Samuel_Tow

Kindness

You know, I’m a patient woman. Growing up in a world of constant danger and ever-present hurry, you’d think I’d be antsy all the time, but the truth is that many of the more sinister carnivores back home actually prayed on people’s drive to act before thinking. In a world where the difference between life and death was a single wrong step, you better believe I learned to resist tension and be cool under pressure. The fight with the giant lizards that initially brought me to this world was a perfect example. When scores of the things were swarming in on me, I felt like I wanted nothing more than to just swing my axe wildly and swat at them as hard as I could. But the bastards were covered by unbreakable bony plates, so doing that would have gotten me killed. Instead, I had to act cool, think fast and aim for the centre of the head where the plates join.

In fact, most of the people in my tribe who died lost their lives to bad, rash decisions, either running into the killing fields of predators before they could recognise the signs, or failing to wait for an opening to strike in battle. Strength alone was not enough, and indeed I wasn’t the stronger of my people, but I was still the most powerful in final effect, second only to my father before he died. Survival back home was not just a matter of strong body, it required a balance between a body and mind.

Which is why it infuriates me when the people of this Earth treat me and my kind as if we were some kind of subhuman idiots! The nerve of these people, touting their complicated words and numbers as though they are the height of intelligence, when they make stupid, catastrophic decisions themselves, and do so every day! I’ve seen more men hurt out of their sheer stupidity, literally inventing danger where there is none, than hurt from legitimate problems. And they have the nerve to suggest MY intelligence is low? I am not stupid! I may not know this world’s tricky sciences, but there is more to being smart than just knowing facts, and I think I’ve proven this over the years.

Now, I’m a patient woman, and I’ve dealt with many irritating, pressing problems with a cool head, and even managed to avoid punching self-professed intellectuals in the mouth for the most part, but Malcolm really, REALLY stretched my self-restraint. I come from a world of quiet, where only the sounds of nature can be heard and people only ever nod or gesture to each other. I hadn’t heard language before at all. However, the novelty of this strange new concept wore off pretty quickly when I realised that he just would not stop talking even for a minute. He went on and on and on about all sorts of things. I guess he was very excited to meet me. To be fair, he was a great man, and I would learn a lot from him in time, but then and there I just wanted to find a way to shut him up without killing him. Gagging him would certainly not work, as he could speak to my mind directly. Believe me, I tried.

Malcolm and I spent a little under two days together, walking through the forest back to this “city” he had mentioned. We covered around 50 miles with one overnight rest, and my god did we drag our feet along the way. If I were alone, I could have covered the distance in five hours and not broken a sweat, but since I was lugging his sorry hide around and had to mind his wound, it took FOREVER. Now, look – I’m patient, but any patience has is not infinite, and Malcolm certainly explored the upper limits of mine. Although... Really, I have to be honest, amid his childishly excited rambling, he did tell me a lot of things I really needed to know in order to be prepared for the utter cultural shock I would suffer when I finally discovered “civilization.”

Malcolm told me a lot about cities, though I couldn’t really comprehend much of it at the time. It was just so alien to me. Back home, we didn’t have anything which would count as a “structure.” Occasionally we’d take shelter in natural caves, or the hollowed-out husks of dead monster trees, but as far as constructing anything ourselves, we never so much as put two branches against each other. And, honestly, there was never any point – we didn’t spend long enough in one place for that to matter. We just slept on the ground and moved on. Yet here he was, telling me about man-made things as tall as the sky, made out of stone and iron, paths paved, with thousands of people crowding around. I thought he was delirious, as he was running a fever at the time. I just couldn’t imagine such a thing.

He told me about machines, and about vehicles, even if those are a mystery to me to this day. I accept that there are these “things” which perform certain “actions,” but what makes them work I’ve never been able to understand, nor honestly really cared. I was never interested in knowing about them or using them. Far as I’m concerned, they are part of what makes the people of this world so soft and helpless. When they chose machines to do their work for them, they lost the strength and talent to do it, themselves.

More than anything else, however, Malcolm warned me how to act around other people. I’ll give him one thing – he was a smart man. He knew I couldn’t communicate with the people, and he understood I had no people skills at all, so he coached me. He told me to say nothing and not try to interact with them, warned me not to intimidate or push them, and just generally asked me to be gentle.

Gentle... I could never quite wrap my head around that concept. Back home, we always acted hard and we acted fast. Decisive action was what kept us alive. There was never any time for sentiment or subtlety. It was kill or be killed. But Malcolm wasn’t like that. He may have been one of the weakest people I’ve ever met, even by this world’s standard, and that’s saying something, but he always had a way of making me feel at ease. All my life, every living memory I had, I had fought for everything. Fought for food, fought for shelter, fought for my life. But with Malcolm, I felt safe, I felt... Somehow at ease. There was a certain power in his words, I will admit, but I never felt like I had to fight him. He was always so... Kind, I guess. Even when he was hurt so bad he could barely breathe, he always tried to reassure me and make me feel better.

Malcolm made me feel something I had never felt before. Even back home, even within the tight-knit, family bonds of my tribe, I never felt like anyone really, truly cared about me. Yes, we protected each other, but we never put much emotion into it. I needed my tribe to survive, and they needed me, so we protected each other. It was pragmatic, nothing more, no different from the beast that retreats from combat when it realises it cannot kill you without suffering grievous harm to itself. Look... I’m not sure I understand this, myself. I don’t know the how and the why, and even though I’ve been trying to make sense of it for the past ten years, I still don’t know if I’m any closer to knowing. All I know is what I feel – this strange, inexplicable calm and happiness.

I started out wanting to kill Malcolm just to get him to shut up, but in the end, I think I actually grew to like him. Certainly, he was still annoying, but he seemed to genuinely care about me, to want to help me. Even though he was hurt, he seemed to care more about helping me than helping himself. And, I must admit, I kind of enjoyed it. Here I was, the strong woman of action lost in a strange new world and he, my frail, wounded guide, showing me the way. I was so used to doing everything alone, to fighting for myself and surviving on my own, that it was... Nice to have someone help me. Maybe even take care of me... I really miss that annoying, little man and his strange antics. The world is a much lonelier place without him.

Well, after I spent two days lugging his loudmouth hide around, tending to his wound and foraging for food and water, I began to feel more like a mother looking after a frail child... Which is odd, since I’ve never actually BEEN a mother, and we didn’t exactly tend to our children back home. I can’t say I disliked it, not entirely. There was something... Pleasant about taking care of another and watching them feel a little better. Malcolm was a kind man, and he never missed the opportunity to thank me. I’m not sure if I realised it at the time, but it made me feel... Kind of good to see that smile on his face. He had such a charming smile...

Except, on the other hand, it irritated me how frail and soft this supposed man was! In-between looking after him like a little child, I was trying to tend to my own wounds, extract the bullets, clean them, bandage them and so forth, while all he did was lay about! And, despite his words being helpful, his constant droning speech in my mind was more than a little annoying. Though... Thinking back on it now, I miss all of that. I guess, over the years, I sort of grew so accustomed to his irritating antics that it’s eerie to be without them now. It’s just... Too quiet without him.

But, Malcolm survived. After two days of trekking VERY slowly, I finally caught sight of this “Paragon City he had been telling me about. And, I must say, I was AMAZED. In all my years, I had never seen anything which came even close to this level of magnificence. I could never have imagined the size of these “buildings” he had told me about, or their wondrous shine. Spires shooting up into the sky, taller than the ancient titan trees. They were amazing. I could scarcely believe that such a thing could have been made by these small, helpless people who couldn’t even catch their own food. To this day I cannot understand how silly, frail people like the ones I see every day could create such wonders.

And then there were the people, themselves. Thousands of them, maybe even millions, crowding together and moving about like a torrent of bodies! I’d never seen such a thing. My tribe had been barely a hundred strong, and we were one of the larger ones I knew about, so I thought that was many. But this Paragon City was literally crawling with people everywhere you went. Walking through this city with a wounded man on my back was an almost surreal experience. The loud, horrible noise they made just talking to each other and the strange looks they gave me... This was a great culture shock to me. Back home, we mostly ignored each other, even within my own tribe. Everyone was always busy doing something. But here, I felt like everyone was focusing solely on me as I walked and... Well, I understand now how badly I was sticking out, but I did not enjoy it.

Malcolm had asked me to just do nothing and let him do all the talking. By that time, he had already fallen unconscious, but even torpor could not shut that man up. I want to say “much to my annoyance,” but I have to be fair – his ability to speak even when out cold actually helped a lot. He directed me to this... Hospitality? Hospital? Something like that. A place where people here tend to their wounded. Back home we’d just do it on the ground where the person fell, but I quickly realised the people here were too fragile for that little care.

The people at this hospitality took Malcolm away, and he instructed me to just stand in this little chamber and wait, and that he may be a few hours. And... I waited. I’m honestly not sure why I did. My instincts told me to just forget about him, leave and get away from this crazy place, but then my instincts had been telling me to abandon Malcolm for two days at that point. If I hadn’t listened to them before, I wasn’t about to listen to them now. I kept telling myself I would be lost in this strange world without him, but that was a lie. I could just as easily have left the way I came, returned to the forest and resumed life as I had been leading it before. But... I didn’t want that. I didn’t care about this “civilization” thing, mind you. I still don’t. As far as I’m concerned, it’s far too complicated for what it’s worth.

No, what I didn’t want to admit to myself at the time is that I wanted to meet Malcolm again. Yes, he was annoying, very much so! But at the same time... I liked being around him, at least a little. He was the first person I actually cared about in my life, believe it or not. Plus, I’d seen the man in action, and I knew he would be lost without me. I know it’s silly – he’s a grown man and probably better at scrounging up an existence in this overcomplicated world than I was, but it was quite obvious to me that he needed someone to take care of him, the little man.

So I stayed and I waited, every instinct in my body telling me I was being a fool. I guess this was a new experience I just couldn’t resist. As it turned out, waiting for Malcolm was the right call to make.

Remember - Stalker sets are Melee Defence sets first and anything else you want to make them a far, far second. Ninjutsu is about as far as you can go into the utility side of things, and it cheats a little by unifying so many protections in so few powers. Aside from a minor passive resistance power, you have no resistance, and since you're going to be in melee all the time, that's just a death sentence.

I can support a Stalker set that's gadgets-based, but NOT with that choice of powers. I'm going to need at least two shields, a status protection power and a meaningful final power (Trip Mine is NOWHERE NEAR meaningful). That, plus Hide, gives you four powers to play with in terms of utility, and I'd axe Smoke Grenade altogether. It's an unbelievably crappy power which gives a meaningless to-hit debuff (compounded by your not including defence in the set) and -perception, which is largely useless on a Stalker. Granted, probably two or three enemies in the entire game can see through hide, but having an entire power in a powerset devoted to combating that is not a good choice.

I want to take a moment to commend je saist for that post. It is thoughtful and interesting, and well worth the read. Good show

More to point, though, when we talk about "items," we go back to the old paradigm about why items don't fit with all characters in a super hero universe. In fact, that's the primary reason why Natural enhancements are types of training, Science enhancements are chemical and energy exposures and Mutation enhancements are... Well, mutations. Unlike in other MMOs where items make the hero, here POWERS make our own. These powers could come from items, obviously, but just as easily, they may not.

Let's say I'm the Silver Surfer. Am I really going to want, much less need, a pair of pants, a ring or a hat? What if I'm Ben Grim, the Thing? What am I going to do with armour when my skin is harder than that just naturally? Or, to give you a more specific example, what if we look at my ridiculously human robot/cyborg woman? All of her powers are neatly tucked away into her INTERNAL workings, serving to reinforce her central point - the perfect duplicate of a human being. She has no use for weapons or armour, because she is both naturally tougher than any armour and naturally stronger and faster than any weapon. About the only thing she can hope for is clothes that don't disintegrate around her at the first sign of danger, like after running through a fireball or taking a rocket to the face. And that's more for the sake of maintaining a PG rating than for actual utility.

The whole reason we even HAVE enhancements and why we DON'T have items is because, in this universe, it just doesn't fit that many of the heroes and villains. This was discussed five years ago, and it has been discussed intermittently since then. I even remember the quote: "Oh, right, I remember that episode where Neo beats up Agent Smith and then rummages through his suit for his tighty-whities." It doesn't make sense. It never did.

Typically, when I deal with Customer Support for a problem that requires GM intervention, I have to wait half an hour to 45 minutes, which to me is actually what I'd expect. Sometimes they show up sooner, but usually it's around the half hour mark. I'd say that's acceptable.

That said, I haven't needed GM support for a LONG time now, especially since they added the mission drop feature. Any mission that ends up bugged, I drop it, and I haven't had problems aside from that. The last time I had a problem was a missing glowie, but when I was teleported to it, it turned out I just missed it. Missing glowie, indeed.

I really can't complain. Hell, I even managed to get a GM try to help me use the Microsoft Language Bar in-game (via e-mail this time) even though he said it wasn't really supported. To me, that kind of support is admirable, even if it ultimately didn't work. But, hey, a couple of months and a few patches later, and the Microsoft Language Bar no longer crashes the game, so I got my wish anyway

I'm all for updating the zone, but a lot of the things you suggest really, really bug me. The fog SHOULD NOT be messed with. As the Goat pointed out, below the fog, the zone SUCKS. It's only a travel hazard the first time you visit. If you have any of the map explored, just go by that. All the buildings are clearly visible, and you can just follow the roads if it bugs you. I've taken all manner of characters through there.

Also, lay off the TFs. There is NOTHING worse than running a few arcs and finding out the last leg, the POINT, as it were, is unavailable to you. The Hollows and Striga are bad enough. We don't need more of that. Either axe the TF altogether, or add it as an alternate story not written into the main story arc chain.

But, really, what you need to get people in there is a POINT. Right now, there is no point in going to Dark Astoria unless you want to make your own fun. Putting story arcs that send you to instances in it would fix that.

I didn't know zoning changed these. Yeah, I agree with this. If I want to fight a specific enemy group or take a specific type of mission, it's REALLY annoying when the paper doesn't provide. I definitely agree with this idea.