The bigness!

I considered putting this in the All Things Art thread, but I actually think I want a bit more of a discussion on this topic and less so to make an actual suggestion, though that's also on the agenda. I'll be posting some pics, so if they end up stretching the horizontal, I'll probably have to split this into two post. Let's see:





Yeah, they stretch the horizontal. Give me, um... An hour to compose the rest of this in a separate post, please.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You make a post about bigness and then worry about things being too big?

The two pictures above are from Darksiders, a game with a very... "Particular" sense of style and design. The reason I bring it up is because Darksiders designs almost all of its characters as very, very big and very, very chunky, and this is no better demonstrated by the two pics above, those of War's Chaoeseater sword and that pistol that I don't know the name of. I call it "the gun."

Why bring that up at all, you ask? Well, there has been an ongoing debate here in City of Heroes on the subject of "bigness" pretty much for as long as I can remember, predating even BABs thoughts on the subject. Zombra, when he was still here, used to have a jolly good time making fun of me for wanting to use BIG costume items, like the Large Robotic gloves, the Enforcer boots and so on, and would constantly mock my unceasing complaints that broadswords for women just weren't big enough. And yet when this comes up, a lot of people seem to feel that too large ANYTHING just wouldn't fit the game.

Historically, and I know the guy will hate me for bringing it up, BABs has expressed unwillingness to put in really big weapons into the game unless they had the proper animations to reflect such weapons' weight. After all, a big weapon swung around lightly feels like a flimsy prop more than like a lump of iron with a handle. I actually used to agree with this... To some extent. But the more I play games with a less... Compulsive outlook on my own tastes, the less inclined I am to agree with this, and for reasons very simple: It just looks awesome from where I'm standing.

Back to Darksiders, and the reason I brought it up: The game has balls, if I may say so. What other games would depict with some sense of moderation, Darksiders just drops on your screen in a fireball and screen shake. What other games would try to limit and make more believable, Darksiders makes almost grotesque. The game, for those unfamiliar, revolves around the player character War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, involved in intrigues too complex to explain here, basically going around killing various flavours of demons, and some angels here and there just to show he doesn't take sides.

War is already a pretty big guy, about twice the height of an ordinary human, and bulky to an unnatural extent. On top of that, he wields a sword that's actually taller than he is, a handgun that's about as long as his forearm, and has a cloven gauntlet that, judging by the zombies running around, is twice the size of a man's chest just in itself. By all accounts, this should be ludicrous, and indeed many reviewers have described it as such. But then on the other hand, it is also completely glorious from where I'm standing.

In a way, popular culture in general and the City of Heroes community in particular have trained us to develop an almost compulsive feeling of... "Refined taste," I suppose. We aren't supposed to like dumb things, we aren't supposed to like simplistic concepts, we aren't supposed to like a six-year-old's view of masculinity. I don't know about other people, OK, but at least for me, that is the case. I've always been a fan of the simple, basic, unrefined concept of raw brute strength, but have always attempted to temper this desire in order to appear more... I don't know. Intelligent? But having played a few specific games recently and otherwise having been exposed to certain concepts, I'm slowly embracing the fact that I may well just be a dumb guy who likes dumb, simple entertainment. In fact, I'd sooner be the dumb guy having fun than the smart guy to whose ideals nothing ever measures up. And I've been both, so I know what I'm saying.

Darksiders was, in a sense, a cleansing experience for me, because I adored everything about that game, and realised I wanted to bring as much of that as I could in City of Heroes... Then I realised that I can't. There aren't any swords nearly big enough, with the possible exception of that one Rularuu's Bane which I've already used before. There aren't any glove options big enough, at least not in the way War's left hand is big - his has a large hand with large fingers, whereas our gloves all have relatively the same size hands with only bigger forearms, which isn't quite the same. The very concept of what War represents in terms of character design is something at, here in City of Heroes, is more or less considered bad artwork for lack of proportions and lack of artistic restraint. It also runs afoul of BABs problem with large weapons swung lightly, something I have grown to vehemently disagree with in the face of evidence from other games.

And it's not just swords and armour that "the bigness" concerns. At least for them I can make the argument that the bigger the melee weapon, the harder it hits. But this concerns all areas of design, more specifically that of guns. The pistols we have right now, for instance, are all fairly small, with all of ONE big variant - the match compensators, which are both low-res and low-poly models and are also untintable AND EVEN THEN aren't actually all that big. And this carries on to rifles, bows and so forth. The only really big rifle we have so far is the Redding Rail Rifle, and that's just long, not big. Techbot Alpha has gone on to suggest bigger cannons, and to that extent I'd agree, but I feel regular weapons too can receive implausibly big options already in them, just for the sake of being there.

I guess the point of all of this is, and to put it as a question: How do you feel about the concept of "bigness," as defined not just by absolute size, but by looking bulky and having out-of-scale big weapons? I suspect many people wouldn't care for such options, and that's just fine and dandy, but would you actually feel it detracts from the game to actually have such options? Would you feel it detracts from the game to have a sword that stands taller than you are, to have a handgun that's bigger and longer than most rifles? How do we, as a community, feel about this?

*edit*
Something that made me laugh out loud was the description of War, the second horseman of the apocalypse, from revelation:

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When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!" Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.

To him was given a large sword, indeed

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You know, I'm going to go ahead and agree with you on some of these points. While I don't feel the overall art style of City of Heroes would mesh terribly well with the exaggerated bulkiness of the style you're describing (used by games that want to convey a sense of big badassedness, like Unreal Tournament), I think CoH could stand to use a little more bigness.

One thing I don't like is the way the character models scale when their size is increased. Hands and heads remain mostly the same, the rest of the body however balloons out to a degree that is, at least in my opinion, aesthetically hilarious. And also pretty ugly.

Now it's 5 AM and I haven't slept so none of this post is going to make any sense but here we go anyway, I would love it if "huge" meant "huge" and not "hormone problem." If you take a male bodytype and increase the body mass slider it looks terrible. Really terrible. I haven't actually seen anyone take the slider that far unless they're trying to intentionally make a bulbous monstrosity.

I've also always wanted to see CoH convey a difference in character sizes. While it's hilarious that a 4 foot female swings an axe with exactly the same amount of force as a seven foot gorilla, it also kind of.... well I'll just say "sucks" that their brawl also hits with the same kind of wimpy impact I'd expect from an angry child. And trust me, I know a lot about fighting children. Unfortunately the only real solution to this problem involves a ton of work for poor BAB.

Now here's the problem. The game you're describing, Darksiders, is an obvious parody of the overly-machismo and uses this nexaggerated style to help convey that. The art style of City of Heroes tries for the most part to retain a serious air. What you're describing might feel more at home in Champions Online, whose art style is purposefully cartoonish and things that are really big don't stand out as being stupid-looking. Because everything is stupid-looking. Champions Online sucks.

That said, I think it could work. Things that are impossibly big and unwieldy are a staple of superhero... stuff.

I agree with you on most points. The one point I disagree on, which is neither here no there, is I suspect Darksiders takes itself pretty seriously, as I hear the lead artist actually has that particular style as his "thing." And there's room for everybody in the entertainment industry.

More to point, I couldn't agree more with you on the way our characters scale up. I've had many grievances with body sliders and proportions over the years, but you've pinned it down in one go - as a character gets bulkier, the hands remain the same, making the forearms appear like cancerous growths over a normal person. A big guy should have bug hands and big feel, but our big guys don't. The balloon out from the centre, getting massive chest, upper arms and upper legs, but retain relatively small feet and hands, as well as small-ish heads. I know the term "man hands" is typically derogatory in nature, but few games go as far to avoid it as this one.

To be honest, probably the first thing that struck me and stayed with me was War's left gauntlet. Its sheer, utter size is beyond impressive, and yet he seems to retain full functional use of that hand, using it to grab, climb, bunt, shoot and even hold the reins of his horse (he IS a horseman of the apocalypse, after all). I really wanted that gauntlet in City of Heroes, until I remembered that our hands don't scale up with body bulk or glove size. Now I know I just CAN'T, and it's depressing.

I agree that Darksiders' art style probably wouldn't fit City of Heroes on a direct transplant, but I feel this has more to do with the technical aspect of both games. City of Heroes uses the Cryptic engine, which is by this point probably 10 years old. It does well in describing relatively simpler character designs, but doesn't really work well with obscene detail levels. Darksiders uses the Unreal 3 engine (I think from looking at it), and has everyone overdesigned with what I would describe as "needless" detail. In the words of Yahtzee, War looks like "someone started drawing him and never ******* stopped." "What War looks like is a coral reef on legs." He has about half a dozen faces on each side of his sword, a complex curved blade, he has faces on his shoulders, faces on his hip armour, he has a skull on his gauntlet, he has bits of cloth everywhere, boots made out of belts... The guy is over-designed, and that level of complexity just doesn't fit City of Heroes both for technical reasons and for the fact that we have a more... Stylistic design.

On the other hand, I don't think the actual bulkiness is out of place in City of Heroes. The game as it was originally designed did indeed favour slimmer designs, with even Freakshow Bosses being more scaled-up, but not specifically bulky. On the other hand, the original design gave us the Large Robotic gauntlets, which to this day remain the largest glove option available to any character in the game. Not only then, but we have since gotten characters like Black Scorpion and Mender Silos, who basically exploit the concept of overwhelming bigness without making it look tumorous, and even Back Alley Brawler and Marauder both display the clear signs of aesthetic bigness. They're not just big guys. They're bulky guys with large gauntlets and large shoulders.

I firmly believe that City of Heroes as an environment can use practically every type of character design ever invented, provided it goes through some adaptation. And I firmly believe that aesthetic bigness is a design that's largely unrepresented, with only a handful of piece, alone in their respective categories, really support.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think we could use more bulky stuff, certainly. I like diversity.

The problem, I think, is not just with our characters but with the NPC-favoring bias. NPCs are allowed to be 10 feet tall and much bigger than player characters, with special designed bulky gloves and heads and feet. Just look at Noble Savage. He's one big slap in the face of people who want to be THE BIGGEST. Nobody can be as big as he is. It's unfair.

Noble Savage is a good example, yes. He's big in exactly the way I described, and over-detailed to boot. My thinking was more along the line of... Well, I'll just go out and say it: I want to be as big as a Fake Nemesis. There, I said it

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I think this is essentially the same as the "gun ninjas vs cowboys" (or whatever it was called) debate from a week or two ago. If you lean more towards "realistic" superheroing then you're probably somewhat against automobile sized swords and guns made out of storm sewer pipes. If you lean more towards the "It blew up real big!" mindset then that sort of thing may appeal to you more.

I'm personally more of the former than the latter and enjoyed the more refined equipment styling of an older, first generation fantasy MMORPG to the over the top silliness in a later, widely popular game.

There are too many catgirls, G0KUs, and Girl Zeldas running for me to be worried about the flavor of my immersion while outside my circle of friends. Stupid-big swords are not worse than these things, so thumbs up from me.

I will note though, that BaB's is correct; War looks awesome because he is animated to use a sword the size of a bus. If it were my game, I wouldn't introduce a ZOMGSword without the proper animations to back it up, because it would drive me MAD.

So that said, I'd actually get behind this (as opposed to being ambivalent about it) if it meant the development of a "Huge Weapon Melee" powerset, with great sweeping animations appropriate for WTF weapons of many flavors, from fullblades to massive axes, to Jurrassic's car-hammer or Jack-in-Irons' People-Basher (unlockable, of course) and things like traffic signals or Telephone Poles. The set could perhaps be somewhat slower than other sets, but in turn generate more rage (for brutes) better punch-voke and bruising (tankers) and crit more often (scrappers). Just some thoughts.

Bigness in City of is not an idea that thrills me.

The first and most obvious problem for me is that no matter how big you make your guns/swords/fists, they do just as much damage as the person with regular size weapons. (Unless we get a BigMcLargehuge Melee/Blast set)Seeing a person dual wielding Sherman Tanks for Dual Shot's damage just makes me raise my eyebrow and wonder "Wonder what he/she/it is compensating for."

Of course, I'm shallow and judgemental, so thats more of a personal problem.

On the other hand, seeing someone dual wield Sherman Tanks would be absolutely hilarious. The first time. Usually, A character who wields overly large weapons is unique in his doing so. He or she is an aberration amongst combatants. Either because the weapon is tremendously difficult to use or physics just get in the way. The more people who do it, the less interesting it becomes.

Bigness is good every now and then, but it shouldn't ever become commonplace.

I can only speak for myself in that :
(a) I probably wouldn't use them, and
(b) for me, they'd seem out of place, even if fully designed around/scaled properly/etc.

My point of reference here is Aion. Where, yes, there are wildly impractical bows, swords as tall as you are, axes with ten foot handles (ok, more 'polearms,' really, with thoroughly impractical heads,) armor with spikes and blades sticking out in such a way that... really, you put it on, you're not moving for fear of slicing something important to you off.

To me, it looked silly, but it didn't look out of place there because *everyone* used those things. You didn't really have much of a choice. It was the entire game design. And since *everyone* used them, it was acceptable as part of the world. It fit in just like the purple trees and such.

Now, bringing a set like that here?

For me, it would be jarring. I'd have to say I probably wouldn't play a "giant weapon" set, and would find it somewhat distracting to be on a team with someone who was. For it to "work" for me, it would have to be... I guess "context aware" or "location aware" would be a good way to put it. Are we out on the street? Then yes, you CAN hit someone with a car and bean them with a lightpole. In a cave or - say - the wooded areas of Croatoa? Boulders and trees. They'd fit the setting while displaying some over-the-top degree of strength.

Character-size-wise, I'd have no problem with someone being Fake Nemesis size. I wouldn't do it, but the character size wouldn't bother me, with everything scaled appropriately. It's just that step from "really big" to "outlandish" with the weapons that would make me cringe.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I played WH40k (an obvious inspiration for the aesthetic of Darksiders) so I may be biased. I like the look...but I don't know how it would mesh here...not so much the size, but the chunkiness, i guess, that is a part of making weapons and such of that size work. I don't think upscaling things would work with the look in general of CoX.

edit - The gun was called "Mercy", btw

I think ultra-big weapons and armor would work fine in this game. City of Heroes is nothing if not eclectic. I can team with Fae creatures, zombies, silver age heroes and post-apocalyptic, time traveling robot ninjas at any time. Why would someone with a really big gun or sword really be that out of place?

When I saw the title of this thread, my first thoughts were the various items we see in the environment that are out of scale for the default height of a character in the costume creator - and how much that bugged the heck out of me when I come across it.

It's really immersion-breaking for me, especially in building a base (I know, Sam, not a big deal for you since you don't build bases). There are many items, especially Arcane ones, that seem to be much larger than those similar items found in Oran-Bega.

Laughably oversize swords and guns wouldn't bother me as much as those items - but when I want that effect, I just scale the character as physically smaller - the big-a** guns for DP and legacy weapons like the legacy broadsword and MM pistols are comically huge for that character (especially since all my characters are female). And since there are items in the current environment that are already out of scale (in my eyes), running with a character generated in the costume creator as being on the small side is no more immersion-breaking than coming across any other oversize item in the environment.

I don't think this style would mesh particularly well with the current artwork. Things like the Rikti Sword are about as big as things can comfortably get, in my opinion. So /unsigned, sorry.

I'm not particularly concerned so much with big melee weapons, but having huge looking ranged weaponry sounds like a good idea to me. Considering the animation times for Dual-Pistols the weight of the weapon could work with whatever increased size of the models. Big Assault-rifles? Hell yeah!

I think Huge bodytypes need a 'Bigness' update sweep, the proportions are a little silly in itself, given how many people have 'silliness' issues, what kind of respecting huge character would choose to have a tiny pin of a head if they had the choice? Unfortunately considering the way the head sliders work, it would most likely take a lot of work to make heads bigger in a way that doesn't end up expanding into the pit of the neck. Then there's the hands and feet, I often have to use the Large pieces just to correct the proportions of Huge characters, more specifically the wraps costume pieces. Since physique sliders do very little to the hands and feet. Things like the large tech/steampunk gloves are a step in the right direction.

And for 'big people doing normal damage', while it may take away from the superficial appearance, in the end the only way to maintain diversity is to make everything unaffecting gameplay. City of Heroes is one of the few MMOs out there where you can look however you want and still be as good as the next guy or gal. If people want to have broad, towering characters they should, as much as ultra-tiny one.

This game could do with bigger heads, hands and feet for Huge characters, big armour and weapons would be good too if they match up with the animation times.

/signed by the way!

I may pick and choose quotes, but I'll try to address everything I can think of regardless.

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Originally Posted by Dementor_NA I will note though, that BaB's is correct; War looks awesome because he is animated to use a sword the size of a bus. If it were my game, I wouldn't introduce a ZOMGSword without the proper animations to back it up, because it would drive me MAD.

Well... Yes and no. In a few sparing instances, he does slam the sword on the ground and cause camera shake (specifically in the cinematic the sword pic is from), but for the most part, he swings that thing with more speed and finesse than I'm actually able to visually follow. War, I suppose, is super-strong, and as such doesn't really seem to display any weight swinging around a sword bigger than most monsters. War actually wields that thing one-handed the entire game and I'm not sure if he even HAS any two-handed animations at all. Maybe one baseball-style heavy swing, but that's about it.

The dude, of course, is strong enough to chuck cars with his left hand, punch out giant robots (seriously) and with the Tremor Gauntlet, actually punch entire train cars with great speed. War is kind of like Soul Reaver's Raziel, in that he's stronger than he looks, only Raziel was able to pick up puzzle blocks, instead.

All of that is to say that I agree with BABs in principle - a heavy weapon set with actual slow, heavy animations would be great. I fully agree, in fact. However, I realise that this is NOT going to happen. Ever. Not in this game. What I don't necessarily agree with is that such weapons in current sets would look silly. In fact, Broadsword (and, by extension, Battle Axe and War Mace) already have pretty heavy-looking animation, heavy enough, in fact, that I cannot play the sets with small, short weapons or they just look weird. To my eyes, having a Buster Sword, just to pull a random example, would indeed make much sense in there, as would a non-scaled-down Nemesis Staff for War Mace, come to think of it.

I just disagree on how bad it can look even with light animations, for the simple fact that War is fast, agile and extremely light on his feet with that huge lump of metal in one hand, and having played the game over twice (twice in four days, in fact), I can safely say that he looks very good with them.

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Originally Posted by Kasoh The first and most obvious problem for me is that no matter how big you make your guns/swords/fists, they do just as much damage as the person with regular size weapons. (Unless we get a BigMcLargehuge Melee/Blast set)Seeing a person dual wielding Sherman Tanks for Dual Shot's damage just makes me raise my eyebrow and wonder "Wonder what he/she/it is compensating for."

On the one hand, I agree that this is weird. On the other hand, our game is currently so far down that rabbit hole I'd forgotten it was ever any other way. Even just looking at basic NPCs, certain questions are unavoidable. Why does a large revolve hurt less than a wooden baseball bat? Why can I sustain high explosive rockets to the face, but knives and tire irons really hurt me? If a Fake Nemesis is taller at the waist than most people are at the head, why doesn't it just stomp on me? Why does a GUN do measurably less direct damage than a bow and arrows? And that's just picking obvious examples.

To go a little more obscure, Dual Blades can range from "barely there" daggers like the Main Gauche/Dorte, to... Tell you what - load up the editor with a Dual Blades anything and pick the two Organic Armour Blades from the Mutant Booster Pack. The way those things scale, at least on women, they are about 2/3 of the character's height, and I can fight with two of them. Not only am I not any slower than a guy with two Swiss army knife blades, but he doesn't do any less damage than my big honkin' lumps of steel and biomass.

What I'm saying is that this already exists in the game, and I personally feel that this is one instance where player's discretion needs to be trusted a little more. For me, just as an example, a Sword Scrapper feels like he (or she, as the case may be) is dealing a LOT more damage when using a big sword. I know the numbers are the same, I know there is no difference, but visually seeing a much bigger sword swung around make me smile a LOT more than seeing, say, the Valkyrie Sword swung around. I'm almost sorry we asked for it to be ported to Broadsword, but that's neither here no there.

I want to bring up an argument we had with David before (and about muscular females, no less ), in that the current editor already allows you to do hideous, immersion-breaking things. I don't care what you say about comic books, but Rainbow Cow and Evil Channey do not fit as far as I'm concerned, yet people are perfectly free to make those. Trying to restrict the editor such that people can't make stupid stuff (even if we assumed that's a good idea to begin with) would just leave us with not much choice at all. The best part about costume piece additions is that you don't have to use the ones you don't like. I know I'll never use the mini-katana, the bone or the rusty blade. EVER! But I still recognise the need for them to exist.

And, yes, I realise it might seem off if your Golden Age Whizzer happened to team with War and Cloud Strife, but in a medium which has featured squirrels with guns, I at least tend to relegate that to "weird people today."

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Originally Posted by Kasoh One last observation in our differences, samuel_tow: I HATE being bigger than the foes I fight. I've always felt like the bully fighting people smaller than me. I know it's ridiculous-- sparred with a high-school-state-level boxer that was 6 inches shorter than me in BASIC-- he kicked everyone's butt with pugle sticks-- but I still can't get over the feeling. I blame grade school lunchtime scrapping. A third grader fighting a first grader = bully. A third grader fighting a 6th grader = notsomuch. Size generally followed those lines back then & I never really got that feeling out of my system.

This really is where opinion comes into play, but for myself, being able to play a big brute who's considerably larger than even the larger of his enemies has always been an alluring prospect. It has also been an elusive prospect, since very few games are designed like this. Darksiders, luckily, IS designed like this. As I mentioned, War is a big guy, and not just in terms of physical size, though he does tend to thud when he steps. More he's the classic big guy character - always confident, always fearless, always stylishly cool (in the "cool guys don't look at explosions" sense). A big giant demon offers "Maybe we can make a deal?" to which he replies "You won't like my terms." in that he needs her "still-beating heart," as per Samael.

What I like about War is a concept hinted at throughout the entire game - that being a Horseman of the Apocalypse, he mostly likely will, and most probably can, stand against the combined armies of heaven and hell... Alone! That's one of the prospects that thrills me so much about the game - that this guy is less a character and more a force of nature. He's not just some guy called War. He IS war, the practical concept. Can he fight alone against everyone and every thing? Hell yes! He's WAR! It's what he does!

I know some people find playing a character who's stronger and bigger than his enemies to feel like they're being a bully. Now, if you're playing a villain, isn't that kind of par for the course? A legitimate character concept? But that aside, I find a certain allure to be found in a very powerful hero who does not bargain, does not sneak around and is not cautious. A hero so strong that the bad guys really have no way to even cheat. In a way, I am basically a wimp in real life, facing problems of many kinds every day. Sometimes, I just want to read a book, watch a movie or play a game where the hero not only doesn't falter at these problems, but is in fact so awesome they aren't problems for him.

Here's how Darksiders does it: The game starts with War falling from the sky and landing in a huge explosion. We then quickly realise that fire doesn't burn him, falling any distance doesn't hurt him, he can't drown because he doesn't breath, he isn't afraid of anything even when he should be and he's perfectly willing to walk into obvious traps and still win in the end hands down. I am safe in the knowledge that any enemy I face when playing as War, I can kill. If not now, then eventually. Even when I'm warned to stay way from these GIANT sand worms (yeah, the game has sand worms, too), I eventually find a way to shoot them in the mouth... Pretty much literally. The whole game is pretty much a vessel for the awesomeness that is War, and I like it for that.

Now, I realise more grounded characters are to some people's tastes, as I found out last time to ample evidence, and that being bigger, badder and meaner than all your enemies does not make for a very grounded, very believable character. I get that. But on the other hand, the opposite is also true - over-the-top unrealistic and exaggerated characters are just as appealing for different reasons, the feeling of power, impregnability and confidence being some of the ones I'd pick. For me, playing a weak, easily killed, small character just doesn't feel as impactful, because I FEEL weak. Even if I may be able to actually win hands-down due to skill or speed or what have you, I would instinctively still pick the bigger, stronger character that I have to screw up to get killed. At least when I have a choice.

War, I found, with enough collectables collected, turns into a veritable boss monster that's pretty much borderline cheating right towards the end, at least the way I played him. And that's intentional design when the guy ends up having 11 health bars - I'm dead serious here - plus a special armour, plus a level 4 stone skin that reduces damage taken, increased damage dealt and stuns and hurts enemies who hit you. At some point, I started just toying around with the various hellspawn, just as revenge for pissing me off so much earlier in the game, and then again just because I could.

Now, of course, I couldn't ask for actual GAMEPLAY to unbalance itself and turn on god mode for me (appropriate as that may be within this context), but a large enough character, large enough weapons and big enough effects can go more than half of the way there.

My problem is that while big items and big weapons exist, there are only a handful of them. Broadsword, for instance, has a ton of esoteric weapon choices like the Kopesh and that curved sword and so on, but it really only has ONE truly big blade, and that's Rularuu's Bane. AND YOU CAN'T COLOUR IT! Well, almost at all. Or how about shoulder pads? We've had Medieval and Gladiator since creation, but then what else? Zilch. Well, OK, the Valkyrie shoulders are pretty big, I will admit, but that's still three out of how many. Big gloves we have one set of - Large Robotc. Enforcer come kind of close, but not really, and they clip pretty bad in combat mode, and that's about it. All the other even moderately big ones are bug at the forearm, but not at the hand.

Big boots are even worse. For the longest time, Enforcer boots were literally THE ONLY option, and now they share that spot with the PPD boots. And worse still, most people actually hate the Enforcer boots, and the way they're designed, they clash with almost everything, as well.

But we have no big guns, we have one big sword, we have one TANGIBLY big axe, no big enough hammers, no big rifles... Not even big fists, and you'd think that would be obvious. Hand size remains fairly small even with big gloves. Our character size is also limited fairly low, to boot. Yes, Fake Nemesis do clip in offices somewhat, but that doesn't stop them from going through small doors just fine.

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I know it may seem frivolous to make that kind of requests, as it's probably unpopular to do so, but that's kind of what I want to find out. Yes, I'm aware that some people hate bigness, but I'm also aware that some people hate characters who don't wear tights. I want to know how many people are really bothered by this for whatever reason, as well as how many are like me and will always jump at the chance to be even bigger.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yes, yes, and yes to Sam's sentiments.

I'm behind you all the way Sam!

We need more big stuff I want shoulder pads like the WH40K Space Marines do! Especially for my female toons, where what little big stuff we do have is scaled down more


Starcraft II WOL had the same chunky art with Raynor (both in and out of his armor) and some other games off the top of my head Gears of War and Too Human. (Dawn Of War II as well but that's a given.)

By the way, to avoid stretching actual posts, here's a standalone pic. We talked about how big the sword in the earlier pic is, but because of the wonky perspective, it actually looks bigger than it is. In actual fact, the sword is about as long as War is tall, plus a bit more because he has the tendency to stick the sword a good 6 inches into the ground when he stands it up. Observe:

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I can say that even if it doesn't do much damage, it's would still be cool to punch someone's face with a massive gauntlet. Or [Kick] someone with some heavy boots. Or rocket an enemy into the air with a huge axe.