SuperOz

SMASH PUNY THREADJACKING GOKU!

<ahem>

Sorry, couldn't resist that....look, the Hulk isn't for everyone, but he's the antithesis of the other great power fantasy character, Superman. Instead of being the 'ordinary guy with godlike powers' that Superman has, the Hulk is driven by anger, is very inspired by Frankenstein and the Jekyll/Hyde motif, and is a great character for portraying often unwanted power.

I'm the first to acknowledge as a long-time Hulk reader (and I'm even bearing through the 'Hulk family' nonsense going on right now) that the introduction of his Multiple Personality Disorder was kind of unecessary, but it was also an acknowledgement that the 'Hulk Smash' concept was pretty thin on the ground if you were even remotely interested in the character.

But this is a character like any other can soar in the hands of the right writer. Look at Batman under Christopher Nolan. Less than ten years before Batman Begins, Batman was a joke character filmicly, and had even resorted to the 'broken back/replacement/comeback' story in his own books. That one movie comes out and voila, the character is almost reborn overnight.

Ang Lee tried to do this in his film, but came away with a flawed but beautiful piece of work. Louis Letterier went the other way but came closer to the source material. But ultimately, there has to be something you connect with in a character to get into them. I love the Nolan Batman films, but he's certainly not my must-see character of all time.

S.

Hm. I'd recommend:

The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original, not the horrid remake) for its questions on humanity and if there's anything to learn from it and

Jason and the Argonauts. Nice way to get them into mythology without having Sam Worthington wooden-board you to death.


S.

I find I can only limit it to a select number (in this case about six) that I alternate between as needed. Each one I've tried to make different from the others, especially in AT's and powersets so I know I'm having a different experience each time.

When I make a new character, I devote a lot of time to them because I'm really enjoying them and my others become my number two or three or whatever. But I think personally the more characters you have, the less quality time you get overall. It depends on how much you can play and how much you want to play.

As for the number of responses, you probably would've gotten more responses on the Virtue forum, most likely.


S.

Hey all.

Yes, as the title states, I did bite the bullet and bought the Party Pack. For a couple of reasons. The first being the Australian dollar was in the mid 90 cent range and it meant I'd get value for money, and two, I have a birthday in two weeks and I'd had a very stressful week finding out I was going to be looking for somewhere new to live soon. So I figure I deserved a nice piece of fluff entertainment.

But! Upon getting yon pack, I wondered if the game graphics or engine could extend to other emotes or dare I ask it, little visible mini-games we could play if folk were in a team or somesuch formation. I imagine this would involve coding things like the ability to have a temp basket/soccer/pool ball power that could be resisted for 'play', and coding on basketball hoops and pool tables to make them 'playable'.

So I wondered 'is this even possible?' I don't even know if other games have things like this at all where people are playing modern sports. Not even Champions, with the inherent flexibility you'd imagine with a more modern game engine, had anything like that.

Thoughts? Opinions? Laughs for fun?


S.

I agree with Electric-Knight; stick at it. I'm a roleplayer over on Virtue, but I've also had twenty years of tabletop gaming to give me enough experience and judgement to know what to look for and where to look for it.

Honestly, I think it comes down to just being out there and making enquiries through the contacts you do have. For example, there's a thriving community of Silver Age/Golden Age hero and villain groups that operate on Virtue and it took me roleplaying with some folk and having a fondness for that era to get in with a really excellent group of folk who are fully into it and have numbers, not like some smaller secluded groups.

My whole approach and always will take that of enquiring both ICly and OOCly when I'm in the world about what groups are out there and making sure I have a decent character that's open to change and adaptive when it needs to be.

As for integrating into the story of the game, I think you'll find everybody has different interpretations of what that means. I'm in two SG's, and whilst one accepts the canon of the game as the only one to pay attention to, the other has made up its own seperate continuity where they've changed events and defeated canon villains.

My advice is to not think about trying to join a group and let a group find you, really. Play your character the way you're most comfortable with and people will compliment you on your style of play, your character design and so on. And make it known you are looking for an SG and ask if they know of any. But don't stress out over it, either. If you've got other characters, play them too...but don't make this one character your roleplaying focus if your roleplaying focus is broad enough.


S.

Just to clear up the ship business from the movie: There's a whole scene (amongst a few that some fans are wanting in a director's cut of the movie) that explicitly shows Superman in said ship having flown back to Krypton. The ship is vastly bigger than the one that's carried him to Earth as a child, and suggests that he's grown a new ship or constructed one thanks to the knowledge crystals that are in the Fortress.

I do want to love the movie so much and even own it as part of a box set a friend got me of all the Superman movies to date. But....I love bits of it, most notably the airliner/shuttle rescue sequence. Where was that for the rest of the film instead of Super-Stalker and his whiny kid of doom?

But y'know...Singer went off and made Valkyrie with Tom Cruise, so.....


S.

Hello all.

I promised two of my friends on Virtue that I would post this, and so I shall.

This is a shout-out to those dedicated folk that make our Supergroup Bases...well, super. Given the tools that they have (and from all accounts, they are like a stubborn dyslexic mule to work with), and the limitations of their time, these people pull off minor and major miracles on a regular basis.

Imagine my surprise earlier this evening when one of my friends was showing me around a Coalition base he's been working on and off with for years now and to see the incredible level of detail added to it. Rooms had fire hoses in them (Occupational Health and Safety reasons, he commented). A full night club with a floor section replaced with 256 stacked bookcases. A cinema! And last but by no means least, another person had been contracted in to build an apartment complex inside the base! And it was totally believable! I didn't think someone could pull off furnishings, stovetops, showers, beds and furniture given the limitations of the base editor, yet here it was.

And my other friend showed his mastery of spiralling columns, acheived by 'weaving' curved floor decorations together from floor to ceiling. I am and continue to remain in awe of these people, who can take these objects and manipulate them so to create things the original program could have never anticipated.

I sincerely genuinely hope that the dev team look to this group in the future, who have said whenever I've enquired of them that they would love simpler, more intuitive controls and far far more options for building than what they have now. I also sincerely hope that the technology and art assets brought to bear in Going Rogue also become available for base builders, because quite frankly I think they deserve it. These people show me why for no other reason than the aesthetics and the desire to actually be in these enviroments, bases have a relevance that has long stood away from their original functions as PvP staging grounds and never fully realised bases of operations, pun unintentional.

I want to see base building be as elegant as in something like Second Life or the Sims and be as graceful as Galaxies could be. I hope others will join me in expressing their appreciation and desire to see base builders get the tools they rightly deserve.


S.

For me, it was nearly midnight Wednesday when the first news came across on late-night television, Australian time. It didn't seem like much at first, but then the first pictures came across the screen, and I knew it was something bad, something horrible.

And then the second plane hit.

I stayed up that entire night as events unfolded and was shocked and stunned. I never felt more helpless also, being so far away. I also remember getting online to the MUX I was playing at the time and there was one person in New Jersey who could see the plumes of smoke from the tower. I spent as long as I could awake calming people as the situation became clear, but I can only imagine the fear people felt seeing that so close and thinking that World War III had broken out.

One of the first times in my life I really genuinely wanted superheroes to be around to help us.


S.

This is the stunt costume. Baggier and loose-fitting for stunts. You could not wear the form-fitting latex as suggested in the promo shots for Chris Evans and be expected to not only handle a motorbike at speed but also do physical stunts.

Ignore the patterning; it's a visual reference so when you see the guy for the fraction of a second on screen, you go 'oh, it's Captain America's costume'. As another poster correctly pointed out, you have the stunt and 'Hero' versions of movie costumes for all sorts of movies. Indiana Jones even. That fedora and jacket were tailored for Harrison Ford and him only. They certainly used a less weathered jacket and a cheaper hat for stunts.

Not remotely worried.


S.

I thought it was great fun, and I like the series very much. And why? It remembers the universe from which it came. No convoluted 'reimagining' of the DCU, no need to fill it with unnecessary angst, and a Batman who enjoys what he's doing and is pretty damn good at doing it.

Plus, Diedrich Bader (yes, that one from the Drew Carey show and the lamentable Beverly Hillbilles movie) voices a great Silver Age Batman. Yay.


S.

A lot of this is indeed generational, but I think the poll's intent is to try and measure the lasting impact of a given show culturally, and the Lucy series that eventually ran for thirty years is something you can't underestimate, along with Lucille Ball's position in the industry as the person who formed the production company and was its president for much of its life and helped other shows get off the ground (note when you watch original Star Trek, it's filmed in the Desilu studios).

Yes, a lot of the older comedies are formulaic, but it's because the demographic back then was considered to the Midwest and older people, and it wasn't until the 70's that it all shifted to younger, urban comedies like Good Times and All in the Family. I think what they wanted people to consider was that broader impact on society and their lasting iconic status, and I'm surprised that Seinfeld wasn't there also, even though it was probably more appreciated by comedians than a general audience over time.


S.

I think we'll see a lot of what's been requested, really. Noble Savage's All Things Art: threads hit on costumes specifically at one stage and I saw a number of things canvassed that he particularly liked. What I saw he liked were:

Civilian/day ware clothes: Most notably what a lot of citizen NPC's wear.

Animal/alien-like parts: A particularly savvy forum poster Photoshopped many existing features onto faces to demonstrate how this could be done and his response was that the Art Department really liked this. The user also posted pictures of cowboy, tech armor, and magic costumes that were asymmetrical. These were asked to be forwarded by PM to Noble Savage.

Anime and giant robots? Apparently he really likes those and would somehow like to squeeze giant mecha in there. Go figure....

As many NPC costume parts as possible: He definitely said as many NPC parts from Going Rogue as they could would be ported over for player use (nothing was said about power animations and the like, but I guess it's possible) and that older parts such as Hellion and Skull jackets and other NPC groups would become available too.

I am expecting something of a costume explosion soon, and I'd fully back it. Releasing the NPC stuff to players would dramatically increase our options and allow those who want to theme themselves as a player version of an NPC group would finally be able to do so. In addition, it'd tide people over for a significant amount of times for 'regular' outfits whilst newer things can be concentrated on by the art team.

I think the only other options that he was looking at were those to do with holsters, back items and so on. It's been a sticking point for a while, but I think we might finally see some movement.


S.

Hi all.

As the title suggests, I'm trying to see if there's a definitive answer to this question. I would very much like to buy both the t-shirts and the sketchbook, but the impression I have from the NCSoft Support center suggests that I can only pay in Pounds or Euros, and that there's no delivery to the Oceania area.

If that's the case, I'm wondering if there's an alternate means of getting these items?


S.

I think it works simply because it gives the writers breathing room to pace the stories involved. That way you're going from a to b with little filler going on and hitting all the notes that you want to hit.

It's about as decent a compromise as you'll get with there being no prospect of a return to 23 half-hour episodes a season.


S.

There was a Hulk that was powered by cosmic energy, a Hulk-bot built by....the Asgardians, I think? That was running around and causing confusion also. Banner did the big smash on it.


S.

I think Hamidon exists in Praetoria (those of us who have been in the sewer system there have heard something down there, I have no idea what), but after a nuclear holocaust where Praetoria may be the only city on the planet?

It's way way more than an amoeba. I like to think of the phrase 'The Coming Storm' as a perfect storm. One that has the very worst elements blended together in the most perfect way.

When the stories of the survivors of the Shadow Shard tell you that Rularuu broke his world...and Praetorian Earth came so close to being broken....I look at Rularuu...and Hamidon.

Food for thought....


S.

That'd be ironic, given that Danny Rand I think was English but was blonde and about 20....

S.

What Zortel said.

It's very cool. Got that whole hail Caesar thing going on, though you could just as easily ignore the salute part and use the final stance for tribute/memorial moments.


S.

Ray Park has wanted this role forever. And I think he can act well enough now to possibly pull it off.

S.

Well, this largely falls on the shoulders of Jeph Loeb. And as much as I despised the whole Red Hulk saga and the really poor writing of him punching out the Watcher and Thor and so on, I have to have some sympathy for the guy.

He really didn't stop writing comics after the death of his son, and I think it really shows here. Red Hulk reads like the ultimate power fantasy; he can take down anyone, he outthinks everyone, he's just unstoppable. I'm no psychologist, but I can see someone who's lost a child writing a character that never loses.

At least they've brought it to an end (even if the two-year-in-the-building fight between Hulk and Skaar ended in a panel for no reason I thought was good), and we now have the 'Hulk Family'. Whittle it back to Betty, Bruce and Skaar (so long as they ditch the emo attitude) and I'll be starting to be okay with it.


S.

I only noticed this today as I was hanging out with some SG friends and the course of conversing, I went to go to a regular salute emote...and lo and behold...Praetorian Salute!


Thanks! Very cool emote, that one. I know a few people want it, too.


G.

Totally agreed with that, Samuel. I had to reroll a Brute I'd made specifically to be a Resistance Crusader in Praetoria and I came to one of the first Morality Missions there (in Nova) and made a choice which made sense for my character but made me a Loyalist. Upon enquiring, I discovered I would have to run all the Loyalist content in Imperial City before I'd get a chance to change sides again. In addition to that, I was totally locked out from getting to Resistance contacts that I already had.

So yes, I'd definitely be in favor of morality meters in Praetoria as well. I think this would also help tremendously in the Rogue Isles. In discussion with some friends, we came to the conclusion that if you had a factional system with Khalinda and Burke (your starting contacts), the whole story of the 'Chosen One' would be given an extra depth. Imagine choosing not to do Recluse's bidding in his project and saying 'no, I'm gonna do it my way'.

Choice and even the illusion of choice gives a player so much more input and investment into their characters, and this has to be encouraged more and more. And honestly, I can't see new players who have played through Praetoria coming into Paragon or the Isles not wanting a similar amount of depth in their Primal lives.


S.

Honestly Troy....all these slanderous rumors and fear-mongering! There's only one thing you need to know about what's new in this game:

The steampowered lazer unicorns.


Where have you been? Some land that the dieties forgot?

....oh, right....




S.

Having seen these both in Beta and now Live, I would very much like to see these get unique maps that reflect the NPC's within them, particularly Fort Trident which is subbing as a HQ for the Freedom Phalanx. And the Phalanx HQ is the one major hero NPC location that for obvious reasons we can't see but has been shown to us in comics and the like.

Am I alone in wanting to see unique maps for these two places?


S.