Samuel_Tow

This reminds me of probably my favourite line from the Lost Vikings 2: "Olaf is as Olaf does. Get used to disappointment."

But what I mean is I just don't get it. What possesses a person to have that kind of "GIMME!" mentality? How can a person like that function in civilised society? Is it the spoiled brat of some rich businessman who threatens to fire everyone who back-talks his kid? Because that kind of attitude just doesn't get you anywhere, and is actually liable to get you backhanded on more than a few occasions.

There has to be some reason why a person would develop this kind of attitude. And I've actually seen it, myself. Not quite as bad as the long-suffering poster in question, but I've had head-scratching instances. Something like, and I'm not quoting because it was years ago:

Tell: Powerlevel me.
->Tell: I'm sorry, I don't do powerlevelling.
Tell: Why?
->Tell: I don't enjoy it.
Tell: Please?
->Tell: Sorry, but no.
Tell: Please, I really need to get to 50!

And so on and so forth. I've had at least one conversation that went something like that, where the other person wasn't really belligerent, just... Confounding. But this was more me wondering why you'd approach a stranger asking for a favour and then be surprised when you're turned down, and to the guy's credit, he did eventually leave it alone without becoming angry. Just disappointed, I guess.

Still not as dumbfounding as the guy who butted into my fight, then stood in front of me and said "please give me money" in local.

I doubt it. "Number of heads" measurements are a metric of scale which take the size of the head as the unit. The ruler's measurements, however, are static while head size varies. What's more, the "height" slider is not a true height slider, but rather a SCALE slider. That is to say, it doesn't make you taller, it makes you overall bigger in every respect, including giving you a bigger head. If you look at a costume file, you'll actually notice that it's listed as "Scale," rather than "Height" and unlike other sliders, it goes from -25 to 25, whereas the other scales go from 0 to 1. It looks like that's just a multiplier for the model's size.

A "heads" scale assumes that people's heads are all roughly the same size and that only their bodies' sizes and proportions change. But in City of Heroes, the proportion between the head and the body is written in the actual model and tweakble with the head sliders.

I think the ruler was supposed to measure feet, because a 5'8'' woman on the ruler feels about average height in the world, as compared to building floor height, door width, car size and so forth, but a 5'8'' woman is TINY compared to the "regular" women who walk the streets. So it feels like the world was built to scale for the ruler, but then someone dropped the ball and made giant civilians, and then even more giant villains to tower over the civilians. Considering they were making ridiculously tall NPCs to the point where a comic regarded one of the Wedding Ceremony bouncers as "Mr-I-cant-make-an-npc-less-than-eight-feet-tall."

The newer NPC of the last few Issues - Midnighter Club, Going Rogue lite arcs and so forth, seem to be of the proper scale. But the old ones were just... Ugh. Again, when they were introduced, all the tutors in the university were something like 10 feet tall, and even now they're something like 7'5''.

To be honest, I kind of enjoy that. I like the concept that raw brute strength and bug muscles can only take you so far, and that sometimes, the strongest one of them all isn't necessarily the most bloated one. It's the Old Sensei Effect in action, where a tiny unassuming old man will toss a bunch of big brawny muscle men like a salad. Yoda, in fact, is probably the quintessential old sensei of Western fiction.

In fact, I've gotten into arguments with a friend of mine who tends to treat people like cattle, who insisted that all people wanted was BIG monsters to fight. While I'm sure many do, I still insist that a lot of the time, it doesn't befit the mastermind of a criminal organisation to be bigger than a tractor trailer, but it almost always befits him to be the strongest of his followers. And there's a certain amount of badassery to be had when the little guy is stronger than the big chumps you just smashed, even though he looks like he should be much weaker.

Basically, my problems with scale are that far too many enemies are far too big for far too little reason, not the other way around. My other problem with scale is that bosses often seem to be bigger than their followers, which doesn't always make sense, especially when their powers are not driven by their bodymass, such as mental powers or magic.

Yeah, yours is the approach I copied It's harder than one might think, however, at least to get a good angle. Mine are a bit smaller-scale because I wanted to get her hooves

And, by the way, that's not a demon. She's an alien that feeds on energy of every kind. She was an experiment of mine as to whether I could make a hoofed woman work, and the only way I could pull it off is to capitalise on the contrast between the beastly parts and the pretty body. The new Demonic Pack parts go a LONG way towards boosting that contrast. I'm just sorry I didn't get any new hooves to add to the mix. Something less ragged and scratched-up, but more stylised and alien-looking instead.

I have to wonder, though, if effects can't be made to ignore this effect. "Unaffected" enemies are not exempt from the powers system, they are merely placed in a state which rebuffs all outside effects. Unless this is done by making powers "automiss" and so never actually even land on the target, then each effect is simply being refused on a logical check. As we have unresistable damage and powers that break the power suppression field (Walk), then it might be possible to make a phase power effect that ignores phase effects, making it possible for the effect to stack with itself.

In fact, if I were designing such a power, I'd make the effect around five seconds long, incapable of staccking its magnitude and reapplied every two seconds, such that even when you turn it off, it still persists for a while thereafter. And that actually IS a pretty clever solution enemy phase powers.

I disagree. This has the potential to make the game's animations VERY ugly. Especially in melee attacks, as well as some ranged attacks, much of the power's "cool factor" comes from the feeling of force, which comes from proper footing and and body position. "Put your back into it," as it were. The last time I explained this, someone left a good example - a simple haymaker is a powerful punch, but try and imagine doing a haymaker while running backwards. You probably could, but it would look endlessly goofy.

Many games have tried this before. Rune is an easy example as probably the UGLIEST game in this regard, where your legs ferry you about like a dolly and your upper body pivots around like a structure-mounted turret. It is just that bad. A few others have tried it, most relevantly World of Warcraft and Champions Online. WoW skirts around the problem by simply not having many decent animations to look at, just the same repeated hand wave or bow shot, and Champions Online skirts around the problem by looking worse than my butt after a full day of sitting at the computer. The only game that I have ever seen (and that I can remember) which had decent attacks on the move was Oni, and that had special, unique attacks designed for each direction of movement (like a jump kick or a clothesline), and which locked you in motion for the duration of the attack.

I know I've gone on about not making a big deal about what we DON'T want and focusing on what we DO want, but this particular change has to potential to make things so bad, so... Horribly very much worse, that I just have to speak up. One of the big advantages City of Heroes has on other MMOs is its beautiful animations, and this has the potential to utterly remove that advantage.

A couple of points on this:

1. Could we please stop calling civilians "peds?" That has all sorts of unpleasant connotations.

2. The University teachers that you see now are their SCALED-DOWN versions. The originals were almost twice their size, or at the very least at the top of the height scale.

Height scale in City of Heroes is something that has always been "off." One piece of advise I'm going to give everyone right off the bat - ignore the height ruler at character creation. It's drawn to its own fictitious scale that has nothing to do with anything at all. Instead, peruse the height SLIDER.

For the Male and Huge models, middle-slider is "average height." Even if the ruler says average height is something like 6'5'', ignore it. THAT is average height. If you try and match your character to the ruler and make him a realistic, say, 6'8'', you will be a MIDGET. That's about a third from the LOWEST height. Ignore the ruler and just pick the height by eye. If you want your character to be average, use mid-slider. If you want your character to be slightly higher than average, go a few notches right. If you want your character to be really tall, but not freakish, go about a third to a quarter to the end. Most importantly, ignore the ruler.

For female characters, middle slider is "very short." I don't know why it was decided that female characters would be tiny compared to makes, but female models are about a foot shorter than male models at mid-slider. I realise that statistically, women are somewhat shorter than men in real life, but one would think this would be up to the player to decide. Not so. A woman of middle slider will spawn at aroun 5'8'' on the ruler, and if someone wants to be "realistic" and make his female, say, 5'2'', then what you will get is a tiny little child, not in the slightest a grown woman. As we've established, "average height" is around 6'5''. Here's my advise - when making female characters, push the slider up until your characters matches the male model, or goes up to at least above 6 feet on the ruler, then go from there. If you want slightly shorter, go a few notches down. If you want very short, go down to about mid-slider. Most importantly, if you want your woman to be "tall" in any meaningful sense, go up to AT LEAST a third from the end, possibly a quarter from the end if you want a normal but tall-looking female.

I'm not saying this just to make numbers up. Pedestrians in the game, as well as most male contacts, aren't actually sized by the ruler. They're sized by the slider. Pedestrians are all middle-slider (i.e. 6'5'') so if you want average height, match THEM. Ignore the slider and match what you see from civilians. Beyond them, enemy NPCs are even taller than that. Most Skulls and Hellions will have half a head or more on most civilians. If you want your character to be "tall," then ensure you match at least the Skulls and the Hellions.

This is actually one reason I fell in love with the Science Booster Pack. I originally made a female character who was supposed to be a giant Troll woman. I didn't want to go overboard, so I made her about a quarter from the end high. This made her barely taller than the skulls, thanks to them being much taller than 6 feet and women being much shorter than men. When the Science Booster came out, I jammed her height at the far right, as high as the slider could go, and now she's just about imposingly high. And even then, she mostly has a little over a head on most "normal-looking" NPCs, whereas I wanted her CLEARLY towering over them.

The height scales in this game are messed up, and the ruler is completely broken. Ignore the ruler and measure yourself by the civilians you meet.

Jay himself once said either that he hates furries or that he's not going to make any costume pieces that furries can use, I don't remember exactly how it went. However, he HAS said this, so it stands to reason to assume this is how he feels unless he or someone who can speak for him says otherwise. Again, as with all things Jay says, no-one is ever sure how much can be taken on face value, but consider this - Jay has said he does not want to make animal parts and animal parts have not been made. While many explanations for this exist, the possibility of a correlation IS a very prominent possibility.

You know... That tail doesn't look like what I saw on David's screenshots. Huh... If this looks like what I think it looks like, I highly suspect I'm going to use it, and being able to use two pieces from the same booster pack the moment it launches is pretty much "sold" in my book, regardless of what else is in it. Still updating test now, but I'm hopeful.

*edit*
And it's high time I un-borked my Test client, because those muscular textures will just end up making people ask questions.

*edit*
Yup! I'm sold! Here's what I got!





I apologise for the size of the pictures, but the sheer scope of these wings is difficult to get in frame To be honest, I wanted to try the shoulders, too, but I didn't want to give up my spiked collar. If only we could have neck and shoulder details as separate items...

What changed angry protesters into adoring fans is a week's worth of time for the disappointment to sink in and for us to get over it. But please, don't mistake contentment with happiness.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't think that one wolf tail makes up for all the stuff I thought the pack would have but didn't get. I'm perfectly capable of being happy at the tail AND angry about the pack at the same time. I'm just over being pissed off about it and I try not to let my disappointment ruin the positive impact of this kind gesture.

Simply put, just because people are happy about the wolf tail doesn't mean they've let go of their other frustrations, and I guarantee you - next time the issue comes up, it will be viewed through the eyes of the current disappointment, and if it ends up not being animal parts that time, too, it will not be viewed as "again" but rather "YET AGAIN!"

I don't mean to be negative here, but that's one thing that's good to keep in mind.

Heh, true, I caught that I don't know whose idea that move was, but it was pretty clever, I admit. I'll wait for a larger-scale animal parts pack before I fully believe Jay was kidding, but at this point, I COULD believe it. That leaves the question as to why animal/monster parts were left to rot for five years, but let's not look a gift horse in the mouth.

They've added items to a few packs after they came out, such as allowing the Valkyrie sword to be used with Dual Blades, but you're right - never long after the pack has come out. In this case, it looks like it might be theoretically possible for them to release a "with skin" version of Organic Armour either before the pack comes out, or shortly thereafter, like a week or so. Provided that's what David is shooting for, of course.

You know, I've learned something very important over the years - there's no such thing as a free lunch. If they don't add these items to a paid-for costume booster pack, they'll stick them behind some STUPID, level-gated unlock. Like, say, finish the "Fall of the 5th Column TF from Mender Lazarus" or "Defeat 100 Minotaurs in Cimerora" or some such. As a dedicated hater of unlockable costume pieces, it KILLS me to see good costume pieces added to the game "for free," because inevitably they're slapped in as unlocks or inventions or TF rewards.

I will say this without a shadow of a doubt and without an inkling of shame - I would sooner see costume pieces sold as Booster Packs that I can then use at character creation than added to the game as *** backwards costume unlocks that I have to wait levels of and still ask someone to do for me.

Many people seem to view video games, and MMOs in particular, as both childish and sad, and many more still seem to view the Internet as a dumb place that makes people dumber. But I agree with you - it's probably the complete opposite in reality, at least as long as you approach it with a positive attitude and find a decent game to play

I want to repeat something I've said before - it's the Internet, and this forum in particular, which taught me English to the degree I speak it today. I came here with a good but rudimentary level of written English, but through practice and interaction with the native speakers, I've managed to get to a level that at least I feel is pretty dang good

That, and for an unsocial person such as myself, the kind of interaction I've had here has been quite useful in general. It sound odd to learn about people's reactions from the Internet, but in a large part, it's useful as thanks to the Greater ******* Theory, most people tend to be more genuine to their personality on the 'net than they are in real life, which makes these experiences actually quite useful.

'Sides, no better way to learn how to take a verbal beating in your stride

Point for point:

1. We already have impressive powers in the game, and I don't mean the Statesman's Lightning. Something as simple as Electric Melee's Lightning Rod or your typical Peacebringer's Foot Stomp (what was that called? Solar Flare?) or, hell, even the REGULAR version of Foot Stomp are pretty dang impressive. Lightning Rod has that massive lightning effect and the Kheldian Foot Stomp shakes the ground, leaves a massive expanding crack on the ground and shoots jets of Kheldian energy into the air. That's cool! By Contrast, neither Nova nor Inferno nor even Rain of Arrows feel very impressive looking at them, and Full Auto is just underwhelming, thanks to its sound.

2. If many people's effects stacking is the problem, the solution is not to kneecap your game's graphics, but rather to institute effects scaling. Too many people covering the world in an impenetrable purple haze? Scale down maximal number of effects when many players gather together. Or, indeed, have the players who are bothered by this (I'm not) scale their settings. Essentially, if I want to see pretty lights and you want to see, period, we can both have our wish.

3. While a game's GRAPHICS are not the most important part, a game's VISUAL APPEAL always is. You don't need super-exclusive graphics for the future to make a game look good, because that's down to art design and artistic talent. The mere fact that I can look at 2001's Oni, which looks like it's using a 1995 graphics engine, and still gasp at the awesomeness despite the jagged polygons and low-res textures, means that you can have cool visuals even with poor graphics. In fact, Capcom's MegaMan X series actually got WORSE visuals when they switched to the superior graphics of the X7 and X8 games.

Basically, I want a game to impress me visually. It doesn't have to be with fancy graphics, but it usually HAS to be with good art and design.

You know, this is the kind of thing which actually kind of bugs me. Not that you don't like it, by all means - it's your opinion. But what bugs me is when developers decide that, since big explosions and flashy fights aren't "deep" enough, they just won't include them, ending up with games that look decidedly... I don't know. Tame? Low-key? Boring is probably the word I'm looking for, especially when it comes to an action game.

Put it like this - Final Fantasy VII is how old by now? Fifteen years? It's an old game, yet it still has combat moves that are more impressive and striking than a lot of modern-day games, simply because the game embraced the more ludicrous side of needlessly big explosions, needlessly large swords and needlessly unorthodox fighting styles and looked like it just had fun with it.

City of Heroes, by contrast, seems to be deathly afraid of big explosions and over-the-top action. Take for instance Inferno, the power which is supposed to be this huge, hearth-shattering explosion that just blows enemies up. It's not impressive! Not visually. Try it some time, preferably by yourself and you'll see what I mean. It's just a little fire and a little screen shake, and that's it. Even with enemies around, it just plays a low-key fire effect on them. Sure, enemies fall down, but the power itself just... Doesn't look all that great.

In my opinion, Inferno should be something so powerful and massive that, when you use it, EVERYONE should know something big just happened. Think of it like that moment in most cartoons or stories where something big blows up, and suddenly you cut to some hero half-way across town seeing a giant explosion in the distance and rushing over to see what happened. That's what I'd have ideally wanted. Instead, we get a slightly bigger Fireball.

I don't know what I'd have wanted, exactly. Something louder, probably, possibly with a pillar of flame that stretched up into the sky, with a clearly visible shockwave of flame and just... More bang.

My modem dies for a day and it's like I'm dead all of a sudden

I just want to state one thing, and this will be the last thing I'll put in this thread because I realise I'm contributing nothing but "me me me" derails, BUT:

I almost never try to make fun of people, and even when I try, I rarely succeed. However, when I do end up being the bad guy, I'm not above admitting it. If it strikes anyone that I am but I'm still denying it, say it to my face, send me a PM or just tell me about it. I will appreciate it, and I'll do my best not to derail threads over it.

Promise.

That's not a good comparison, as it misses the context of the matter. The Vahzilok disease only happens once in the character's entire lifespan, unless you DELIBERATELY seek it you again via Oruroboros. After I run through the Vahzilok disease, my chances of acciedntally being afflicted with it again are precisely nil.

It's also missing the fact that the Vahzilok disease is initiated by MY actions, whereas the Mystic Fortune buff is initiated by OTHER PLAYERS. You make the argument that it's "the developers" that give me the Vahzilok disease, but that's not exactly true, because there isn't some developer running around in-game slapping the Vahzilok disease on people. The disease is a consequence for MY actions, not something applied to me as a result of somebody else's actions.