Samuel_Tow

Sure. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a terrible movie. That much is a fact. But I'll still watch it because I like visual aesthetic of it. Say what you want about Square Enix, but the one thing they've always done right, at least in my book, is pretty much just what you described - set design. Not only were this movie's visuals revolutionary for its time, being one of the first CGI movies to focus on actual adult biological humans, but its technology informed so much of the 21st century's vision of the future. The holographic interfaces that movie pioneered have been cropping up in so many other works of fiction right down to Mass Effect. I'd watch that movie just to look at it, because for as uncanny valley as people claim it is, I still like it.

Actually, I feel the same way about that HORRIBLE Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children movie. I'm honestly not sure if that one even has a plot, but DAMN if the fights scenes in there don't make me smile. They're absurd, they're bizarre, they're logic-defying, but they LOOK amazing, at least to my sensibilities. And I'd honestly watch that movie again, but it's... Kind of a vehicle for Cloud Strife to the detriment of his companions whom I've seen to be quite capable in their own rights. Tifa - a fan favourte - has one scene getting her *** kicked and one scene tossing Cloud against, erm... A blue dragon of some sort. I get the feeling it was intended to be either Bahamut or the "weapon," but I can't tell, with the plot being as dense as it is. And yeah, I watched it with subtitles.

Granted, that's more "visuals over plot" in terms of debate, but to me, plot is to a movie what gameplay is to a game - it's why it's made, with the rest being pop corn. But like a game, JUST plot isn't really worth much. Ghost in the Shell 2, for instance, has enough plot to fill a novel, but it's one of the dullest, most boring movie to feature a half-hour cold room conversation and and a triple-wake-up dream sequence within the same run time. I'm sure the plot was great, but I lost patience about half-way through so the latter part of the movie I sort of glazed over glassy-eyed, with little understanding. It had something to do with what it means to be alive and the future of humanity and that whole laundry list every pretentious anime seems compelled to drag around and exposit about several times. I'd have watched it for the beautiful animation, but most of that was spend animating people standing around gormless and talking to each other. Oh, joy.

Oh, I actually have an example of the reverse! One of my oldest characters - Crash - is based around two old animes I'd seen at the time - Battle Angel Alita and Armitage III: Poly Matrix. Both of those movies have... Honestly, really crap animation. Armitage is just mostly incompetent and Alita seems to have been rushed. At the same time, both of these movies served to tell the same basic story of mechanical life form struggling to find its own identity and personality and, like Pinocchio, become a real person. These managed to inspire me to such an extent that probably what is my all-time favourite character is a direct descendent of those plots. Even though both movies are ugly as sin, I appreciate them for the fiction they present, which manages to inspire in a big way.

That's a very one-sided way to look at them. Yes, as a basic concept, a "game" is something you interact with the computer in order to "play." But that's far and away not the only reason a person might buy a game. For instance, I stopped "playing" City of Heroes back in 2004, when I realised what the game's true strength was and where the bulk of its staying power resided: Character creation. Some time towards the end of 2004, I started playing with City of Heroes in much the same way as I played with my Batman and Robo Cop action figure (that said "Drugs are trouble!" when you pressed a button on its chest) way back when I was a little kid. Only this time, I didn't have to pretend-fight and make sound effects with my mouth and essentially smack toys together with my hands. Here was an actual, honest-to-God game which took my imagination and made it a reality.

For... God, years now, I've never really been that bothered by what I do in City of Heroes, specifically. So long as it's not a pain in the *** to do and it involves fighting, anything will suffice. What matters to me is seeing the characters I design throw down on camera in front of me. I can't draw for ****, so this is really the only way I'm ever going to see these people on-screen in a game, and I love every minute of it. Well, every minute of action, anyway. And in-between fights, I try to immerse myself in the game's plot and story, not because of some Venturian quest for Shakespearian writing, but because the game constantly feeds me little seeds of ideas that I can then take and develop into my own.

Hell, the concept of alternate dimensions is something I'd never have become so accustomed to if it weren't for City of Heroes doing such a good job of integrating into a consistent storyline. And that one, single line of text you get from a Tech Naylor mission entry pop-up about the Shard - "It's like being inside the mind of a god!" was enough to earn me several new characters just from the idea I got out of this.

A game with great gameplay can entertain. A game with great storytelling can inspire and enrich. That's been my experience, at least.

OK, I see what you mean, and I see I misunderstood your position. I can definitely see your stance on it, and I agree that you can spin anything into any story because, in the end, it's all just fiction. That's why I started writing, myself - because fiction really isn't limited to matters of practicality unless you want it to be.

That said, though, this is less about what can and can't be done as much as what would have made for a better story. Yes, I can see how you can argue the same as I argued for the Statesman but replace him with anything else. You'd lose his iconic status, but you could probably tell a similar story with Positron. The thing, though, is that you COULD have told it with the Statesman, and now you can't. And I firmly believe that telling it with Jack's creation would have been superior to telling it with Matt's creation.

I still feel like you hold no opinion on the specific matter of the Statesman's demise, though, which I conclude from your comments to the effect that it might as well have been anyone else. And I honestly don't believe that killing him made for a better story than keeping him would have. Maybe that's just because the SSA1 was mishandled like Team Ninja giving Samus Aran a voice and the Statesman's Death plot angle didn't have to suck if it were told properly. I don't know, I just feel that the Statesman could have been put to better use, narratively, than to serve as fertilizer.

While I'll give you that that's a good rule of thumb, I don't think it should be universal argument. I've played a great many games that I played for the story DESPITE gameplay being pretty much crap. I need go no further than the Soul Reaver side of the Legacy of Kain series. All three games (including Defiance) have amazing voice actors and tangled but very interesting plots that I play in much the same way as I watch a movie. Which is just as well because gameplay in those games is crap, and it somehow manages to become WORSE with each sequel. It's very rare indeed that I'd enjoy so much a game that's so fundamentally broken, annoying and generally punishing to play, but these games deliver for story alone.

There are also a number of games that I've played squarely for the visual design and style... I played them because they looked good. NCsoft's Lineage II may well be the worst game I've ever played, and the reason I keep trying to like it (and failing miserably) is because I simply just LOVE that game's Orc designs. In fact, all-caps "LOVE" is an understatement, considering this game more or less informed one of my major aesthetic choices for female characters and served as the basis of inspiration for Xanta. Have you seen what I ask for in EVERY costume request thread? That's where it started. Right now, Xanta is probably one of my favourite characters, and the only one I have artwork for. All of this in easily my least favourite game I've ever played.

Inversely, I've dumped games that had great gameplay but shoddy art design and especially bad stories. For instance, the original Hard Truck: Apocalypse is a deeply flawed game that's more or less alone in its genre, but it's a decent game. The game's sequel, however, has a story that's not worth a crap, and so is the far inferior game. Both games have essentially the same gameplay, with the sequel even having more stuff, but its story is just repugnant and really not worth playing through a second time. And for as many people try to get me to give it a shot, I just hate how Guild Wars 2 looks.

This actually bleeds over into my characters, as well. By FAR my longest-running and most favourite are the ones with the best and most involving story. I'm sure you've seen me post about Kim till my fingers bleed, and this character went from being a throwaway on the doorstep of deletion to one of my all-time favourite characters, all because I wrote a story about her. Frankly, the most I ever really want out of an RPG's gameplay is for it to stop getting in my way and asking me to jump through hoops in order to do what I came to do anyway - have a cool-looking characters kick *** and go through a story which will eventually inspire me to write my own.

It's also why I'm getting ******* sick of the literal quagmire of plotless "retro" indie games that offer nothing BUT gameplay, with no story and aesthetics that even the NES would have been ashamed of.

OK, this was based on a misreading of your post and was, upon reflection, a bit of a low-blow. I retract my statement.

Please understand that I don't say this in a malicious way, but I need to say it: If that's how you feel, then you really have no place holding an opinion the RP aspect of the game. I get not caring about the lore-side of the game. You're hardly alone in this. But you've consistently suggested that no argument about anything lore-related is valid because... Well, you don't care about lore and so it doesn't matter one way or another.

Again, if you're not interested in the lore, that's fine. I don't care about PvP and that's not going to change. But by the same token, I'm not going to go into a discussion on PvP mechanics and strategies and suggest nothing anyone has said important because PvE comes first so what happens to PvP doesn't matter. They could turn it off entirely for all I care. I don't PvP, so I have no place holding opinions on what's best for PvP, beyond explaining what might get me to be involved.

You're really just channelling Venture on this one, anyway - the story is crap, everything about it is crap, nothing matters because everything is crap so why are we still discussing it? You may not care, but I hope it's pretty evident that some of us still do.

Oh, I was pretty well aware that Doc Aeon (the developer) wrote a lot of the new content. There's a reason the "Dr. Aeon hasn't figured out how to kill off the player character... Yet." going around for a while. I'm hoping the big kill of the Statesman will reign the man in somewhat so he can stop killing off secondary characters like the Praetorian Dr. Vahzilok and Cleo and pretty much everyone else who came from Praetoria, as well as stop stuffing people in fridges like what happened with Katie Hannon. Sure, those might not be on his plate (I wouldn't know), but they carry the same cannon fodder named character feel to them as the SSA1.

What's funny about that pic is it got ME interested in shark-themed characters. When it comes to animal characters, there are two things I can never get - fish and birds. Characters styled after them are just weird to me, if for no reason that the source animal is so far removed from my own species. Yet Leo's pic got me excited over the possibility of a DECENT shark set, and I didn't think that was possible.

That just goes to show that it's really not so much a question of thematic as it is a question of the quality and passion of a piece of art. Hell, for as much as I dislike bird characters, Kung Fu Panda 2's Shen (the peacock bad guy) actually sold me on the concept. The movie was just that good, and I'm convinced City of Heroes can be just that good, as well.

That's what I mean when I say they feel "off." The Monstrous pieces seem more designed to ape "rubber suit alien" monster flick than they are designed to depict actual animal characters. Then came the Animal Pack, which while it had a decent selection of animal parts, it went too far in the other direction. That is to say, the Animal Pack pieces are designed to create realistic-looking animals which just so happen to walk on two legs. This is never more evident than with the animal heads, which just look like a stuffed prop animal head stuck on a person's neck. I'm not saying they look bad - stuffed animals often look "more realistic" than the real thing - but I'm saying they're pure animal parts, rather than anthropomorphic parts.

Anthropomorphism, defined as the attribution of human-like characteristics to animals and inanimate objects, is something City of Heroes has always lacked, for the simple fact that we've never an artist sit down and work on the subject. It's either pure humans with a few props or pure animals that walk on two legs with nothing, really, in-between. The fact that we can't have animal heads with human hair is, I think, the most striking example. I'm not sure how many of these there are in comic books, but they were all over the kind of cartoons I grew up with, from things like the Swat Kats to the Ninja Turtles to pretty much half the stuff Disney ever made, and especially Jungle Book/Tailspin. It's not inherently horrible or niche.

For my part, I intend to keep lobbying for more of this middle ground and see what comes of it. Shark heads, I'd say, are a good starting point because you really can't make a shark head on a human body look good unless you take liberties with what a "shark head" constitutes.

A jerk can still be an icon and an example if he does the right deeds, and a jerk can most definitely be a yardstick to compare ourselves against. Linkara once said that you should only kill a character if you can tell more stories with the character dead than you can with the character alive, and I don't believe this is the case with the Statesman. Killing him is just squandering all of the backstory and player reactions he has attained over the levels. Instead of making something out of these, be they positive or negative, we've just tossed them aside. And as much as we're pushing Positron and Not Penny Yin, they will simply never have the same kind of weight the Statesman did.

I mean, seriously. The guy took a nuke to the back of the head and walked it off. He took down a Rikti saucer by himself. Love him or hate him, he was THE premier hero of Primal Earth, and he would have done far more good as a supporting character in the Incarnate system than he will when he's dead. In death, the Statesman's about as meaningful as Atlas or Talos or Galaxy Girl. We all know they existed, but they don't really have any impact on our gameplay. The Statesman could have been used for so much more, instead he was discarded.

And what eats the most is the Statesman didn't die because it would make for a better story. He was killed because Jack Emmert made him. And don't get me started on Sister Psyche, who seems to have been killed so Penny Yin can replace her. I struggle to imagine a WORSE way to introduce a new character, to be honest.

I honestly think you should let up about that sash. It's one costume item, and it's not worth holding a grudge over.

Mine tend to end up with more "fantastical" names. Unless the character is specifically a regular human granted powers in some way (and I have a small handful of those), then he or she will be called something like Lurian, T'Lerth, Morten, Iprit or Tirin. Those are both easier to get and make me feel like I came up with something of my own.

Some look like foxes, yes, but I'm working with a VERY limited pool of source material that's just that right balance of decent artwork and actual shark, as opposed to human given a toothy smile. The whole pool of reference I had consisted of about 100 pics, half of which were unprintable, with half of what's left being garbage, and half of THAT not being "sharky" enough to post. I got pretty much the only decent heads I had access to, give or take a couple.

And as for the following "please don't" reaction, I've grown to pretty much expect this every time I post about anthropomorphic characters on this forum. My very first ignore was actually Tokyo trolling over just this subject.

Only his is right.

A bit more seriously, the only reason the Statesman came off as a Mary Sue is the writers never did anything with him. He was always just sort of there, being more awesome than the game could depict. All of the Phalanx were. The proper way to give them character development was to do pretty much this - give them character development.

From the very onset of the Incarnate storyline, the Statesman was painted as weak and left wanting. The Well can control him, but it can't control us. The Statesman was just a regular man when he drank of the well. We are just about at an equal footing with him by level 50, and THEN we start messing with the Well and getting even more power. Considerably more than the Statesman ever had. All of a sudden, he's put of his depth among people with equal power to his own, often even greater, who are not hamstrung by the Well's control. All of a sudden, the world's most powerful hero isn't. All of a sudden, he's reduced to a supporting role because were we're going, he can't follow.

The best way to "depower" the Statesman is to just shift the power level of the game up and leave him where he is. That way, he still works as an icon to up-and-coming heroes, but he is no longer the unreachable, unmitigated Mary Sue, because towards the end, we do reach and exceed him. BECAUSE the Statesman has been built up as this massive powerhose is exactly why it is so satisfying to surpass his power.

That can't happen now that he's dead.

I think that's the simplest thing to do. Call the enhancements by what they do, then just put their "in character names" in the enhancement description which talks about the made-up logic behind why they enhance my powers. I get my lore fodder, you get descriptive names and everybody wins. I'm in full agreement with you there.

What I'm saying is that enemy ranged attacks are intentionally designed to have a longer range than 80 feet. And even if they didn't, Arcana had a pretty good write-up of the several different ranges past which Blaster damage output decreases. I believe they were 0-40 feet for the most damage, 40-80 for about 2/3 damage and 80-150 for pretty much just snipes. My point is that if you're using a snipe at max range, you have nothing to follow it up with until the enemy closes in, and "hoverblasting" has never been a viable approach.

About the only thing people have consistently and doggedly defended snipes as being good for in all situations is pulling. I can't really argue with that point, I just wish I didn't have to pay with a power pick and give up what is potentially the single-target attack I NEED to not trail behind in single-target damage (thank you, Assault Rifle, for teaching me this life lesson) for it. I mean, guess you could quite Scrapper Confront as a power that does almost nothing but pull, but at least that's auto-hit and costs no endurance.

You should be doing that anyway. I stop to report every copyrighted character I run across, but only once have I seen a person I reported actually broadcast about being genericed. That rule's there for a reason, so reporting possible violators is not something I can wrap my head around seeing as a bad thing. That's what the GMs get paid to do.

I don't mind seeing new systems replacing old ones, but that's only when they retain the old functionality. As you're attested yourself, DOs and SOs are cheap and bountiful. They are, as such, not so much "loot" as they are "stats." It's not a question of finding the enhancements, it's a question of optimising what to do with your slots. This gives SOs and DOs a legitimate reason to exist, as the step below the better but more cumbersome Inventions.

I am, therefore, in complete agreement with you - the system needs to do better. Once upon a time, stores had tooltips, and everything was rainbows and unicorns. It was simple enough to remember which colour means what (and that's not too hard), beyond which you could always check the tooltips to make sure. Without tooltips, you have to resort to the "trick" of getting the enhancement info, which was never ideal.

What I don't get is why the system was allowed to become considerably WORSE and no-one ever bothered to fix it. It was never nearly this much of a pain.

Matt Miller was recorded as saying this was an attempt to move away from Cryptic Studios, I believe in one of the Ustreams. Whatever the reason that drove them to kill the game's single most recognisable character and the face on every item of promotional material ever made, it certainly wasn't the desire to tell a good story. Which is fitting, considering the abominable story that carried that act forth.

I wish I had a whole dimension named after me.

There's already a "scales" texture for tops, bottoms, boots and gloves, and it's even actually glossy. Doesn't that work?

Are we talking about the AI quirk that has primarily ranged henchmen run into melee? Because I've been playing Masterminds since CoV Beta and the only AI quirk which was ever a legitimate problem was henchmen refusing to use the full complement of their powers, such as Spec Ops refusing to use snipe or the Thugs Bruiser refusing to do anything than chuck rocks. Pets occasionally running into melee does not strike me as making Masterminds "impossible" to play, as the MM forum seems to suggest.