temnix

This is not anything on my end. I have been to Kallisti countless times before Homecoming worked their magic, and there was never a problem. They have done something that consumes significantly more memory, significantly for old machines.

Homecoming have shown themselves such listeners that their best illustration may an image of a deaf man with a hearing horn in his ear, plugged, so at this point any game suggestions and discussions are mostly for "Here, people, if you ever set out to make a MMOG of your own, these are the pitfalls to avoid!" One of the mechanics these prospective designers should be wary of are yes-no, works-doesn't work, predictable effects such as fear, sleep, knockup and all the rest in CoH. The problem with their implementation is that they are completely binary: they either work against the player or a mob or they do not. There is no element of chance involved for the better or for the worse. If my character has a 2.0-magnitude protection against knock effects and somebody fires a shotgun at him, which probably does a 0.67, the shotgun never performs and the fight turns dull and boring. If it is a higher level enemy with a bigger shotgun that goes over 2.0, the knocking always works, the fight turns dull and boring again, because the player inevitably crashes on his ass unless he has pre-stocked on Break Free etc., AND it gets hard. Either way it is no fun. A CoH character's early life is therefore divided in two parts: before he gets some kind of status protection (and most sets offer a range) and after. Affected/not affected. Worry/Ignore for the rest of the game. Only much higher-level enemies and bosses have some chance of going over these resistances. For their part, players ALWAYS succeed with their knocks, sleep and so on, except with the weakest versions. In that upcoming title, City of Heroes 2, they should put effect magnitude on a random roll: a little below average, a little above. Or perhaps not a little but a lot, only uncommonly. Probably not below 0.67, that would make any effect useless, but if the shotgun sometimes went over 2.0, that could be more exciting. The exact range would have to be tested, but the goal is a situation where enemies sometimes resist tried-and-true (and boring) tactics, surprise the player in return and the player may hope to win by trying his subpar status attacks on more powerful enemies.

This is has happened on different days, on Indomitable with light load: almost as soon as a character of mine steps into the new Kallisti Wharf, the world slows to a crawl and then recedes into a Ctrl+Alt+Del haze. I probably was the only player character in the area at the time. I had about 15 seconds to get out of there before all of the computer's RAM would be consumed - not enough to run up to the monorail, but thankfully I had my Long-Range Teleporter. Not every starting character would, so I imagine they would be permanently lost. As soon as I stepped into Talos, the world started moving again. Way to go, Homecoming!

Let's start a place where people can showcase scenes of superhero films that they find the most most inspiring or thought-provoking, trailers, music videos that can be said to relate to the topic (taken loosely). I'll begin. These are the opening titles for "The Shadow" (1994). If you have not seen this film, you definitely do not know all of the best there is of the superhero genre. I think this is Alec Baldwin's strongest and most natural performance, one where he opened a new side to his personality. Penelope Ann Miller is stunning, and there is a host of other distinguished actors on the job, but also an entire talented ensemble of cameramen, wardrobe and prop makers, scene designers, CGI artists that make the film truly unforgettable, and the music was written by no less than Jerry Goldsmith, the author of something like half of all famous Hollywood scores (there is also a superb song in the end credits). Together they have created real art, so mysterious, meaningful, so romantic that it stays with you forever. Here I snipped off only a small bit, not even the first scene, but one should already be able to appreciate the quality of the production. "The Shadow" has since been released in a widescreen version, in HDTV, some time ago, a treat for those who, like myself, only got to see it in fullscreen in the 1990s. Of course, like all movies, but this one especially, it should be watched alone in a darkened room and with no beeps and interruptions from a stupid phone and such. Go ahead and bring your own clips!

A. I. is very detrimental to one's sense of good and bad. The more people use it, the less able they are to distinguish quality and appreciate skill. I observe this in myself. I have a couple of generated pictures left that are on the fun side, but I steer away from trying to make anything seriously. Because A. I. is most dangerous not where it fails and draws seven fingers on a hand but where it sort-of-succeeds. Then it fills the screen with blandness. All of the details of clothing, gestures, positioning, lighting angles, textures, all the spots that are supposed to contain an artist's creativity end up generic, generic, generic. And since they don't contain any errors, we accept them. But nothing is quite the way A. I. presents it. Nothing real or imagined is this normal. In the end it is an exercise in missing opportunities that leaves behind a wasteland of killed time. Taking A. I. for jokes like I do is entertaining, but even that is killing time. For a reminder of what real drawing is like here is a picture by a true artist, Edmond Dulac, from a hundred years ago. There is no one on Earth who can draw like that now. Of course, we live in a time when a crappy web comic on some hot political topic wins all of the illustration awards. If technique and talent don't matter, then we all may just love the kind of rubbish that fills the pages of Marvel comic books - which are just a step away from A. I.. Well, here is another piece of junk from not-me. I have a couple more left, but I'm not rolling the dice any more, or A. I. will kill my eye with its filler where meaning and exactitude should be. The Kraken of Mendes

I am done with new hero costumes, but here is one variant for the Ringmistresses in my upcoming Carnival revamp. With a placeholder where a mask should fit. By the way, I think people should give up on using graphics filters for their characters. Those cartoonish outlines don't let me make heads or tails of them. If they have tails. And if they have heads.

Thank you, @TygerDarkstorm. So it is something particular to biostem. Since I would like him to rejoice in them, however, I'll put up two pictures from those two characters' sets. The links will be active for 30 minutes only! Hurry up, biostem!

But that should happen with all pictures from Postimages. For all of the characters. All right. I'll update the links if others can't see the picture above also. Can I get a confirmation from someone else here that the image doesn't show?

Hey, @biostem. Can you see the picture now? It's the same upload address that I used before. By the way, Hermesia is very sexy. This is for @TransHero. She is not packing any surprises in there, though, is she?

Titane

They are all uploaded to the same service. Was it unavailable? Check it again now.

I like that one, @Vic Raiden. Free fall

Excellent combination with that sash-wearing character, @Erratic1. I would have picked a less-saturated blue, but that might have been difficult. And @biostem as usual, with the Wrought Wrecker. In particular the pants-thighs-boots. Five more from me, and that will be enough. The Wreck of War The Smithsonian The Tender Dirge The Merry Hell Company The Gypsy Kign

Fluoride Jackets: Mini Vest, Chest: Leather Straps, Bottoms with Skin, High Ponytail... wielding a new War Mace option Homecoming is alpha-testing. This RNG setup is stuck on a pony model, but for color palette it is second to none.

I remember requests and ideas around the concept that draining an enemy of Endurance should be an alternative way to win a fight. But I am concerned about something different: Controllers and other Archetypes half-similar to Controllers. The problem with them all, but especially Controllers, is that they are potentially the most interesting character types, with the most possibilities, but they just can't win a fight. Because they can barely put a scratch on the enemies, especially after the freebie Prestige attacks (that were paid cheats to begin with) peter out. I have tried playing Controllers solo and other types with a half of their powers in the controlling basket, and to the extent they use control, their fights never end. Control is only useful when the actual means of defeating enemies is from a damage-dealing power set, as for Defenders or Corruptors. Then it is convenient to be able to hold down enemies while you shoot them. But control itself, with a few exceptional powers like Propel does little to completely nothing to end a fight, give experience or drops. That is wrong. I am not buying the excuse that "some Archetypes are inherently more suited to group play." All that means is that the original designers could not find a mechanic that would express the ability of gravity-benders, terror-mongers, psychic dominators et cetera to come up on top. Perhaps Cryptic was still too locked into the buffer/tanker/etc. role division so that one was supposed to resolve to play second fiddle forever, help out and derive satisfaction from that. But Magneto didn't need Sabertooth to smash those who stood in his way and Professor X only brought Cyclops along for backup. It isn't difficult to imagine how such diverse powers over the environment, bodies and minds as the controlling types possess would let them scare away, stop, deceive, frighten, seduce, displace everyone and everything that at the moment represented opposition. And CoH features plenty of such interesting powers in the sets. They just don't win fights. For me the purpose of a new mechanic in this case is to enable Controllers (et al) to overcome enemies solo at the same rate as their damage-dealing counterparts without diminishing their role as helpers in groups. That is the only standard: the only thing we are competing with or comparing to here is not some theoretical "balance" but the amount of fun others get. To make this possible the mechanic of winning only needs to be parallel to damage-dealing (instead of going on top of damage-dealing, as with the Endurance drain). That way a Controller in a group would not bring down the enemies by this mechanic sooner than the damage specialists by damage and steal their spotlight, because damage is dispensed in groups so much faster than solo: few fights in a mission room take longer than a few seconds when Scrappers, Tankers and Blasters are involved. Yet on their own Controllers would be adequate and progress at the same pace as the others. A Controller should be able to dispose of a few whites very quickly, of yellows in a half-minute, of oranges in a minute and so on, at the same speed as the others, but if not by damage, then by what? Morale break. The way I see it, any sane enemy should be able to take only so much gluing down to the spot, freezing in place, mind terrors and slamming down and about before he hoists the white flag. You can interpret that in psychological terms or in functional ones. Even zombies can only take so much before their binding magic gives in. Give mobs a third bar, Morale, below Health and Endurance. Let it replenish slowly but receive boosts every time the critter manages to land a blow on a player. And make the Mez states depress Morale by the magnitude of their effect for its duration. Those depressions should be cumulative. For the sake of an example, suppose that a typical minion has 10 points of Morale. Let's say that Crush from Gravity Control applies a 3.0-magnitude hold for 20 seconds. (I don't remember the exact numbers.) Morale would be depressed by 3 for the same 20 seconds. If the player had added an Extend Hold Duration Enhancement to Crush and boosted duration of the hold to, say, 25 seconds, the Morale depression would also extend.(Enhancements don't, of course, increase magnitude.) During this time the player can add other powers that also hold, or put to sleep, or immobilize, or confuse - everything to represent his overall dominance of the situation. He could add the same power, Crush again, on top of the first Crush, if he had sped up its recharge enough to take advantage of the accumulation. Primary and secondary-set powers, side effects of temporary powers, Pool powers that had to be taken in order to get to the higher tier and wouldn't be used otherwise, such as some mild debuff, that toxic dart - all can find a use here. If the overlay of these powers brings Morale to zero, the enemy collapses or runs away, the player gets experience and drops. Holds and immobilizes (for instance) are generally of the 2-3 point magnitude, it is more or less the same with the rest of mainstays. If the standard Morale is 10 points, it means an application of 4-5 powers in succession to defeat an enemy: in line with the number of attacks it usually takes a damage-dealing Archetype to do a job. Debuffs could be converted as 10% equal to 1 magnitude, and instant effects like Knockdown, Knockout and Teleport only apply quick, second-long depressions, because their magnitude can in some cases be increased. That lieutenants, bosses and archvillains should have longer morale bars and that level difference is going to apply is obvious. Notice also that the needs of morale-breaking when using control powers may vary from the needs of helping teammates, which should keep this mechanic from being too applicable and give players some choices to make. And also notice that when a player focuses on damage, morale break is going to be largely irrelevant and vice versa. When enemies have been made to miss all the time with Negative Energy debuffs, it is not going to matter to a Blaster or a Scrapper that they may now be brought safely to a morale break after a time. The damage-dealer is going to want them dead ASAP and move on. Likewise, for someone with an eye on morale break harmless control-set powers with quicker recharge may be preferable to the ones that are slower but do some damage. By and large these are going to be parallel systems. The resulting picture is something like this: the Controller puts on a Gravity Distortion Field on an encountered group, made to last longer with extra slots, and proceeds to Crush them individually. He could also speed up the recharging of the GDF and recast it several times, but that probably won't be quick enough to accumulate and is certain to be dull. He uses other powers behind his belt to strike the fear of god into them. For effect, he slams the last one into the ground with a high-boosted Lift, quickly destroying the tatters of this enemy's morale. This is all still dangerous enough, because the Controller's hit points are low, somebody may still get to him or fire at him from away, but he can do it! And he feels good about himself. P. S. If breaking morale of held etc. enemies turns out to be too safe, morale depression durations can be halved from effect durations. In that case the Controller will have to concentrate on select enemies and quickly string along his Mez, debuff and knock/teleport powers to take advantage of this way of winning.