Sin_Stalker

Originally Posted by El Topo

Howdee friends,

I wanted to take a moment and follow up on Positron’s post regarding the Circle of Thorns’ new look. We are very excited to introduce this modern take on an enemy group near and dear to your hearts. The Art team has worked very hard to update the look while still echoing the original theme. For example, the thorny look you see on the new pieces is based on the spiky elements in the first incarnation of Circle of Thorns. As Positron mentioned, there were some valid points made by you, our players, regarding the re-vamp and we have incorporated much of this feedback into the final look for this enemy group. More importantly though, I wanted to make sure you had a chance to see an assortment of costumes in all their glory. There are literally over 70 costumes associated with this re-vamp so we can’t show all of them in one image, but we have picked out ten and put together the line-up for you below. For those of you that want to try this look on your character, some of these costume pieces will be available in the Paragon Market later this year. Here is a list of the changes we are incorporating into this enemy group in an upcoming beta build:

• Long garments have been given to all members of this group including the minions.
• Faces have been obscured across the entire group.
• Some costume colors have been tweaked and toned down to be closer to the original costumes, but with others we have taken creative liberties.
• Eye auras have been tweaked to be green on several costumes.

Originally Posted by Dark_Respite

Yes. You need to assign it a health value. Add the following lines for each fire, replacing XXX with the relevant object number:

0 XXX HP 150.00
0 XXX HPMAX 150.00

This is because fire is a destructible object.

For flames at half-level, drop the HP (NOT the HPMAX) down to 75 or less.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Originally Posted by Dark_Respite

If you want the mercs on the ground, hit the Codex for the 4 or 5 DEADGUARD MOVs. Try those.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Originally Posted by BackFire

Since when does Batman drink Slim Fast®?!?

Now, maybe, Ensure® I'd believe...

Originally Posted by Ironik

That's why I say it needs to be excellent in order to be used correctly.

BTW, I read the 1st issue of Justice-Knights and you're right that it needs a rewrite. You could lose a fourth or even a third of the pages without much trouble just by looking for more efficiency in the story and dropping the in-game references. There's no need for the SG to be "popular" to have experienced a sneak attack by someone who hates them. Compared to the excellence of the Stalktress second issue, the action is really muddied and hard to follow, plus the shots are really dark.

Or leave it as-is, as evidence of how much your writing has improved.

Originally Posted by Ironik

One of the biggest changes -- which Bendis recently brought back in one of the umpteen-dozen Avengers books -- was the elimination of thought balloons. I never realized just how much I hated them until they weren't there any more. In some spots they were fine, but most of the time, ugh. Very much like narration in films: don't do it unless you're going to rock it.

Originally Posted by Ironik

Bendis does wordy pages quite well, but then he's the Tarantino of comics, so he can get away with it. As long as it moves either the plot or character forward without much repetition, then I say go for it. I'll have to see if I can find a good example of how he does it.

Originally Posted by Ironik

My critique of Issue 1 is -- and please bear in mind that I'm the person people love to identify as "The Guy Who Hates Everything" -- that it's fine.

The dialogue is fine. I don't think you have too much at all. It is, in fact, nice and spare. She repeats herself, but that's exactly what people do when wrestling with those kinds of things. However, what I would add is an extra page of him convincing her, so her acceptance of his point is less abrupt. You might even want to put in a few frames here and there which hint at what she went through, using her POV. (Which is hard to do with screenshots, but you can pull it off.) But you need a starting point, and that's a good one. Issue two is different stylistically and it kicks into gear with excellent pacing and really great framing while keeping the theme. But I like how you've ramped up the action and increased the dialogue (inner and outer) at the same time. I think the only reason Issue 1 feels dialogue-heavy to you is because there's no action. But action isn't necessary to be compelling. (Go see The Social Network as an excellent example of that.)

One minor thing I might change about Issue 1 is to make it a bit similar to Issue 2's dialogue by giving Stalktress the word "revenge' when he says "justice." "It's for justice." ["Or revenge."] "Stop them from doing it again." ["Stop you from doing it again."] That sets up the conflict but gives a hint that she plans to turn on him at some point. I mean, you could go back and make it mostly visual, but I don't think it would be a tremendous improvement.

Anyway, just an idea, keep up the good work.