Samuel_Tow

I don't have any way to actually check this since City of Data appears to be out of date and that's the only place which lists the "hidden" Avoid effects. I do know, however, that as soon as I drop Burn, enemies scatter. They may take a second or two to react, but they scatter. They never run far, but they do run out of the patch. I've been successful in keeping them in the patch only by killing them, usually via adding in Fire Sword Circle. However, if you let them stay in the fire, I've never seen them stick around.

But again - the bulk of Burn's damage is up-front, so it works either way. Now if only the same could have happened to Ignite...

That's a good point, as well. As long as Kheldians are considered some kind of exclusive prestigious reward (they never were, but let's assume they were for the sake of argument), then a lot of their faults could be left in with the excuse that they're "elite" and so don't need good balance. After all, if a player made it all the way to 50, said player should be able to play an obviously under-performing, prohibitively complex character. Because it was "l33t." Once you open the AT to the masses and a lot more people run through the levels with one, the faults in the AT become that much more apparent, the datamining that much much comprehensive and you see opinions from a lot more than just the select hardcore few who can tolerate improper balance.

In a way, opening Kheldians to everybody meant that they had to be good for everybody. And that's a good thing.

Or they can ask for content which is designed to expect the level of power which the Incarnate system - the de-facto end game - is designed to give them. Right now, Incarnates are like selling fast sports cars to a village that has only one dirt road. Yes, you can drive slowly, but you don't buy a fast sports car to drive it slowly on a dirt road. You buy a Range Rover for that.

OK, this one I REALLY like! I love how the goggles match the Valkyrie face plate almost exactly. The round eyes in round slits give this one a sort of otherworldly, inhuman aspect as they express no emotion whatsoever, unlike some of the other helmets with a little more... Attitude

Thanks, this gives me an idea

So I've been told, but again, this is only the case with high-resolution textures and high-resolution normal maps. The most common way I've seen normal maps used is to take an extremely high-polygon model, something on the order of several million polygons, and then fake almost the same look on a much lower-polygon model, something on the order of a hundred thousand. Granted, that's talking about entire characters, but the point remains - normal maps are intended to face mesh complexity.

The Steampunk faces don't appear to have been prerendred on a very complex mesh, and indeed don't seem to bring any additional detail at all. I don't see any wrinkles on them, I don't see any skin pores, any bumps or dimples, I don't see anything of the sort. It's like someone took a low-resolution texture, slapped it on a low-polygon face, slapped a low-resolution normal map on it and called it a day. This produces not only a low-quality face, but one which looks unnatural on top of that.

If that's the case, then this isn't worth it. However, I know that the game already has a "bump map" associated with absolutely every costume piece which exists, and that bump map is to the size of the texture. Quite a few costume pieces also have reflection maps associated with them, and quite a few have "self illumination" maps, as well, all of them to the size of the original texture. As far as I'm concerned, drawing the Steampunk faces in anything BUT a very high resolution removes any point in putting normal maps on them. Not only do they look weird with this bizarre high-contrast lighting, but there's no point to adding normal maps if they won't add extra detail, for which you need high resolution.

Of all the things faces need, "new technologies" are not a priority. What they need is better meshes and higher-resolution textures. And, no, normal maps can't supply better mesh substitutes in this case any more so than normal maps on a cube can make it look like a sphere. Normal maps add fine detail. They cannot make up for the lack of major structural detail deficiencies.

I actually don't mind the Energy Blast effects, I just can't find them in use by melee ATs. I don't even mind Energy Transfer so much, I was just looking for a single-target attack, something in the vein of Power Bolt or Power Blast. Does ANY melee AT get those in any of its Epics? As far as I'm aware, Tankers and Scrappers get Laser Beam Eyes (one more reason to HATE Superman for making that confounded power so popular!!!) for their sole single-target Epic attack, and Brutes and Stalkers get the same Epics, or close to them.

If I could snag anything from Energy Blast that isn't Energy Torrent (or Power Push), I would be happy, but I don't see an Epic that offers that. Keep thinking we need a purely ENERGY Mastery set, as distinct from Body.

Oh, it hurts to laugh Actually, yes it does, because I was right there with you pumping my fists about how the rest of power customization would come ANY DAY NOW! Are we there yet?!? That was, what? A year ago? Two years? I lose track of time.

I hope the rumours of power customization being worked on are true, and that it's better than the half-hearted customization options for Blasters.

Either way, DOO EET! I would gladly peruse such a resource and give you many "likes" on YouTube

I'm pretty sure that's just because their textures are fairly low-resolution. Are you suggesting that they higher-resolution than they appear but have been "smoothed?" That would be... A questionable move.

This is the primary reason they stand out in the editor like a sore thumb. You're flipping through all the old faces, seeing a fairly smooth gradient shading and then BOOM! You get these pale faces with thick, dense black shading and that oily skin. Yikes!

The Organic Armour Face (and the Bio-Organic face) for all body types looks superior because its texture is HUGE. It's easy four times the surface area of the regular faces, and the result is a high-definition face that has sharp lines and crisp detail even up-close. The Steampunk faces, however, look to have very small, smeared textures. I've so far been unable to find the actual textures in the pigg files to confirm my suspicions, however.

But the Organic Armour faces prove one point beyond reasonable doubt - a high-resolution texture counts for a hell of a lot more than any amount of shading or special effects. It's a really basic fact of 3D graphics that high-polygon meshes and high-resolution textures make for by far the GREATEST impact on visuals, bar none.

Well, dog! There goes my reason to care. If they're just regular Dark Blasts, I can just pick regular Scrapper Dark Mastery, and I'm not going to do that, either. I had considered Mace Mastery for the Focused Accuracy, but... The mace...

I was a bit hasty in writing a "particle cannon beam" into my character under the assumption that one of the Scrapper sets had it, without realising that... No, none did. So I considered using Patron powers, but as I've seen these won't cut it, either.

Now, I did hear talk of further power customization coming (as opposed to "we're considering it"), and if this includes Pool and Epic customization, then that might solve a large part of that problem. Until then... Well, we'll see. I guess Energy Torrent will do.

I agree that they should. As I said before - why not make it a mini-combo like in Dual Blades? It doesn't have to be marked with rings around the powers or even announced as such, so long as it gives a longer window of opportunity to act in but cancels as soon as you throw an attack.

When you choose to save a file as a jpg, IrfanView will give you a "Quality" slider that goes from 0 to 100. I suggest setting the Quality for any reasonably-sized pic to 100. I typically post things around 800x600 and they are never larger than about 300KB, which is well within the capacity of most image-hosting sites. You'll get a large file if you screenshot an entire 1920x1200 monitor, of course (I have), but anything of a reasonable size really doesn't deserve being lower than maximum quality. It's what all of my shots are saved at.

Actually, the problem is more that you need to make the "bear arms" large enough to fit over most existing gloves. I'm not even talking about things like Large Robotic or Enforcer, just the regular Large and Banded gloves, or even the Flared ones.

However, if you make this into a weapon, what this means is the "weapon bear arms" would only exist when you're using Claws attacks. As soon as you attempted to use a non-Claws attack, the bear arms would disappear just like the Claws do now. Furthermore, emotes suppress weapon props, so if you attempted to eat, drink or even cross your arms, the bear arms would disappear.

I've suggested this before in a slightly different form - large cloven metal gauntlets perpetually stuck with fingers extended into a clawing position which appear when you attack and disappear when you stop, revealing your normal, smaller hands underneath. I still think it's a viable suggestion, though probably one best made in the de-facto Suggestions forum.

Actually, the screenshots are pretty good, but they're saved with a very aggressive jpeg compression.What programme are you using to save those? If it's MS Paint, that has a terrible image quality when you save. If you're using something like IrfanView (which I greatly recommend!), then you may have control over the final quality.

I really like the helmet on your Chernobyl (which I inferred from the screenshots file name), though. I love how well the PPD visor melds with the Martial Arts face mask as though they're parts of the same plate. What's that mask underneath, by the way? It looks like Technis, but I can't be sure. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the lead suits people in older science fiction wear to protect against radiation, though that's probably the colour and the bulk of the helmet talking more than anything else.

Just a quick question, though - isn't the red on the helmet detail 1 a little too bright in contrast with the darker visor and the upper torso in those shots? You seem to be using what looks like either a Vanguard or a Tech Sleek top, I can't tell, and both of those have primary plates that, because they are reflective, colour a darker hue for any given colour.