Samuel_Tow

A man (woman?) after my own heart, then

Personally, I've always held the above as my ultimate ideal. Far and above teamwork and strategy, I prefer it when ever member of a team can look after himself to at least some degree if left alone and doesn't need to be babysat. If the team splits up, many people die or someone gets separated, I want to know they can hold out and possibly even win. I want to know I can rely on my team-mates to not die if I screw up, and I want them to be able to rely on me to take care of myself when they can't be everywhere.

By far the MOST fun I've ever, ever had (in terms of teaming) in this game was on a Bastion TF with six Scrappers and a bubble Defender. I played my namesake Scrapper then and got a spot for a friend of mine, who only had a Scrapper of the right level then, as we joined a team of all Scrappers. We appended the Bubbler right before the start. Not only was the action the most fun I've ever seen with the six of us Scrappers basically carving a path of our own, but it was actually some of the safest I've had. I could count on all of my team-mates to look after their own work so I could focus on my own, and I knew that even if I got in over my head, all I had to do was hold out until the others were finished with theirs and they'd pull me out of the fire.

No Tanks, no "healers," no crowd control and, most importantly, no "leadership." Not much need for it on a team that's basically all Scrappers. What would a leader say? "Go kill stuff?" We knew to do that on our own. I would much rather have that over a needy, codependent team that falls apart if you remove even a single player. I know some people like the idea of force multipliers or characters who cripple themselves in order to benefit the team more in return, but I've never been a fan of this kind of gameplay. I'd much sooner see 8 soloists playing together than be on a team where everyone has a "role."

Unless you also want one of the things that are team-only, such as Hamidon enhancements, or the far faster Reward Merit collection rate of TFs, or indeed the much faster Vanguard Merit collection rate from Mothership Raids.

This assumes a mix of mediocre effects is superior to a singular focus on a single effect. Martial Arts would seem to suggest that "odds and ends" secondary effects are not terribly popular. Experience with Battle Axe would seem to suggest that its focus on knockdown on literally every attack is far superior in terms of mitigation than War Mace's low chance for low-mag short-duration stun is. A lucky streak on an axe character can keep an entire spawn off its feet for a good portion of the time and a boss mostly knocked down the majority of the time. I've never seen anything even remotely similar with War Mace's stuns. The only time I so much as notice them is on Clobber, and only because it has an autohit mag 3 stun on it.

I'd take Battle Axe over War Mace every time, and while I'm never against adding more redundant effects to buff any set, I don't think Battle Axe really needs one, and I definitely don't want to do it by using War Mace as a boogieman.

Warcraft III. I keep wishing people would name slightly more obscure quotes like "What? What do you want? Why do you keep touching me?!" Though now that makes me feel old...

As far as Behemoth Overlords go, I dare say they're too big to fly. Not to say they COULDN'T fly because they're big, but rather that they'd look silly flying when they're this big. They look a lot more impressive with solid footing underneath them, I feel.

I'm also not sure I necessarily want to see the skies become any more dangerous to fly through. One of the benefits of Fly that people keep reiterating is the fact that it's safer, which excuses it for being by far the slowest.

One can only hope.

I actually don't want to go TOO tribal on this one. What I have in mind is more of a "savage" look than specifically a tribal one, which I came to realise when I dismissed the Tribal shield out of hand as looking far too off. As David Nakayama's Noble Savage demonstrates, you can have various degrees of technology and still be savage, and I originally drew Brutticus' initial concept to something of an iron age to bronze age look. I wanted to have metalworking added in there, though not be very prevalent, hence mostly axe handle, shield trim and other odds and ends.

As well, going too tribal and/or bestial risks losing the actual "girl" part of the whole monster girl design, which is actually why I eventually resolved to get rid of the ears. They're not a bad detail, but they detract too much from the point in a costume which is basically engineered to detract from the point as a central feature. Still think I'll leave the tail in, though, just because

That... Actually confuses me a bit. If the majority of my pros for the tail have to do with liking its animation, why would I want to pick a tail that didn't have animation? Not criticising, just trying to follow your thought here. To be honest, I probably wouldn't have even considered keeping the tail after I saw it in action if it didn't look so cool with Ninja Run.

Understood and appreciated

No matter what you do, you will always run into one specific unsolvable problem here - the axe. You can't recolour it, and it's always grey (actually bluish) metal. That's immutable. As the one unchangeable item, the rest of the costume has to shift to fit it, and that means matching the rest of the metallic pieces to the axe. I'd personally have gone darker grey if I had the choice, but I wanted the armour to match the axe as much as I could manage, and white was the only really appropriate colour, it seems.

I actually have to say that's not a bad idea in concept, as it retains what I had before and adds to it, but unfortunately you're running against the editor here, because all skirts we have access to are just that - skirts. As in, obvious skirts. I wouldn't actually be opposed to a loin cloth (then again, over pants...), but I don't believe skirts can do this. The pic just serves to reinforce that notion, I'm afraid.

Actually, I wasn't shooting so much for earth tones (even though that's what I got) so much as I was shooting for the look of fur and worked leather. Not being very world-wise, myself, my visions of fur and leather come in two variants - tree bark brown like those leather belts everyone seems to wear, and the kind of creamy, milky whitish that you tend to see barbarians in movies wear. I think there was a girl in Conan the Barbarian right at the start (that didn't do anything) who had kind of a cream shag carpet kind of fur clothes. Unfortunately, the colour I wanted isn't available for clothes, I guess because it's too close to a skin colour, so that very desaturated orange was the next best thing to looking like an animal skin.

Again, I don't actually know what leather, fur or animal hide would look like in real life. Those are just the impressions I got from rooting through my memory. That said, blue is... Not really something I can see and go "Oh! She's wearing furs! I get it!" The concept is already weird and then some. If we go too much weirder I risk losing my audience

I'm gonna' level with you here - the whole body tone I actually lifted... Pretty much wholesale from Miyuki Ayukawa from Basquash! Now, let me explain why that was. Typically, anime doesn't really feature too many dark-skinned people, especially girls, I guess because of Japanese cultural phenomena I don't fully understand. However, when a dark-skinned girl IS depicted, she falls into one of a few tropes, the most popular being Ganguro. In fact, the whole of Dragonica is pretty much made on this. In fact, Bruttics' original incarnation on MyBrute was a dark-skinned, long-haired blond, which is what originally attracted me to her.

However, my attempts to carry this over into City of Heroes tanked. Bad. I suspect I just suck at this, but there was no way I could make a blond, dark-skinned girl AND make her feel like she should be big and intimidating. I honestly don't know why that is, but it seems to work much better for tomboys than it does for... Well, this. However, Basquash!'s Miyuki is a concept I don't think I've seen much of in anime, as she basically looks like a native African girl, with the thick, curly black hair and very dark skin. That sort of look is what got me hooked, originally, as it really did seem to be right at home with the whole "giant strong woman from another world." I could alter her hair or skin colours, I admit, but I think she would lose a lot of her charm in so doing. Again, I'm trying to balance the fantastic with the instinctive, and I tend to give most of my more assertive characters black hair if I don't have a better idea.

Not a conceptual reason per se, but a design reason very much. One of the things that bugs me about a lot of designs is what I like to call "shoulders for no reason." Yes, you have these big, huge metal shoulder pads, but... What are they actually attached to? Big lumps of metal can't just sit on your shoulders and not fall off, and even ignoring the insanity of gluing them to your spandex, hers are over bare shoulders. The chain is there to make at least the big shoulder pad appear like it's being tied to her shoulder, rather than stuck to her skin with double-sided tape. I would REALLY hate to lose it, because it's one of the little details that really works for me.

Actually, the face marking was supposed to be a scar across the face That's why I had it just a shade darker than her skin, though I wonder if I shouldn't have actually made it LIGHTER than her skin. Honestly, if I could, I'd have given her more scars over her back and her upper arms, but the game doesn't support it. It'd make sense, though, considering the story I wrote for her.

I should note that even if it feels like I went point by point and rejected everything, I still rather enjoyed this Thank you for your help and for your participation.

Wow... I'm glad I didn't have to blow my rep for saying it.

I actually do have the Super Science Booster Pack. If I could actually make the character right now, I'd have been doing this as I'm playing her but I need to wait for Going Rogue. I just love the concept, though, so I'm trying to work on it in the meantime, so I'm not stuck second-guessing myself while I play. That REALLY sucks the fun out of the game.

1. I have no problem with her being considered a catgirl, though with the rat ears that's less likely. I don't have any catgirls, and I welcome the excuse to make one. But you have a point, because:

2. I had not thought of that. The only reason I put in ears was because I put in a tail. I figured it made sense. As you suggest, it doesn't, not necessarily. To be honest, I've tried playing around with "ears on" and it just looks bad. I have not tried playing around with just a tail, however. I'll do that. Thanks!

Belt, definitely. Not only do I need something to keep her pants up, but the large studded belt with the spikes really adds up a sense of bulk to the design. It's just not the same without it, I'm afraid.

Will go test. Thanks for the tip

You know, when I read this the first time I thought "Doh! Why didn't I think of this before!" It's a really good idea, I have to say, but... Well, it has a particular problem that's inherent in how costumes are handled, in that I can easily "reverse" the evolution by swapping to an earlier costume. Because of this, I try to design my costumes like outfits, that is to say as things that can be swapped into and out of either in real time or with minor limitations (such as having to go back home to change). Any costume which obsoletes another costume is best done as a REPLACEMENT for the earlier costume, rather than as an alternate one.

Now, I guess I could just go the werewolf route and have her sprout ears and a tail at night or during a full moon or when she powers up or such, but... Well, it's just ears and a tail, so that's a pretty underwhelming transformation of that's what I'll be selling it as. And I honestly don't want to go full werewolf. I don't have a wolf head I can use with hair (or that doesn't look like my butt), I don't want to go with backwards legs and werewolves are... Kind of a bland concept, to be honest. Granted, girls that turn into werewolves are inherently more interesting, but I just don't think the concept is interesting enough to carry a werewolf through.

Huh?

I don't use pre-fab builds, but in effect, that's pretty much what I did anyway. High muscle slider value, wide shoulders, wide hips, long legs. Seems to work just fine.

Well, David already pretty much shot down that train of thought permanently and without compromise as unworkable and infeasible. And as much as I want to have taller, more muscular females, I don't think a "more feminine" version of the Huge model is really the answer. To be frank, it's bloody ugly, even on men. And trust me - I'm probably the most vocal proponent for muscular females around here, so me saying it's ugly really is saying something.

Ideally, I'd have liked to see an alteration of the sliders, which David also said was out of the question, or more realistically, more muscular body parts using technology like Robotic Arms and the Armoured torso, as well as bigger hands and feet via specific boots and gloves, to which I've had no official answer yet, so probably a no-go. About the only thing I've gotten a positive response from David on has been the suggestion of adding a more muscular skin/tights texture for females, which seems to have gotten thumbs up, at least on the surface. Probably be another year before anything comes of it, if anything comes of it at all.

I have to admit, though - a more ripped, muscular texture for females makes them LOOK a lot bigger without the actual model being any bigger at all. I, err... Received a few pics to demonstrate it some time ago, one of which was in the original post of this thread, though I had the link tags broken. I hope we see something of that nature somewhere in the future, because it would solve most of the problems I see.

What? Have you any concept how much 5000 people actually is?

City of Heroes instances outdoor zones when they become too full to avoid precisely this problem.

Yeah, but I only really caught that on, like, the twelfth pass I've been running through these options for the past two days or so, and I somehow managed to both miss the technical details AND forget why I wanted to alter the gloves in the first place. Odd how that works, sometimes.

That, by the way, still does not exclude the canine feral look. I can use the big gloves AND still go with the Rat Ears (that's what those were ) and the canine tail. The question is if I SHOULD.

You managed to sink both me and yourself, Swell Guy. And after I went to so much trouble with my choice of phrase

"A little feral" is a pretty apt description of what I have in mind for her Not stupid or disorientated, mind you, not in the sense of "Evil iron creature must die!" but more so in the "outdoorsman" sense. Actually from what fiction I already have written about Brutticus, I have her preferring to sleep outdoors, such as on the roof of an apartment building and preferring the open spaces of nature over the commodities of modern cities. I don't know if that really is "feral" as such, but it's up there.

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More to point, you guys forced me to examine my options much more closely, and I actually think the game engine, along with my weapon choice, might have made the decision for me. It's all well and good looking at just gloves in relation to the costume, but what really bugged me enough to consider alternate gloves was the way her small hand gripped the large handle of the Legacy axe. I can fully see why BABs would have wanted to scale weapons down, given the clipping problems. But since I couldn't leave well enough alone, here is some evidence:

Tied Gloves - I ran across these by accident tabbing through the options, and since they were mentioned a few times, I thought I'd include them. The overall look is not actually bad at all, but you ought to spot the problem I was talking about right away - her hand is big in a fist, but the axe handle is bigger. From the front, it's not too bad, but from the back it clips through her thumb and out of her grip. It's minor, but it's there.

Chain Wrap - As suggested by the Vulpish One and others, this is a test of the Chain Wrap gloves. Now, I have an instant problem with these - they're thinner than Tied and they have the chain run into her grip along with the handle, which looks... Uncomfortable? Odd, at any rate. I realise I could just remove the hand chains, but then the forearm chains aren't dense enough to impress me. Probably won't go with this one. And again, the axe clips out of her grip.

Tai Gloves - these are what I originally misspelled as "Tie" gloves. From the front, they look the best of the lot so far, but from the back, they have the same clipping problems. Nevertheless, the way the leather pads pull the whole thing together make them the best choice. Until...

Large gloves, Rough Leather texture, Rough Leather pattern - The moment I saw how these gloves hold the axe, I went "Bingo! This is exactly the look I want!" The large gloves have a much, MUCH larger hand than practucally any other glove type, which is basically REQUIRED to hold the axe I've chosen for her. From the front, it's PERFECT. It's a large glove holding a large handle and more or less dwarfing it a bitl. From the back, it clips ever so slightly at the pinky, but there's still enough glove in all directions to make the grip feel strong and secure. What's more the pose of that glove right in front of her face is exactly the kind of look I wanted. So even if it doesn't look perfectly ideal on its own, the Large Gloves option is really the only non-robotic one I can think of that works well with the large axe in practice.

A few supplementary notes:

*I know that if I had not picked such a large, out-of-scale, unsupported axe, the handle thickness would not have been a problem. I know that. The problem is that there is no bigger custom axe, and certainly nothing even REMOTELY as big at character creation. I'm out of options here, so I do the best I can. Yes, I needed a decent grip to handle the axe, but I needed that axe for the character to look good, so it is what it is.

*The poses I got were achieved by zooming in while editing her weapon. I had no idea the editor did that, as I'm not used to zooming in for anything other than face (the old editor only ever zoomed into the face), so I keep discovering new functions. I wish we had this for an in-game emote.

*I finally found a way to grab screenshots off the editor in Windows 7 x64. Ironically, it has nothing to do with either the game or Windows. I just used Fraps to take snapshots, and that seems to be capable of dumping a screen capture of anything regardless of circumstances.

That's about all I have for the moment. Thank you for arguining with me and pushing me to do more research and look at things closer. If I were doing this alone, I'd have probably settled for something mediocre and run with it. That is why I enjoy discussing costumes - it always leads to better designs.