Crasical

It seems like Cobalt Arachne's intention was that they are not just different, but harder to fight than Malta is, describing them as a difficult endgame group like Vanguard and the Soldiers of Rularuu. It's not an issue of 'these are two different military groups, equally dangerous, but with a different tactical doctrine', this is straight up 'Blackwing has an extremely similar narrative vibe to Malta, but are just better at being anti-meta paramilitary than Malta is.'

I have some concerns that the decision to make the group a 'super endgame squad' like Vanguard or Rularuu has meant that they've kind of obsoleted Malta. being: A technology/natural based villain group. Paramilitary-themed with specialist technology Specialized in taking down super-powered targets Mysterious Shady Military People I feel like they've basically taken over as a 'Better' version of the Boys In Navy Blue.

I think that it's fairly self-evident that the form that increases your resistances, health, provides self healing and taunts, was intended to be a tanking role for Kheldians, and it's very strange to me that you're pretending otherwise. The 'reality of gameplay' being that people prefer to use the changeling exploit/glitch doesn't make it any less clear what it originally was intended to be used for.

I'm really confused by what the tanker changes are. The self damage buff is for their build up equivalents (and Assault from the leadership pool, I guess?), not their base damage. But what's this Overcap? You can hit people above the target cap now? What arc/radius buff restrictions have been lifted?, Is this the powers that didn't benefit from the Gauntlet AOE size increase (Like most of Titan Weapons)? Cones are now deeper instead of wider?

When playing a Peacebringer, upon changing from human form to nova form, there is a several second delay before one can attack if one is using specifically the 'wispy' customization for Light Form that is not present if light form is not active, or if the default customization for light form is used.

There are actually animations for the Freedom Phalanx where they get mediported out (With longbow escort, even!) because you can't canonically kill them. anyway there are a few explicit kills in the game, more as time has gone on, but the generic term 'Defeat' is used for a reason, so that you can decide if you're sending them to the shadow realm or leaving them beaten but alive, or sending them to the zig with teleport magic or what have you. I do want to echo some frustration with Tarantulas/Tarantula mistresses and with Carnies, who sometimes explode or have their souls sucked out when they are taken down. Heroes that refuse to kill are super genre appropriate, so having explicit death animations for those factions is kind of vexing.

The Legacy Chain never actually do anything wrong, I don't think, they just have bad vibes, and aren't actually very *effective*, they kind of get crushed out of existence with huge numbers of their order getting wiped out by the player villain in the Striga and Blood Coral arcs. The PPD are, despite a lot of the playerbase/characters professing to hate cops, mostly portrayed as honorable and upright. A handful of dirty cops in Kings Row, the one time that they thought they were being denied lifesaving medical tech (Which, with how *obscenely* dangerous police work is in Paragon, wasn't entirely unfair) and Blue Steel freaking out and beating a guy mostly to death that one time.

It's ten times more involved, but it adds so much detail that it might make figures ten times better looking, so, even tradeoff.

For me, the line is when 'This doesn't feel like it belongs in the setting'. Which, considering City of Heroes is a Super Kitchen Sink setting WITH multiverse travel, you kind of have to go out of your way to do. The three pillars are name, costume, bio, with name and bio being the more egregious ones. Like, what bothers me isn't that you have a Power Girl Homage, with similar costume, it's that you NAME THEM Power girl (Power.girl, PowerfulGirl) and state that they're 'From the planet Krypton'. (Or, bafflingly as I observed once in the wild, from *Praetorian* Krypton.) If you do the diligence of taking a character's backstory and saying 'okay, so what would that look like in the city of heroes universe' and adjust it accordingly, I'm much more likely to say 'Oh, you're doing a wolverine-style character, neat.' and here is the amazing part: I will think you're clever instead of being a hack. I do have characters that are openly homages of other characters I like, and at least one huge rip, but I try not to make them be immersion-breaking.

How are you getting the bump maps out?

Who Will Die, Leo Poggiani's arc, final mission.

The information for the void rifles used in Abyss' second mission arc, against Kyros and Sunstorm, indicate dealing bonus damage to Kheldian targets in both the story lore and the weapon info pane(About x4 normal damage) but they do not actually apply any extra damage.

Ah, right. My Arse/Arse hasn't gotten her Judgement yet, but that's another pairing that it'd be nice to have such a thing for.

I have several characters that I'd like to have a 'tech' judgement on. Keyes Orbital laser, tutorial strafing run, an artillery strike using some of the warburg missiles or something? Doesn't feel right having a mercs MM or a beam rifle blaster call down lightning or throw a fireball.

Thank you for weighing in (on my side) of a two-year-old internet argument with someone I haven't seen since this debate. My spirit can finally rest at peace.

So, here's an odd question. Do you think dead Peacebringers leave a corpse behind? It's a question on if the host retains a degree of physicality while being empowered and transformed by their merged kheldian, or if the merger renders the two homogenous to the degree that the 'human form' isn't very different for the squid and lobster energy-shapes. The fact that Shadowstar has been able to cancel each merger as her former host neared the end of her life, and then jump to a new host in her daughter, seems to indicate a more heterogenous mix, as does the fact that using magic it's possible to uncomfortably split a kheldian from their host, and while it's not pleasant it's a survivable process; but I've had people argue the opposite, that from the moment of merging, the physical body of the human half is just gone (And presumably the Kheldian could immediately merge with another host, at the cost of adding more personality traits and thoughts to their gestalt consciousness, and possibly driving itself crazy if it did this repeatedly.)

Considering that the Minotaur in the Fog is *THE* Minotaur, rather than one of the many other minotaurs in Cimerora, have you considered updating Mender Ramiel's story arc, where the Time Echoes culminate with the 'Echo of Minos' as the last obstacle before one breaches the chamber were the Well of the Furies was once kept? Considering that NPC is intended to be (a temporal echo of) the same definitive-article minotaur, shouldn't they now share the same model?

I don't know how to demo-edit, so everyone got cropped out and pasted in manually. Happy 20th anniversary, everybody.

Mission 'Find out what went wrong' from Vernon Von Grun, run at +1/x8 on a mercs/traps mastermind. Longbow and PPD forces aggrod on each other and were infighting when I arrived at their location. The spawns should probably be friendly to each other.

Don't think we've ever actually met, but I remember your time as the game's Senior Animator. I thought very highly of your work, and Kinetic Melee/Dual Pistols/Dual Blades made such an impression on my teenage brain that I ended up pursuing a bachelors in 3D modeling and animation. I didn't end up ever using the degree, but I've still got it, even if none of the programs I learned are industry standard anymore. Anyway, hope you're enjoying Homecoming.

I finished my character thread/tournament here, it can be added to the list. EDIT: Thank you!

Final Match: Seed 8 Colmilla vs. Seed 7 Ryoko Kobayashi The sun was shining, burning away the lingering winter chill. The day was saved. Even the notice that the villainess, Hivemind, had been broken out of jail couldn't truly dampen Colmilla's infectious good mood. She folded and set aside a newspaper raving about the new gas-grenade wielding heroes taking to the streets, standing up and stretching. She'd perched atop a handy apartment building, enjoying the sunlight and gentle wind. Her hand had just touched the police radio at her belt when she heard, distantly, a yell: "Stop, Thief!". A smile flickered across her face, unseen beneath her mask. Perfect. The day was just a little *too* peaceful. Colmilla landed in the parking lot, glancing up at the familiar green, white and red billboard with its mariachi, the banner for El Super Mexicano, the franchise popular all through Paragon City. She only had a moment before the front doors of the building smashed open, a blur in blue, black and white rushing forward. Ryoko Kobayashi, the dine-and-dash demon of the rogue isles, was zipping forward in a ninja run, both arms laden with bulging takeout bags, a third bag equally overloaded gripped in her teeth. Colmilla tensed, focused on the fast-moving target, and swung, going low with a rising, teeth-shattering uppercut. To her surprise, her target vanished from in front of her in a flash of light and smoke, the trio of bags hitting the asphalt of the parking lot and spilling. Not filled with cash from the register, the three bags were filled with foil-wrapped buritos, tacos, styrofoam containers of enchiladas, and tortilla chips, along with jars of the house salsa, guacamole, and queso. Stolen food, rather than money. Colmilla didn't have time to do more than register this, as the ninja girl landed, sliding back towards the door before her sneakers found purchase. Her katana slipped from its sheathe in a single smooth motion, assuming a basic kendo stance. "...Out of my way." Was the only thing the schoolgirl said before launching herself forward. Colmilla found herself ducking and weaving through the rain of blows, occasionally parrying a blow with the impervium wire inserts in her gloves, the frenzied rain of blows intensifing as Colmilla began to counterattack, throwing punches, kicks, knee and elbow strikes at the elusive foe. Ryoko was the first to break off, realizing her attacks weren't working. skipping back, she slid her sword back into its sheathe with a flourish. Colmilla hesitated for only a second, thinking the girl was surrendering, but instead her hands came up holding glittering metal, throwing stars. Colmilla flipped and tumbled acrobatically through the hail of metal, but though her own reflexes meant that the stars and throwing knives weren't getting close enough to be a threat, the girl was effectively zoning her out, keeping her distance and safely attacking where Colmilla couldn't easily counterattack, flashing away in that arm-trailing ninja stance or disappearing with a smoke bomb anytime Colmilla tried to get close. It was now a race to see if Colmilla would tire or Ryoko would run out of ammunition first. Colmilla wasn't sure she liked the odds on that; the tiny ninja seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of pointed metal. Worse, as the battle roved over the parking lot, Ryoko was starting to pick up and throw some of the shuriken for a second time, extending her supply by ripping the knives out of the cars or asphalt they'd stuck into and re-using them. This required some lateral thinking... Diving into the line of parked cars, she prayed that the unlucky vehicle's insurance was paid up and punched through the glass, unlocking the door from the inside, and then tearing it off its hinges. Holding the door as an improvised shield, she rolled out, caught a fusilade of thrown knives with the door and rushed forward, turning the charge into a slide at the last moment. Crashing into the ninja girl's legs, she swept them out from under her, discarding the car door to keep up the momentum: Her knee hit the girl in the stomach, launching her into the air. Colmilla followed her up with a leap, snagging Ryoko by the neck in a headlock and bringing her back to the ground, the two crashing to the pavement together and jolted out of the hold, both doing rapid kip-ups to return to their feet as quickly as possible. Ryoko spat out some blood, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. "...Guess I gotta get serious..." She brought her hand back to her sword. Colmilla took a defensive stance, ready to grapple her out of any charge, but she wasn't ready for the sheer speed the draw came out at. The girl just vanished, leaving behind brief impressions, afterimages, leaving gleaming white lines in the air as her sword ripped through her opponent, and the arena itself: The cars in the parking lot were reduced to chunks of metal in her path, and the large sign outside the super-mexicano was bisected diagonally, falling from its mounting in two halves. Comilla couldn't defend against all the lightning fast strikes, not coming like they did in rapid succession. All she could do was try and reduce the impact When the storm finally, mercilessly ended, Ryoko was visibly exhausted, panting as she slid to a stop. The shattered cars went up in simultaneously thunderclaps of explosion, as Colmilla sank to her knees, bleeding from hundreds of shallow cuts all over her body. "...Surrender. You're beat." The girl threatened. Colmilla defiantly picked up and hucked a car's bumper at her, which the girl cut in half as it sailed towards her. "Why would I do that? I'm having a *fantastic* time." "...Tsk. Alright. I avoided your vitals, but this next strike will trigger your mediporter." Walking closer, she raised her sword. "...Consider it payment for your stubbornn-AGH?" Colmilla waited until that sword had started to defend before striking like a cobra. Both hands snapped up to grab the wrists holding the sword, while wrenching and pulling them down. Her feet left the ground as she spun herself around the ninja's sword arm, snatching the girl's neck between her knees as she yanked ther arms up. The blade's edge was something to consider, but pulled up into an arm bar, while choking her out with her thighs, she only had to hold the agile ninja until she ran out of breath. "Hehe. No fancy tricks to escaping a hold! It's just strength and stamina! Ryoko struggled until the end, popping several smoke bombs, kicking and squirming, but there wasn't any escape. Despite her injuries, Colmilla's grapple had locked her in tight. Eventually, the blackness crept in at the edges of her vision, and she lost consciousness. Colmilla felt the 'pop!' as the girl vanished, mediported to safety. SHe rolled to her feet, scanning the surroundings. "...Still undefeated...But that girl was dangerous." Surveying the carnage, she folded her arms. "...all this for a bag of tacos...?" Colmilla v s Ryoko Kobayashi Deals smashing damage, resists lethal damage ✔️ Deals Lethal damage, somewhat resists smashing damage. Strong self heal Strong self heal Bonus perception Stealth Elusive Elusive Mez Protection Mez: Immob, Confuse I feel bad about how this project fully ran out of momentum at the end, but it's at least complete now. Colmilla is our winner, Ryoko our second place finisher, and Hivemind our 3rd place. The tournament's now complete! It was a neat writing exercise. I wish I'd finished it back in 2023 like I'd originally intended, but life had other ideas. Oh well. With the event complete, I'll open up the thread to any questions, comments, or feedback. Thank you for reading along.

Wait, what? The 'wreck your defense plus blind' power, the main reason I always first-target Tarantula Mistresses, was an autohit?

I feel like you may expose the question to bias by posting this in the Roleplay subforum.

\o/