Trike

I’ve noticed that my Tanks get fewer drops of everything than Blasters. I really like Frostfire so I do that one a lot, and it’s not unusual for a Tank to get nearly zero rewards (recipes, salvage, enhancements), while a Blaster has an embarrassment of riches. Is this a general function of the game at large, or is it just part of special missions?

On live I used my beta toon, Ironik, as my forum name. But I first went online (such as it was back then) in 1985 when it cost money to send each character, so I used my real-life nickname Trike as my BBS/Usenet handle.

Well now I need to work on leveling up a villain! I need to see that.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and all that. I often admire costumes in game, frequently taking screenshots and sending the person a /tell in appreciation. Mostly it comes down to various semi-nebulous criteria like “creative use of disparate elements” or “really nailed the spirit of the idea”. I like most genres, so I also like most costumes. Superhero, epic fantasy, space alien, robots, pulp hero… it’s all good. Here’s an example of a subtly brilliant cape’n’cowl-style superhero named Mr. Victory from Seadevil on page 2 of the “fave costumes” thread. Seadevil combined two different patterns that work together seamlessly, added metal accents which have wings that can be read as the letter V, and cleverly used one of the cape styles to clip the pattern into a giant V. The three colors work great in this combination. https://ibb.co/zF916D1 https://ibb.co/QY2PbVS This character by Jon (pg 4) is deceptively simple, but look how he’s alternated the color of the glove and boot pattern and inventively worked in the chest pattern. It looks obvious, but few people can come up with such an elegant design. https://ibb.co/sqLkNVj First Player likewise made use of color and clipping for this one (pg 218) to come up with something minimalist and cool. https://ibb.co/nmbmKpz

My barbarian warrior, Dread Vilda, ready for action! https://ibb.co/X4YkwQm I know what you're wondering: what will she do once winter arrives? Never fear, she has a cozy winter outfit! https://ibb.co/hL972fV And for those fancy Christmastime soirees: https://ibb.co/gr0yk4p Plus super heavy armor for really intense battles: https://ibb.co/5KwZcMV

I swear I thought that said "Jump Roof". And I am way too old to try that any more. 😆

Yes, it was in Spider-Man: No Way Home and that was the rationale. I'm cool with that; I'm a big fan of Benedict Wong the actor and Wong the character.

I’m still surprised that they didn’t add a gorilla head back in the day, given the sheer number of gorilla-themed characters there are in superhero comics. That’s one of the few things Champions Online got right. Chimpanzees are probably a close second when it comes to sentient animal characters in comics. Even dogs come in a very distant third place. If making all-new animal heads is beyond the abilities of folks contributing art, maybe make a way to use the existing animal heads with hats and eyepieces and such. Probably just as much work, eh? But just look how cool they are wearing hats in the Blacksad comics: https://ibb.co/bH75BtP https://ibb.co/HFbz15X https://ibb.co/cFdW0bk

I would definitely like the option to make beefier-looking female characters. Using the sliders to get big arms makes everything else ridiculous.

I vaguely recall something from back in the day that the construction in Steel was going to end up straddling Boomtown and become a spaceport. Dunno if that was serious or a real dev plan, but it sounded cool.

Either version of that story works. One night stand during the 2-3 years Hulk was there that we didn’t see or starting it from the beginning, both would be fine. If I were given $200 million to make a Marvel movie, I would do a Savage Land flick because I love it, making the Macguffin a machine that has transplanted the Savage Land from another universe onto our Antarctica. So they have to shut down the machine to keep the universes safe, but the cost is that the entire place and all of its inhabitants will be stranded on the MCU Earth. I would throw in every dinosaur-related character from the comics, like Stegron and Devil Dinosaur, so we basically get Jurassic Park with superheroes. The stinger would be Moon Girl and Matthew (Ka-Zar and Shanna’s son) playing around the machine and getting bawled out by Ka-Zar because it’s dangerous. Shanna would remind him that it no longer reaches into the multiverse so he can relax a little bit. They leave the room and the machine turns on, materializing a large figure who is wielding and axe. The camera spins around him, revealing that it’s Skaar, who angrily demands, “Where is my father? Where is the Hulk?!” That leads directly into the comic book storyline where Skaar in his rage accidentally releases the Designer, who starts taking over people, unleashing a modified version of World War Hulk. Grr, argh, smash.

Prey is the best Predator movie since Predator. I had a lot of fun kicking the legs out from under the anti-woke incels claiming “a girl with no training beat a Predator solo!” Like, here’s a thought, watch the movie to discover that, in the words of Luke Skywalker, “Amazing. Every word of what you just said is wrong.” 😝 As for alien skull thing, the xenomorphs are not endoskeletal or exoskeletal: they’re mesoskeletal. Which means they’re both endo and exo. Mesoskeletons have never been seen on creatures on our world as big as the xenomorph, relegated to tiny ocean polyps found on coral reefs, but I would put forward that such things are exactly why Science Fiction is so freakin’ cool. Many moons ago when Mary Doria Russell’s novel The Sparrow came out, someone on Usenet was extremely annoyed because the aliens in that book were unlike anything that existed on Earth. I asked him why he bothered to read SF at all, if all he wanted was to see things from Earth except bigger.

If they’re taking a write-off on this, then the movie has to be destroyed and never released in any form whatsoever. That said, in recent days there have been multiple screenings for cast, crew, and executives on the WB lot, so I am 100% confident this will get leaked online sooner rather than later.

I am loving it. The show is funny, and that stinger for the first episode was legit hilarious. Showrunner Jessica Gao is doing a masterful job integrating the comic book storyline with the existing MCU canon, a tricky line to walk that not many get right. (Looking at you, Falcon & Winter Soldier.) So far (two episodes), this seems based primarily on the Dan Slott run collected in She-Hulk: Single Green Female and She-Hulk: Superhuman Law from 2005ish. There are, however, some significant departures, so I can’t predict with certainty what’s going to happen next. Tatiana Maslany is easily one of the greatest actors ever, a point solidified during her run on Orphan Black where she played multiple clones raised in different countries who had to interact with one another. That in itself was impressive, but when she had to play one clone impersonating another clone and she did it in such a way that you could see the first clone’s personality coming through the one she was pretending to be… I mean, I don’t know what alchemy that was, but it’s the most incredible acting I’ve ever seen. That bit about Bruce on the spaceship makes me wonder if they’re setting up World War Hulk. Why else would he go back to Sakaar if not to meet his son, Skaar?

So far I like Symphony Control. It’s a little weird to hear a somewhat feminine voice coming from my old dude, but I rarely play with sound on anyway. After a break when we finished Frostfire I went back to listening to an audiobook as I soloed. My highest Symphony toon is now 17 and I quite like the look of these powers. Kudos to the animator(s) on that. Looks like that boss fight from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Spoilers: The aggro thing though… hoo-doggies, that definitely changed things for me. My Controller could not initiate any fights without serious risk of being immediately taken out, especially on teams. Even then he was at high risk because everyone else on my team had the two sonic shields to mitigate damage. So yeah, folks were really getting a chance to use their rez powers last night. 😆 I switched to a lowbie Blaster for a while just to see how the aggro would fare there and it was a lot of edge-of-my-seat nailbitiing in the lower levels — which I’m not complaining about, but it was kind of sweaty after awhile, so I then switched to taking screenshots to chill out. Stalkers are my least favorite, so if it’s that bad for high-damage Blasters, I’m not sure I’ll be interested in taking them out much. On the whole it seems okay to me. I really like the new Symphony powers, and that’s 90% of what I care about. —— Edit: clarified that 17 is my highest Symphony toon, not highest overall. Despite my severe altitis I do have a couple 50s and several high-40s characters.

But it’s aluminum.

Some new ones I've made recently and a couple older ones. https://ibb.co/Q9X1pD2 https://ibb.co/bJ9kTzR https://ibb.co/2WNkfj2 https://ibb.co/8gwmVNV https://ibb.co/xFWsLWG https://ibb.co/r35f7Vx

Related: Someone in-game the other day bemoaned the fact that they were about to turn 30. I was like, "My young brother, when I joined beta I was 39." 😂 I would french kiss Stheno to be 30 again for just a weekend. 😘

Or have multiple icons. Dr. Warning ⚠️ Dr. Warning ⚠️ ⚠️ Dr. Warning ⛔️ ⛔️ ⛔️

Yeah, I definitely see Manticore as a Silver Age Green Arrow, with a bit of Dark Age angst thrown in. One of my favorite current writers is Tom Taylor and in one of the Injustice books he has an exchange between Harley Quinn and Green Arrow where she changes the name of the Arrowcave to the Quiver. Amusing little side moment.

What pattern is on the sleeves? Stars? It looks like a knit sweater in this pic.

Did anyone tote it up and average it out? I’m 57, btw. My grandmother just turned 108 and she’s doing fine. Weirdly, two of her high school classmates live in the same nursing home she does. I wonder what’s in the water there? They just celebrated their 90th (!!) high school reunion.

Related question: do we know the oldest being in the CoH universe? How about oldest member of each faction? Like, is Nemesis the oldest human? Is Stheno the oldest snake?

I do wonder how difficult it would be to create Technology/Science attacks of things like ice, fire, sonic, and mental powers. In the real world we have sound cannons, and the Klingons use sonic blasters. DC has a number of villains who use ice weapons, particularly Mr. Freeze and Captain Cold. DC’s Mad Hatter and Marvel’s Ringmaster use mind-control hats, and Marvel also has the brainwashing Serpent Crown, while the Penguin has his mesmerizing umbrella (also a heat ray umbrella). Jafar in Aladdin has a mind-control staff, as does Loki in the MCU. Then there are characters like Paste Pot Pete who have glue guns to immobilize foes. So it’s not like these types of weapons are unprecedented. The question is, how hard would it be to animate these things in the game.

Maybe a one-off level 50 mission: Contact: “Hey hero, remember back in the day when you beat up Frostfire and sent him to the Zig? Well, he’s out of prison now and looking for some payback. Oh, and he’s brought his big sister along to even the odds. Her name is Firefrost.”