Samuel_Tow

Transparency is written into the graphics engine itself, and it always works for all powers with transparent effects, but the methodology is a bit ambiguous.

Bright themes are additive, as in the colours you choose are added to the colour of the background. Additive models mimic light, so they assume total darkness (black) and build up towards total light (white). As such, having, say, a pure green effect against a pure blue background will give you pure cyan, which is blue + green. Having a blue-green effect on a blue-red background will give you a greyish, washed-out blue, because you'll get lots of a blue, as well as some red and some green, which gets close to grey.

Dark colour themes are subtractive, as in they remove the colours you pick (or rather, all colours BUT the colours you pick) from whatever behind them. Subtractive models mimic paints and dyes, so they assume a white sheet, with each colour obscuring that white sheet and blocking light from reflecting off it. As such, having a pure blue effect over, say, a green background will tend to look dark grey or black, because the blue will block out red and green. Basically, you have a blue filter that'll let through only blue light, but you have no blue light coming from the background, so you get no light at all. On the other hand, a blue-green effect against a blue-red effect will give you a blue colour, because blue-green blocks only red and blue-red blocks only green, so the blues will stack and the green and red will be blocked.

Basically, if you pick a Bright theme, then primary colours (red, green and blue) will be much more transparent than secondary colours (cyan, yellow, magenta), or rather, will be transparent a lot more often, whereas white and bright greys will be much more opaque. By contrast, if you pick a Dark theme, then primary colours will be much more opaque than secondary ones, and blacks and dark greys will be more opaque still. No matter which theme you choose, your effects will ALWAYS be transparent against a background that has the same colour as your effect. This is problematic in the editor, because the Hero editor is blue and the villain editor is red, making transparency behave differently than it would in the real game.

As far as I'm aware, regular cape patterns on males before level 20 is a bug. Not one I'd like to see fixed, but it probably will be, at some point.

Secondly, the reason women don't get Occult is because they don't get the Baron jacket, which they don't get because... The Cool Aid Man is red? I don't know, I've never heard a compelling reason behind this.

Basically, this is more of an explanation than an excuse. I agree with your suggestion, otherwise.

"More Epics" is a general consensus that I don't believe has ever been discounted by the player base, so it's a bit confusing as to why those are so hard to come along, specifically since, for the most part, they tend to recycle old powers anyway. So, yeah, I agree wit the general premise. We need an Electrical Mastery pool for all ATs that have electrical powers but don't have this.

I mentioned this in another thread, so if you get a sense of deja vu, it's not a defect in the Matrix. I just didn't want to derail that thread.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I realise there's a particular kind of enemy we currently utterly lack. We have plenty of humanoids, some non-standard snakes, a few spider robots, a few floating enemies and so forth, even a giant robot thing. You'd think it would be natural, but the one thing we currently never fight against for some odd reason is the most obvious one:

TANKS!

I mean, seriously. We already have models in the game, both from the US military looking ones in Firebase Zulu and the Vanguard insignia tanks that run around the War Zone. Sure, they're actually mini tanks in the same sense as the Metal Slug tank is a mini-tank, in that they're about as big as large SUVs, but they're still tanks. You don't really need a tank to do very much, other than swivel its turret, move around and shoot. I can even deal with insta-turn for the turret and a coaxial machinegun if turning speed isn't factored into enemy NPCs.

What's the problem with these, really? Is there a problem with causing the turret to track independent of the chasis? Is it a problem of mobility and size? That never stopped the Kronos Titan, Babbage or Jurasik from being made. I mean, they can't exactly get through doors, but that doesn't stop them. It can't be a problem with too large a hit box, since a tank, even a normal-sized one, is still far and away smaller than many of our own Giant Monsters. And the Vanguard tanks are even smaller than that. They're about as big as a Greater Devoured, and not nearly as tall. And speaking of tall, how do Fake Nemesis fit through those little doors in office buildings? Or the infamous question: "How did they get a Sky Skiff IN THERE?"

The game tries to fudge vehicles. It really does. The Sky Raiders have those large-ish Sky Skiff things that they really hope we'll squint and pretend are actual aircraf5t, even though they're little bigger than a large Boulder or Quarry. Or Zeus Class Titan, for that matter. We also get the Longbow Chasers, though I suspect those are added less because VEHICLES!!! and more because someone was feeling sadistic at the time and thought JUST Eagles wasn't enough for Longbow. But even taking them as vehicles, they're still no bigger than a basic autogyro. And even then, they're all "aircraft." We do not have a single land-based enemy that doesn't walk on multiple legs. Not even a tracked robot, and you'd think those would be fairly easy.

Here's my suggestion: Please add tanks to the game. Even if they have to be the Vanguard variety. Not turrets, not turrets on top of parked vehicles. Tanks. The kind that move around. Keep them as bosses or elite bosses if you must. Hell, make them AVs and keep them to special encounters and TFs only. Wouldn't one fit somewhere in the Reichsman stories, at least? They're frikkin' Neo Nazi. How can they NOT have frikkin' huge tanks? I mean, we have the Arachnos Flier as a Giant Monster, and a real tank wouldn't be much less... Well, big. Here's a bit of perspective. The size of an M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank, as far as I can find on the 'net, is:

Length With Gun Forward: 387'' / 32'3'' (that's almost 10 metres long)
Turret Height: 93.5'' / 7'9.5'' (that's around 2.3 metres tall)
Width: 144'' / 12' (That's a little over three and a half metres wide)

Brackets notwithstanding, that's a little more than HUGE! In fact, I just measured MY ENTIRE HOUSE and that thing would take up about three quarters of my floor space. If that ain't good enough for AT LEAST an EB, I don't know what is. It's a frikkin' tank! I mean, what self-respecting badass hasn't secretly wished to take one out? That's like... Wow. That's a little bigger than I expected it to be. Surely this would make for a really cool fight.

I actually think we might do well with a map and train training section in the tutorial. It seems a lot of newer players don't seem to know how to use the map. I still get odd questions for returning players, like "Hey, is Crey's Folly off Brickstown or Founders' Falls?" The City Map tells you exactly that, but few players seem to know it even exists. Not many new players know about the train, either. I was introduced to it by a team-mate back in the day.

How about, instead of Coyote "teleporting" us to Atlas Park or Galaxy City, he directed us to the station so we could take a train there?

I feel a lot of it is teething problems owing to incomprehensibly bad design, as in "I can't comprehend why this was done that way." The things most people complain about when they mention outdated content is either simplistically designed missions, time-wasting fed-ex missions or inordinately hard hunts. To that effect, there are a few things we can remove out of the game which should smooth out most of the truly major bumps.

1. Contact introduction missions requiring you to visit the contact. Gone. We don't need these. Replace them with a standard contact introduction or with a "So and so has called for you!" pop-up.

2. Security Chief missions. Leave those in the game for people who specifically hunt out Security Chiefs, but remove them from general missions circulation.

3. PvP liaison missions. Either remove them, have the info accessible via Security Chief or via trainer, or have the contact himself explain about the zone, rather than forcing you to travel to them.

4. Hero Corps Field Analyst visit. Remove those entirely and have the info available at trainers. Or better yet, make difficulty settings part of the tutorial, now that changes are free. Either that, or have a University-like special contact in Kings Row that pops up as soon as you come into the zone. Might not hurt to have one for Scanner/Paper missions, as well.

5. Mission rewards. ALWAYS give rewards for missions, regardless of what they are. Go visit Jim Temblor? Mission reward. Go chat with the PvP liaison? Mission reward. Go speak with your next teacher in the university? Mission reward. These aren't repeatable, so why the hell do they give NOTHING? Grant standard mission complete bonus for all fed-ex missions (they currently grant half) so that people may view them as free experience, rather than a waste of time.

I realise there are a lot of other improvements that can be made to streamline everything, but all the others are more specific. Do this, and we'll get rid of the major, most obvious irritations. Then we can fix the rest mission-by-mission.