Samuel_Tow

Well, yeah, that's true, but I actually want to eventually get a fix for snipes in general, not just for this one in particular. There are quite a few snipes out there, and they almost always suck, so it's a bigger problem than just that. I suppose we could always buff Assault Rifle's Sniper Rifle even beyond that in some way, but it's a systemic problem that needs to be attacked at its source.

No offence, but considering the TRAVESTY of bad design that is Ghost Widow's patron arc, I really can't see how you can complain about word choice in the much better Dark Mirror arcs. True, Ghost Widow's arc is well written and executed... And then they take a huge dump over the whole storyline when they basically order me to betray her. And I do, because Daos says so. With the other Patrons, there's a tangible reason to want to betray your Patron. Mako is aiming to kill you, Black Scorpion is an idiot who involves you in his petty vendetta and Scirocco threatens to re-write all of reality.

Ghost widow wants to... Live again. Oh, no, the horror! It burns! Must... Stop... Wait, what? Why am I bothered that she'll live again? Doh, right. I'm not! So the only reason I actually go out and betray Ghost Widow is because Daos pulled his pants down and waved his willy in my general direction. In fact, I'm actually horrified you don't so much as mention THAT elephant in the room, yet get hung up on the game telling you how you feel? Dude, I would gladly be told how I felt at the time if the game let me slap Daos across the mouth and wagged my finger at him, even if that put me behind the 8ball.

And you don't need branching storylines to fix THAT mess. You could have simply written the arc with a more imaginative reason for me to betray my Patron, like, say "Oops! Didja know she needs a you-shaped sacrifice? Bet that's gonna' suck, boy howdy!" I might still not have liked it from a meta-game perspective, but it would have made sense. Caving in because Daos gave me the evil eye is just cheap, especially considering his soldiers around like errant puppies for 40 levels know, and I've knocked out so many of his bases I ran out of notebook to write them all down. And yet I still cave in to him like a good puppy.

Compared to THAT? Yeah, I'll take the Dark Mirrir arcs any day. In fact, I'd take the Dark Mirror arcs over ALL OF COV, because I'm sick and tired of that stupid railroading, presumptuous storyline. I'd rather be told what I think and what I want if what I think and what I want are what I ACTUALLY REALLY think and want, rather than the game sort of quietly assuming what that might be and forcing me to be carry the idiot ball in an idiot plot. Ugh!

If the Dark Mirror arcs are a taste of things to come, then Going Rogue will be GRRREAT!

My biggest problem is that it's unreliable. I honestly can't replicate Goat's results, and I don't know why that is, but I'd REALLY like to see Igniteuseful for its full damage, or close to it, on at least one target without having to rely on the AI not running away or additional support powers.

But, yes, I do agree that its animation time is just... Stupid. It actually rivals Full Auto now...

The problem with Sniper Rifle isn't unique to it, it's a common problem with all snipes currently in the game. Their damage just BAD for what they cost to use, both in terms of opportunity, buff, time and endurance. I'm always told that I can just use snipes to take out dangerous lieutenants, which ignores the fact that anything which isn't AR/Dev has faster, safer ways to take out Lieutenants which STILL leave you with more time on Aim and Build Up to deliver more damage longer. A snipe's base power is 2.76 scale damage, which is actually worse than what a lot of melee sets get multiples of, and that's not counting things like Super Strength, Energy Melee or Fiery Melee that have ~3.56 scale damage attacks that don't suffer interruptibility and 4+ second cast times.

Actually, and I probably shouldn't be talking about this, that's not exactly how it works.

Skin textures are like any other sort of texture. You have a bitmap picture of the skin and a bitmap picture of its bump map. Certain textures have an additional texture that's a tinting mask, defining which sections tint by how much. You aren't limited to jut one colour that's static and unchangeable. You can set any part of the texture to be untintable and it will just remain the same no matter what colour you pick. This isn't limited to just greyscale, either, as not all textures are set up as greyscale. As a point of fact, bare skin is brown/orange-tinted naturally, which is why you can never really match it to costume colours other than black.

Going off ordinary pieces, your list is about on the money. You have 3D model that is defined per costume piece in the actual texture file, you have a texture on top of that, a bump map on top of THAT and a tinting mask if one exists. Beyond that you apply patterns, which are define as two-colour black and white masks with set transparency. I THINK pure black is as opaque as the engine permits (which still ends up transparent) and pure white is no tint. A few masks, like Blend and Tiger Stripes, have black-and-white, which is why they blend like they do.

The problem is that each costume piece has only ONE 3D model ascribed to it and can draw from only ONE texture and ONE pattern. It's not possible to take, say, a lizardman chest and apply a cloth t-shirt to it because that would require two textures.

So how does Tights with Skin work then? By a simple cheat. "Bare skin" is just another texture like Tights (actually, the SAME texture, but brown-tinted), which is applied in the exact same way, only it draws its primary tint colour from elsewhere - the skin colour selection. On top of that skin, you can put on a PATTERN. That's right, you don't put on another texture, you just recolour part of the skin texture another colour. Any pattern put on any costume piece is always transparent. That's how the game defines it. However, the female skin chest is drawn without any actual features like nipples or a belly button, so just tinting part of it makes it look like you have clothes over it. It's still around 50% transparent, but there's nothing below it to actually see, so you can't actually TELL it's transparent.

It's easy to tell when you try to match up Tights With Skin with Full Tights. You'll notice there's a colour difference between the same colour selection. That's because tights are greyscale and that's what their tint is transparent to, whereas skin is "brownscale," which is what Tights with Skin are transparent to. Yes, Tights with Skin are transparent, they're just not transparent to the colour of skin you picked, but to the same brown that the base texture has on it.

This works for skin because it's a case-sensitive cheat. Comic book fans in particular and people in general are very receptive to seeing human body shapes with muscle definition "painted" to make it seem like they have clothes. We see it, and we go "Aha! Tight spandex! Kinky!" This does not work, and let me say it again:

THIS DOES NOT WORK

For anything other than skin. The reason Tights with SKIN works is because of the skin texture. Any time you try to apply patterns on other textures, they look like exactly what they are - paint over the base surface. You can test this yourself - go Tights top, put on a Reptile or a Rock or a Bio-Organic cortso than put the Athletic top onto it. THIS is what it would look like if you could swap skin textures. And THIS looks really bad. The reason Tights with Skin works so well is because the skin texture looks a heck of a lot like the tights texture (and for good reason - they're basically the same), but the tights texture DOES NOT look like the bio-organic texture. If you want a bio-organic skin, then you're going to have to concede to dress only in bio-organic pattern tights that just happen to match the veins on your chest perfectly... Otherwise known as PAINT-ON CLOTHES.

Again - human skin is smooth enough to give the illusion of clothes if you use just flat-colour patterns. Nothing else has that property, because every other texture has much more detail on it that tights would and SHOULD cover, but the current system won't let them.

As a point of fact, nothing is stopping you from faking that your skin is reptillian or bio-organic. There are full sets of the stuff with gloves, boots, chest, legs and face. The problem is that you can't wear clothes over it, especially if you're male. Women, at least, have shirts and shorts to use, but men have NOTHING.

On that: The game will ALWAYS tell us what we think and what we know. To try and design it otherwise produces crappy content, as the older story arcs well demonstrate.

HOWEVER

You don't have to use phrases like "you think" and "you feel." In fact, doing this is probably one of THE worst things you can do with writing a story arc, if for no reason other than because there are plenty of other ways to do it that end up with the same effect but presume a lot less. For instance, instead of saying "You thought a Freakshow hideout would be more cluttered." you could just say "You'd think a Freakshow hideout would be more cluttered." It says practically the same thing, but one is an explanation of what YOU think whereas the other is a general statement of average expectations.

Or let's look at a harder example: "You feel scared as you enter the cave." This is BAD. A better example would be "You enter a scary-looking cave." That way the narrative gives you its appraisal of what feeling you're SUPPOSED to have, but without enforcing you to actually HAVE that feeling if you don't want to.

You can write a story for a player that's just as railroading as ours are and still make it FEEL like it's generic. It's all about word choice.

Well, that's just because I don't know what I'm talking about The point stands, though - I want to see the game playable even if one day there is no longer any official support for it. For instance, I can still play Dungeon Siege if I REALLY wanted to even today.

I actually hope this happens if City of Heroes ever needs to shut down, be it now, ten years from now or next century. Even with its flaws, it's too good a game to just let fade like that, and unlike most other MMOs out there, I don't know of any "private" servers for it on the 'net.

Remember, it took some serious science to get that hip-waggling just right. Just like it takes embarrassingly complex science to make the breasts of Japanese fighting game female fighters bounces

Hmm... That was actually quite informative. I don't if Blizzard tried reusing animations from the other races or just started from scratch (they have money to burn, so it could be either), but those are pretty close to what I'd like to see. In fact, it showed me a few things of note:

1. Drenai feet are almost always very close to vertical no matter what they do, meaning most of their locomotion comes from their knees and their ankles, but relatively little from their toes. Speaking honestly, that actually looks quite natural.

2. They crouch the other way. When humans crouch, they bring the toes back and curve them up, sitting on their heels. When Drenai crouch, they bring their toes forward and fold them back. They can't actually sit on their heels since their shins are much shorter than their thighs, which looks surprisingly natural.

3. Both the knees AND the heels are animated. No doubt that's what gives Drenai their much more natural feel above our own static legs. Even simple animations like bobbing up and down doing the "chicken" emote use both knees and heels.

4. When standing up straight, their legs are almost straight, in turn, much like the Succubus I listed. The knees are still forward of centre and the heels are still back of centre, but by very little. Remembering what my Wing Tsun teacher said, holding a joint at around 120 degrees or so is actually pretty string for the muscles, so that's why it might look more natural than a more crouched pose.

5. WoW has better emotes I'm not sure they have MORE emotes, but between fingers and what must have been a higher monetary cost... They just look really good.

Personally, I prefer this version of Standing Cat

Hmm... That might work, but remember - pushing the ankle forward also has the side effect of shortening both the shin and the foot. Given how oversized the thigh is compared to them even how, this has the potential to look like an angled shin bone rather than a digitigrade leg, and that would be... Really bad.

Honestly, when I account for the technical restrictions, I'd say they did about as much as the system allowed them to. It's still BAD, but I can see why making Monster legs better would be a serious investment. I'd still want to see it, but I understand the problems.

Wings are are an entirely separate costume detail that just happens to have a semi-autonomous animation. Ming motion actually takes its cues from the same sequences that the character does, but does not actually take them from the character, itself. I have very serious doubt that the character itself is nearly as modular.

Additionally, wings aren't accounted for in power animations, but that's largely because wings are not used in power animations. There is no animation that assumes you have wings, like some kind of wind-driven wing gust attack the classic anime wing slice. Legs, however, very much ARE required for practically every animation done on the ground, even if they have no reason beyond propping up the torso. You could have a case for legs being extraneous in the air, but that's the one time when digitigrade legs don't actually matter even visually

Every animation used on the ground has its own stance. They all start from the same one, but the leg motion in each power is specific to that power. As such, you can't just replace the legs with a different skeleton without actually animating those different legs for all the old stances and animations.

You MIGHT be able to get away with doing a kind of mathematical transformation from the regular leg to a funky digitigrade leg, and I actually think I know enough about digitigrade legs to at least try and think about this now. We'll see.

That's more than a little ambitious for an in-game animation, though, as it's a brand new run. On the other hand, so is Ninja Run, so it's actually not as ambitious as swapping legs That said, I'm not sure I'm a fan of it. It actually looks awkward and silly to me, somewhat reminiscent of a guy on a pogo stick, which is basically what it is. Animals that move in hops tend to do so by hopping with both legs, and those that walk and run with alternating steps don't tend to hop much.

Hell, even astronauts on the moon found out it was easier to move around in two-legged hops

You do have a point, though, in that a humanoid bipedal digitigrade would probably bot walk quite the same as a human would.

That's, um... Oh, my... I don't think I like how these look

I think my biggest problem with the lizardmen in that pic is that they don't really look like they're digitigrades. They look like people standing on their toes and slouching. See, this is exactly the look I want to AVOID by trying to sell the foot part as much longer and much more vertical. Ideally, a decent digitigrade shouldn't look like or even remind of a person standing on their toes. If people can manage to confuse a cat's heel joint with its knee joint (and I know people who do), then that's what we should be looking at.

Looking at that picture, I'm reminded of something else that bugs me with the digitigrade feet we currently have. Let's have another look at this pic and notice the very bottom of the foot and what its joint does. The "toe" joing in these legs is actually curved down and back, which actually reminds me of the aliens from Independence Day, who actually walk on the knuckles of their feet... It's almost as if we are walking on what is LITERALLY the very tips of our toes, rather than the balls of our feet, because the ball of the foot is where the foot bones end and the toe bones begin.

Looking at the legs of practically every digitigrade I'm aware of, they all have one thing in common - in normal, standing-up stance, the toes are bent UP from the foot as though the animal were walking on its tip-toes (which it actually is). In pawed animals, the paws don't actually curve back even during walking, and at most the toes sit in-line with the feet at rest. Hoofed animals and walking birds do occasionally bend their toes "the other way," but they almost exclusively do that when sitting down, in a position where the heel touches the ground. They don't do that standing up or walking around.

So for our digitigrade legs to end in such an awkward angle for the toes, especially on hoofed feet, is just... Really, really odd. It feels like something that didn't have to be that way, actually.

Raptors and, to the best of my knowledge, a bunch of other dinosaurs, actually had the body shape of birds with their spines horizontal to the ground and perpendicular to the legs. As such, their stances and movement habits really don't apply to an upright humanoid. As well, Raptors have a part of their abdomen positioned below their hips and "between" their legs. Family jewels notwithstanding, the human abdomen is generally above the pelvis and the legs are structured to be next to each other with no room for vital organs. This very different pelvis simply makes their motions incompatible.

That said, I will join you in exclaiming how bad the Champions digitigrade legs are This was one of the huge shocks I got when I started that game, positive as I was that it would be better than this one in all respects. Instead, the broken-shin legs over there made my eyes turn around in my head. Ugh... OK, I will admit - ours are kind of embarrassingly cheap and really not very well animated... But the ones over there are just BAD. Seriously - you do NOT put a human foot on an inhuman leg. Even I find that too weird.

Well, my WoW-playing friend deactivated his account after getting robbed twice, and he never played a Drenai while he was there, but a Google search reveals that they don't look too bad. However, you have to remember that in WoW, each race and each gender is basically its own model with its own animations. They get away with having relatively fewer things to animate, with every other magic being the same hand wave and so many of the attacks sharing animations with different effects. I'm not really sure that's applicable here, considering how everything has to fit practically every situation for it to count.

Modifying in what way, though? That's the big question. Do you feel there's anyway to modify the legs such that they could still use the old knee joint without throwing animations too far off? I guess shifting the knee slightly forward and the bulk of the thigh forward from that might work, but I'm not sure it's change enough to be worth the tweak.

Other than that, yeah, I'd be up for a complete redesign, but I fear the animations problem.

While I agree that legs more reminiscent of an accordion bag is not a good design , I still feel we should be averse of making digitigrade legs TOO straight. Human tend to stand upright with their knees locked and their legs straight. At that point, how many joints they have along the straight leg is unimportant, because it's a straight leg. I still feel that whatever we do, we need to retain enough of the bent leg look to still feel like digitigrade legs. The succubus I posted is probably as extended as I'd like to see these legs. More than that just misses the point.

To be honest, JUST more Monster leg options (and better Monster heads, come on now!) would be enough for me without a specific redesign of the rig. At the same time, I have my doubts that this is what the pack will actually contain. When it comes to non-human parts, I've almost always been disappointed with the options we get, and I don't know why that is. Either my thinking is far too weird or the art team are far too conventional and not inspired to make weirder inhuman items, but the Monster bits we have feel like an artist was given the task, responded with "Dude! I do NOT want to draw that!" and was forced to anyway.

It would be easy to convince me otherwise with an awesome Mutant pack, but something tells me they'll all be human-frame parts almost entirely. Tails, monster legs, monster heads, monster head details, monster gloves and so forth... I'll get excited when, or rather IF, I see them expanded.

The problem is that, as far as I can tell, each animation involves the WHOLE body, so if you put in a new set of legs that doesn't work with the old rig, you'll basically end up having to retweak EVERY animation out there. That's a bigger endeavour than even Shield Defence, if it's at all technically possible. I'm sure BABs would fly across the Atlantic just to punch me if he were made to go through every animation AGAIN

That said, this is definitely something I'd like to see. Let's put it like this - if there really IS a CoH 2, this is one of the things I want to see integrated into it from the get-go. I'm still unconvinced that a technical solution can't exist to bridge the gap here, though.

I'm not sure I can agree with that. The man in that video is still walking around as normal, he's just hopping on every step. To avoid flipping himself over, he's adopting a kind of wider, swinging walk, which is something I can mimic with my own natural legs. Again, I'm not a fan of modelling animations after humans wearing digitigrade stilts, but I'd be interesting to see one of those running full-tilt. That has got to be awkward with our own biology's adaptation and limitations.

I'd also be averse of copying other games, especially giant robot shooters like Mechwarrior, or indeed the various walking robots in existence, as those tend to walk on a constant balance model, which living creatures don't actually do. Humans, especially, lack static balance almost the whole time when walking or running. What you'd see in a game is a digitigrade character placing a leg forward and THEN shifting weight to it, essentially balancing on one leg. What I envision an actual humanoid bipedal digitigrade doing is shifting weight forward and actually impacting on the feet... Which is actually not something I'm convinced backward-bent legs are good at.

And I didn't write either! There's always one like that whenever I bring up a non-human subject, it seems. Comes with the territory, I guess.

Unfortunately, I never played any of the Elder Scrolls games. Not really my kind of thing. Looking for the Kajiit, though... Ugh. OK, I give up. I can't find a decent full-size pic of one of them that isn't erotic or a nude patch. Would you happen to have a decent screenshot handy so we're on the same page? Because this actually does sound like an interesting concept.

And, yeah. I guess animations will always be the bottom line, especially if you have to reuse plantigrade animations with them. In fact, a random image a random search threw up reminded me that Champions Online uses the same legs we have here, right along with everything that's wrong with them here. In fact, theirs look even stranger, because while ours are limited to hooves and claws and other legs that end on a toe, theirs actually end on a real shoe-shaped foot, which actually makes them look like someone steel-piped you in the shins. As far as animations goes, there is indeed something to worry about.

In fact, this brings to mind the earlier conversation about how a digitigrade would crouch, and the acceptance that it would not be like THAT. What we see on the last pic is basically human crouching with the heels touching the butt, since it actually misses the point of having digitigrade legs. At the same time, though, it doesn't actually look half bad. I don't recall crouching with digitigrade legs looking anything short of repulsive here.

Well, obviously it's not a smash hit, not after Heroes of Might and Magic 4 basically murdered the series, but it's still a mainstream game that's famous enough to get its own review on GameTrailers. For reference, ours DOESN'T! More to point, I mean to say it's a professionally created created title that's famous enough for a lot of people to at least know it exists. Hell, I'd even count Advent Rising as a mainstream game, and YOU tell me if you've ever heard about it

I mean, it's not Requiem Hurts, after all.

See, this kind of goes back to a dangerous argument - The piece is exotic, i.e. not many people use it, so it receives few additions and doesn't really look very good, causing fewer people to use it. I, myself, have only two characters with digitigrade legs (out of thirty, last I counted), but considering there are a grand total of three lower leg options... OK, make that three out of 30, I have a robot... Considering there are three lower leg options for Monster legs, is that really much of a surprise? It's like asking why I don't have more trenchcoat-wearing characters when the entire game has ONE TRENCHCOAT!

I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, of course. The Monster legs are indeed a more exotic option. However, consider that virtually nothing has been done about them since I7 when Robotoc Claws were added, bringing the total leg types to a staggering three. We don't even get the option to use Tights with Skin designs on these legs, forcing me to use my most hated type of garment - the below-the-knee pants - on my digitigrade alien girl, whereas I'd have gone with something more interesting like the Hacker bottom or even one of the two versions of shorts.

I fully appreciate leaving the stranger stuff alone while you focus on the more mundane stuff, but they've been leaving the stranger stuff alone for four years now. CoV gave us five monster heads and one extra soon thereafter. Five years later, we have 5 + 1 monster heads. CoV gave us Monster heads, and it took a while before all models and all torsos could actually use them. CoV gave us Monster Legs, and we have the exact same options we got then, +1. I honestly feel it's high time SOMETHING happened to them, and with hints being laid down for the Mutant booster pack, I have some hope for "more stuff" in this regard.

But that still won't fix the awkward legs. At this point, I'm not sure the awkward legs are even fixable.

Interestingly, a casual Google image search today threw up something it didn't give me before, at least not that I was able to see. It's a simple drawing of digitigrade vs. plantigrade legs that neatly encapsulates what I've been talking about. I could spend all day talking about how I'd envision digitigrade legs looking, but instead I'll point to this image and say "pretty much like that."

Not that that'll stop me from explaining it, of course Look at that pic and notice what I've been talking about - the thigh is bent forward, bringing the knee ahead of the centre of mass. The shin is strongly backwards, putting the heel as far behind the centre of mass as the knee is in front of it. Then the foot is angled forward, placing the toes (rather, the ball of the foot) right under the centre of gravity. It's exactly what I wanted to draw and failed.

Well, I ran the memory test programme, and I didn't see any errors. However, the programme didn't seem to want to give me a log pop-up when I logged back in. It gave me the usual word balloon that the testing was done, but when I clicked it, it didn't open a window. I assume if there were errors, it would have been more persistent about telling me about them.

What about that FurMark programme? Will it run on Windows 7 64 bit and can I be sure my box won't catch fire?

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Incidentally, I saw another instance of the "driver crashed" problem in Heroes of Might and Magic 5 when I was catching my screenshots of the naked flaming Succubus. The game froze to black, stood there for about five seconds, then resumed as if nothing had happened. The problem didn't recur for the time I ran the game, nor did it actually crash it.

So, what you're saying is I should watch District 9 again? Possibly with subtitles this time? Good idea, actually.

So, what you're saying is that while humans would crouch as we do, a humanoid bipedal digitigrade would crouch like how a cat sits? Let me see if I get this straight: This would involve putting the entire foot, toe to heal, on the ground, then folding the shin and thigh over it and folded outwards with the body standing BETWEEN them? Hmm... That might actually look weird on a humanoid frame, but it does make sense.

So, what you're saying is that when a human's butt is on the ground, there's no good position for the legs that could put weight on them? Huh... That actually makes sense. I remember trying to think of a good way to sit on the ground when I was a kid, and I know how horribly unstable people are with any stance like the above-describe, not unless you have your back to a wall, and even then it's not just comfortable. That's actually pretty cool to think about, by the way

Interestingly, while cats tend to not need surfaces to lean on, that never stops them leaning. As an owner of cats for years, I've noticed that, especially when they lie down, they prefer to do it in a corner, resting their back on one surface and their head on the perpendicular surface. I had a cat who wouldn't sleep unless he was in his corner of the sofa

Hence why I wanted to try and avoid real-life examples. As you said, most digitigrades are either quadrupeds or birds, neither of which have a skeletal structure directly applicable to a humanoid skeleton. Even a feline standing up isn't directly applicable as they stand on their entire feet. Canines standing up don't count, either, as they are visibly struggling for balance. I guess the walking dog that was born without front paws could count as an exception, but their skeletons really aren't built to stand upright.

I'm not sure we want to apply digitigrade animal habits directly into a humanoid bipedal digitigrade, as I'm not convinced a direct transition would look good. Quadrupeds, especially, are designed with a pelvis hat lets their legs ride up the side of their hips, with knees going up as far as their rib cages sometimes. Doing this on a humanoid frame would be really freaky, and not in the good sense, since human legs are designed to stand side by side next to each other, not on both sides of the body. Twisting them up into this frame would REALLY stretch the butt in a way that makes me hurt just thinking about it.

Actually, the primary reason I listed the HOMM5 Succubus is to demonstrate that humanoid bipedal digitigrades CAN look good and natural, even if they violate the laws of nature. I actually think her stance is about perfect on that pic, but I'd need to reexamine the actual in-game model more closely. Stupid game not letting me rotate critters on their info screen!

*edit*
It occurs to me that we're missing an important character of this type - Mass Effect's Tali-Zora, and MY GOD it's hard to find a decent picture of her online that isn't porn. Guess I wasn't the only one who got that impression, but I'm starting to think I should turn my Google search content protection back on...

Anyway, Tali is a good example of a character with a non-standard leg composition who still looks works and acts humanoid. I'm not sure if she counts as digitigrade, however, as she looks more like she just has really bowed-out bones on a regular humanoid leg. It looks like possibly her femurs are bowed forward while her tibia is bowed backwards. It gives the LOOK of digitigrade legs while not actually BEING digitigrade legs, at least I don't think they are. One could actually try and pretend there's a small, short bone between a straight thigh and a straight foot, a very minor shin, as it were, but I'm actually starting to doubt that's realistic.

That said, I also found a picture I could only describe as What? doing the same search which actually does look like it has either straight-up digitigrade legs, or at the very least very screwed-up knee joints. I'm not sure this is a good way to draw out the legs, myself, but I wanted to put it out there.

There's a BIG problem with player-specific plugins, in that they're player-specific. You talk about iTunes, but I don't have, use or even WANT iTunes. I don't want a Media Player plugin, I don't want a VLC plugin and BY GOD I don't want a Real Player plugin. It's hard enough just to keep that piece of adware out of my startup, I don't want more plugins for it. If we did have a plugin, I'd want it to be for WinAMP, which others have already explained they don't use.

It's like this - certain keyboards come with "interface buttons," such as "play next song" or "open browser" and such. The problem? Multimedia keys only work with the piece of crap that is Windows Media Player, the browser button only ever calls the ****** Internet Explorer and the e-mail button calls up Microsoft Outlook. Why would I WANT to call up Microsoft Outlook?!? In essence, it gives me several keys that not only do I not want to use, but are often highly problematic because the programmes they call up are the Microsoft brand of fat and bloated, take hours to load and slap me with registration wizards that I have to confirm thrice that I want to cancel out of.

I don't want an ap for iTunes. I want one for WinAMP. I'm sure others don't want an ap for WinAMP, but would like one for iTunes. So what do you do?

Here's what I don't get, though - if the three-year-old MP3 player is just as good and in just as good a condition as the new one, why buy a new one? I can understand the sentimental value of having "new" stuff, but if it has no benefits over the old stuff, you'll have people raising an eyebrow.

I'm not questioning your desire for an in-game player, especially if you crash on Alt-Tab, which itself is reason enough. But "just because" is not a good argument, even for quality of life.

I wouldn't say Buckshot is BAD power in and of itself, but people often look to it because it's practically the only thing in the set that looks like it could be a single-target attack, and it's what the set really needs. I honestly wouldn't mind trading Buckshot for a high-damage single-target attack, but I could see it would be unpopular.

Flamethrower is one of these powers that does a lot of damage, but when you get it and shoot enemies with it, it FEELS really anaemic. I remember my disappointment when I first got it back in the day. It also means that, in an AoE-heavy set, you end up killing your enemies before they tick down. Up-front damage would help a lot.

Leaving burn patches along the way seems a bit... Harsh, but why not just give the enemy a damage aura to hurt his buddies with while he burns down? Most importantly, I'd be ecstatic if Ignite worked as a single-target attack I didn't have to keep enemies immobilized in. It'd be a LOT more useful in the heat of battle than the fat fiddle that it currently is.

Ugh... Don't remind me. Snipe powers in general have been a thorn in my side for years now. Their DPA is crap, making them poor use of Build Up and Aim, they're interruptible which makes them useless in battle and the damage they do is unimpressive in general. Most sets with a Snipe can actually do a LOT better with regular attacks under Build Up and still get more damage to the enemy in the same time. At the very least, a boost to 3.56 damage would be needed to fix them (up from 2.7), and it would still be "only just."

Yeah... Full Auto is probably one of the coolest powers in the game, but... It's just not very good to use. It does little damage, it takes too long, it's too dangerous to use and it doesn't hit enough people. Having some kind of protection while it's firing would be nice. A powerful debuff for the duration of the attack would actually be pretty cool and it would make sense. Its damage is just bad, even for a mininuke, and it NEEDS to hit at least 16 targets. With a cone that size, it's a crime that it doesn't.