SpittingTrashcan

Nope, just that I can't count.

I think this is a bit strong. I appreciated your input, and I think you do have a point that it's hard to perceive bias from within a cultural framework. That said, I think I did raise a specific question which I would very much like your opinion on: given that the parameters for attractiveness, athleticism, and heroism have a lot of overlap (as defined by the framing culture etc etc), how can you tell the difference between a male character who acquires attractive qualities as a side effect of having heroic qualities, and a male character who acquires heroic qualities as a side effect of having attractive qualities?

Also, I'll fully admit that I don't have a strong grasp of what makes a man attractive, in this or any other culture, because I don't have a sexual attraction to men. That said, I've read and viewed many works by people who do find men attractive, and thus seen many depictions of what I can only assume are sexually idealized men. They're a varied lot, I'll say that much. Some of them do look and act like the archetypal superhero. Many others don't. So if there's something I'm not getting here, I'd appreciate you laying it out in simple terms, because I'm genuinely interested in what you have to say.

Almost certainly so. The problem here is partly that features associated with heroism - physical strength and athleticism, upright and confident posture, symmetrical features and so on - are also associated with common ideas of sexual attractiveness in men. So are the men sexy because they're heroic, or are they sexy because they're sexy? It's kind of a muddy question.

However, looking at the costume items that are exclusive to men, I don't see much that sexualizes masculinity, unless you become weak at the knees in the presence of cigars, cornrows, or coats below the waist (and if you do, hey, rock on). Whereas looking at the costume items that are exclusive to women, I see a lot of stuff that is both distinctly feminine and distinctly sexual (and distinctly impractical). If you can point out a male-exclusive item that a man would wear to make himself more attractive, even at the cost of practicality in a highly physically active profession, then I will be quite surprised and may even need to retrieve my monocle.

I can get behind all of this. Even the mustaches. Frida Kahlo needs love too.

They're not.

I have seen many sexualized portrayals of men created by various people, male and female, who have many different ideas about what makes a man attractive, some mainstream, some quite unique. The aspects of this game that are male-only - poses, animations, exclusive costume pieces - are not sexualizing masculinity in any of the ways that I have seen masculinity sexualized. What they remind me of more is neutral motions, that are neither particularly male nor female. What they remind me of is characters who have the same body language whether male or female because developing alternate male and female stances was too much work.

They are. Men can't have skirts or thigh high boots. Women can't have cornrows or long coats. And women can't walk straight-backed, nor men with a wiggle in their hips. I understand why women can't have bare chests (T rating) or mustaches (luxuriant facial hair being quite rare in women), but the rest is a matter of choice.

Again, I wish I could say exactly how many more dollars Paragon Studios would receive in exchange for making an effort to allow male and female characters to have the same range of dress, pose, and stance options. Certainly, I'd pay real actual money dollars for what I'm suggesting, and would also accept less stuff being created overall if all of the stuff that was created was available to all genders. But that's just me.

I actually can't tell whether you're trolling or not.

I disagree with what you just said.

I stand corrected on this point of fact. I do not think it weakens my overall argument, since my point was that the developers will have enemies cheat, and the change was in the direction of enemies cheating more.

This is an interesting idea. Let's look at some numbers.

First, there's getting an AV confused. Controller Confuse has a base 29.75 second duration for mag 3 confuse, with a 20% chance of an additional mag 1 for 22.313 seconds. If I understand correctly, the level difference scalar applies to mez duration, so these would be .30 seconds and .22 seconds respectively. With slotting, increase that to perhaps .60 seconds and .44 seconds. I'm not sure if that's even long enough for one to activate an attack, and of course since Confuse has a 2 second cast time and then has a base recharge of 8 seconds, even with a miraculous recharge boost it won't be possible to stack consecutive Confuse casts. Obviously punching through purple triangles is out of the question, and even when they're down it will take two simultaneous Confuses to break through their non-purple-triangle mag 4 mez protection.

But what about Dominators? In Domination, Confuse deals a base 23.8 second mag 3 Confuse and an additional base 35.7 second mag 3 confuse. That's enough to beat the boss level mez protection in one shot. Admittedly, it's still only .24 seconds, but it's something. Now, throw on slotting: .48 seconds per Confuse. If we throw on Megalomaniac: 0.63 seconds. Let's go kind of insane here and imagine we can get the Doms to ripple-fire their confuses 0.5 seconds apart. With 8 doms, that adds up to 4 whole seconds of confusion, which means you could theoretically perma-confuse one AV if you can get +200% recharge on 8 Doms. And of course if all their Confuses hit.

Hey, while we're tossing around accolade powers, though, throw in Force of Nature. That's +25% tohit and +100% recharge for 60 seconds. Now we're kind of getting somewhere. Replace two of the Doms with Controllers, say Ill/Rads or Mind/Kins, and you lose a little confuse but gain some more recharge. Assuming supernatural levels of coordination, you can get a single AV confused for most of the time for the 30 seconds that purple trianges are down. Whee!

Now, which AV to confuse? Numina is level 35, which doesn't help much for confusing her, but considerably impairs her ability to damage the others. Buffs don't scale by level difference, so her Fortitude is going to be the same buff as if you were even con - not much help there. What we really need is somebody with debuffs that are on par with the AVs, preferably regeneration debuffs strong enough to make the lava damage significant. Somebody like... Positron!

I'm afraid I must admit to being insufficiently number-versed to say how strong Positron's Lingering Radiation is, but I'm going to guess it's pretty strong. Of course we can't decide whether he'll cast it or on who, but let's just assume we're persistent enough to keep trying this until he does, and that he throws it early, and that he throws it on Numina. Numina is -5 to the others which makes her an ideal target for murder (I'll settle for one, because it's a lot more than zero!). So the question becomes: can a +5 Positron kill a non-regenerating, lava-cooking Numina in 30 seconds or less?

I'm betting... no. But it's the angle I'd take if I were to try this.

That's one way to try it, and I'd be interested in the result. Given the strong level difference penalties, I'm not sure the usual tactic of stacking buffs and debuffs is going to apply here, but it's certainly worth a shot.

Possibly worth noting: they can be single-pulled, but as soon as any one of them are aggroed, Numina starts handing out Fortitude.

22 levels. Until you can slot SOs.