Techwright

Oh, incidentally, Superherohype.com was quoting Cameron Monaghan as saying the sets look phenomenal, to the point that he was coming in on his days off just to admire everything. He feels this third film's look has again reinvented the look of TRON, just as the second film did over the first. Appropriate, given computer technology's rapid advancements.

Had to wonder if he'd be back. Bridges improves my hope for the movie. If "Ares" is a continuation, rather than a reboot, they've got to explain how the game universe survived what supposedly was an Armaggedon explosion of creator and creation. I'm suspecting we'll hear that Flynn tapped into his full user potential and either did a complete reboot/wipe, or somehow contained the blast to a localized area. Which means Tron should be back as well, though without Bruce Boxleightner, unless he joins a growing list of actors who outright lie about participation in a movie. Hmm...the helmet is a generation 1 helmet. Wonder if that implies a reboot of either the game universe or Flynn? Whatever they do with Bridges, he can't stay in the series if they keep rolling them out every couple of decades. Flynn's going to pass on at some point. Then again, he might be merely the narrator of the movie.

I learned a lot about the black & white era comedy groups when I did a thematic art project back in college. I'm impressed that you not only got all the Marx Brothers, but also their female lead. Many have never realized there were more than 3. Don't overlook the Ritz Brothers. They're sadly not as well known, but they were something of a counterpoint to the Marx Brothers. Of course there is also all six of the Three Stooges: Moe, Larry, Curley, Shemp, Joe Besser, and Curley Joe Derita. Emil Sitka, their long-time collaborative partner, was considered to be the 7th Stooge, and had been announced as such, but illness in the aged team prevented him from ever playing a stooge onscreen. There's also all the Our Gang members, generations of them, and Fatty Arbuckle and Joe E. Brown, who, while not a recognized established team, did work together on occasion. And you could always lump the 3 individual greats together as a "best of" set: Charlie Chaplain, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd.

Had similar Yin TF experiences yesterday. On one of them, a team heavy on light-defense archetypes was getting the job done slowly, admirably, but just barely hanging on, and it was crystal clear they could not take on more at the time. They were in the entryway fighting two groups, their backs turn to Clamor's re-entry point, and some chucklehead decides to run to the consoles and activate her group without alerting the team. Half the team died in the next 15 seconds. I demanded to know why they were so impatient they couldn't have waited just a few more seconds. No answer, but the guilty party very quickly exited the team after the eventual finish. The one I ran after that, would have been a duplicate situation, but I was ready for it this time. I ran over to the farthest console from the door and acted like I was interacting with it. The witless chaos lover trying to activate the consoles got three of them but backed off when he saw I was "dealing" with the fourth, and instead jumped back into the fight. I waited until he was well clear then rejoined the fight. Once we cleared them, I sauntered back over and activated the console. 😉

That's a nice reminder of how far the graphics have come. I know we got that mirrored surface effects the same time we got Gun Fu, but these shots remind me of just how much the rest the graphics have gradually improved over the years. Or perhaps, just how much my video cards have improved. LOL.

I didn't realize that and it's good to know. I once tried reworking the position of enhancement tray 4 to sit over the original 3, but gave up because the server tray kept popping up, covering it. Now I might be able to change that.

I used to have Razor mice, back when ball mice were still a thing. To this day they were the most durable mice I had. One, the Boomslang, lasted about 5 years of constant gaming. After Razor sold, however, I got one new Razor mouse (Copperhead?) it lasted 1 year, and that was it for me and Razor. Sad, 'cause I really loved them. I'm hard on mice, even gaming mice, so I don't go for the elite ones with a crazy number of buttons on them and a hefty price tag. If I can get two years from a gaming mouse these days, I'm content. In fact, I'm probably going to replace my Logitech gaming mouse soon, as it's started doing occasional funky things in the game. It's been close to two years. I had a couple of Corsairs before it, but they only lasted about 6 months each. I decided not to waste more money on Corsair.

Effective. My sole goal is to put that sucker down, preferably hard and fast. I don't care whether that means ZOT! with a bolt of lightning or hitting him with a whiffle ball bat as hard and fast as I can. Down and staying down is effective. Yeeting him into the air 4 times is colorful, but if he still gets up with 1 health point left and fires more shots, I'm not really as effective as I feel. EDIT: There is one moment when feeling takes over: when the guy come behind me, seemingly from nowhere, and kidney-shots me. For those, I feel a good sandpapering of the concrete walls with their skin for a bit will really make me feel good. Then I'll get all "effective" on him.

Close enough for grenades, as they say, but I do thank you for the correction.

Yep, the Rikti were first. From the wiki article: Operating word is "derived", I think. That suggest that though we got something up and running, the Rikti's devices are still more advanced. Who knows what that means, however. Long before this thread, I'd always assumed the reason for seemingly endless hordes is that the Rikti, like us, pull their troops at point of collapse and give them a complete recharge spurring them into the battle again. The also wear power suits which may serve as life protection units not unlike a certain red-clad war lord in a very cheezy, often-referenced video-game movie. Why not go inside the ship? Because as much as they've advanced into the ship each effort, humans have yet to figure out how to get the shield/boarding repulsion system completely disabled. Redundancies kick in and repulse them each time. If Vanguard ever figures out how to get out of the "bowl" and past the access points deeper into the ship, theoretically, humanity should be able to neutralize the threat, but then, no one knows what waits below. It could be a single greater defense, or perhaps a series of defenses each as tough as all the others. And remember, heroes barely won the war. If not for the success of the strike team disabling the dimensional portal, the ending would have been very different. I'd also note that Rikti are trickling through a lesser dimensional rift, the same one that brought the Honoree through, if I recall correctly, so that's more reinforcements, though not the horde as before. Still, its enough to keep Vanguard and its allies, still rebuilding super-powered numbers years after the war, from getting the upper hand.

Bing engineers must have made some adjustments to the A.I. I've not noticed any extra or distorted figures in your pictures of late.

Sometimes keeping an archive of experimental costumes helps. Frustrated in trying to come up with a look for my new Mind Control/Psionic Assault dominator, I dove back into my saved old creative experiments, pulled out a spectrum one, and started tossing a little of this and a bit of that together like a Sicilian grandmother cooking. The results caught my fancy. The chains are a visual representation of his ability to bind. The fishbowl helmet, well, I just liked it, though in after thought the look might have been subconsciously influenced a little by Mysterio. P.S. - We really could use the Malaise pattern in the boots category. Will Begone

Just a reminder, this thread is for pet names. There's another thread for character names. Carry on! 😊

After running the Penny Yin TF, the TF of the week, many times over 6 days, I can see a need to either relocate the "disembark" spot from the helicopter on the ship in the final two missions, or add a feature that allows for getting past the exceptionally crowded conditions, at times. I've had multiple times where two or more teams are trying to disembark in the same area, and since our avatars cannot be passed through, those coming out of a mission are stuck until those blocking the entrance move. While it would seem common sense to clear the door quickly, I've run into several who are finishing the TF who just stand in the door doing who knows what. And don't forget this spot accomodates not one but two missions. I had one occasion, and based on the crowd I suspect there were 3 teams occupying the space, where I could not exit for an extended period of time and I still had to take the flight agent to get to the final mission. Assuming the feature that allows a team to reappear is an invisible, flat layer of some kind, I'd suggest moving it to just outside the helicopter, or to allow the characters some sort of pass-through feature so they can clear the helicopter even if others are blocking it. This might be looked at as well for other popular points of exit, such as the first helicopter on PYTF, though I find less delay there, probably because there's only one mission using it.

Honestly not sure what to make of this one, but I'll probably give it a go. There's a lot more comedy in it than any Transformers product I've seen before. I'm not used to hearing the different voices, especially Optimus Prime (or rather Orion Pax), who is always associated with Peter Cullen to me. I'm surprised they didn't acquire Respeecher and a contract with Cullen to maintain the sound of his voice into the distant future. But I suppose if you're going to break with all the old voices, staffing the new cast with 50% MCU alumni helps.

I'll answer your hidden contents:

Yeah, I bolted over there, and it does look like it might have been put in at the same time as the Mot plaque. The use of dates and lengthy descriptions seems part of the style of these new ones, and this one has a "tell" in that it lists 2013, the year of the game shutdown. There's another plaque of this bunch, I believe, just north of Synapse in Skyway, the mayor's "moment of thanks" plaque. I'm sure there's more, I've just not run into them yet. Good find, though!

I don't recall that either, and will go look at it. That's not something recently added at the same time that they added some other plaques around the city like the one in Talos facing the Dark Astoria entrance and describing the Mot attack, is it?

It's not just these, nor just stealth. I recently dueled a CoT with earthquake ability, which my earth dom likewise had, and though I lacked stealth, I did manage to get close enough behind him to use my ability as a first strike without any reaction from him based on proximity. Imagine my surprise then, when my earthquake took multiple seconds to enact whereas he spun on the first quake and immediately activated his earthquake at my feet. We both fell and I recovered to finish him off, but it's very annoying that there really is no such thing as a true surprise on an NPC enemy. Also annoying that the player's earthquake power takes so much longer to activate than the NPC equivalent power.

I never realized this. By "unlock Cimerora", do you mean completing an ITF? Because I have 50s with access to Cimerora access, even completed Senator Decimus Aquila's tutorial mission, and they do not have Cimerora on their portal menu in the Big O. If it's not completing an ITF, I'd really like to know what needs to be done.

I, for one, would dub him "Steak Knife". 😉 Did everyone give up on including description details for training and comparison? Trike, I'd very much like to know what the text was that rendered these art styles. They're very much in keeping with what I'd like to achieve on some projects.

There's also the matter that Cimerora is under the guardianship of the Midnighters' Club and is accessible through their property. Access to their properties used to be via a mission arc only, but even today when it is a quick run over to Night Ward for a badge unlock, it still requires something to unlock access to the Club doors, signifying the Midnighter's permission.

Well, there was that time in the OG game where I ran 22 players through the Atta cave, but I was young, experimental, and had no clue what an exploit was. (I can tell you that taking essentially a league into a wide cave with wall-to-wall trolls (the game apparently kept adding them as our ranks increased) is a heap of a lot of fun. But I'm wiser now and don't endorse exploits. Perhaps some day they'll make it a league event.) Ahem. Under normal play, however, I'm usually 1 or 8. I have done a lot of 2-person teams with my best friend who is an infrequent player these days, but if I'm in a pug, I prefer 5 or more. I've been in an awkward position once or twice where I thought the leader was going to recruit a full team, but tried to run the mission with just 3 players. I find that a bit too personal for my tastes when we're all strangers.

Hey! I saw Wafer Thin Mint over by the P2W START vendor recently. I remember thinking, "now that's an original name others probably won't try to get". I've got about 50 to 60 characters at this point. I enjoy trying out different archetypes and power sets, and I find it relieving to have a completely different character to switch over to after a long, dedicated run up the leveling ranks with one pair of power sets. For my many 50s that I occasionally switch over to, I take a slower approach towards getting their badges and tricking them out with the best set enhancements. But people vary. I've met characters with hundred of veteran levels (I just teamed with one today with around 830 or so levels) and that tells me the player is laser-focused on one character. That's great! They're focused on what they enjoy, too. Your arrangement might be something in between, say 80% main character, and 20% exploration of other characters. Find what you like, and be willing to mix it up a bit if need be to keep things interesting.