Samuel_Tow
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:To be fair, a large part of why people play games and watch movies is because they AREN'T like real life. So if someone wants a little less hardship and uncertainty and a little more good old-fashioned Nazi punching, I can hardly fault them for that.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
I see that you prefer Disney villains over more realistic ones.
The truth is, there are no villains. There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy. There's just you and me and we both disagree....
Whoa-oh-oooh! o/~ -
Generally speaking, a discussion with people in real life that goes past what happened at work today, what the sports are like or what movie might be worth watching is exceedingly rare, I've found. Just finding someone who is even willing to discuss something less mundane and yet is not so rooted in a position as to reject arguments unquestioningly is a major score, in my experience.
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Quote:I'm lumping this all together in the same quote as I don't know how to care it up appropriately. But this is interesting stuff, and in a lot of ways, exactly what I was hoping to hear. You say Majors and Colonels are field officers? Is that why movies use them so much, or is it just that they have the easiest names to say?Originally Posted by inktomi
Majors tend to be a bit outside the chain of command. They might end up in charge of something if something happens to their superior, but the usually have no command of their own. It's basically a "don't mess with me rank".
Majors and colonels are collectively known as "field grade officers". They might be in command of battalions or squadrons (cavalry) consisting of 3-5 companies, batteries, or troops. They don't directly command soldiers, but are still low enough in the chain that they might be directly involved in combat. They are "field grade" because they are the highest officers likely to be on the battlefield.
Majors might be an assistant to a colonel, but it's a common rank for officers that are somewhat outside the normal command structure. They are basically peers to the colonels without having to worry about who has seniority or whatever. Liaison officers and specialists are very likely to be majors.
Colonels are the highest ranking officers who are likely to be on the battlefield. While they aren't likely to pick up a rifle themselves, they are likely to be under fire, directing from the front. Any higher ranking officer is unlikely to interact directly with local civilians, enemy combatants, or their own troops.
This is interesting, though, in that from what I've read so far, I was led to believe that a Major or a Colonel would spend all their time in a tent ten miles behind the front line doing clerical work and organising operations. This was what I was afraid of, but what you're telling me is a bit more to my taste. I can certainly see how a Colonel wouldn't pick up a rifle and go shoot people in the head because he'd have much more important work to do, but putting him at the field, rather than in an HQ somewhere back home, only to occasionally visit the front lines is encouraging.
The big thing, though, and what got me really curious, is why you say they're kind of outside the normal chain of command. Certainly, I don't know how things work, but whenever I see a list of ranks, both Major and Colonel show up in a line with the others. If you could elaborate on that a bit, that'd be really cool. I especially like the notion of the rank Major being given to specialists without specific command, but in need of a rank.
Say, here's something interesting to ask. I keep hearing that rank may not always describe direct command of personnel, but may instead be given to a specialist in order to grant them the authority of this rank, even if they aren't assigned any troops to command. This is where my eye was all along, and I just wanted to ask how likely it is for a high rank to be given out like this. Say Major or Colonel. How likely would that be? And keep in mind, I can exaggerate even "somewhat" into "Positively will happen!" if need be
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Quote:A while ago I bought Half-Life: Source for real money. The game looked good back in 1998. Today it looks embarrassingly bad, even with its cool style and design. It's butt ugly, frankly, but I still paid money for it. I am now considering grabbing the original Half-Life, Opposing Force and Blue Shift because Half-Life: Source doesn't have the high definition weapons pack and because I love Opposing Force. Damn that tutorial was cool! I wish they'd do something with Adrian Shepard in the Half-Life 2 storyline.Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain
I play really old games with bad graphics too... But they dont cost me money every month to play them.
I play Civ 2,3, and 4
I play Heroes of Might and Magic 4
I play Tropico 1... but now that I have tropico 3 I may finally remove tropico 1 from my gameputer...
I play PONG!
That is to say, it's quite possible for a game to be good enough to pay money for it even if it has bad graphics. Even so, those are exceptions. By and large, for a game to be at all playable, the player has to be able to stand looking at it, and for many people that just requires a certain level of graphics. Beyond that, if the visuals of a game are good enough, they can rival the actual gameplay in terms of appeal. For instance, Legacy of Kain: Defiance is probably the worst of the Soul Reaver games, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of puzzles, but its Devil May Cry inspired swordplay more than makes up for that, making it one of the coolest games in the series despite its many staggering shortcomings. -
Quote:Eating is kind of fun for some people, isn't it?Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Well, just reread what you wrote, then apply that to asking why it's wrong to kill someone for fun
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Quote:I want to quote this post in its entirety, as it's very good info and one that isn't actually terribly easy to find. I appreciate you taking the time to type this up and explain it, and I will definitely bookmark this thread or save that to a file somewhere just so I don't forget. This takes all the guesswork I had to go through in trying to figure out who should be commanding what.Originally Posted by Doughboy
Staff officer = not a rank, but a position. Usually an officer on a general's staff.
Commissioned officer = someone ranked Lt. or above. They are "commissioned" as opposed to the "non-commissioned officers" aka NCOs or enlisted personnel.
XO = executive officer. Assistant to the commanding officer.
CO = commanding officer. This officer commands a unit. Can be basically any commissioned officer rank.
To explain the ranks and their responsibilities, I need to explain how army units are organized. I hope this doesn't get too confusing. The troop numbers below are averages and can vary.
Units
- Squad - a group of about 10 soldiers.
- Platoon - four squads. a group of about 40 soldiers.
- Company - a group of four or five platoons. About 200 soldiers.
- Battalion - a group of four or five companies. About 1,000 soldiers.
- Brigade - a group of four or five battalions. About 5,000 soldiers.
- Division - a group of three or four brigades. About 20,000 soldiers.
- Corps - a group of two or more divisions. Size can vary greatly.
Ranks
- Sergeant - non-commissioned officer, aka enlisted. In charge of a squad or a platoon.
- Lieutenant - in charge of a platoon. Or XO for a company.
- Captain - in charge of a company.
- Major - XO for a battalion.
- Lieutenant Colonel - in charge of a battalion.
- Colonel - in charge of a brigade.
- Brigadier General - in charge of a brigade or a division.
- Major General - in charge of a division.
- Lieutenant General - in charge of a corps.
- General - in charge of a theater of operations or a major command.
More info on sergeants and lieutenants:
Sergeant = working man's boss. Think "foreman". It's an enlisted rank, not a commissioned officer rank. Sergeants are the backbone of the army. Sergeants get things done.
Lieutenant = junior officer. Second Lieutenant is the lowest officer rank. First lieutenant is the next next lowest. These are folks right out of college, officer candidate school or West Point (a university run by the army).
FYI: there are many enlisted ranks, including Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, etc. "Sergeant" as a rank refers to what some call a "buck sergeant", the lowest rank of sergeant. But all ranks of Sergeant are addressed as "Sergeant", much like all officers are addressed as "Sir".
I'd be happy to answer any other questions you might have.
I have one question, though, that isn't directly related to the thread, but is sort of in the same vein - where does an army and an army group figure into this? I see you've listed things up to a corps, but I remember seeing a lot of WW2 documentaries which talked about army groups and the armies within them, and I sort of inferred they meant possibly into the millions of soldiers. Just curious where that stands. -
Quote:I know! But she was the only major I could think ofOriginally Posted by Ironblade
Terrible example. Firstly, it's not set in the U.S. Secondly, she's an intelligence operative and not a regular soldier.
*edit*
Other than Major Payne, but wouldn't that be a WORSE example? -
Quote:Let me see if I get this straight - a Non-Commissioned Officer is someone who enlisted as a soldier and rose through the ranks, whereas a Commissioned Officer is more a commander and less a frontline soldier essentially commissioned by the government? Do I have that about right?Originally Posted by je_saist
Sergeant : . Non-Commissioned Officer
These are the enlisted guys. They talked to an Army Recruiter, got a job doing something in the Army, moved up through the working ranks, and have practical experience in their job field. They work for a living.
After attending Basic Training, they head onwards to AIT, or Advanced Individual Training, to begin their career paths.
Commissioned Officer: A Commissioned Officer enters the Army with some formal training, like a college degree. After passing Basic Training, they attend Officers School to learn the basics of leadership and the core tenants of being an Officer. Once they graduate they receive their Commission which basically says they are of such and such a rank.
So how likely would it be for a commissioned officer to willingly step out into a fight, rather than standing back in his command centre and commanding? Movies seem to show Lieutenants rolling out with their soldiers, but Colonels tend to stay behind. Then on the other hand, we have CNC: Generals' Colonel Burton, who knifes people and blows up buildings... Is he a real Colonel or did the name just sound cooler with Colonel in front of it? Remember, he's a throwback to Red Alert's Tanya, whose title in that game is "Special Agent." I think she was supposed to be CIA, but I don't remember.
How likely is a lieutenant to see action intentionally? Movies seem to show them going into battle with their men (Starship Troopers as the example), but I don't know how realistic that is.Quote:In the US Army, the Lieutenant Rank is the lowest rank, with First and Second Lieutenants. They've just graduated from Officers School and get stuck running the lowest amount of paperwork and acting as the direct commanders of squads and platoons.
That's part of the reason I asked. In the info I found, the Major was described as essentially a paperwork rank, which wouldn't quite jive with what I had in mind. The amount of people under a Major's command feels about right, but if it's completely ludicrous that a Major would step out of the tent and, as you said "blow the smithereens out of something," then I may have to do some lateral thinking. That's generally the problem with trying to give someone an important-sounding rank - the higher the rank is, the less action that person is likely to see. Gone are the days of king leading cavalry charges.Quote:The Major is above the Lieutenant. They've passed the rank of Captain, and have authority over a wider range of resources. Although they are of a higher rank, a Major can spend a lot of time in the field on assignment. In fiction, a Major is often used to identify an officer that's got some time in the service behind him, and is in charge of the crack team of sociopaths that are going to blow the smithereens out of something... or more often... the sole sociopath going behind enemy lines to blow the smithereens out of something.
In realistic life, most Majors are a bit boring. They often get small duty assignments or lost in the paper-work shuffling.
I'd also like to thank you kindly for your help, saist. I appreciate the insight and the more down-to-earth explanation of things. It really helps me get a feel of how things go. -
I want to respond to je saist, but I'm going back to front, so... Thank you, Arcanaville. This goes a long way towards helping me. I generally have two characters I care about, and they fit both of your points.
Quote:I'll have to double-check the link to unit sizes Ruby Rose gave me, but I think from what I saw, a Major will do for the one character who was supposed to be one. I'm still not sure how accurate it would be for me to put the major in actual combat, but given the kind of position I had in mind for her, the rank seems to ring true.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
1. If the character serves as a commander of combat troops, their rank would be associated with the number of men under their command, in rough terms. Calling him "Lt Jones" would imply he was a commander of a small unit of a few dozen people. Calling him "Colonel Jones" would imply he was a commander of a very large unit of probably a few thousand people.
This is the one that concerned me the most. I have a character who's sort of in the position of Commander Shepard from Mass Effect (I came up with him way back in the 90s) in that he doesn't actually have a fighting force he is in direct command of, and is more a special operative who largely works alone. However, because of the importance of his missions, he is given authority roughly equivalent to that of a Colonel, in that he needs to be able to commandeer an entire facility if need be, or arrange tactical support and military action where necessary without needing specific orders from someone higher up in the chain. I wasn't entirely certain if that was a feasible premise, but that's essentially what I was going for.Quote:2. Alternatively, they might have that rank because they served some special purposes in their career of similar importance and authority. As a rule, a Colonel is a Colonel if they have to be able to give orders to Majors, and so on. So a Colonel might be a Colonel because they command a regiment, and must give orders to the Majors in command of the units within the regiment. Or he might be a Colonel because he needs to be able to give orders to Majors and be the equal of other Colonels for some other reason other than direct command of a combat unit. An intelligence service officer, perhaps.
Provided I know what's appropriate for each rank, that's pretty much the answer, yes.Quote:Pick the rank that is appropriate to what that character's military backstory suggests. -
Quote:That's not graphics, that's style.Originally Posted by QuiJon
Graphics cant be the be all end of most MMO players. Heck WOW has looked like my dog ate a can a chilli and 4 bars of chocolate took and took a dump on my monitor since the day it was released, and its still for some god awful reason popular.
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Quote:I'm pretty sure animal sacrifice features in the bible, and if it doesn't, I'm sure there are religions where it's prominent. Which brings up another interesting point - our views of what is good and evil are a fairly modern phenomenon, and to a large extent the result of Western European and North-American views on morality. Even right now, what is moral and good in something as simple as the middle or far east, or even Africa is quite different, and looking back in history to the old American people in pre-colonial times when human sacrifice was not only expected, but glorified and worshipped, the water just gets muddier.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
People who harm animals for any reason are not good people.
vs.
Here's a literal cookbook on how to prepare the animals you eat.
Both are good, virtuous in their culture, and mutually exclusive ideas of what is "good".
Can someone provide me with a link to animal sacrifice being holy and noble? I want to complete the triangle!
I'm not going to argue with anyone that says our current understanding of good and evil is probably the most tolerant, fair one, but again, just because we hold it as an ideal does not make it a universal fact. It's quite possible to run into a society where, say, living past the age of 20 is forbidden and you are killed and chopped up for food when you do. I'm not saying we should justify acts of evil as "well, he's just different in that he likes to eat people," but I AM saying that not all peoples of the world hold the American/European ideals of good and evil quite as they stand. -
OK, I know this is a stupid question, and I tried to find my own answer. Honest to God, I tried, but there is just so much supplementary information I just plain don't know that I can't make heads or tails of it. I don't know what a staff officer is and how that's different from a commissioned officer, I don't know what an XO is and how that's different from a CO, I have practically NO knowledge of army infrastructure or logistics. That, and I'm not American and I haven't been in the army, myself. My country dropped conscription laws a year before I was due.
Now, I've looked into military ranks before, and I know there are about a zillion of them, with lots in-between (not that I know what any of them mean), so to narrow the question a bit, let me specify a few ranks I'm looking at. Specifically, I'm looking to understand what the ranks of Sergeant, Lieutenant, Major and Colonel mean, what their responsibilities and authorities are, and what someone holding these ranks would do, just as a general thing.
My reasons for asking are about as simple as they get - I want to give a couple of my characters ranks, and I don't want to just randomly attribute one out of nowhere and then guess what it would mean. I'm not too much of a stickler for realistic accuracy, but wherever possible, I like to NOT contradict real life for no reason beyond simple ignorance.
Now, keep in mind that my only exposure to US military tradition has been from movies, and not all of them having to do with the actual US military, so Heaven knows how much of my info is even accurate. I have seen a few people use those ranks, however. Off the top of my head:
Sergeant - Big Joe from Kelly's Heroes. He seemed to be practically in charge of everything, though they kept talking about a Lieutenant (was it?) who was away for the entirety of the movie.
Lieutenant - Rasczak from the Starship Troopers movie, who seemed to act like lord and ruler of his men and the sole man responsible for everything. Of course how much of that is the rank and how much is Michael Ironside just exaggerating it I can't say. Am I safe to assume the Lieutenant is a combat rank, though, as in someone who suits up and goes out to shoot people?
Major - Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. Unfortunately, Ghost in the Shell is such an existentialist mess that I've NO idea what her rank even meant or what she was supposed to be doing. She could have been called a SpecOps and it'd have made as much sense. I'm drawing a blank here.
Colonel - Cambell from Metal Gear. He's an old man who spends most of his time talking and trying to give orders, but doesn't actually contribute much in a meaningful way. Ineffectivenss aside, he appears to be some kind of high commander who is supposed to have a lot of authority (even if it doesn't work out that way, damn flanderization of a good concept!), but I've no idea what his responsibilities actually are.
For a Colonel, I could probably also quite Colonel Carl Jenkins (seriously) again from the Starship Troopers movie, but his entire role in the movie is to resemble a Nazi officer and make a grand total of one order, so I've no idea what his rank is supposed to mean.
Can anyone help me out here? -
Quote:Personally, any set that lets me protect MYSELF with a big round bubble and still shoot out of it has justification enough to existOriginally Posted by Sigium
I have to say, I'm tiptoeing around this idea. I'm always up for new powersets, but I'm confused as to exactly what defines this one above the others. What new things does it bring to the table? Some more Repel attacks? Well... Maybe? But I'm skeptical of that much so far, considering I'm not sure how effective knocking the enemy back would be, paired with melee.
Other than that? Where's the Mez resist?
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Quote:This looks like you're trapped in a valley under a forcefield. Also, it looks like you tripped and you're about to faceplant. I know it was supposed to look like you're underwater, bit with that lush green grass underfoot and the complete lack of atmosphere, it just looks like someone cut off a valley.Originally Posted by fibblins
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Quote:And Zombra laughed at me when I said I wished we had an attack called "Shoot REALLY BIG Arrow."Originally Posted by Olantern
For extra added fun, use Stunning Shot on a giant monster, then play with the giant, leftover arrow when it's defeated.
What? My archer gets bored sometimes! -
Quote:While the third option solution is clever (VERY cleverOriginally Posted by Olantern
Exactly. A famous philosopher (Kant? someone law professors like to talk about) posed the following scenario: A despot hands you a pistol and tells you to shoot the innocent political prisoner standing in front of you. If you don't do it, the despot will shoot you instead, then shoot the prisoner himself. The philosopher, whoever it was, asserted that the only moral option was to allow the despot to shoot you, since you'd be actively wronging the prisoner by shooting him. I've met any number of people in real life and many more in fiction who'd proudly tell the despot to kill them.
I believe those people are wrong. In this scenario, an activist becomes a martyr to self-determination and morality.
A hero shoots the despot instead.) I don't think that's the point. The point is to test whether a person can excuse themselves doing a terrible act by a sufficiently convincing excuse. This one, in particular, is a tough choice, but it's an extension of a moral question we actually see every day - we know something bad is going to happen, so it might as well be us that do it, such that we may profit from it. I mean, it'll happen anyway, right? What's the harm in cashing in on the inevitable?
The response to this, and it's one I've actually given in real life, is "I don't care if it's going to happen. I refuse to be the one to do it." This is, of course, subjective and that's just my opinion on the matter, but if kill an innocent or die AND get the innocent killed anyway are the only options, I'd still pick the latter for a good guy. I'm not sure what I'd do in real life (haven't had enough of a close call to know how I'd react), but I subscribe to a more idealistic, romantic vision of fiction, where it comes down to not just saving the world, but ensuring you end up with a world worth saving in the end.
Which actually brings about my own view on moral relativism. I don't mind questionable morality, grey characters and even a world half empty as a PLOT POINT, as long as everything gets resolved by the end. As long as the narrative doesn't become malicious (Japanese anime tends to go there half the time), I can accept a LOT of crap thrown my way by a story provided it ends with a resolution. But when a story ends with it essentially telling me that there IS no resolution and that we really live in a crapsack world, my response is to flip my TV a birdie and go watch something else. -
Quote:This reminds me of one of those Iraq war documentaries, where a bunch of American soldiers were retelling a particular firefight. One of them explained how they ducked into a building to take cover and walked into a family in the middle of a meal, which showed them just how much violence had become a part of people's lives. Here they are, a whole platoon of Americans having a huge firefight with insurgents, with rockets, grenades and masses of machinegun fire, and the common people are just staying inside and trying to have dinner. While the American soldier is trying to get the people to leave because it's not safe here, they're trying to offer them to sit down and have dinner with them.Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Just visit another continent, once, and you'll see how much this is true. Culture can be fabulously different, even in it's minutest "similarities." Go as far as, say, the Middle East, and you may understand why dressing and grooming the way they do, the way women, minorities, etc. are treated the way they are, and why daily car bombs are considered everyday life.
No one said it was right, or good...but it's certainly "normal" for them.
So, yeah, "normal" is relative. -
Quote:He has a point.Originally Posted by PsyFox
Wow. Disrespecting an iconic character. Classy.
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Quote:If I'm not mistaken, all toggles should fade, so if you find any that don't, you can probably submit those as bugs and/or list them in BABs Official Visual Effects bug thread. I'm not sure if it completely the right place, but since we don't have an audio effects thread, it's the closest thing you have.Originally Posted by Star_Seer
Not all armour sets have a not effects option - I wish they did
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Quote:See, that's what I'm talking about. You don't have to be a Saturday morning cartoon villain who wants to take over the world or a complete monster who wants to eat dead babies or something to be evil. To me, all of the above are evil, minus the class. My counterpoint to your businessman is my fairly simple "overlord" style villain.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Hardly 'Baby-eating' evil. Theres a lot of characters that aren't ebil-jeebil screaming bonkers Evil.
Dunno how it could be handled though. We've got some good writers at PS, so we just have to trust in them, really.
Ezikiel is not malicious, he doesn't specifically go out of his way to hurt people for the evulz or anything like that. He has an very simple objective - take control of the world away from those who are weak and don't have enough imagination to make use of that control, and pull the reigns himself, creating a world based on order and discipline where nothing bad every happens to you as long as you toe the line. If I were generous with his character, I could even make him redeemable, and somewhat grey. I went completely the other way.
I made Ezikiel a complete villain not because he is malicious, but because he is completely and utterly ruthless. Murder, kidnapping, torture, blackmail, manipulation, even self destruction - nothing is below him. He is a man who crawled out of nothing, who suffered crushing indignity for years and years and who lost everything he worked for many times over. He is a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his goal, and so everything he touches, every life he affects, he leaves completely and entirely putrid. Think of a man who's only goal in life is to hollow others out and manipulate him to his ends with no remorse ever given.
Evil by choice is what I had in mind for him. Of course, style with him comes from exactly the same source, this unashamed audacity, but that's a long subject that's besides the point. The point, in this case, is that evil doesn't have to be OBVIOUS in order for it to be complete. If anything, the more obvious it is, the less interesting it becomes. Recluse's empire of evil is highly uninteresting because his whole nation is one giant dump and there's so much rampant evil that it's desensitising. You don't have to make evil a point in order for it to be very, very evil. In fact, the kind of sinister evil that works just below the surface is simultaneously a lot more scary and a lot more dangerous.
All that said, I still think we need more proactive content in Going Rogue. And by "proactive," I don't mean more newspaper missions. They're just as reactive as regular content. "Here's an opportunity, go take it." I mean content that causes us to manufacture our own opportunities, to go out and set the plot in motion, not just stumble into a plot that's already rolling.
I'm a rogue working for the Loyalists. Nothing is going on, so I'll see if I can't start up a new investigation into uncovering some Rebels. I'm a vigilante working with the Rebels. Nothing is going on, so I'll see if I can't find some dirty secret about Tyrant to maybe sway some Loyalists over. Have the storyline originate with me. It'd help some with heroics, and it'd help a LOT with villainy. -
Quote:I just meant if you choose to kill 3Dog. If you want to be an *** and just kill a person for no reason, the game gives you a middle finger and tells you to go find your own clues if you're going to be like that. Which is actually good way of handling it.Originally Posted by Carnifax
Actually I thought the opposite, I was incredibly disappointed with now hacknied Fallouts approach is to Good and Evil. It's incredibly unrealistic. I mean look at the first big Good/Evil decision you make in Megaton. It's completely OTT and rather silly. The only saving grace for it was the consequences for making the "good" choice on others.
Mass Effect does it well, you're not real, baby-eating, evil as a renegade, you're more ruthless and willing to make sacrifices to achieve your goals. -
Quote:This post sums up everything that is, and always has been, wrong with moral choices in video games. Any time a video game gives you a choice between being good or being evil, it's actually a choice between being good and being a jerkass. The game assumes you're following the "good" storyline, so evil can't be anything more than just a momentary, meaningless deviation. I think Fallout 3 handles it the best. If you're a dick and you murder 3Dog, the game gives you a middle finger and tells you to essentially figure it out yourself, then. Not that that changes anything, since Rivet City is a frikkin' LANDMARK. I would have SO loved it if dear old dad was hole up in a cave somewhere you'd NEVER find unless someone told you, and that you'd be SOL if you kill the only person who could know, but that's just me.Originally Posted by Eisenzahn
I don't see the Loyalists and Resistance as Villains and Heroes respectively... they both look like groups with some good strong positive points to make, and almost certainly a lot of shady ways that they can go about making them. I'm really hoping that both sides are presented as being as morally ambiguous as I imagine, and that the the decision making process that influences which side your character ends up on won't be a bunch of simple "Do you help the lost little kid find his mom or MURDER HIM AND EAT HIS TENDER FLESH MUAHAHAHAH" kind of crap. I'm hoping for some decision trees where you won't know until after you choose which side you just pushed yourself towards. But with some way to recover standing with the other faction before the final decision has to be made, if you've really got your heart set on one side.
This is the big problem with City of Villains, too. It follows a sort of Dungeon Keeper "You are evil. Go wild!" mentality that still presents being evil as being anything between a mercenary and a jerkass. Smart, creative, charismatic villainy doesn't exist. You're a murderer, a monster, an opportunist with no larger goal than to die another day and maybe some day serve Arachnos. That's about as uninspired as it gets. You can make a hero who just does the right thing all the time and have a convincing plot, but you CANNOT make a villain who does the wrong thing every time and end up with anything other than goody silliness.
In a lot of these games, evil isn't evil at all. It's the opposite of good exactly. Which is often very, very stupid.
Personally, I see Praetoria as the "right" kind of evil. Believable, possibly justifiable, subtle yet very real. It's not just a bunch of people Mu-ha-ha-ing about how evil they are, it's an almost real person really trying to make something decent out of his world. I want to see the Loyalists vs. Resistance confrontation reflect that (and off the forums, but that's besides the point). Both factions can be drawn as completely justifiable, with one trying to fight for freedom from oppression while the other trying to fight for the security, safety and comfort of life under Tyrant. And I hope good and evil is drawn as a little more self-driven and a little less "go there and do that." -
Quote:See, this I'd love. You know that mission in Time After Time where you look out a window over the future Cap Au Diable? That was amazingly cool, and I'd LOVE to see more of it. You know those Longbow bases that are all said to be underwater? Yeah, how can we tell? We're told they are, we may see a single submarine pen, and we have one dead end with water dripping from the ceiling which might as well be a leaky pipe. How about a large window looking out into the ocean? It doesn't have to show much, just a but of reef dropping off into the void and maybe a fish or two making endless loops.Originally Posted by Zamuel
However, I more than understand your stance. At the same time, is there any possibility of maps with windows/portholes that make the rooms look like they are underwater without having to put up with the shenanigans of coding attacks for a submerged area?
Or how about something more exciting? How about an underwater base with plenty of large plate windows and glass tube corridors, where you can see the parts you've already visited out the walls? You can already sort of fudge that in Arachnos labs. I understand Longbow bases are just retextured blue labs (they even have the same misplaced geometry), but this is the perfect opportunity for Going Rogue to shine - revamp the old tilesets! Make underwater bases have windows to the water. Make high-rise maps have windows overlooking the city skyline. Even if it's not from the same zone we came in, I wouldn't mind, just so long as I can look out. Give warehouses windows to the outside. They don't have to see the REAL zone, or even the SAME zone, just a sidewalk with buildings. Make us come in through a roof access hatch, or through a WALL!
But, yeah, windows to underwater locations, please, even if we can't get to them. -
Quote:We need to make powers not look incredibly stupid when used in water. I'm with BABs on this one - in order for an underwater environment to look good, powers have to behave differently. See, this is one of the reasons I LOVE our development team, and BABs in particular - they have standards of only introducing things in the game that actually look good, and not half-assing something just so it's there and who cares about quality. Even sans grapics update, our game still looks very good for how old it is, and I lay this entirely on the shoulders of BABs, Jay and their minions, as well as the programmers behind the scenes making it possible.Originally Posted by Lohenien
ACK! I'm confused! We should already have most of the animations needed for such things : we already have a swimming animation, it would need to be adjusted for vertical movement though. We also have fly animations which would work just fine for fighting underwater.
So other than making water effects, what do we need ?
I'm not against an underwater zone if it looks good. I don't envision making this happen being in the slightest worth the workload involved. -
I... Don't like your powers setup in the slightest, but that doesn't matter. I agree with you on the idea of a personal forcefield set. I love the Forcefields bubble and I'd love to see that, among other things, in a defence set. I'd stick to more shields and knockback/repel, though.
If we do get something like this (and $10 says we will at some point), I just hope we have at least one bubble, and that ALL shields are some kind of forcefield, not just glowing messes of wavy auras like Energy Aura. I foresee we'll have shields more along the lines of the forcefield in Oni (or Dune, if you want to push it), in that they'll be form-fitting, but I'd still like to see at least one bubble shield that isn't Personal Forcefield.