Samuel_Tow

Hmm, this is kind of a problem, since we don't seem to have a consensus here. I will freely admit that I don't like the Insect Wings for the simple fact that they're too small for the tail and legs. So they're out. I AM, however, partial to the Dragon Wings. I'm not sure why that is, though if I had to guess I'd say I just like big, bulky designs. Furthermore, for a hive queen, I wanted something a little more impressive. They may not really work very well with the whole "hiding" concept, but I'm willing to turn a blind eye.

Just to note - I did try Bone, Burned and Organic Armour wings, and none of them looked good to me on that one. Bone looked too decaying, and I want this looking less rotten and more sleek. Burned were, again, too small and too tattered. Organic Armour I'm reluctant to use because I've already used them elsewhere, again with the Organic Armour tail, but also because they're a little more slender and work better on a more subtle design. This one needs something more substantial.

Demon Wings are... Actually, I don't know why I chose to not use Demon Wings. Would they look better than Dragon Wings? I know I don't want to use Angel or Valkyrie, however, as I'm going for a more... Scary skin flap over bones look. It just wouldn't look nice enough to have a bug lady with bird wings, even if they're back.

What occurs to me is that I'd easily use the Insect wings, but if two things were different. One, if they were about TWICE as big (think dragonfly wings) at around twice character height across in full spread. The other is if instead of hanging limply behind my back, they folded into a shell like on your typical beetle. I realise such long wings would be too big to fit inside a "carapace backpack," but I wouldn't mind them shrinking or actually folding. Not gonna' happen, though.

This is actually a point I've been trying to dodge for some time, but I guess I'm going to have to address it sooner or later. The bit about "his technology" that I mentioned earlier is something I put in there for flavour. I didn't actually picture this bug lady lugging around bits of tech with her. And while I could still retrofit the concept and add a bunch of odd-coloured tech that stands out (say the same cream paintjob as Cedric's coat), I suspect it would deteriorate from what is, again, and incredibly basic design to begin with.

In fact, a large part of what makes Duriel's costume work for me is the fact that she's just a black indistinguishable insect with glowing eyes. That's basically how people tend to see insects in real life, even big ones - they're just one big pile of icky icky icky! If I start attaching tech to this one, yes she will become a lot more interesting, but she'll also lose a lot of that mystique that a black bug without a face brings to the table. I actually tried doing contrasting tech and it really ruined the whole look of the costume. Sure, it looked more interesting, but it had less... I don't know, spirit?

Now, just to go the extra mile (and considering I've been preparing these last two posts for close to two hours now, know that I mean this), I decided to check and see if colouring the tech parts black would help. And it did, but... They still look out of place. Let me explain something here - she looks all black, but she isn't. Insectorid costume pieces are tinted a little grey and a little brown. They don't colour the same black that metal does. So the metal parts still stand out, and they stand out A LOT. The only problem is I don't think they add to the appeal of the character, but only subtract from it. If they were bright, like yellow and white, for instance, that might make a difference, but it would make a completely different costume. With them black... She just no longer feels like some kind of alien bug monstrosity and feels like... Like... Put it like this - when I looked at the design with a metal arm, a metal chest and metal wings, MY reaction was "OK, so what is this thing supposed to be?"

My gut tells me to keep Duriel as basic and simple as I can. If I can cash in on that Aliens look and keep it, I'm in the money. The more I deviate, the more questions the look begins to raise. At this point I'm positive I want to go with one of the living wings, but I'm restricting myself only to the bat-style among them.

Easy things first: I don't really see any reason to not use Invulnerability on this guy. I don't want to do Willpower, because it'll be my... Let me think... Fifth character with it, and third Brute overall. I have a whole bunch of Invulnerability Scrappers, but only one Brute, and it fits the lizardman's armoured design. He's a big brute, so it makes sense he'd be invulnerable

As far as Stone Melee being a "hard fit..." Dude, we were just talking about planet-eating parasites. I can work something out for a lizard who secretes lava

As far as Axe and Mace go, I did and have a look at the various options. I'm once again reminded why I hate unlockable costumes, because there's no way for me to check how the Roman axes look in action, and unless I can see that they look good, I won't ever unlock them. No reason to make this guy Axe if I don't think he'll have a decent axe in the future, and I can't, so I won't. That was actually the key problem with axes, as well - the only ones of decent size were the Roman ones, only the bigger one I'm already using on Alexander and the smaller one looks a bit... Small. I did really like the Rikti "axe" and would in all honesty have gone with that, but then I remembered it's unlocked by participating in Rikti Invasions and Rikti Invasions ONLY, and screw that!

War Mace looked a little more promising, at least at first glance, but ultimately, it was disappointing, too. None of the maces have nearly enough weight to them. I mean the guy is as wide as a garage door with ham hands like you wouldn't believe. It just doesn't fit him to be swinging around something like that. He looks like he'd do more damage punching you with the hilt. I tried a variety of weapons, but none of them really worked. Again, the Rularuu Hammer could have worked, but I couldn't try it. Can't customize powers in the Architect, don't have it unlocked at creation. And people wonder why I prefer costume packs to costume unlocks...

Really, though, both Axe and Mace suffer from the same essential problem when it comes to Shaffakoom - they're too small because they're one-handed. Something as fat as this needs to swing around a tree trunk (or a Buster sword), neither of which is really appropriate to a one-handed weapon, which ALL of our melee weapons are. Having actually gone into the editor to test this really put the weapon ideas to the grave. I can't make them work. I wanted to, but I just can't. Stone Melee just feels much more appropriate for his weight class. And his wrestling belt, though why I decided to put that there and KEEP that there is beyond me

Go ahead, Vulpy Because I don't think I can. Not with Iprit. The concept isn't bad as you describe it, not at all, but it's far sideways of what I really wanted to achieve with this guy. I wanted poison before disease, to be honest. My inspiration came from the very name: Iprit is one of a series of names for Sulphur Mustard Gas, an early poison gas first used in WW1. It's organic (as far as I can tell) but not biological, which is why I wanted to focus on this guy being less of a "creature" and more a walking... Well, Slag Pile. In a sense, where the Slag Golems are golems of trash, Iprit is a golem of toxic, corrosive chemicals.

I will be perfectly honest here - I didn't have high hopes of altering much on Iprit, being that he was the only one whose concept evolved out of a powerset, rather than the other way around. The Rad/Fire idea had a lot of merit, and were it not for the fact that I can't make Blasters villain-side (not at level 1, anyway), I probably would have gone with that. As it stands, I CAN work around it, but it significantly lowers the worth of this as a solution as compared to a Poison Necro Mastermind who not only can be made a villain at level 1, but also features a powerset I've never played. Both Fire and Rad are things I have on other Blasters.

Now, right off the bat we're switching ATs here, as Stalkers can't use Fiery Melee. Even assuming that I go Brute and that I can find a proper powerset to go with that, though, adding anything other than binary black and white will, I feel, go a long way towards denigrate the character's overall look. Right now. Duriel is only very BARELY creative. She is, essentially, an almost full-body Organic Armour set mixed with Insectoid pieces, and at that colour scheme I could swap those for Organic Armour and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The only reason, I feel, that she stands out at all (aside from ripping my own Samuel Tow off) is that she is so very "iconic" with the sharp, driving contrast like that. If I mess with that, I kill the costume. So much so, in fact, that I'm not sure I'd ever be able to give her alternative outfits. But she's a bug lady - she won't need 'em.

Now, I went the extra mile and tried to fit this into the overall design by painting the powers a flat Dark black. On the one hand, they don't look TOO bad... But on the other hand, they just don't look like swarms of bugs. I've seen swarms of bugs in this game - use a Necromancy upgrade from a tad far away and watch the ground. It's disgusting! This looks like... Well, it doesn't look like fire, but it looks like black turbulent smoke. Fiery Melee throws around these smouldering cinders all over the ground and it has the occasional convection plume carrying a stray bit of fire... Excuse me, "stuff" up. It just doesn't have the kind of look that would make me go "Yes! This!" And it also suffers from making me swap ATs when I'd rather not and it repeats what I did with Kragoss a few years back. It just doesn't have the right look, I'm afraid.

And, yeah, there are the fire swords I COULD explain those with sentient bugs, but it's starting to cross over into silly territory, kind of like those bees in Bugs Bunny cartoons who form themselves into a cork screw to screw through a wooden shed or form themselves into a punch to hit people.

This actually reminded me of the Naruto Shippuuden filler with Guren, the woman whose ninjutsu consisted of forming pink crystals out of thin air and encasing people into them.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can go with Crystal for her for the simple reason that I can't make it black, or indeed white. I can only ever settle for shades of grey, which I honestly don't want. I don't know why I can't make the crystals black (probably something to do with transparency) or white (I got nothin'), but without the ability to use either of those, I'm just not capable of using those.

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By the way, if it seems like I'm just shooting everything down, please understand that that's not the point. This is simply how my mind works. In order for me to be truly confident and unshakable in a decision, I need to know not only that it's right, but that all other choices are wrong. This is not always (or indeed, often) the case, but it does mean that knowing what I can't or won't use is as important, if not more important, than picking what I actually WILL use.

So if it looks like I'm just refusing everything and nothing is getting accomplished, that's not true. A LOT of work is getting accomplished and these characters, as well as my will to play them, are improving with each iteration. So, thank you, Vulpy, for your time and your help. I really appreciate it

She's actually the one I see as the most open-ended, though. For the record, I like the insect wings, but I generally prefer slim designs.[/QUOTE]

Ugh! I agree, so few games get "evil" anywhere near right. As Yahtzee exposits in his review of Alpha Protocol, most games give you three options: Neutral, Good and *******. I am honestly entirely fed up with "evil" in games being defined as "the opposite of the Good option" or "being a dick at random" and this continues to be the case in new games being made even today. Good characters are relatively easy to relate to, and they tend to do the wrong thing, but no-one ever seems to get evil characters right as writers keep assuming they will undoubtedly do the "wrong" thing, where "wrong" is defined as the opposite of the right thing.

I've spent the last five years designing evil characters that I could not just stand to play, but actually enjoy advancing, so I like to think I know a thing or two about how to make a character who's evil, but evil in a way that makes him a cool and important antagonist, rather than just a random jerkass because the script says so. And that, as well, is what bothers me about Villain tip missions, in that they seem to present villains as malicious bastards far more than they do as actual antagonists in a decent story.

A good villain is not someone walking down the street kicking puppies and looking for people to punch in the face, and I would really, really like if RPG makers would understand that.

In this regard, I do agree that Praetoria did a very good job of putting down some hard but fair moral choices and blurring the line between hero and villain. For the first time in a long while, it FORCED me to dissociate from my characters and pick options that THEY would pick, rather than whatever I thought was best, forgetting there was a character between my mouse and the choice prompt. In fact, I've found myself liking certain characters less and less the more I "let them" do what they're likely to do.

Cedric, for instance, killed a clone he's saved previously, even though the clone only came to thank him. Why? Well, Cedric is a conqueror. Everyone must bow down and serve his will, and those who refuse simply die. It was a hard choice for ME to make, but from the character's perspective it was little more than a shrug.

Wasn't that precisely what I was told to avoid if I didn't want to rip off Sarah Kerrigan? I mean, it's not a bad idea, provided I can deal with being tied to Arachnos and having to make do with a Widow costume slot, but I really don't want to skirt that line.

I would, believe me, but I already have a Mace/Shield Brute at level 30-something. High enough to have Shield Charge, anyway. It's not a bad idea, but I REALLY don't want to basically create the same character all over again but with a different costume and bio. This is easily the biggest showstopper for me. I need for the character to at least be another AT if I will consider reusing powerset combos like this.

But technicalities aside, yes, I would do that in a heartbeat.

Yeah, I thought of that half an hour ago. Then the servers went down Will look into more options when they come back up.

Thank you for bringing it up regardless

Here's how I feel - an attack doesn't have to have a high value for me to use it, if the cost to taking, slotting and using it is low. Low cost to low value can still equal high comparative worth.

In other words, Mastermind attacks don't have to be made GOOD in order for me to wan them. They should just be fixed so they're no longer BAD. I wouldn't have a problem spamming largely useless attacks if they didn't HURT me to use them. And they do.

Making a good attack out of a useless attack is hard, complicated and often downright impossible. Making a mediocre attack out of a useless attack, on the other hand, is very easy - make it cheap and be done with it. And I'd sooner have mediocre attacks rather than useless attacks with mediocre debuffs on them.

Ah, that's something interesting to expand on: Empty characters. Gordon Freeman kind of gets a free pass, because even if it doesn't seem like he's all there, he's all there because people keep acting like it. That and because it's a really cool game series regardless

But Dragon Age I never even tried, and for this precise reason - I like Protagonists who speak in voice and have personalities, especially when I'm limited to concepts constrained by the genre. This is actually the same reason I LOVED Mass Effect. In a lot of cases, I didn't really know what to do, how to act or what to say, but Shepard always knew. If I got his persuasion skill high enough in the first game (and I made that a priority) or his Paragon score high enough in the second game, the guy was awesome. Man, the way he saved Tali's *** at her trial and essentially bluffed his way out by the sheer awesome of being completely right was amazing.

In many ways, I like to trust my characters to do the things they are supposedly so good at doing. If a character is supposed to be very eloquent and persuasive, I'd rather hit the "persuade" button and let him do his thing. I'd much rather do that than trying to be persuasive and eloquent myself and do it for him. Or if a character is really evil, like the Cedric I may have talked about before, I'd rather be able to just trust the game to treat him like a high-class evil dictator, and the bad thing about that is it really doesn't. Tip missions for villains seem to be more of the "jerkass" variety than the "evil overlord" variety.

But bringing up Mass Effect's Commander Shepard vs. Dragon Age's Your RPG Protagonist is a good point to make.

That's kind of what I got from reading your post. Now, stop me if I'm reading this wrong, but it seems like you don't really NEED to identify with the protagonist to enjoy a story, but because you can be pretty empathic, you still manage to do so most of the time anyway. Hmm... That's an interesting position to be in. It seems to lean a little more towards identification, but I don't want to go out and state that as a fact.

I realise I neglected to explain my own stance on the subject (even if the post itself is pretty biassed), but I'm easily on the cheering side. The last thread on character help I made ought to be evidence enough to that. I've always treated my characters more like my Pokemon than like an extension of myself, though having written for them, I more or less HAVE to identify with each one. I guess it pays to design characters who are actually cool with that mindset, huh?

Actually... Thinking about it a little bit more, I prefer to cheer on characters when I make and play them, but I need to actually LIKE them in the first place.

Uh... No it doesn't. It comes down to this...

"If I set my mission for ONE character, it's too easy. If I set my mission for TWO characters, it's too hard. If only there were something in between. Well, there is, but if only I could set my difficulty to that."

I don't see why people continually have a problem with what I want to set MY difficulty to. Am I somehow altering your difficulty settings without knowing it, as well?

I don't believe "Masterminds" need an endurance reduction. I'm saying three specific powers per powerset need endurance reduction, because THEY ARE NOT WORTH TAKING. And I disagree that more debuffs would make them that much more worth it, considering support is what your entire secondary is devoted to.

You know... When I pick an attack that's a rife doing auto fire, I don't want the only point in taking this to be because it confuses enemies or because it debuffs their resistance. That's as silly as the old time when Knockout Blow stunned people but did no damage.

I've nothing against control or support powers, not at all. When it makes sense for that to BE a support power. Shooting people with a rifle does not make sense to be a support power. If these were meant to be support, they should not have been made into the powers they are. Shooting people with bullets, lasers, grenades and arrows should not have to do something that's completely out of character for them in order to be useful. This is like suggesting that the proper fix for Blasters during the Defiance 2.0 debates was to give them stronger secondary effects on their ranged attacks.

As long as we shoot guns at people, I will disagree that the primary functions of those powers should be support. Shooting guns at people should foremost KILL people. Shifting the point away from this destroys the point of the power. If, for instance, Mercenaries Mastermind personal attacks were supposed to be attacks, they should have either been given special grenades or given a rotary barrel grenade launcher with a bunch of control grenades. Say a Beanbag, a Flash Grenade and a Dear Gas Can. I wouldn't be complaining about them being support, then. But instead, Mercs Masterminds get guns. And guns kill people.

The joke was interesting. The actual bio, however, is just BAD. Would have probably been smarter not to post it.

"Peruse" means "to read carefully." The point of the thread is to put exactly these kinds of suggestions in there, which is written in David's aka Noble Savage's original post.

That's like saying that defence sets are the ones where health is irrelevant because they never lose health (unless they get hit).

Masterminds lose pets. It's a fact of life. In fact, certain enemies are capable of one-shotting pets, and certain enemies are capable of spawn-wiping pets. Once you lose a pet, you have a 20-end summon, a 45-end upgrade and another 45-end upgrade. Even if you three-slot these for endurance reduction, you're still down to half you total endurance all in one shot. And if you happen to pet-wipe (and it happens), that's three 20-end summons plus 90 for both upgrades.

And I don't know about your Dark Miasma Mastermind, but mine tends to run around using Twilight Grasp an Fearsome Stare rather a lot, so there is a cost associated with them.

I honestly don't know why people keep claiming Masterminds almost never use endurance, when my Masterminds are entirely and wholly endurance-bound. Given enough endurance, they can survive almost anything, but with such severe costs... They rarely are. I guess if you assume that you can just let the henchmen attack and never lose anything to anything and rarely do anything yourself, I can kind of see that. But that's never how it turns out for me. There's always that Longbow Flamethrower or Scrapyarders Demolitionist, or Arachnos Drone or Malta Gunslinger or Knives Caltrops patsh or a Knockout-Blow-happy ancestor spirit or SOMETHING that's taking my guys down, and that costs rather a LOT now that our upgrades are AoE.

Most of what I've heard whenever anyone brings up Kinetic Melee is "Oh, that's basically Tai Chi. THIS is what Martial Arts should have been like all along!" and I'm like "O.o I don't agree with that!"

I'm not against adding more animations to Martial Arts, especially not more acrobatic ones. But not these. They work really well for Kinetic Melee, but they're not what I'd look for in an "acrobatic" martial arts set. I'd like to see air, more wild swings, more fancy footwork and so on. Just check out anything from 9Dragons, like... Say, the Heavenly Demon fighting style. Or, really, anything. That's more like what I had in mind.

Trust me - I take, slot and use my personal powers. Almost all the time, you'll see me pumping rounds into enemies myself. Gotta make use of that Redding Rail Rifle. It doesn't make much of a difference, ESPECIALLY in hard fights. You'd think that if the fight is hard enough, you could step on the personal attacks and help kill things faster, but that's actually to your enormous DETRIMENT. Not only does it burn endurance you could be using for healing, protecting and resummoning your henchmen, but you're also wasting A LOT of time doing what amounts to not much of anything. Almost every time a fight starts going sour, I have had to STOP attacking and focus on henchmen support, because this is always and without fail the better course of action.

Mastermind attacks are toys. They're fun to use, they give you something to do when you're not desperately needed and they look cool. But they're also very expensive toys, requiring power picks, slots, money to fund them and energy to run them. They're fun to play with when it doesn't matter what you do one way or the other, so why NOT shoot arrows at your enemies? But they go out the window as soon as you need to get serious. Mastermind attacks are the first thing that gets dropped when a situation deteriorates in much the same way as a cop would drop his coffee and doughnut when he sees a thug holding up a 711. They are cool, but their use is next to nil.

I'm not saying Masterminds need to do Blaster level damage on their own (nor could they, with all of three powers). What I'm saying is that I don't want to feel like I'm making a mistake every time I fire a personal attack. I doubt they'll ever give Masterminds better personal damage, even at a higher cost, but I see no reason why they can't be given a discount. Secondaries get increased costs for a very simple reason - Masterminds get a LOT more mileage out of support powersets than any other AT, so it makes sense they'd cost more. Conversely, Masterminds get a lot LESS mileage out of personal attacks than any AT in existence, including Controllers, so it doesn't make sense that they'd be so inefficient.

And when I say I want them to be attacks, I say this because they LOOK like attacks. Again - if I fire a rifle, I want to shoot people, not debuff them. If these were supposed to be debuffs or control effects, they should not have been modelled after lethal weapons designed to kill. If the Mercs rifle, for instance, fired beanbags and tear gas, then I could see the powers being support, but it fires bullets and high explosive grenades. Those are not support powers, and they shouldn't be altered into such.

Because my ******' stupid mouse has a Back button on it which caused me to lose a seriously long post, let me try and summarise:

I've been playing on Tenacious and then Malicious since those existed, and the only spawns I ever saw were:

6 +0 minions (used to be five)
1 +0 lieutenant, 5 +0 minions (used to be four)
2 +0 lieutenants, 1 +0 minion
1 +0 boss, 1 +0 lieutenant
3 +1 minions
1 +1 lieutenant, 1 +1 minion
1 +1 lieutenant alone
1 +1 boss alone

Always this, and it never varied, aside from exotic faction-specific spawns. The first time I switched to +0x2, I got spawns of 6 +1 minions and 2+ 1 lts, 1 +1 minion. I died a few times before I caught on what was going on.

As Skarmory said, difficulty varies too much. It's not a question of it being too hard or my characters being too weak. -1 spawns at x2 are far too easy and +1 spawns at x2 are uncomfortably hard. Arcana already beat me over the head with how "resource management" is an integral part of game design, and +1 spawns make me have to rest a lot. I could build my characters stronger, but then all that would end up happening is I'd get caught between +0x2 and +1x2 or +0x2 and +0x3. +0x2 is the golden centre for me, if only THAT were what I got when I picked that difficulty.

As I've seen it explained, the war walls inhibit the free movement of large-scale military forces, keeping large-scale conflicts more static and localised. For instance, if the Freakshow decided to go on a massive rampage, they could threaten a zone, but would not be easily able to spread to other zones because they could be contained at choke points like gates and tunnels.

For me, though, they're just something big, cool and decidedly sci-fi to look at, which makes an otherwise unremarkable cityscape look more interesting. It's the same reason why Fantasy RPGs don't have just featureless endless woods, but like to throw in giant trees, towering ancient temples, meteorite craters filled with dinosaurs and so forth in.

I petitioned a blatant Dr. Doom knockoff earlier this week and got a response that they were investigating it, so I know they still worked as of... I want to say Tuesday, but call it at least Monday.

Check your junk mail folder, and if that fails go to my stuff on the PlayNC Support site and check to see if you have any open tickets pending. I no longer remember how accounts there are handled, but I believe that you may need to create a new one based on the e-mail address you're set to receive official mail to. That's the best way to track your communication with customer support.