Samuel_Tow

Hey, Tech, do you think you can find me a giant eyeroll pic in the spirit of your Optimus Prime facepalm? It's starting to get irritating to need one and not having it.

On the note of why I care: it's a personal thing. I realise that most people wouldn't know the difference and some people who should probably won't look hard enough to see it. However, I'd still rather have something clever that most people miss but someone gets every once in a while over something wrong that no-one knows better about, but horrifies someone who does from time to time.

Again, I tend to be on the receiving end of this with people's ****** Russian born from horribly flawed online translators concocting garbled language that has no discernible meaning unless you translate it back into English and read from there. I try to not be that guy if I can help it.

Wow, that's... A lot more information than I expected to get I'm very happy for it, however. A few points I want to address:

First, I misspoke when I said I was looking for a "name." It's true in the broadest sense of the word, but what I'm looking for is more a moniker, in the sense of "He is Rikimaru, the Black/Blood Wind!" where Rikimaru is his personal name and the rest is what he is known as. Think Jack the Ripper. You can see why I'd call it a "name," because it is in the most literal sense, but the phrasing I used is confusing. I'm looking to give this guy a meaningful clan name that doesn't necessarily follow naming traditions as long as it actually means what I need it to mean.

I keep thinking of - and I know I'll misspell it - the way people in Naruto refer to Gaara as Gaara of the Sand (as I've seen it translated), which in Japanese sounds like Sabaak no Gaara. I've no idea if I have this right, but this is sort of what I'm looking for. Basically, "Rikimaru of the Black/Blood Wind." How would that work?

Secondly, "chi no kaze" looks interesting. However, it's problematic in that it's three separate words. I don't suppose there's a single word for this, or something which would roughly translate to something like this? The problem here is that this look like it translates to "wind of blood" and ends up producing "Rikimaru of the wind of the blood," which is... A bad way to go about this. I know in English I can just jam "blood" and "wind" together and produce the grammatically incorrect "bloodwind," which is still something that's easy to read, understand and follow nevertheless, but I don't know if there's any way to say this in Japanese.

Secondarily, having no useful knowledge of Japanese grammar, I wouldn't know how to make the phrase possessive, in the "Rikimaru of the..." style that I keep repeating. What I'd ask is if there exists a way to phrase this without participles, such that "blood" is expressed by a word that, through the way it is said, qualifies "wind." In English, I can just say "blood wind" as two words, and very rudimentary grammar would suggest that "blood" somehow describes the particular "wind" in question. It doesn't tell us HOW it describes it, such as whether the wind is made up of blood or is coloured like blood or is in some other way abstractly reminiscent of blood. All it gives us is wind characterised as being like blood, and in just two words. If I can pull this off in Japanese and have the whole packet reference Rikimaru, I'd be sold then and there.

Finally, I don't know why that is, but I've somehow grown attached to the word "guro" and am curious if this still can't be worked in somehow. Considering what kind of monster this guy is (pretty unpleasant villain), the description seems to fit. You see him called "the grotesque wind" and are thereafter hit with a thick, blood-red wind straight to the face. "Grotesque" is what comes to mind, right alongside "revolting," but that has less of a punch to it, as it were.

To distil everything down to a more specific request: is it possible to somehow turn the name into "Rikimaru of the Black/Blood/Grotesque Wind" in as many words as necessary and in any order as is required. If so, what form would that take?

*edit*
Just to explain - if it seems like I glossed over a lot of things, I apologise. There's a lot of good info to cover Rest assured that I did read it all and it was quite enlightening.

And people wonder why I don't team.

I haven't run into this, I'm afraid, but sheesh! That was a class A jerkass.

*Question right at the end. Skip to it if you don't want to read my ramble.*

OK, I have a problem - I don't speak Japanese. This becomes and obstacle when I try to design a character with a Japanese name, and a meaningful name, at that. Yes, I could grab a random "Japanese names" site and snag the first one which comes up, and I'm sure it would be free, but I wanted to be fancy with this one.

There is a character I made quite a while ago who goes by the name of Kazeguro Rikimaru, "Rikimaru" at taken from Tenchu's protagonist and "Kazeguro" as comprised of two words: "kaze" meaning wind and "guro" which I somehow thought meant black. The problem is... It really doesn't. As it turns out, the proper romanisation of black is "kuro," and this is something which sounds out rather an ugly obscenity in my country, so I clearly can't use it.

My original intention with this guy was to call him "the black wind" as a reference to the classic Japanese fictional concept of cutting wind and just general weather control as a "ninja wizard." There are, however, two problems with this one. Firstly, when power customization came about, I realised I could not, in fact, have black wind, because black was not available for Storm Summoning powers. Two - I can't actually call him "the black wind."

Here's the thing, though - I looked up a bit, and it seems "guro," which I already used in the name, translates into something like "grotesque," as used in the name of the ero guro style of fiction. Having unintentionally run across fiction of this sort in the past, "grotesque" is indeed one of the many words I would use to describe it, along with "sickening" and "wrong," but that's besides the point.

What this inspired me to do, however, was colour all of Rikimaru's Strom Summoning powers red and retroactively "fix" his description to turn him into The Grotesque Wind, so to speak. But here's my problem - does "Kazeguro" actually even mean that, or anything even remotely like that? Or is it, as I fear, just Japanese-sounding gibberish?

*Question starts here:*

So here's where I need help: If anyone speaks Japanese or is otherwise able to confirm this, what, if anything, does "Kazeguro" end up meaning? And provided it's gibberish, how can I formulate a name which comes off meaning "blood wind," in the sense of wind made of or tainted with blood? I don't want to just start looking up words and jamming them together, as I have precisely zero knowledge of Japanese grammar and I don't want to look like the jokers who used Bablefish to make bios in Russian that just make me slap my head when I read them. I do not want to make a fool of myself.

Well, more of a fool than I already am, anyway

*edit*
On second thought, that's better without the link.

Oh, sure, quitting over arguments and idiots I can understand. What bothered me is a lot of people made it sound like that response is their default, rather than an exception, which it ought to be.

Well, a female Commando could actually keep precisely the same outfit (obviously aside from the bare chest) and gain similar upgrades. There's pretty much nothing on the Commando that isn't available in the editor anyway. In fact, why don't I put in an example?

...

*edit*
There you go:



The Commando uses player powers exclusively. He has everything from Assault Rifle but Beanbag, Ignite and Sniper Rifle, plus he has Long Range Missile, which my AR/Dev/Munitions Blaster already have. The only thing that would need to be reanimated is the parachuting in animation, and possibly the "catch magazine" and "dig through crate" animations, but BABs has already said that fitting animations between player-available character models is not a big investment.

*edit*
I'd have picked a better top, such as the Yakuza tattoos, but those don't exist for women for some ungodly reason.

Personally, I wish they got extra defensive passives as they level up. I experimented with something like this on my Bugs Mastermind and have so far not had anyone complain about (or even mention) them. What I mean to say is, they have their Resistances power, but then they get another Resistances power with their first upgrade and another again with their second. It could work, can't it?

The problem I have with Phalanx Phighting, and which is why I'm suggesting alternatives, is the very concept. Phalanx Phighting works on the principle of a Phalanx, where multiple characters would form a wall of shields and thus stop most incoming damage. How do we explain ninja becoming harder to hit when they huddle together? Wouldn't the law of conservation of ninjitsu work against that? Furthermore, wouldn't a large group of people be easier to hit just by virtue of presenting a larger target area?

And mechanically, a function which requires henchmen to stay together seems like a terrible example of herding cats. Think it's bad trying to keep actual people together? It's practically impossible the way ninja run all over the place. I guess it would work on EBs and up, where the ninja can be forced to surround the enemy and keep in range of each other, but for the most part, they just scatter too much. Half your Genin will, on average, stay behind to throw shuriken. I guess you could make the range really big, but then you're just giving them a flat buff.

I remember such an incident from another game (Alien Swarm, so not an MMO) where I actually had to scold a team-mate for typing profanities at a player who was quite clearly new and possibly a little stupid. Luckily, the guy was cool about it, apologised and soldiered through the complete disaster we suffered.

One of the things that really makes me smile is people who remain amicable even in the face of complete failure and great difficulty. It's all well and good to be nice when things are easy, but when you start hitting a brick wall and it's clear that other people are causing it, the presence of mind to restrain yourself from hulking out into a jerkass and instead try to work people through the problem is beyond admirable. In fact, it often takes one serious shitstorm for a lot of teams to actually pull together. If the team can weather one and still remain resolute and undeterred, then those are some dang good players.

Of course, I'm not above commenting: "You saw the parasites, you heard the warning. What went wrong?"

Did someone forget to oil a door or something? There's this whining sound coming from somewhere, and I just can't pin it down.

I hate quitters, myself, for the simple fact that I hate people who will tolerate nothing but things going perfectly smoothly. I don't really care how awesome your character is and how much my crappy build is holding you back. If you're a good enough player you'll be able to slow down to accommodate the less good players.

It's really the attitude that bugs me, and a lot of people seem to display it. "Well, if the team is full of idiots then yes I'll quit!" Really? Maybe try to work with these people DESPITE their ineptitude and see if you can't come up with a workable solution? Lord knows it doesn't always work, but at least try to stick it to the end of the mission. Hell, some of my most fun teaming moments have been on a team full of losers that I kept trying to convince "We can do this! Just stick together!" and eventually succeeded.

As a point of fact, if you tend to look down on people, then many of them will feel like idiots to you. We all make mistakes. I have almost encyclopaedic knowledge of this game, and even I goof up on my facts all the time. I've had people mock me for making simple mistakes, but simple mistakes happen. Wrong aggro happens, wrong information happens, brainfarts happen. Yes, even team wipes happen from time to time. The only really good team is the one that takes this in stride and doesn't collapse in on itself over the first sign of difficulty.

Personally, I prefer if people would try to help the team more, instead of making demands of the team so very often.