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Quote:It can't hurt for the game to support it. It's one thing to go "Yeah, that's what THE GAME says happened, but it actually isn't." and quite another for this to be what the game says actually happened.For people who actually build up their own stories on top of what the game offers, this is already an option. Two identical characters enter the lab, the lab explodes, one of the characters survives and you go on playing the survivor - but that survivor can be either one.
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Quote:Yeah, I've suggested this many times, myself, and I agree with it here. Have the occasional plate glass window looking outside over a generic cityscape. It would make the missions SO much cooler.Even if they didn't do this, it would be nice if some office building maps (for instance) had one end of the map designated the "exterior wall" with some windows looking out. Even if the windows looked out into the generic "cityscape" you see beyond the war walls or something, it would feel more like being in a building and not just on a map.
Also, give Longbow's underwater bases large plate windows looking outside at the bottom of the sea. We don't have to be able to go there, but being able to see it from time to time would make them feel a LOT more like underwater bases than like underGROUND dungeons.
Also, give Anti-Matter a REAL space station with port holes looking out into space. Maybe even give him a custom-made shuttle bay?
Generally, give maps fake views into the fake outside. It helps a LOT more than you think.
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Have more maps switch between indoor and outdoor sections. Like, for instance, have us run through a warehouse, come outside into its truck park, then run into another building.
The new missions have the ability to have a separate mission exit that puts is in a different place than where we entered when we use it to exit. One mission I entered from Faultline and when I came out the other side, I ended up in Talos Island. Do more of those. In fact, try and use that as often as possible. Much cooler to go into a cave, do something and come out the other end than to backtrack to the entrance. -
Hey, if it's a choice you're allowed to take or refuse, I see no reason for people to complain. Might actually be really cool to have in the game. Instead of an inescapable timer, let me get down to the clone and decide, Mass Effect style, if the clone dies or if I die.
That actually reminds me of the ending of Ben 10: Alien Force, when the Omnitrix, the focal point of the series, breaks and is replaced with the "Ultimatrix," which does basically the same thing, but better.
And, yeah. It's not a clone. I know. Easier to say that way. -
Well, can't blame a good story for the tools it picks, and if she can't be saved then she can't be saved. Knowing she can't is, at least, better than feeling guilty, like I could have done something more. And again - I'm not holding that against the story. It's a good approach.
On the notion of a character we all wanted to live, I dare say a lot of this has to do with two things:
1. The clone is a persistent character that we get to know and become familiar with. When such a character dies, it's always more meaningful than when Longbow Rifleman #1235412351 bites the dust.
2. The clone is actually USEFUL. Not only is it tough in a fight (tougher than most NPCs, as it turns out), but you're also never really saddled with escorting it and trying to keep it alive, giving it that much less chance to be annoying. I dare say many more people would like Fiusionette if you didn't have to lug her along, aggroing the world.
3. The clone does things without you having to lead it by the nose. What does, say, Faultline do in the War Zone? What does WMD do? Not much. It feels like they're sitting on their hands while you push forward, advancing the plot. This clone actually has initiative. It goes out, does things, kicks ***, accomplishes objectives and can be trusted to do missions on its own. How can you NOT like that, when every time plot points are left to someone else, they always fail and you have to clean up their messes? Not with this one!
And, yeah, I keep calling it "clone," even though it isn't. Easier to say, I guess. -
Here's one thing I'd REALLY like to see:
Building interiors that are not floating inside a black void, but actually match up to a building's exterior that we can switch between in real time. Think the Grandville Tower and the various Architect buildings. It would make entering buildings feel less like teleportation and more like entering an actual space.
Make the Architect doors open like in-mission doors, such that they leave a direct line-of-sight opening between outside and inside, rather than opening to fake "blackness" that we run into, then run out of.
As for the rest of my points:
1. Look into the scale of the footprint of newer buildings, and make sure they aren't over tunnels.
2. Look into bringing more colour to the Rogue Isles, possibly via a new zone if that's ever on the agenda.
3. Tie specific map layouts to specific doors in the word. That way, if I go to "that" warehouse, I know to expect "that" interior. Missions can still take place in different doors, though.
4. Have more buildings with with less rigidly defined "inside" and "outside" like the the Wentworth's Fine Consignments building. Add these to outdoor instances, as well. -
Just to get it out of the way, this thread will obviously contain SPOILERS for the "Looking Through the Glass" arc. If you haven't done it, go do it. Seriously, even if you don't intend to read the thread, go do it. It's a great arc.
As far as the actual question goes, I'll try to keep things simple: Can you save your alternate self at the end?
Since I assume only people who've played the arc can tell me, I won't explain the whole ending. Suffice it to say that right at the very end, your "other self" will do an ellipsis-replete dying monologue in a cutscene, then the game will give you control of your character back, with something like five seconds on the timer. By the time I realised I was even in control, the timer had ticked down and I was booted from the mission, with my double having sacrificed her life.
Can this go any other way? The game gives me time, obviously, but can I actually do something in that time? The five seconds would have been just about enough to Super-Jump down to where she was lying and... Then what? Can I even do something about it? I know the letter right at the end mentions her death, but I know those contact dialogues can change. Hell, the villain-side conterpart of this arc has a clone that may or may not show up for one mission depending on what you do in the previous one.
It kind of sucks that I lost my clone, to be honest, especially considering she was the only companion NPC in the game that's worth a crap, both functionally and narratively, and she was written to be likeable. I'd really like to save my clone on the next run through that arc, if it's at all possible. -
Bug: Integration on Women (at least) is missing its visual effect.
Character: Female Electric Melee/Regeneration Scrapper
Relevant powers: Integration
Bug Description:
This one is simple. Integration, as used by a female Scrapper, lacks its old visual effects. Last time I used it, it had an effect that looked like a glowy cross with a glowy circle behind it, with dots swirling outwards (if memory serves). Right now, it has NOTHING. It's as if I have the No FX option turned on, only I don't.
I tried all themes: Original, Bright Regeneration, Dark Regeneration and FX in PvP Only. None of them show a graphical effect, but clearly there is supposed to be one, otherwise this power would only have an Original option like Fast Healing and Quick Recovery. The options are there, but the effects they're supposed to represent are not showing. -
This has me really confused, but didn't Integration use to have kind of a green glowing effect, sort of like a cross inside a circle? What happened to that? I just got it on my newest Regen Scrapper, and the effect is gone. It doesn't appear on the power customization screen, which I thought was just an interface bug, but now I see it doesn't appear at all.
It can't have been removed intentionally, since the old options are still there, options like Bright, Dark and FX in PvP only. Trouble is, neither Original nor Bright shot any effect at all. AT ALL. Nor do any of the other options, in fact. I haven't been to a PvP zone yet (why would I want to) so I don't know if the effect shows up there, but MAN. What happened here?
Is this an actual bug that I should be reporting? -
Quote:Those aren't exactly "glass towers," though, they're buildings which incorporate glass façade elements along with other architectural features, like how the buildings we have now implement windows with stone or concrete details. I'm not opposed to the notion of large plate glass façades here and there, but I DO NOT LIKE buildings like the Architect Entertainment ones. They're just boring to look at. And the Architect doesn't reflect right, to boot.Samuel, did you see this earlier post by Newty, especially the last pic?
*post*
Glass can be a very flexible building material. See all the concept pics at this site or just google image "Dubai building" and scan through several pages.
Yeah, some buildings, especially the ones made to look smaller, do look the part, but larger buildings simply don't. I'll try to get a screenshot of what I mean next time I'm in the game. It just seems like building scale drops the "bigger" it's supposed to be.Quote:I don't know Sam, the scale in some places seems ok to me.
http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b1...2-16-14-42.jpg

*edit*
Huh... I guess I was wrong. I'm playing a relatively small-ish girl right now, but still, each floor looks like it's well tall enough. I'll have to revise that last statement before I insist on it. I still have to complain about building footprints, though. Looking at the footprints of most of those buildings, I have to wonder how they have room for so much as a lobby.
And then there's the building in Atlas Park near the station that is built ON TOP OF A TUNNEL! Apparently, buildings in Paragon City have no foundations, they're just plopped onto the ground, and no-one worries about putting a 50-storey monsters entirely over a tunnel. Mind you, that that building's actual footprint is narrower than the four-lane tunnel beneath it... -
Quote:Yeah, but it's a large plate glass tower block in an apartment building, and it's never taken a shot to the windows? I know Rikti Plasma Rifles have a range of, like, five feet, but you gotta' figure that if Vanguard are using bunkers and those still get shot up, the glass tower ought to get a shattered window an hour.I do agree with this, but-
At leas it DOES have a tonne load of HVAS and turrets guarding it
Anything nearby tends to get exlpoded fairly fast.
Seriously, in a real war zone, that place would be windowless in, like, a day. And you know what? That's fine. I don't want a ret-con. Sure, someone had the bright idea of putting up a luxury tower block in the middle of a war zone. It's stupid, but I can roll with it. So let us see the consequences. Say it's too expensive to maintain the building, pull the big Matrix generator and let it become a tilting ruin just like the rest of the zone. That would actually be cooler than if the building never existed
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Quote:I'd love for buildings to be a lot more massive in general. Real buildings are huge. Our buildings are vastly scaled-down, as if built for three-foot midgets to work in. The game in general can use more "big things."I'd love MASSIVE buildings for major, plot important places.
Things that you just go up to and say "Whoa..."
Like the tower in Nova Praetoria.
The dam wall in Faultline used to be big and impressive, a sheer drop of HALF A MILE STRAIGHT DOWN, but then they flooded it and it has been boring sice. The Rikti Saucer is huge, granted, but the area around it is so dangerous that I've never really been able to appreciate its size. The Terra Volta reactor is BREATH-TAKING, but again - who goes there, and why would I want to?
I don't know what to say. The roads in Paragon City are far too huge for the cars that drive around, taking up so much land area there's very little left for the actual buildings. And the buildings themslves are always all alone, looking more like a forest than... Well, a "Steel Canyon." I'd have much preferred to see them jammed closer together, made bigger and generally feel like a cityscape, rather than the base of a Command and Conquer general. There's nothing that can be done to change it at this point, but I'd hope and pray that at least in Praetoria, buildings will be more to-scale. -
Quote:That's just it, I haven't noticed any of that. I play on Pinnacle and Victory, and neither server seems dead, at least no more dead than it was in 2005. Team invites haven't slowed down much, I still run across people in the streets and TFs are still being done. I'm not saying that's proof positive of nothing wrong at all, but again - how do you figure?Really, Sam? I'm not adding to doom over CoX because it is where it is, and I want good things to come to this product ( in no small measure because my wife still loves it and it's still our only sub'd mmo ).
But unless you call Freedom or Virtue home, there's no masking the low server activity compared to just one year ago.
Either way though our monthly $30 is on auto pay until NCSoft stops accepting it. -
Quote:Yeah, I'm sorry but those buildings still look too much alike to me. Not just the glass towers. All of them. From that distance, they're just boxes of different shapes. You'll note that current Paragon City architecture has a lot more useless detail to it that at least looks interesting from a distance, like a building with an entire metal floor right above the entrance, or a building with three huge A-frames apparently supporting it, or the building with that huge round sculpture on one side, or the one that has sort of a domed roof... There are many variants, and all of them look unique (well, reused, but still unique in and of themselves). Paragon City has more the look of Gotham City than that of New York, with its needlessly ornate architecture replete with eagle heads and gargoyles.Also, not all glass towers look alike. There are at least 5 in this picture. None of them look alike.
If anything, the Architect building is the epitome of everything I hate about building design. It's a square glass box. That's ALL it is. Yes, it has one terrace, but even its solitary decorative element doesn't help detract from the fact that it's BORING. Yay! A huge wall of glass! We haven't had that before, so it certainly has its place, but more of that? Nah. I can envision a FEW glass towers here and there, but they're easily my LEAST favourite type of building. -
Quote:Can't have been I16. I was given the Jim Temblor runaround with my Pistols Blaster when I made her, and that has to have been post-I16. Could have been with I17, since this is the first hero I've played since then, but it can't have been before that.It was with one of the more recent issues. i16, I think, though possibly i15 (although, come to think of it, i15 was a year ago...not all that recent, really).
Either way, it's great. One useless unwanted runaround timesink no longer exists, and I am very happy about it. Now if only I can stop being sent to PvP liasions and Security Chiefs... Or at least, you know, let me abandon the missions without them following me from contact the contact! -
A few things I want to say:
First of all, I want to cast my vote AGAINST "more glass towers." Glass towers are boring. They have one shape - a box - and one finish - mirror-surface glass. You think zones look repetitive now? I shudder to think what they'd look like if they were all turned into glass towers. I'd much sooner see a city built out of architecture reminiscent of the Chrysler Building, the World Trade Centre or the Empire State Building than a whole city of Sears Towers.
Secondly, scale. Just about every building in the city is BADLY out of scale, When you climb a building's windowsills, you will quickly notice that each floor is around 6 feet tall, and most skyscrapers' foundations are smaller than most standing houses. It's not so evident in City of Heroes as there are just a lot of buildings, but in City of Villains, it's REALLY apparent. When Aion "City" is comprised of, like four buildings, each with a footprint smaller than my house (and I'm a poor sod, too), something is wrong.
Speaking of which, City of Villains. Something needs to happen to its dull-grey appearance and its slummy look. City of Villains is built out of black, white and brown right now, with very little else, and most of the areas are either monochrome depressing architecture or brown disgusting slums. A grand total of two... Well, one and a half zones have a blue sky - all the others are permanently overcast. Either we need a new zone that's less depressing, or we need to clean up some of the slums and diversify some of the buildings. Be nice to see CoV buildings that aren't made of either black stone or brown brick. Haven't those guys heard of paint?
And, of course, the Combine wannabe architecture that is Arachnos forts needs to have something happen to it. It stands out like a sore thumb and far too often makes no sense, being by far the most out-of-scale of them all. Just look at Ghost Widow's tower in Fort Cerberus. At the narrow part, the thing is about as wide as my outstretched hands, and we're running around huge, sprawling levels inside of it? BAD! This thing needs to be about ten times as wide as it is to so much as BEGIN to look reasonable. And that goes for most buildings in the entire game. An entire apartment building can't be as wide as a single room and as long as a short hallway. And who builds a building with a two-wing window every foot along the outside wall?
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P.S. The Architect building in the War Zone: Move it into the Vanguard Compound to be accessed off a side door and leave the current Architect building shot up, windows broken, equipment defunct and abandoned. That's what happens when you build a fancy internet cafe IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR ZONE! -
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You know, I have a tendency to whine about City of Heroes giving me the runaround, visiting PvP liaison officers, Security Chiefs, contacts and the like. So when I started levelling up my new Slime Girl, the first thing I did at level 50 was to pop into the Hollows and flip Wincott a birdie. I mean, who wants to be set AAALL the way there from the butt end of Kings Row, right? Little by little, the game started giving me the the runaround, like every couple of missions it'll be the Boomtown Security Chief or or Hero Corps Representative or the Skyway City Security Chief, all the while I'm thinking "Ugh, when are they gonna' send me across creation to talk to Temblor even though I don't want to do his missions?"
Thing is, I never was. I expected to be sent to him as soon as I hit 15, but no. Didn't happen. Didn't happen when I hit 16, either, and eventually I kind of forgot about it. Easy to get used to a good thing, you know? But then suddenly I get Fareed Abdulah's phone number, and he offers to introduce me to a bunch of new contacts. "Sure" I think "Gimme, though I doubt I can do them." Except... One of the contacts he offers to introduce me to is Jim Temblor. Whaaat? Since when?
Let me get this straight - I am no longer sent on a mission to speak with Jim Temblor, but rather other contacts introduce me to him like he's any other contact?
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Sweet! When did that happen? It wasn't there as recently as a month ago, I don't think. But this literally is one MAJOR hassle down the drain. No more pointless running around speaking with contacts I do not intend to do missions for. That is, provided this actually means what I think it means and provided all contacts like Jim underwent the same treatment. But MAN! This is sweet!
That's not to say all the annoyances are gone, of course. I still got swamped by Security Chief missions and, as if to spite my enthusiasm, the next mission I got after being introduced to Jim the BETTER way was to speak with the Bloody Bay bloody Liaison. The more things change... Still, if those STUPID forced introductions to contacts have been removed, I will do a happy dance! -
When doing illegal research based on the work of not only a convicted criminal, but a committed madman, to boot, all of it behind your employers' backs, it pays to be very, very careful. However, the consequences of science gone awry is one lesson that Professor Scott Sholl, lead developer of biotechnologies for the prominent Biotech corporation, apparently skipped in school. To be fair, the man himself was always one loaf short of a bread basket, himself, so things like "operational safety" and "catastrophic failure" were never part of his vocabulary. They say genius goes hand in hand with madness, but I dare say genius his highly overrated, considering most of what it produces is unstoppable monsters, portals to hell, killer robots and the like.
Back a few years ago, Prof. Sholl managed to con his superiors into funding the development of what amounted to perpetual energy technologies. You know, the impossible. At least, impossible to modern science, but when have the limitations of real life ever stopped a determined mind? Why an otherwise respected scientist decided to shoot for what was clearly science fiction has been difficult to understand, but what we all know is that Sholl spent a year gaining no progress, wasting massive amounts of money and causing more than a few tragic accidents in the process. Facing utter, career-ending humiliation and actual fraud charges, Sholl finally resorted to what can only be described as madness.
About ten years prior to Sholl's ill-fated experiments, another scientist whose name was eventually classified, but whose public moniker of "Majik" (misspelling included) could never be truly erased from public memory, shot for much the same elusive goal of unlimited energy. Unlike Sholl, Majik had rather a lot more success, actually perfecting an entire branch of science and technology which seemed to be able to generate as much energy as his machines could project, drawing on a source that appeared to be literally unlimited. Free energy is always an enticing prospect for any scientist with vision and ambition, obviously, but most of the sane ones have learned to let it go.
You see, Majik's research managed to upset a lot of people for one simple fact - he attempted to harness the power of literal magic through his machines, hence the awkward name. And, yes, seriously. He tried to, as papers at the time described it, "cast spells with computers." Much more shockingly, he succeeded! What should have been a massive breakthrough, however, turned him into a laughing stock, as his academic colleagues refused to take his as of then unproven technology seriously, and the mystic society saw him as a threat. Magic lost his funding, which caused him to turn his inventions to crime in order to find alternate sources of money, eventually getting him thrown in prison, and finally seeing him broken out and employed by one of the more notorious criminal lords out there. As of the making of this programme, it is not known if Majik is indeed still alive, but his last-known status was basically that of a prisoner and slave to the infamous "Lord Bane," truly a fate no refined man of science would want for himself.
You would think that the utter ruination of the creator of what could have been the greatest scientific discovery in all of history, bridging the gulf between the physical and metaphysical worlds for the first time ever would be a strong deterrent to Prof. Sholl. After all, even the greatest of ideas will be stamped out by a misunderstanding world if they are too far ahead of their time. But before the prospect of complete failure and losing not just his job but his entire career, Sholl did not think twice about stealing the illegal research of a convicted criminal and using it as his own.
At first, Majik's equations helped Sholl's bioelectricity generator finally produce more energy than it consumed to run, delaying foreclosure and saving his career, but it had set a dangerous precedent. Sholl had only limited understanding of Majik's work into mystical energies, and unlike the technology's creator, no eye for the metaphysical consequences of his actions. After all, the "magic generator" was never a free energy device, it merely tapped into the energy of the world's invisible metaphysical forces, which in turn had other, more mystical effects. For instance, Sholl's original design called for a large body of amorphous biomass to produce large amounts of bioelectricity when stimulated by outside forces, relying on a series of controversial theories describing a loophole in this kind of cycle, allowing energy to amplify itself. That obviously failed, but when Sholl applied Majik's research to his own generator, it seemed to do exactly that... Except it didn't.
As far as Sholl's measuring equipment was concerned, electricity was being fed into the biomass tank and more electricity was sunk out of it, so obviously the tank was amplifying the energy input. Right? Well, with no way to measure the actual interaction of energy and biomass, that's what Sholl assumed, but he was wrong. Studies of his generator done after the incident indicate that what the generator was actually doing was siphoning what mystics describe as "the life force of the planet" and converting that into more contemporary electricity which was being fed into the tank did little more than simply govern the process, and was in fact expended in whole in what was later dubbed as "animating the slime," as the biomass in his reactor was dubbed by researchers on site.
So, basically, you had a project lead dealing with technology potentially able to produce unlimited power, the fundamentals of which he didn't understand in the slightest. Sholl simply stole someone else's research which was both illegal and potentially dangerous. A normal person would worry at this point. Maybe there's a reason that this research was banned? Maybe there's a reason that Majik is widely regarded as a madman? Maybe there's a reason mystics were afraid of this power? Maybe you shouldn't build a high-energy generator based on science you don't understand because it might blow up in your face? Well, normal people would, but as a man posthumously diagnosed with several psychopathic disorder, Sholl never even attempted to halt the project.
Until it blew up in his face. The longer it ran, the more unstable his biomass generator became, reacting more radically to ever smaller input charges. Sholl dismissed this as a coincidence, but recent research has revealed the reason behind this. Sholl's generator was based upon the ability of his "slime" to channel mystic life force and transform it into electricity, but to do this, it had to be attuned to the frequencies and flow of life force around it, which is where the input charges came into play. However, the world of mysticism being as mystic as it is, eventually the biomass itself began to develop rudimentary intelligence, gaining the ability to align itself with greater and greater precision without outside help. Why this happened, no-one has been able to explain. Scientists the world over are baffled and mystic experts refuse to comment. Terms like "souls" and "spirits" have been thrown around by occultist speculators, but no conclusive evidence has ever been given.
The closest we've ever come to understanding what gave Sholl's biomass actual sentience is Roy Trent's "neural network" theory. According to Dr. Trent, the passing of both life force to which the "slime" was sensitive, as well as the passing of electrical current through the biomass eventually created charged pathways of least resistance, transforming what was once an unordered, amorphous mass into a structured system. This system would therefore be able to reshape itself to retain its arrangement, as well as eventually begin reacting to stimuli in ways that appear intelligent. He likened this to the forming of connections between the neurons of a human brain, a theory shared by a number of philosophers, but which has very little actual scientific backing.
Whatever the reason, Sholl's biomass developed a rudimentary kind of intelligence, along with the ability to align itself to channel life force into bioelectricity on its own, to the point where one day it went onto meltdown overload all by itself. With no means to stop the process other than cutting its input power - a futile gesture at this point - Sholl was unable to stop the meltdown, eventually leading up to the biomass core reaching critical charge. "Critical charge," as defined in Sholl's design documents, is a level of electrical current which, when surpassed by the generator's output, will arc out of the internal circuits and ground into the building's superstructure, basically electrocuting anyone within the lab complex. in an instant. This was considered one of the primary dangers of the reactor, but since right up until the incident, output levels have always been problematically low, no-one worried too much about it, Sholl least of all. What would happen to the generator after it reached critical charge was never officially theorised in advance, though some had proposed ideas that it might open up a black hole, create a portal to another dimension or even create life. Idle speculation is as idle speculation does.
On the day of the incident, Sholl was leading a tour of investors through the generator chamber, trying to ensure them that everything was going to plan. Talk about a bad day to make a visit. Confident of his grasp of the situation, Sholl didn't evacuate the complex when the biomass reactor's output suddenly surged, but instead tried to control it. When retracting full input charge failed to stop the power surge, it was already too late to do much about it. A single, massive electrical jolt arced out of the reactor, electrocuting the entire building and feeding into the power main, knocking out transformers all over the city. The reactor itself superheated from the current, causing the slime to expand, shatter the protective glass and basically splatter all over the room.
A few staff members did survive the power surge, however, mostly through the sheer luck of being in protected locations at the time, such as an animal handler who had crawled into a large metal-bar cage, or Eric Stein, one of the building's janitors, who survived the power surge in the water main sub-basement where the forest of interlocking steel pipes absorbed the shock and led it way from his body. For the people who weren't killed by the power surge or weren't in the presence of people who were, there was no indication of the massive tragedy that had occurred. Thanks to Sholl's constant aggressive experiments, power in the building would go on and off all the time, and lacking an actual supersonic explosion, the incident was easy to miss.
Eric the Janitor assumed that the power outage was just another one of the many tripped breakers and that power would be back eventually, so he grabbed his flashlight and went to work. He was the only person to come into contact with Sholl's biomass before it evaporate4, as he came across a puddle of the green "slime" which had seeped through a ventilation grate to the level below. By mopping it up and dissolving it into the water and cleaning solutions in his bucket, Eric ensured that the slime did not disintegrate when exposed to air. The rest of the slime puddles which pooled around in the reactor room, on the other hand, quickly dehydrated, then hardened into a porous, rock-like solid, then eventually fell apart into dust, losing all of their unusual properties. Only the rather large sample that Eric had mopped up remained.
It wasn't long before the slime in Eric's bucket, now solidified by the various detergent into the consistency of soft jelly, rose of its own power and began shifting its shape. And it is at this point where both scientists and mystics just shrug their shoulders, because no-one has been able to piece together just what in the world happened next. The slime rose out of the bucket, forming itself into the shape of what Eric would later describe as looking like "a naked young woman made out of slime." Why a woman? It has never been explained, though parapsychologist Dr. Robert Craven theorises it could be a residual image the piece of biomass extracted from Eric's mind when it came into contact with his body while he was mopping it up. Dr. Craven has written several books on the appearance of spectres and apparitions, which he believes define their forms by drawing on the memories, desires and fears of the people who see them. That is why a poltergeist can look like a skeletal monster to some and a beautiful woman to others. While interesting, there is no evidence that this theory extends to sentient slime.
Later research would reveal that Sholl's biomass, as influenced by Majik's metaphysical energies, developed a certain amount of latent psychic abilities which. It has been theorised that this caused the limited, rudimentary intelligence of the whole biomass to interact with Eric's own psyche, essentially jumpstarting high-level sentient thought very reminiscent of human intellect, probably owing to the fact that the biomass' own psyche patterned itself either after Eric's own, or after Eric's idea of what a person should be. It's not entirely clear, but there is strong evidence to suggest that the biomass did "borrow" its eventual intelligence from Eric. In fact, AI engineer Dr. Alan Rick, has since written an entire book on intelligence development by borrowed exchange. By observing the interactions of people and how more suggestible individuals tend to copy and adopt the mannerisms and logic of stronger personalities, Dr. Rick has developed several self-learning AIs which attempt to "become" other people by copying them until sufficient intelligence is achieved for the AI to become self-aware. No evidence exists to expand this theory over Dr. Sholl's biomass experiment, however.
What is known, however, is that a brand new, sentient creature came out of this tragedy, calling herself, or rather, itself "Slime Girl," supposedly after Eric's original reaction toward seeing the creature, reported to be: "Woah! A slime girl?" Parapsychologist Dr. Craven believes that the then-impressionable creature accepted this as a moniker without question and built its entire personality onto that name, adopting it too deeply to change at a later date, even when it eventually realised how silly such a name sounded. This is how the eponymous Slime Girl first came to be, though her original personality was literally a blank slate, basically copying the actions and reactions of others and showing little initiative of her own.
For reasons unknown, Eric did not report the existence of Slime Girl to investigating authorities, instead opting to take her home with him. The reasons for this are unclear, but Psychoanalyst Heather Summers theorises the primary reason was that Eric was, in her own words, "a gigantic pervert," a statement that saw her sued out of job and home by Eric Stein several months after the incident on the grounds of slander and libel. Eric himself faced several years of prison time for perjury and withholding vital information from a federal grand jury by hiding Slime Girl instead of reporting her in. Luckily for him, some time had passed after the incident when the news came out, at which point Slime Girl's levels of intelligence and self-awareness had increased to where she was able to testify in Eric's defence and reduce his sentence to community service and a cash fine.
Slime Girl herself (and at this point we can no longer call her "it") has come a long way since her humble beginnings as the unintended consequence of a mad scientist's experiment. When she first appeared, her intelligence level was so rudimentary she was no more intelligent than one of the many Police Drones that have been patrolling the streets in recent years. Her entire interaction with the world consisted of copying what she saw with no will or understanding. Xenobiologist Craig Kingston explains that her time spent with Eric Stein could perhaps have contributed to the healthy, working intelligence Slime Girl eventually developed. Prof. Kingston even testified at Eric's trial, explaining that, had Slime Girl been surrendered to researchers and exposed to tests and a colder environment, then perhaps the intelligence she developed might have been much more warped and hostile, turning her from the asset to society that she is now into what could have been a dangerous monster. Instead, she developed her mind in a warm atmosphere of friendly interaction, basing her psyche on positivism, empathy and introspective understanding, setting the foundations of a healthy individual.
Slime Girl herself has expressed thanks to Eric, whom she continues to live with, for the care and attention he gave her when she was still developing into a real person. In a recent interview, she talked at length about the many things she had learned from her mentor, as well as all the ways in which he had helped her get the right start in life. According to Slime Girl, it was Eric who urged her to apply for a hero license with City Hall, making her one of the first heroes of the city at the time.
As papers have written and talk shows have said, Slime Girl is particularly cut out for the job of a hero of the city. Retaining the ability that Sholl's biomass was first synthesised for, Slime Girl is able to channel the life force of the planet, producing high voltage, high-current electricity practically at will, making her an extremely dangerous opponent to the criminals of the city. The exact workings of her bioelectricity have, of course, never been fully explained. The science of it is relatively clear - Slime Girl is able to draw on energy from "somewhere," which she then uses the consistency of her slime to channel out of her body and form into arcing bolts. Where this energy comes from is unclear, as no-one but Majik is able to explain the function of his technology, and mystical experts refuse to comment. The few odd scraps of information we have talk about a "lifestream" that either circulates around the planet, or is possibly born from the planet that Slime Girl taps into, but none of that has been substantiated. It is more than likely that the exact mechanics of her power constitute forbidden magic.
The other side of Slime Girl's powers is the actual composition of her body. She lacks any sort of tissues, organs or body structures, her body consisting entirely of the same amorphous, jelly-consistency biomass. As such, harming her has proven extremely difficult for her adversaries, as it becomes akin to trying to harm water. Bullets and other projectiles will easily punch holes in her body, but her biomass will simply flow back in an close the holes at seemingly no damage. Even blowing her body apart into separate piles of goo has little effect, as she simply flows back together and reforms. The strange, mutant cells that make up her biomass appear to be almost completely resistant to burning or crushing, and even when they are destroyed, Slime Girl appears to be able to produce new cells at a rate faster than they are being destroyed. Criminals have tried shooting her, crushing her, burning her, irradiating her, anything you can think of, and even when she has been entirely evaporated, she has still managed to reform shortly thereafter.
It is currently not known what, if anything, holds Slime Girl together. Most known regenerators still have a vital core somewhere in their bodies that holds their tissues together, but Slime Girl has no such thing. In fact, according to spectral investigator Amanda Wayne, her resilience is more like that of a spectre than that of a physical creature. Spectres, Wayne explains, are typically bound to a specific object, person or abstract concept and will use that as an anchor to reform themselves around when dispersed. It is believed that Spectres draw energy from a mystic source, using it to give themselves paranormal forms while their souls remain bound to a specific anchor. Amanda Wayne theorises that Slime Girl's biomass is actually a physical form of spectral ectoplasm, forming around her soul anchored to this world. This has earned Amanda multiple death threats from the militant Church of Luka, who insist that inhuman creatures cannot have souls, and that Slime Girl's "snot" as they describe it has latched onto a human soul somehow. However, given that Slime Girl has put many of the Church's followers in jail for terrorist activity, it is debatable how much faith one should put in George Luka's opinion of her.
It seems the notion of soul is always brought up when talking of what keeps a creature in this world, but metaphysicist Professor Herbert Howler believes that this is an erroneous interpretation of a much more complicated system. He believes that what binds humans to life is misunderstood and expressed as something monolithic, whereas a broader notion of "life energy" as the fuel which keeps life going is much more palatable. According to Prof. Howler, all living creatures have the ability to draw on the planet's life force, and indeed on the greater life force of all the cosmos, and that we only die when we lose the ability to draw on this energy, leaving only our energy imprint behind, which others might call a soul. But our minds, our feelings and our thoughts are not given to us and defined via a soul, but rather by the physical reality of actual living. As relates to Slime Girl, Prof. Howler believes that she is able to channel life energy via an extra-planar construct which transcends our reality, therefore the destruction of her physical avatar only impairs her ability to project this energy, but not her ability to channel it.
But whatever the scientific or mystical explanation, one thing is certain: Thanks to the crazy, overambitious idiot that was Professor Scott Sholl and the major disaster his carelessness and arrogance caused, we wound up with a strong and dedicated super heroine who has already sworn to use her unusual, inexplicable powers to do the right thing. -
Silly title, silly story, silly concept. I know. Here's a little short (relatively speaking, it's 6 Word pages) story I wrote over the span of an afternoon, detailing the story of my newest weird character - Slime Girl. Unlike most of my other stories, I'm not going to pretend that this is deep or great in any way. I wrote this for fun, and indeed I had a lot of fun actually writing it, which I'm actually really happy with. There are times when it hurts to write, but this time it put a smile on my face.
It's refreshing to be able to stop taking yourself seriously for a while and write this much weirdness with a straight face, and I plan to do more of it in the future. For the moment, though, let me know what you think.
Please, I'm serious. Any feedback would be more than appreciated
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Quote:Yeah, I'm trying to stay out of the discussion as it really is a matter of taste, but this does have a point. Every time I hear about a dog with a sword in its mouth, I'm reminded of those funny videos of a dog with a long stick in its mouth trying to get through a fence gate. I can see dog-mounted missioles, dog-mounted cannons, energy bites, darkness bites and so forth, but a dog with a sword in its mouth I just CANNOT see. And believe me, I'm giving it as much leeway as I can.Sorry it took so long for me to come back to this, but I had to stop laughing from the image of a dog trying to fit a broad sword handle into it's mouth, move around with it trying to keep the tip off the ground and then attempt to disembowel someone with it.
*edit*
Yeah, like this. I'm not trying to be a dick here. That's honestly what I'm thinking of when you say "double-bladed sword." -
Quote:If you're joking, it's not funny and has been done before.I mean, he's not that interesting of a character anyway compared to Posi and Sis Psyche, and hey... he doesn't even work here anymore.

If you're serious, then that's badly misguided, specifically because it mistakes personal problems with the Statesman aka Jack Emmert and the Statesman aka Marcus Cole. It also misses the point that, as much as people spit in Jack's general direction his is still responsible for most of the lore we have even now. Most of Paragon City's backstory, and I dare say a lot of the Rogue Isles' as well, can be laid at his feet. Granted, Crypitic did get professional writers at some point, but Jack had a way of bringing the world to life and integrating even stupid and minor changes into canon.
Where Jack failed was in the more mundane aspects of managing the game, such as balance intent and vision of game mechanics, but when it comes to lore and related subjects, he did more than good. To be honest, as much as I'm a fan of Paragon Studios and what they've done with the game, their additions to the lore over the past few Issues (I17 notwithstanding) have been ham-handed at best. An Architect building in every zone, even zones it had no business being in (like Croatoa and the War Zone), a dozen Merit Vendors per zone, even when you don't need even one in every zone and so on and so forth.
Going Rogue seems to be a turning point in the game's story and lore, apparently having been given serious thought and consideration, but the stories in the previous Issues? Ugh! I'm still reeling from the 5th Column TFs and how they mangled that storyline, as thought the 5th Column were crapped on enough as it is. Their timeline no longer makes sense, and I'm not sure it has made sense since I3. -
I've always supported the notion of dual powersets, futile as it may be, simply because that's probably the only thing that would get me to play a Defender. Not by mixing and matching, though, and not via free-form swaps. I'd only want to see it element-for-element, theme-for-theme. Basically, if you had a Fire/Ice Blaster, you could dual-class that as either a Fire/Ice or an Ice/Fire Tanker (only one of the two), but not into an Energy/Invulnerability one. That would be a way to show the character using the same powers but in different ways.
I'm well aware of the technical difficulties of this one, so there's no need to shoot the idea down. I know it won't fly. -
Quote:Obviously, it's a subjective stance, I don't claim otherwise. But I don't believe your Elude example points to what you're bringing it up to illustrate. Yes, certain people did see Elude as the one true way to play, and to them the crash, along with building for that, was just the acceptable cost to pay. For a range of others, the cost IN ITSELF was too high, so they didn't bother. Not just with Elude, they didn't bother with Super Reflexes at all. It's actually a similar situation - when Perma-Elude became the status quo, people were forced to decide if they wanted "sub par" performance at a reasonable cost or "baseline" performance at a very high cost. Many took the third option: none of the above. They merely dropped their SR Scrappers and played something else. I didn't, but I know of a few people who did.That's a matter of personal preference, and moreover a matter of psychological perspective as well. In I2, Elude's crash was not an out-of-combat crash for perma-elude scrappers: it occured generally during combat and they had to figure out ways to deal with it. And contrary to some people's recollections, not everyone went perma-Elude: some SR scrappers simply found the continuous crashing unpalatable and remained in toggle builds. And they were not the vanishingly small minority: at the time maybe 25% of the SR scrappers I ran into were running toggle builds and not perma-elude. A sizable minority. But while we would be perfectly happy with getting rid of the crash, most of us felt the crash was entirely fair for the performance (as long as we didn't look too closely at Regen scrappers) and an entirely reasonable cost for running Elude perma. It did not make the power or the game any less friendly in any sense of the word.
Additionally, while I'm always vouching for examining worth in general, rather than cost or value independently, there comes a time when a cost is just too high, no matter the value. Just as a random inappropriate example, suppose every day someone offered to pay me a million dollars if I'd let him beat the snot out of me and put me in a hospital. A million dollars is a lot of money and the injuries from a severe beating eventually heal, so it's "worth" the pain... But it isn't, really. Because while it may be worth it in theory, NOTHING is worth that.
Levels of tolerance differ between the different people who play these games, and mine are fairly low. I simply prefer a game that's not balanced by penalising me, but rather balanced in the things that it gives me. Just in the same way as dying doesn't take experience away and set me back (thereby locking me in a back-and-forth that could last forever), but rather slows down my future gains, so balancing my powers by penalties, rather than by the strength and availability of their benefits is NOT a system I prefer. In fact, I'd go out on a limb and say that, whenever possible, I want to see power penalties enforced to be effective during combat need to be avoided. Where absolutely necessary, then I concede. But I still feel there's no need to balance Granite Armour, in particular, with severe penalties when there are other restrictions that don't feel like a double-edged sword. Or not as much, at the very least.
I do not like this, and that's not a position that I'm going to be convinced away from, because it IS personal opinion. -
Quote:To be fair, I've done my best to make a distinction between content FOR Incarnates and content TO BECOME an Incarante. I can understand content for Incarnates being harder, and I could probably tolerate it since I can use my new-found super powers on the old game. I CANNOT accept, however, that the content to become an Incarnate would be so difficult as to basically rule out solo play forevermore.Just from a mechanical perspective, I'd hate to be the guy tasked with designing the Incarnate system and content.
If it's easily soloable, it's "anticlimactic" and "a letdown" and "lol endgame".
If it's soloable but difficult, it's "powergamey" and "requires the supposedly optional IO system" and "excludes archetypes and builds" and is "stealth forced teaming".
If it requires you to assemble a team, it's "forced teaming" and "raiding content" and "exclusionary".
If it requires many characters working in concert and is based in common zones, it is "lol zone events" and "can't get enough people together" and "lags my machine" and "never happens when I'm online".
If it requires many characters working in concert and is based in population-capped instances, it is "just like hami" and "raiding" and "exclusionary" and "elitist" as well as everything above.
If it is cooperative, it is "why is my villain helping save the world"
If it is separate for each side, it is "there aren't enough people playing redside so I can't do it".
And if it requires PvP, it will be death, the destroyer of worlds.
By all means, write your "epic" TFs and zone events and Monster fights. But throw me a bone here and give me something I can do to work towards the same goal, just at a slower pace, if need be.
