Samuel_Tow

Strangely, most of my grey reputation comes without a comment. I don't know what to make of that.

Pah-sha-pah-wha?!? Seriously? Walking is in the game?

*rushes off to update Test*

Stay tuned!

Now that's a new one. I got neg-repped with the following message which has me scratching my head:

Personally, I have one GIANT problem with SG bases, and that goes beyond the matters of cost and upkeep. It's the editor. It's just far, FAR too complex, at least for me. I can whip up a cool costume in half an hour to an hour if I don't know what I want, and if I have a good enough idea, I can make one in 5-10 minutes. Creating a large, elaborate, detailed base is the work of days, possibly weeks in our current editor. There's a reason I never got into user-made mods and skins even in games that allowed it - I'm not an artist and I have neither the patience nor the talent to work with tools that are too complex and too difficult.

But base building is what it is, and I wouldn't dream of touching it. I don't fancy a torches and pitchforks mob outside my door, you see. But if we're ever going to be looking at a larger-scale, "own island" base builder, I'd like it to be a LOT simpler and a LOT easier to use. Let me try and explain what I mean.

Does anyone remember the old X-Com: Ufo/Ufo: Enemy Unknown game? Rmember how base building went? You essentially had facilities (it's the game which taught me what the word "facility" even meant in English ) all of about the same size to plop down on a grid map, with only the hangar being larger. You didn't choose what was IN those facilities, you just put down square ala Dune: Battle for Arakis. However, when aliens invaded your base, you had a complete level, detailed, ornate, arranged and practically indistinguishable from your average alien base raid, only it was YOUR design, and the layout was as YOU made it. That's something I liked and something I could work with.

Of course, Ufo designed entirely enclosed bases, whereas if we ever got an "own island" editor, I'd probably make it a cross between that and something like Settlers 2. You'd have some kind of main building that you could build roads out of, and linked to these roads, you could build actual buildings. From the editor's bird's eye view, they'd look like the iconic buildings in your average RTS, but brought down to ground level, they'd actually be whole, enterable buildings like the many bunkers we see around Recluse's Victory and Bloody Bay. Or some might be large underground structures, like the underground Council base in the War Zone (show of hands: how many of you know what I'm talking about?) or something of that nature.

See, I know some people enjoy complex editors with control over minute detail. I just happen to not be one of them. I tried to like Spore, for instance, and despite it giving me so much freedom, I realised that, lacking the guiding hand of a simpler editor's limitations, my imagination failed to produce and my ability failed to deliver. A lot of my greatest costumes are the products of trial and error, just tabbing through pieces until something catches my eye, because the changes I can make are large and significant. If I don't KNOW what I want to change, it doesn't pay for me to have much detail in it. I happen to believe that a custom editor should have a good balance between freedom and simplicity, not just aim for as much complexity as the system will maintain. Trying to make something decent in Champions Online demonstrated that there IS such a thing as too much customization.

In essence, an Ufo-style island editor with progressively more land and progressively larger and more, err... "Powerful" buildings becoming available, and eventually with missions around those buildings and that island, is something I would very much like to see.

And, you know, it doesn't have to be an island. It could be an island, or it could be a piece of land somewhere out in the country, on the side of a mountain, in the desert somewhere, in the middle of a town or city, floating on the ocean, or even underground in a cavernous chamber. Or, hell, even in a Dungeon Keeper style "dig your own hole" environment. As a matter of fact, Dungeon Keeper is how I thought base building would be like, but that's besides the point.

Such a thing would probably be far, far too much work for any Issue, though, and I doubt it'd ever fly as an expansion, but it's an interesting concept, anyway

I agree that proper animations are the key here, but between making them and actually repopulating maps with them, it just seems quite problematic. And again, I don't see the ability to lift and throw cars as really in the realm of ability of anyone other than Super Strength and MAYBE stone melee. I understand that practically everyone in comic books has super strength, but to me at least, it'd seem odd for everyone to be chucking trucks.

And I actually have to reaffirm my desire for random Propel debris in Hurl. Yes, it would be unrealistic, I admit, but this is a case where I have to summon up the Rule of Cool. Seeing a character chuck a junk car at an enemy is worth looking the other way when he reaches out and pulls it out of the aether. Yes, the asphalt slab makes SLIGHTLY more sense, but it looks SO BAD that I'll take unrealistic over silly any day of the week.

Actually, a big problem I've had with this that Champions Online demonstrated is that this kind of environmental interaction is quite... Distracting, shall we say. It's a major hassle to go look for the item, pick it up, then go back and find an enemy to chuck it at, when a single-click action would launch a conventional attack, and it's always a question between fighting effectively or going out of your way for a gimmick. I say a gimmick, because even in Champions where it was actually useful, it was still more of a hassle than it was worth, especially since heavy objects weren't as common.

I would indeed enjoy a bit more environment interaction, but I'm not sure I'd want to enter it into combat, is all.

The cardinal rules of pets are as follows:

Henchmen are permanent. No exceptions.

Pets in control sets are permanent. No exceptions.

Any other pets in any other sets are temporary. No exceptions.

Mind you, there's no such thing as ACTUALLY permanent. "Permanent" pets just have a duration of 99999 seconds, which comes up to about 27 hours.

*edit*
Actually, come to think of it, there ARE exceptions:

The soul from Soul Extraction is a an actual henchman which obeys henchman commands, but it is temporary and fades away after about two or three minutes.

Gang War is a summon from a Henchman set, but they are actually pets, not henchmen, and are also temporary.

Phantom Army decoys are summons from a control set, but they are still temporary, and on a rather short timer, as are the Creeper Vines, I believe.

So there are exceptions, but for the most part, the rules hold true.

Enough with this unlockable crap, please. Pardon my word choice, but it's really starting to drive me up the wall. Unless you want to enable costume unlocks to be account-wide, then the LESS unlockable weapons we have, the better.

Now, the "more weapons" sentiment I can very much echo. Please, please give us more weapons. But actually GIVE us the weapons, don't slap them on some level 35+ content or behind a terrible grind.