SuperOz

If you wanted something flashy and fun and simple to learn, the original Marvel Super Heroes by TSR. You can still find free PDF copies of the game and supplements on the net. Even the latest iteration of the game harkens back to the original.

If you want detailed, more custom versions, then try Aberrant by White Wolf. Went to a lot of trouble talking about supers in the real world and the impact they have. Those are always my go to's.



S.

Wow, I think I just started the biggest killjoy thread of the week. Excuse me for taking something that I thought was fun and exciting and interesting and saying 'I thought this was cool, it'd be great to emulate that'.

If you go see the film, enjoy it. I sometimes think the views on these forums are so narrow I'd have trouble finding room for a thread to go through the eye of a needle with them around. It was just a fun idea. Continue to rain on the parade, it's apparently what people like to do to pass the time here, depending on what way the wind's blowing.



S.

No spoilers. If you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it. If you have, then you know the particulars of the structure.


S.

I couldn't help but tease people in the main General Discussion forums about having zone events like the big climax of the film in New York city....I mean, wouldn't we all want something like that where pretty much every character gets to shine in a specific way?



S.

And why do I put that in the title?

Go and see the movie. Go and see something that happens in the film that I will simply call a zone event and then ask if you want to see something like that in the game.

Maybe not to the same scale and technical level, but in the way it's structured and the way it responds to a group of heroes and not just one.

People will want to have something like this, I think. But like I say, when you get to go see it (this includes you, Devs) cast a thought to if you'd want to see something with the zone event structure I mention and I think you'll find a lot of people will want it.

Fair warning, like I said. Feel free to respond if you've already seen the movie or after you do.



S.

I selected individual player housing as a desired feature; I think it's now universally acknowledged that bases aren't going to improve from where they are. It's a house of cards from a code perspective, and can be a beast to base builders. The people who do work magic with bases are wonderful in my book, but they're probably more aware than most how troublesome it can be to work with.

I'd ask people to get behind individual housing so we at the very least have a new, easier to use code base (which could maybe become base code 2.0) and let us use all the wonderful new assets for interiors that have blossomed since Going Rogue.



S.

Saw this just yesterday in a lovely deluxe cinema (out here in Australia, we have Gold Class cinemas where you get lazyboy chairs with the whole electric backrest/footrest thing and menu meals and alcohol if you want), and I loved the utter heck out of this film. It ranks up there with X-Men 2 for me (for very different reasons) as a superhero ensemble film.

Everyone gets a moment to shine. Every character has a character moment and Whedon lets his actors well....act. Robert Downey Jr looks reinvigorated as Tony Stark and Chris Evans projects just who Captain America is pitch perfectly.

And Mark Ruffalo is my new shiny perfect Hulk. I am a huge Hulk fan and I've had to go through two flawed movies before I get the big guy properly done on screen. Stay with us, Mr. Ruffalo. We need you.

Lots of funny lines and subversions of the genre (the bit with Loki near the end is hillarious) and plenty of moments to see the heroes in actual peril, which is hard to pull off in these movies.

I think Joss Whedon not only just stepped into the big leagues, but now will have the rub to pick and choose his projects. And how long have people thought he should, eh?

Five stars from me. Go see this, at least twice.



S.

I did say the list was far more comprehensively covered in the thread that David Nakayama started a while ago, VKhaun. It wasn't just me, it wasn't just a small specific list, and it wasn't just me and my renegade band of entitled posters wanting something so minute that it could be easily written off.

Go searching for it yourself if you want to read the thread. I'm pretty sure it's archived and you can go over it and judge for yourself. But I'm not going to play the marginalised whiner when it was something that was widely discussed.


S.

I have to admit to being a bit perplexed coming out of the FPS with the various discussions about costume sets and stuff, and being a bit amazed that somehow Cyberpunk and Post-Apocalyptic (which are so rooted in specific decades and genre that it'd be a very niche sort of audience who'd appreciate them...no disrespect to those who do) got moved forward seemingly at the expense of the long-discussed-on-the-forums Pulp/Golden Age costumes.

Again, no disrespect to the aforementioned, but the Golden and Pulp Ages of superheroes is as much intrinsic to the City setting as general supeherodom. And the thread that David Nakayama started was comprehensively discussed, to say the least. I know said thread was eventually shelved, but I felt a lot of work had moved forward in the design and what was asked for. To see that work apparently side-stepped or backburned on in favor of costume sets that has left myself and I suspect a few other people scratching their heads a bit confuses me.

I want to stress here that if this is what the studio wants to do, great. I just don't want to see the work already done on what is arguably more thematic (and I'd argue long overdue) for the game go by the wayside for the sake of populism. Maybe someone spoke up for Pulp/Golden Age, or someone heard or asked something and can clear this up, but it has left me wondering....



S.

I find it encouraging that they're not just tossing Praetoria aside, personally. I've been worried for a while that Praetoria was just a backdrop for the iTrials and once they were dealt with story-wise, that'd be it for content. I can feasibly push now to level 30 with First Ward and maybe a bit further with Night Ward, but I'd love to see a viable move to 50 in that setting, because it's a great alternative to blue and redside, or at least I'd like to think so.


S.

I found a comment made by the guys who do the Off the Cape podcast very interesting where they were speculating about what'd happen with the Shadow Shard (which I think will wind up being the probable battleground for the showdown with the Battalion...after all, Rularuu is a bigger tasty treat than any one Incarnate) and they said the way things were going, it pointed at a world reset.

Now I personally think that yes, there's major storylines that have existed since the beginning of the game (the Coming Storm possibly being one of the oldest) that are becoming resolved, and ultimately that means there comes a point of no return. You can't defeat Praetoria, and then the Battalion (shocking I know, but let's be honest...noone's going to write a storyline where the major antagonist is going to win) and then look it as a whole and then not go 'well, that's kind of everything, isn't it?'

I think a world reset isn't out of the question at that point. Things are definitely coming to an end if not a climax. It's hard for me to look at the story as it's going and not at least think that there's not big changes on the way, there's at least big endings. Fair comment?



S.

I own this and the original MSH rules; check in on the MWS site as they added some free stuff, including a completely random character generator, ala the Ultimate Powers book that the original MSH game put out years and years ago. And with a little searching, you can find all the original game stuff on PDF. I have a link to a site that is a repository for it and I'll link it once I find it.



S.

I live in the city where the Egyptian exhibit is on at the moment. Pretty exciting to see it's part of a larger and more interesting manuscript....


S.

It's funny that this has come up, as my SG only this past weekend put on a group-only PvP event that had us all match up and fight for fun and obstensibly to stay in character. I got knocked out in the first round and I'm not angry about this (it was against friends, after all) but it reminded me of all the things I don't like about PvP.

I'm a team player. I always will be. If I'm not running around soloing, then I'm tackling bosses, TF's and whatnot with my friends. And really, that's the definition of what MMO's are about, that sense of community and teamwork, at least for me. So the notion of fighting against people when the game has plenty to offer feels wrong to me, there's lots to do as is.

And I have to agree with the general perception that most people get when they go into a PvP zone; noone's there to say 'okay, let's have some fun and fighting and noone's taking it that seriously'....the problem is that most come away with the opposite impression. People are deadly serious, there's no fun about it and if you're actually standing still for more than three seconds that's an instant character flaw on your behalf and also a weakness to be exploited.

The attitude that people display can be amongst the worst I've seen people display online. Being 'the best' is paramount. Acting the worst, where no low is considered too low with regards to derogatory remarks is not only expected, it's encouraged. The mentality that goes along with it proclaims proudly that 'it's only PvP, toughen up princess' is the sort of thing you expect from sporting jocks and frankly really anti-social people. The number of people I've spoken to in RV and a few other maps that are welcoming (because they want new blood) are on a ratio of 1 to 50, at least in my experience.

And PvP here is unbalanced, period. In the event I mentioned before, it became blatantly obvious which powersets were performing and which ones just weren't meant for it. Fights generally were very one-sided and it was rare combinations that made for anything that lasted a while and was entertaining, but even then it was a slugfest where not much really happened.

And to top it off...the UI just doesn't work. Half the time matches were impossible to make and the other half just had matches failing to load at all. It seemed like random chance to have matches working where people could just spar or whatever, and there was no opportunity it seemed to support groups larger than say....two.

None of these things make PvP attractive to me. Even Trials (a side of the game I don't care for much either) is better organised, better supported and even more visually interesting than PvP in this game currently. There's not even a casual incentive to do PvP that I can see aside for a few giggles now and then with friends.

And seriously....couldn't we make Arenas into other event areas? The buildings seem ready made for community events.



S.

Team 1138 on patrol has reported an increase in unusual odors coming from the nearby sewer access tunnels. (Yes, we've all heard the joke about something rotten in Praetoria.) Is Waste Management aware of the problem?

The last person who reported back from there mentioned not only apparent partygoers who when approached appeared to go into violent conniptions, but an abundance of unusually clad and unauthorised individuals (see unescorted individual report, page 1) who I'm assuming isn't Waste Management having another 'wear your party clothes to work' day.

I have to agree. You can even fit weapons not traditionally associated with the set into this category. For instance, I ached to have a set of escrima sticks for Dual Blades, because all the attacks fit the pattern of how that fighting style works. In some ways I wish the set was called Dual Weapons, just to broaden out the set.

But that aside, it's worth broadening out weapons and weapon types. If we're getting medieval costume sets and mecha armor, then give us weapons for them that are compatible with older sets too.


S.

This has been, and will continue to be, a question revolving around the player skeleton models as they stand. Every limitation we discuss, be it hair here, fingers, certain types of skirts, texture mapping and so on, revolves around the very glaring problem that remains with the bodies as we have them.

I should point out that any proposal to replace them would in turn require every single costume part in the game to be redone, which is just unfeasible. But there's an increasing disparity between the quality and in an increasing number of cases, functionality of costume parts and the body model on which it rests.

What seriously has to be looked at, at least I feel, is some means to upgrade and/or redesign the model as we have it. Moveable hair can be done for low-end rigs with more modern game engines. It currently exists in the space fantasy glow stick game out there. People I'm sure can attest to that freely, and it's a low-end game for a PC now, as MMO's by necessity have to be.

It's in the same ballpark as weapons customisation, power customisation...really any sort of customisation. It probably can be done, it's a question of time and resources. And I think it's becoming overdue.



S.

Well, I have to concede the idea is interesting, but just because there are cartoons or video games with animals wielding weapons in their mouths, doesn't mean it necessarily equates to supehero canon.

At the very best, you have superpowered animals, and they're strictly a niche/novelty area of the genre (Legion of Superpets, anyone?) and at worst, they're anthropromorphised into animals with human-shaped bodies. I have trouble honestly seeing this get up as an idea beyond minion status as we have it with Beast Summoning. Things are already crowded if you have one set of player-controlled animals on a map, and to add to that with power effects...? I could just imagine the furore that'd cause on the forums.

I see things at a near-critical mass as it is right now, and I think this would push things over the edge a bit, to be honest.



S.