vulpish_one

Sounds like a bug. Try typing "/screenshotui 1" into the chat box before taking your screenshot; that'll turn the UI on. (Once you've got shots you're happy with, "/screenshotui 0" will turn the UI off in future screenshots.) I think the people on the boards actually seeing your problem might be helpful, though.

Were that I had more time, but duty calls.

For now, I'll throw this out there: I'm in a small, but very active, RP community on Protector. Throw me a PM and I can see about introducing you around.

Good luck--wherever the road takes you--friend!

I'm officially ambivalent - I see the pros and cons of both sides quite clearly, and it's not my place to say that someone using the old "head wings" as cranial ridges should have that functionality removed. Meanwhile, the look of the game as a whole is beginning to suffer from "art drift." Making the game uniform is going to mean making it crisper all the way around.

That said, I came here from the Dev Digest. The post from Noble Savage that comes before the first post of this thread deals with new costume pieces losing functionality if shader options are turned down to a certain level.

Would revamped costume pieces be fully compatible with lower graphics options? Some of my friends (virtual and real) have to run the game on lower settings if they want to run it at all. I may be showing my ignorance of graphical design here, but if replacing old/adding new costume pieces could finally push the game into "unplayable" on low end systems, I'm not sure I could support it at all.

In other words, no matter what the choice, I hope you guys have a legacy system in the back somewhere to try it all out on.

I can go either way. I imprinted something fierce on Chell in Portal, right up to telling the final enemy where she could stick it. Which probably sounded pretty dorky when it's just me and my computer monintor, but I did it anyway. Link is also a wonderfully executed heroic cipher. I know I wasn't the only one yelling at Morpha to put me down. Playing a game with a character like that feels like walking through the adventure world yourself, sampling all it has to offer.

It falls flat sometimes, too. I didn't really care too much about the Lone Wanderer in Fallout 3, but the setting was interesting enough to keep me on the hook. The "I'm a floating gun" character even reached the pinnacle of deconstruction in BioShock.

At the other extreme, you have characters like Kratos, Solid Snake, and JRPG protagonist #291. These characters have personalities, goals, and aspirations, and it's my job as the player to help them accomplish things. Playing games with these sorts of protagonists feels more like I'm reading a book or watching a movie. It's enjoyable, but maybe not necessarily so interactive.

When these characters fail, it's usually because the audience doesn't react to the main character quite like the writers hoped they would. And that's going to be more subjective than "the player character is hollow." I can't see myself playing Prototype because I already don't like the main character, but I hear some people love the guy.

But there are ways to try to resolve the dilemma. Commander Shepard is essentially the perfect way to stand in the middle and reach for both ends: give the character a goal, but let the player choose from variations on personalities and methods. Heavy Rain does the same thing with n characters simultaneously. (I should probably take notes while playing that one.)

That doesn't always go right, either. The Grey Warden tried to have his cake and eat it too, but mostly fell mute while interesting things happened in the vicinity. That occasionally made me wonder why everyone in the room was suddenly looking at me for a decision, when I could well have been in the corner staring at cracks in the walls up to that point. Hideo Kojima created Raiden for MGS2 because you, as the pasty clueless mass of flesh that you are, will empathize with the pasty clueless androgynous protagonist. I don't think I need to rehash how the fandom reacted to that, but even trying to put a "blank" character in a series like MGS may have been a mistake from inception.

MMOs have to have enough flexibility in presentation to cater to both ends...and to the person that wants to farm White Silver Paladins and rolled a Pestilence-specced Hellmage because they're good at that once they hit level 43.14159. CoX does a very good job of that, but the moral choice systems--where they exist--add a little edge of Commander Shepard.

Having skimmed over the thread, I think most of the "obvious" picks have already been suggested. So, let's see what I can come up with in out-of-the-way ideas...

Shaffakoom: Discounting Scrappers, that leaves us with Tankers and Brutes. Anything else would be a disservice to his looming physique. Someone else suggested War Mace; have you toyed with the axe models for this character at all? Stone Melee might be a hard fit unless you alter the physiology of his race somewhat, but it does have such a satisfying "shaffakoom" sound to it, as Abrams pointed out. But with those gauntlets...perhaps an Energy Melee Brute? As far as secondaries go, Willpower is tough in game mechanics...if not in presentation.

Iprit: While everything about him screams "Necro/Poison" to me, too, I liked the Rad/Fire Blaster idea. Spines might work for this character; as a Stalker, I somehow see him materializing behind his opponents and absorbing them (" ime to di est!"), perhaps using a spine as a feeding tube. Then reconstitute them, add contagion, and..."deposit"...their remains elsewhere later to act as a disease vector.

Heck, Sam, if you don't use the "I-eat-you-through-my-hand-spikes" motif, I might.

Duriel: Okay. Can Fiery Melee be recolored to some sort of dull gray-green? Here's what I'm thinking: what if, on contact, she releases small swarms of insects on her enemies? They then begin to attack her opponents, causing DoT. That adds a whole new layer of squeamishness to the breath attack, which would imply she's hocking up a stream of her bestest little pals and spitting them on you. On the downside, the fire swords would need some form of explanation if you took them.

If you're looking for something really off-the-wall, how about Stone Armor? The crystalline look could be explained as her covering herself with a specific breed of her tiny friends.

She's actually the one I see as the most open-ended, though. For the record, I like the insect wings, but I generally prefer slim designs.

Well, as some of the people reading this may know, my character designs tend toward the subdued. Given a choice between creating a ten thousand year old spirit of divine retribution and a thirtysomething from Peoria who happened to be sharing a body with a ten thousand year old &c &c? I'll go with the latter every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Spider-Man was always one of my favorite heroes. He's funny in a fight, and he's fallible in his personal life. Being a hero was meaningful to him. We know because of all the sacrifices he had to make. Because...let's be honest. Being a hero sucks. Why do it? Because you feel like you should, for whatever reasons. If it was easy, every Outcast and Warrior would do it.

I'll side with the thesis of the OP. I've always thought that larger-than-life characters make taut, but otherwise somewhat routine, emotional scenes more visceral. Simply by standing on a larger-than-life stage, their triumphs and pitfalls are magnified. And I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way. You see, the characters we create in this game aren't that far removed, spiritually, from the heroes and gods of folklore. They are defined by their capabilities, but they are given life in their foibles (especially in European myths). Herakles may have had the strength of a god, but he was the victim of fits of rage. There's a reason his story endured for thousands of years.

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

Sadly, Maintenance Unit 009 was only moments away from a tragic accident that would illustrate exaclty how much Super Speeders prefer ramps to stairs.

If you like the "Large" gloves, then use those by all means. But let me put something else forward for consideration: one of my closest offline friends is a young woman who grew up in the 80s, when strong female role models were just beginning to trickle into popular culture. She's still a gamer and a writer today, and she has a strong prediliction for the capable female characters that made such an impact on her young psyche. And I can't blame her.

But I've helped her design some characters, too. One of her core design principles, though, was that her characters have to have some outward show of femininity. Otherwise, it rather defeats the point, no? Samus Aran doesn't do the trick. Neither does the perpetual victim, Princess Zelda. Lara Croft does. (Less Valkyrie and Swan, more Ms. Liberty, if you prefer.) Personally, I like the slightly softer look of the Tai gloves, and I think she'd agree.

That said, there's plenty of decorative touches about the character already: the tiara, the hair, the midriff. If you're not enamored of the Tai look, let me ask this: have you tried the different forearm wraps? Forearm wraps with chains could hopefully be made to match the leather boots and the chest detail. It'd have a delicate core wrapped in iron.

My villain saved the faulty clone, then let it walk away later. Why save it the first time? It's a potentially valuable pawn, and it did show the proper level of respect ("The Creator! The Creator!"). Why let it walk later? Because, when given the order to fall in, it chose to show courage.

The villain I was playing was violent. And spiteful. And a thousand other bad things. But also honorable.

I'm looking forward to more BioWare-esque decisions in future content.

Ethnicity is a part of a character's story. The degree to which ethnicity affects any individual person is highly variable, of course, but it's almost certain to have at least a minor impact on one's experiences and personality. I do have at least one character for whom "rich and white" was integral: said character was also slightly out of touch with how ugly life could be and got a very rude awakening. I've got one character who is ethnically third- or fourth- generation Irish-American, but puts more emphasis on "American" than "Irish."

I've got a few shades of Native American characters: two built around Aztec (or "nahuatl" or "Mexica", as they call them depending on context) culture and lore, and a far more contemporary Navajo whose backstory is, I understand, all too typical of someone from a Reservation these days: categorized by low-quality education and high poverty. However, he's less "Navajo" and more "poor, blue-collar, and Western."

Then, there's a character from an ethnicity that doesn't even exist on Primal Earth. I had free reign there, but the character in question is intimately tied to social class.

Amongst my less often used characters, I do have a 200 year old Chinese psychic, a 150 year old British assassin, and a 100 year old Italian American ex-mafioso. (He was a kneebreaker who worked his way up to skullbasher.) All of those carry attitudes that are, in some way, reflective of their socioeconomic histories.

I was playing a Dark Melee/Electric Brute who was being supported by a Kinetic/Something with Hide NPC. That's right: a Brute with a hidden buffer (complete with +End powers!) lurking nearby at all times. It was so perfect, I thought everyone got the same help, or possibly even help customized by AT.

I'll chime in, as well. Should I leave spoiler space? Eh, couldn't hurt...



















Two of the questions dealt with whether or not video games were becoming more violent. The first question asks, point blank, "Do you feel video games are becoming more violent?" I answered "Undecided" because, to my mind, it depends on the time frame and the genres being considered. Comparing, say, God of War III to the first Legend of Zelda is one thing. Comparing it to God of War II is another. Comparing it to Farmville is another, as well.

The follow up question asks something like "Do you feel the increased violence in video games relates to an increase in the qualities of graphics technology?" Predicated on my previous response, I had to take a non-answer there. However, when a question later on included a "if you answered 'no' to the previous question..." clause, it made me wonder if the investigator even realized someone might feel video games weren't becoming more violent.

Of course, this isn't a Simple Random Sample: I'd expect a pro-video game bias in the response because of the audience. Good luck, though!

To follow up: I petitioned support. They were able to restore my global friends list and chat channels; apparently, this issue affected more than one person. Anyone else experiencing the same problems should probably /petition in-game as well.

And customer service was prompt, professional, and personable.

Earlier today, my global chat options were offline: no global friends, no global channels. I assumed the global server was off and went about my day. A few minutes ago, my global friends list reappeared...except it's now empty. My global channels have vanished entirely, and my global chat handle (per Menu->Chat Handle) is similar to my previous chat handle, but has garbage text in it: it was @[globalname] and is now @a[globalname]"

Has anyone seen a problem like this before? Should I just bite the bullet and petition customer service?

Thanks in advance!

Congratulations to all of you! Here's to hoping Protector takes home first place in the inter-server competitions!