Psychic Tornado that has a very long range, a very wide AoR radius and is on a very short recharge. I think it might be what the Hydra Head uses in the Abandoned Sewers Trial. The Fonts also deal psychic damage which not all support sets cover, and are quite resistant EBs themselves. Defeating four or six of those solo took me - not joking - three hours when I ran the mission, making me decide to never give Mako as a Patron to any other Mastermind.MMs, as an AT, are not under-performing at the level the game is balanced at.
It's not just specific enemies, though. I can quote the Huntsman and his AoE tree stump that one-shots all minion-class henchmen and two-shots everything else (I survived that via Forcefield Generator, double Seeker Drones on the Huntsman and tightly-crossed fingers), but this problem is evident with every enemy faction that has strong shock damage (say, high-level Tsoo) or lots of AoE (say, Malta). What's more, factions that rely on "patches," (say, Longbow) cause uncontrollable henchman scatter, massive aggro, loss of control and loss of firepower, to say nothing of protection. I would quite literally sooner leave my henchmen to bake in a Flames patch than have them run away on their own, but "Afraid" is an AI command that overrides all others.
Masterminds are very strong... Except when they're not, and when they're not, they're pathetic. To me, that's not good balance. I benefit very little from being overpowered against certain foes when I tend to not need all that power, and I benefit even less from enemies who can wipe away my henchmen before they can get a second shot out. I don't know that better damage or even con henchmen or what is the answer to that problem, but it's a problem that sours the experience nonetheless.
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Entirely tangentially, but: Masterminds CAN hold aggro. Their own threat rating is low (2, I think), but each of their henchmen has a high threat rating (4) which is on the same level as Tankers and Brutes. Yes, pets don't have an inherent Taunt so they're not AS good at holding aggro (considering Taunt is a 100-fold threat modifier, as per Castle and Ghost Widow), but they still CAN hold it. In fact, I've seen many, many instances of a henchman attacking a critter and that critter abandoning the player it was attacking to fight the henchman. I've seen this happening to critters attacking me, I've seen it happening to critters attacking my team-mates. The henchmen's high threat rating and large numbers make them good for stripping the aggro off most players who don't have Taunt built into their attacks. -
Quote:Doesn't Darkness Control kind of do something like that already, at least in terms of concept? I've seen Dark Controllers use a confuse power that turns enemies pitch black and causes them to act like minions. In this sense, I agree with you - having an enemy who can spawn a mirrior of me as a power would actually be pretty cool. Or, hell, why not go the Shang Tsung route and have an enemy BECOME a clone of me?Agreed. But I can still see other uses beside that. When I first heard of Mirror Spirit, I thought a cool power for her would be the ability to make a short lived copy of someone to attack her foes or defend her. Now that we've got doppleganer tech, I'd like some more arcs with heroes/villains with esoteric powers like that instead of just odd blends of our powers.
You're right, there are many uses of clones, and you're right that putting them in minor, non-story-related roles is a good way to not make them tiresome. -
In this case, I'm actually behind the decision to not use the tech too much. Dopelgangers are one of these things that lose their lustre FAST if you overuse them, especially when you start having to come up with more and more contrived reasons for them to show up. Having Nemesis build one, that's fine. Having that whole Clone Lab thing? Fine. Having a double from another dimension, fine. But that's about the extent of it. When you start going from there, you're pretty much using a gimmick for the sake of using the gimmick, and that's a running problem in City of Heroes storywriting of late, even now.
Dopelgangers are like caged matches - you need to use them sparingly or they lose their specialness and start getting annoying and pointless. What I DO like doing, though, is force the dopelganger to spawn in as one of my outfits, then swap to another so I'm fighting a version of myself, but whose clothes weren't also cloned. -
Quote:I'm the poor sod who keeps taking and slotting and using these attacks, and I always feel like a fool when I do it. But God damn it! I want my commander to be able to fire a rifle and thugonomics graduate to be able to pop caps in people's *****!I hear ya. Until the MMs' personal attacks do more damage than the Vet attacks (Sands, Wand, and Staff), I will never take a MM's personal attack.
Which is to say I'm biassed - I take these attacks, and I just want them to stop sucking.
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Quote:Honestly, I never found Jason Blitz to be a good face for Warburg. He has a cool name, I admit, but his character motivation and personality just ring hollow with me. Really, why DID Blitz go to war with Arachnos? Because he's a warmongering jerk who's dying of cancer and fears he might not be able to crush Paragon City before he keels over. That's Saturday morning cartoon villainy right there, and it just doesn't make for a good villain, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, maybe there's more depth to his character shown somewhere, but the only place I know him to show up is SSA1.3. I've run this from both sides and the Marshal has no more character than what's in his description, which is this:- Rogue Arachnos are lead by Blitz. He went "missing" after SSA1 - Malta "rescued" him and made a deal. They give some of their tech to provide Warburg forces an edge, which explains how they could push to GV. In return Malta keep their lab/factory in Warburg and can use it to do anything that would normally be too hard to hide - giant robots, crazy experiments, maybe Battle Maidens training camp?
Quote:Marshal Jason Blitz believed Lord Recluse wasnt acting fast enough in his bid to take over the world. He found it tragic that the Web had developed so many incredible weapons and none of them were being used on the hated heroes!
When Blitz learned he was dying of cancer, he decided to speed things up a bit so that he could live to see the defeat of Paragon City. He murdered Governor Melody Harkness and took over the city with a cadre of troops loyal to him. Soon after, he demolished the false façade on the Warburg Rocket at the centre of his city and started firing warheads armed with various toxins on Paragon City.
Lord Recluse promised the UN he would rectify the situation, but his troops have so far been stalemated by their rivals. (Or so Recluse claims.)
And yes, I did make up her first name, because as far as I'm aware, Gossomer is NEVER given a first name. Even Seer Pia Marino, whose first name comes up ONCE where Wretch refers to her by first name as a brother would ("Tell Pia sorry. Can't go back. Won't go back" if memory serves), yet Gossomer doesn't have a first name even in her own description... Unless her parents actually named her "Fortunanta?"
Now, granted, Blitz can probably be moulded into a convincing villain, as well, but that would involve considerably more work. Not only are you dealing with building up a good concept, you're also having to dismantle a bad concept and hot-swap character traits, which can become a right mess fast. That said, I can give it a shot, just for fun:
Having lost everything - his nation, his dreams, his health, his dignity - Jason Blitz has hit rock bottom. Dying of cancer in a spartan hospital bed in a God-forsaken Argentinean village, hiding from authorities, he begins to wonder what the point of his whole life was. What will he leave behind for future generations? He didn't destroy Paragon City or Arachnos and his missiles are being dismantled even now, his men have abandoned him and soon his name will be resigned to old textbooks that school children gloss over. Was this it? Well, that's depressing...
Then Jason finds new resolve. No, this WASN'T it! He may be dying, but he's not dead yet. He's not finished, and he won't give up without a fight. Even if he has little time left, that's still time enough to leave his mark on the world. And this time, it won't be the mark of a crater in the ground. No, Jason Blitz will be remembered as the man brought Warburg to glory, the man who took a forgotten, bombed-out island and turned it into a global super power. Rather than throwing away his remaining time in petty squabbles with everyone else, Blitz will build a powerful, independent nation which can stand strong and tall on its own two feet. There isn't time enough to defeat Recluse or Paragon City, but this doesn't matter. Once Warburg is strong enough to fight, his successors will have the power to carry his revenge for him.
Having seen the unravelling of the Rogue Isles, Blitz swears that he will not be another Recluse. He will not throw his domain away in his petty personal vendetta, in the hopes that he dies before his nation falls apart. His footprint in history will be the creation of a strong and powerful nation.
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Does that work?
Quote:- Remove Viridian from Praetoria->Rogue Isles portal mission. Or have him make an offer the player character refuses (or tentatively accepts?).
Why DO players need to be greeted, anyway? To tell us that local contacts know about is? That can be done thought Paper missions. Brokers themselves seem to be pretty blasé about who they work with, and they're already the gate to getting new contacts in zones you're just visiting, or were at one point. Besides, with the Find Contact feature, "introductions" seem to have been relegated to a deprecated status. Why else? To put us in the Destined One lists? I'm with you on that one - have the Destined One storyline start at 40 in Grandville when we speak with Arbiter Rein. Really, look at CoV's content - the "Destined One" thing is mentioned a few times by Kalinda, and then never again until the 40s when it becomes relevant again. There might be a few errant references to it in NPC chatter, but then everyone in First Ward calls me "Power Division" anyway, and we just write that off as them not knowing what they're talking about.
In fact, why not just copy the Warden introduction to Paragon City? Do you know what who greets Wardens? Nobody. That's right, as a Warden, you travel to a warehouse that's completely empty, then walk out of this and zone into Talos Island. No explanations given, no explanations needed. Why not just go with that for the Rogue Isles, too? -
Here's something else I want to touch on: reusing named characters, and to illustrate, I'll use the example of SSA2.2 that went Live recently. I won't give any real spoilers for the plot, but to mention that three people show up in it working together - Ghost Widow, Arbiter Sands and Nocturne the Night Widos (who I swear I thought was Veluta Lunata the first time I saw her). I want to look at how reusing named characters can contribute to a story and how it can damage it.
Firstly, the most immediately negative aspect of reusing named characters should be obvious from the above list - they end up mischaracterised. Characters who appear in a mission or arc tend to appear in very specific circumstances in which they make sense, but when trying to reuse those characters in further story arcs, it's not always possible to "match" them to the situation. Our trio above is a wondrous example. From Faultline, we know that Sands and Nocturne hate each other. Nocturne tried to have Sands killed and Sands sold her out to the heroes. These are not people who would do well working together. Furthermore, Sands is an Arbiter, and thus the highest ranking branch Arachnos has to offer, higher than even Recluse's lieutenants, themselves. He should not be working under Ghost Widow as he should, technically, be her superior in the same way Arbiter Daos is. Arbiters are the military police of Arachnos and thus have authority greater than that of any other branch.
Now, that's not to say reusing characters is always bad. Faultline and Fusionette showing up all over the place in the Rikti War Zone makes sense - they're Vanguard agents, and pretty dang good ones, I believe. But they have a very strong reason to be there, and it's in-character for both to have joined Vanguard. Sands and Nocturne have no reason to show up in SSA2.2 aside from Arachnos show up and these two are named Arachnos agents. This leads to the second big problem of reusing named characters for no reason: It makes the world seem very small.
One of the cornerstone problems of writing in general is to give the sense of a large world with relatively little writing. Tolkein built his by essentially devoting his life to ironing out every last detail of Middle Earth, and while this is very admirable, it's not sustainable for a commercial business. Writers who do this as a job, therefore, need to create a large-feeling world by implying size through a very small viewport, which is the small body of content they have the time of day to create. Having the same characters keep showing up repeatedly for no reason other than coincidence makes the world feel much smaller, because it starts raising uncomfortable questions: ARE Sands and Nocturne the only capable people in Arachnos? See, the two of them are believable in Faultline because... Recluse needed to send someone, and it happened to be Sands, while Nocturne just took advantage. Having characters appears one is not a coincidence - someone had to. Having them reappear, however, raises the question "Why them?" and that's not easy to answer. Specifically, what's not easy to answer is "Why not someone else?"
The truth of the matter is that, in many cases, it's better to come up with a new named character pulled out of whole cloth and use it just for that one mission, than it is to reuse an existing one. Basically, unless there's something about the character himself that is tied to the place where he appears, it's generally a good idea to not use that character in the first place. About the most immersion-breaking thing a writer can do when picking who to use is to pick one that feels like he was random-selected. Do you remember the old Street Fighter games? You'd select the question mark, and then the game would randomly tab through the roster and pick one? That's how this feels. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-Sands! That works, he's looked for artefacts before. I know that's not how the process went, I don't mean to insult, but that's still what it ended up resembling, because there's literally no reason to pick the people who got picked.
Again, I don't mean to say that reusing named characters is never a good idea. Far from it. Take Akharist, the Circle defector, for instance. Akharist has two arcs devoted just to himself, but he does make cameos in other arcs, as well, such as Johnny Sonata's search for his soul and I believe one of Mu'Drakhan's arcs. However, here's the difference - Akharist makes sense to be in these arcs because he's a Circle of Thorns arcanist of immense knowledge, an expert in demonic negotiations and a powerful wizard. Yes, it's possible another wizard could have been invented to help decipher Johnny's contract, but Akharist made perfect sense AND linked the stories together. This is an example of a plotline in which a returning character slots perfectly, which is what makes his cameo so spot on. This brings us to one of the reasons why reusing characters is a good thing: It ties the world together.
When creating an open-world sandbox game, you end up writing many standalone elements that happen in the same persistent world, but all too often they seem disconnected and the world, as a result, feels disjointed. Drawing connections between the stories helps pull the world together and make it feel like a consistent whole. That's what Akharist does - his involvement brings one story closer to another because both share elements crucial to the story. And this is exactly what Sands and Nocturne fail to do. Unlike Akharist, there's really nothing about the mission they show up in that's at all specific to them. In Faultline, Sands was selected because of his leadership skills - he was bold, aggressive and smart enough to find unorthodox interpretations of complex problems. Nocturne showed up there because she's conniving, opportunistic and, frankly, fiercely disloyal to Arachnos.
Neither of those people's reasons for being in Faultline are relevant to them showing up in SSA2.2, where they appear as, essentially, goons. In fact, considering Ghost Widow was involved, a much more applicable support crew for her would have consisted of Wretch, her constant companion and bodyguard, and Veluta Lunata, the woman so loyal to Ghost Widow she murdered her lover on her behest and bound his psyche to herself as a spirit. These are characters for whom a cameo would have specifically made sense and for whom it might have actually served as character development. Which brings us to another reason why reusing existing characters can be good: It can deliver character development quickly and with little effort by using context to tell a story the writer doesn't need to.
Having a character show up in someone else's story is a powerful tool for the development of that character, just by means of implication. For instance, having Melvin Langley show up in Operation: World Wide Red as a hardcore operative working under Crimson is awesome. When last we saw him in Missing Melvin and the Mysterious Malta Group (alliteration, ho!) he was a poor CIA clerk that got caught in over his head, and last we saw of him was rescuing the inexperienced bumbling man, with him swearing to help fight the Malta Group. I, for one, didn't believe he had it in him, yet here he is some levels later performing quite an impressive feat of intelligence gathering. It makes sense for the story, it ties it to another story and it progresses Melvin's character at the same time.
None of this is the case for either Sands or Nocturne, which is why their appearance stands out so much. In fact, not only is this not a case of character progression, it's a case of character regression. Sands goes from an enterprising leader and rising star among the arbiters with the ambition and skill to possibly rival even Daos into just a grunt for Ghost Widow. Nocturne, in turn, goes from a cunning, conniving manipulator willing and able to use anyone for her own ends, into - again - a grunt for ghost widow. This appearance reduces these two people from protagonist in their own right and characters with depth and personality into palette-swap goons, and that's a really bad way to use them. It's bad for the story and it's bad for the characters.
What I'd take from all of this is the following: If you're going to reuse an existing character, ask yourself whether that character has anything to gain from being in the story and whether the story has anything to gain from having that character in it. If the answer to either question is "no," then just make up a new character that makes sense and take the time to give that new character some personality. You never know - a future writer might see it fit to use that throwaway character of yours in his own story. -
In the vein of making pets spawn at the Mastermind's level, would it be too much to give Masterminds a decent ranged damage mod? I ask because for every Mastermind out there aside, three out of his primary attacks are next to useless, and those are the personal attacks. Granted, for Beasts that's slightly less the case as personal attacks give Pack Mentality, but when the going gets tough, those are still the first three powers I stop using.
Masterminds have the game's lowest damage mod by quite a bit at 0.55, followed by Defenders at 0.65, but Defenders, at least, get a Vigilance damage buff when they're alone. A Mastermind, by contrast, has a pitiful damage mod making all of his attacks basically pointless... And those attacks cost an arm and a leg, especially the AoE one. It just makes the powers a bad choice to take, is what I'm saying. -
To me, an anti-hero is little more than a sympathetic villain who's more often seen doing good, albeit reluctantly, and usually only said to have done evil. Basically, it's the character who's a villain but is still popular enough to where writers try to blur the lines so they can tell hero stories with him.
It stands to reason that an anti-villain would be the reverse - a character who's really a hero by design, but is still filling in the role of villain. Like the anti-hero, the anti-villain is a character cast against his type - a villain doing villain things, but in a way that constantly makes him feel like with just a little push, he could become a hero proper.
Personally, though, I tend to disregard "hero" and "villain" labels entirely. The reason I constantly bring up the "face vs. heel" duality is because it skips a few layers of fluff story and gets down to the real matter at hand - is your character one the audience is supposed to cheer or one the audience is supposed to boo? If you want to build a face, it really doesn't matter whether that face is a hero, a villain or an anti-thingy. That's a question for personal characterisation, and personal characterisation is entirely independent from the broader dynamic of intra-story morality.
It's actually quite liberating once you realise this. Once you realise that all that really matters is if you want a character to be cheered or booed, and then you can characterise him in any way you want past that, it opens up your fictional world to a much more interesting, much more complex morality. Typically, a character's alignment isn't a simple question of "hero, villain or in-between," because morality is nothing more than an extension of the larger personality of the character. In fact, I wouldn't bother with alignment at all, at least not as a separate character trait, for the simple fact that moral action are bought from a character's personality, not a grid of character alignments. A hero might choose to kill not because "he's chaotic good" but, much more specifically, because he believes villains deserve to be treated as they treated their victims.
Basically what I'm saying is the only meta-story aspect that really matters is whether you're making a face or a heel, because that informs presentation. Anything past that is just artistic license. If anything, I wish more writers took more artistic license with their characters, instead of relying on other people's character archetypes and morality tropes. It makes for a more organic story. Questions directed at a character should only be answerable within the context that particular, not by drawing on a much more faceless generalisation.
Is Dexter an anti-villain? I don't know. I've never watched the series. Never found the basic concept all that engaging. -
Quote:You're not alone in feeling that two wrongs don't make a right, i.e. that ruining the Phalanx is not the solution to their being over-hyped in the past. You are, however, in not as large a majority in disregarding how your characters stack up against canon NPCs. Canon is what gives us context, and how strongly people are put over is directly relevant to how I, at least, judge my own power level. Having the Freedom Phalanx put over strongly is good, in this regard, but having me put over stronger is even better. Sadly, the reverse is happening - I'm not being put over any stronger at all, it's just that the Freedom Phalanx are botching a lot.I realize that I'm no Lorax and I don't speak for the trees around here but I DO at least represent one of a measurable faction of players who appear to feel similarly. If the studio gets that message then mission accomplished. How they choose to act upon it or whether to act upon it is up to them.
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Quote:Pshaw! Keyboards are for grandparents. Real experts programme with voice commands.
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Oh, I see the problem now. He used a capital letter for the definite article and you're not supposed to do that in the middle of a sentence. Yeah, I agree with the others, that's pretty stupid.
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Quote:The Briefs texture option, yes, but men actually have a briefs pattern option that's applicable to other textures. The problem with it has always been that men don't have a "bare butt" texture option to apply the briefs on, hence why they were added as an extra option.neither is the "brief" option for males. the bare is the only bare legged option.
Speaking of which, men also need Tights With Skin, by which I mean they need need a lower body option that's just skin with patterns designed so as to preserve modesty while still giving variety. For tops, I'd like to see two "tights with skin" options - one with nipples and one without. Right now, men can have "bare" chests, but you can't slap patterns on them and pretend they're clothes because your nipples always show through.
Here's a modification of my suggestion from before:
For women, remove Tights With Skin entirely, and add it back to tights in the following way: Add at least two skin textures - one smooth, one muscular (this now exists and is awesome) - and clone all "pattern" clothes to them. Then proceed to add all "texture" clothes as additional options under Tights.
For men, add a duplicate of both bare upper chests, both of which without nipples. For both, leave only the patterns that cover the nipples and call that "Bare Muscular w/ Tights" and "Bare Smooth w/ Tights." The reason for removing the nipples is to simulate Tights With Skin clothing using the existing patterns such that they don't look transparent and, worse still, painted on. DO NOT put in any patterns in those new categories that don't cover the nipples to avoid the "Ken doll" look.
For men, add a new lower body tights texture, and call it Tights with Skin. In there, give men a basic Ken doll bare skin texture, then add all the male patterns that preserve modesty. DO NOT include a "none" option. In fact, pilfer "Shorts" 1, 2, 3 and "Bicycle Shot" from women to simulate hotpants and... Well, bicycle shorts. Add a few new patterns to fill the category in some.
Once this is done, begin designing Tights With Skin options for men, both more patterns and more textures. There's nothing wrong with a male warrior showing midriff or some leg. -
Here's a suggestion that should actually be very easy:
Can we please copy the female Tights With Skin patterns "Shorts 1," "Shorts 2" and "Shorts 3" to the Tights lower body category. For reference, Shorts is this pattern:
Right now, these shorts can only be used with bare human skin. Unlike the male briefs patter, these cannot be used with armour, mutant legs or, leather, chain and so forth. Shorts with tights do exist for bare legs (bizarrely enough, since that's not a "tights with skin" option), but again - that's only usable on bare legs or coloured bare legs. It's not usable with the game's more interesting textures. -
That hasn't been my impression. The two Hydra Heads have always been a pushover. The underlings are easy enough to take out and the bulk of the heads' offence is avoidable "patch" attacks. I've never had trouble with them.