Mastermind Pet: Clones and/or female minions

[Dragonfire]

I'd like to see a mastermind set with clones as the pet you summon.  I would think that's easy enough to load.  Additionally, a female option for the mercs, ninjas, thugs, and demons.

[daveyfiacre]

i recently inquired about dopplegangers [which exist in game] and apparently that part of code is "scripting witchcraft" and hard to alter.

 

on top of MM's themselves being more code nightmares to alter, thats less likely than say, making Illusion's Phantom Army and Phantasms become said dopplegangers, might be easier in the way that animate stone has alternate models, and now, dark servant does as well.

but if we're dreaming about alternate MM pet models, i have a list [many of which DO have female models in there:

 

-Demons:CoT Demons, Rulu-Shin, Bat'Zul, Wailers, Soldiers of Rularuu
-Ninjas:Tsoo, Legacy Chain, Knives of A
-Thugs: Destroyers, Mooks, Skulls, Hellions, Syndicate, Carnival, Lost, Angry Citizens, Prisoners, Family
-Mercs:Knives of A, Knives of V, Longbow, Wyverns, DUST, Arachnos, GoldBrickers
-Bots: Clockwork, Prae Clockwork, Council, Crey, Malta, Nemesis
-Beast: Devouring Earth, Hydra, Tuatha, Soldiers of Rularuu, Spirit Stalkers
-Necro:Banished Pantheon Zombs, Vahzilok, Ghosts, Spectral Pirates, CoT SPectral Daemon/Folloer/Knight

 

and for control pets:

 

Darkness: Ghosts/Spirits, Darkservant, Haunt Shade, Unseelie, Spectral Daemon, Nictus
Earth: DE Rockmonsters + Crystal Monsters, Slag Golemns, Redcaps, Trolls, Minions of Igneous
Electric: Outcast, Freakshow, Storm Elementals, Clockwork, Praet-Clockwork
Fire: Outcast, CoT Behemoth, Succubus, Fir Bolg, Living Hellfire
Gravity: Wisp[rularuu], AnimusArcana-Time Stop,
Ice: Snowmen, elves, Outcast, CoT Hellfrost, CoT Blade Prince
Illusion:Anything available, Mirror-Self/ Doppleganger, AnimusArcana-Ball of Light
Mind:[no pets]
Plant:DE Tree ppl, DE Mushroom ppl, Tuatha, Hydras
Wind: Storm Elementals
Watercontrol: Coralax Guardians, Coralax red/blue/green, Sharks, Hydras
Gun Drone: Dikti Drone, Zenith Hoverbot, IDF Battle Orb
FF Generator: Skyraider's FF Generator, IDF Battle Orb
Triage Beacon: cairn[rock turd], quartz[sm crystal], Crystal of Health[med crystal], Will of the Earth[big crystal]
Spirit Tree: cairn, DE tree of life, DE Fungi

 

 

🙂

Edited September 5, 2019 by daveyfiacre
correction

[Redlynne]

5 minutes ago, daveyfiacre said:

-Ninjas:Knives of Artemis

* WANT *

 

[daveyfiacre]

Tsoo now have female members also! and banished pantheon, and the lowbie skulls and hellions too. added in near the end.

[Steampunkette]

The live devs had a good reason to keep female MM pets out of player hands... I feel like they were right.

 

Not the "Violence Against Women" thing. But the knowledge that time to penis is measured in milliseconds. 

[MetaVileTerror]

Except that reason was never something which the Devs had reasonably considered.  We have had Mission Architect for a long time.  Anything even remotely depraved and sexist can be made far worse in AE.

 

The reason we don't have Henchpet customization is related to technical workload.

[Varkarrus]

I've seen so many people wanting a Clone powerset for Masterminds, and every time I feel the need to say... I don't think that'd work thematically.

 

Compare self-cloning characters in fiction to Masterminds. A Mastermind is an off-support who hangs back and supports their melee / ranged pets. But self-cloning characters in fiction don't have a "head," with any support powers, and instead swarm opponents; engaging in melee combat.

 

I definitely feel Self Cloning is an important powerset, but I think it'd be a whole lot more appropriate thematically to make it a Defense powerset. Here's a writeup I made of it some time ago. Never posted it to these forums but maybe I should...

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, MetaVileTerror said:

Except that reason was never something which the Devs had reasonably considered.  We have had Mission Architect for a long time.  Anything even remotely depraved and sexist can be made far worse in AE.

 

The reason we don't have Henchpet customization is related to technical workload.

The devs had reasonably considered it. The fact that you can do something Terrible in one part of the game that was designed to be as customizable as possible to allow players to generate content doesn't mean they should open it up EVERYWHERE ELSE.

 

Also somehow someone's nasty rape fetish made it through the game's design team and became a Rogue > Hero Morality mish so... yeah... 

 

Also: The AE is a contained place where someone's perversions are at least -somewhat- hidden. McPimpin' the Hoe Mastermind gets to be offensive pretty much everywhere.

Edited September 5, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Shadowsleuth]

We have female Patron pets (Widows/Fortunatas), female Lore pets & even female Controller pets (Illusion decoys); it is long past due to have female Mastermind pets.
 

 

1 hour ago, Steampunkette said:

Also somehow someone's nasty rape fetish made it through the game's design team and became a Rogue > Hero Morality mish so... yeah... 

 

 

 

Lt. Harris' storyarc is also extremely repugnant; getting the player to murder a girl just because she turned him down.

[Steampunkette]

2 hours ago, Shadowsleuth said:

We have female Patron pets (Widows/Fortunatas), female Lore pets & even female Controller pets (Illusion decoys); it is long past due to have female Mastermind pets.
 

 

Lt. Harris' storyarc is also extremely repugnant; getting the player to murder a girl just because she turned him down.

Temp pets that you cannot control, rename, speak through, or emote with animated emotes. 

 

Apples to Oranges.

 

Harris's arc IS nasty.

[Galaxy Brain]

Whats to stop a female thugs MM being the reverse?

[Steampunkette]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Whats to stop a female thugs MM being the reverse?

Nothing. Or male thugs masterminds.

 

But that's also a false equivalence. Thanks to the different ways society treats men and women they both have RIDICULOUSLY different social connotations and levels of expectation. A different impact as well.

 

It's disingenuous to present them as equal concepts.

[Galaxy Brain]

Now hold on, are we assuming the MM pets genders?

 

 

(trolling aside...)

 

This is sort of a weak argument given what is already possible with the game if people really wanna be degenerates

Edited September 5, 2019 by Galaxy Brain

[Steampunkette]

10 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Now hold on, are we assuming the MM pets genders?

 

 

(trolling aside...)

 

This is sort of a weak argument given what is already possible with the game if people really wanna be degenerates

People have the ability to be really gross, it's true.

 

This would make it worse. Why would we want to make it -worse- than it already is?

[Galaxy Brain]

12 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

People have the ability to be really gross, it's true.

 

This would make it worse. Why would we want to make it -worse- than it already is?

I mean, this is just like slippery slope incarnate. People can be gross, and it is already dealt with via ignore / reporting. The same could be done to people making weird MMs.

 

Should we go around and find anyone playing female avatars in pocket D and ban them too?

[Steampunkette]

13 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

I mean, this is just like slippery slope incarnate. People can be gross, and it is already dealt with via ignore / reporting. The same could be done to people making weird MMs.

 

Should we go around and find anyone playing female avatars in pocket D and ban them too?

Slippery slope was "A leads to B, therefore A leads to Q!" with no established connection between A and Q. Like "If we let gay people get married, we'll have to make having sex with ducks legal, too!" an actual argument provided by Pat Robertson!

 

This is "We should have Female Mastermind Pets" goes directly to "We live in a society with rampant sexism and general grossness/cruelty so some people would use Female Pets to do gross stuff"

 

There's no presumption of C through P of sliding slope we're skipping over and jumping to the end at Q. That's one step. A to B.

 

If we do this, people will use it to be gross. Because people are -already- gross with all the stuff that isn't this, already.

Edited September 5, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Galaxy Brain]

Sure, people may use it to be gross. But, you can already be gross with existing MM pets (technically grosser if you wanna go down certain routes) as well as in game resources such as just making certain avatars or AE missions. 

 

Given that you can already be gross, and we have the tools to moderate, this is punishing people who would legit want female MM pets just because some people may be weirdos. 

 

[Steampunkette]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Sure, people may use it to be gross. But, you can already be gross with existing MM pets (technically grosser if you wanna go down certain routes) as well as in game resources such as just making certain avatars or AE missions. 

 

Given that you can already be gross, and we have the tools to moderate, this is punishing people who would legit want female MM pets just because some people may be weirdos. 

 

It isn't "Punishing" anyone. Punishment implies injury inflicted because of wrongdoing or whatever. Injury would be having female MM pets taken -away- from you because someone did something deplorable.

 

This is more like "We're not getting a hottub because your pervert siblings would do unspeakable things to it and in it. And while we could repair the damage after the fact, it's -still- going to traumatize any member of the neighborhood who sees them doing it."

 

'Cause while we do have the ability to moderate, someone STILL gets exposed to the nasty shit before it can be reported since they have to see it in order to know it's happening.

 

You obviously don't mind. I do.

[Galaxy Brain]

Punishment doesn't have to involve physicality. Anyways, people can and do weird stuff in-game already and they are dealt with appropriately. Do you know how many Milk/Bodily Fluid characters I have seen with the Water Blast sets and/or slime auras? Should those be taken away too?

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Punishment doesn't have to involve physicality. Anyways, people can and do weird stuff in-game already and they are dealt with appropriately. Do you know how many Milk/Bodily Fluid characters I have seen with the Water Blast sets and/or slime auras? Should those be taken away too?

I noted injury in this case would mean having something taken away... Did you miss that part of the first paragraph?

 

Thankfully I haven't seen any "Body Fluid Blasters" so far. But while that's gross it's not also tied up in a culture of violence against women and power over women. It's gross and stuff but it's not tied up in a cultural expectation of female subservience. It's gross and all but it's not part of a continuing travesty of hatred and mistreatment of women that gets wrapped up in internet memes and laughed off as 'boys being boys'.

 

You keep trying to set up straw men, Galaxy Brain, but the issue is the social context in which female mastermind pets would exist. Not exclusively this puritanical "Oh no! Something related to sexuality!" you're trying to put forward.

[Galaxy Brain]

I mean if we wanna go there, is beast mastery animal cruelty in promoting dogs / wildlife being forced to fight? The horrors of conscripting people into war with mercs, gang violence with thugs, stereotypes with thugs/ninjas, etc. Pets also don't necessarily need to be "subservient" either, I see plenty of SWAT themed merc mms in Paragon City where its more like a unit than your standard "I have power over my minions!" style character. We have a post above asking for awesome secret agent women as a squad, 

As for fluid blasters, I've been on a sewer run and seen "___kkake" characters once or twice, and even seen on Discord somebody made a stone tanker with a name being a pun on stepping in shit just to have Rooted running as well.

 

People are gonna be gross, there is no stopping that, and you are right that unfortunately we need to see stuff in order to report on it but we already have the means to do weird shit in the game as is.

 

 

[Steampunkette]

If your position remains "We've got bad stuff in the game, so let's add MORE bad stuff! There's no reason not to!" I dunno what to say, GB.

 

I've said my piece. I don't want it in the game because I don't want to be exposed to what we both know will happen 'cause people are often awful.

[MetaVileTerror]

There is certainly the potential for abuse with customization of Henchpets.  However, I do not believe the possible abuses are significantly more severe than anything which exist already (notably AE and multiple accounts, which are now _free_ thanks to SCoRE and Homecoming).  Meanwhile, the potential benefit of granting players more customization (in any capacity) is always, in my opinion, a positive.  This game's strength has always been its incredible customization options for players.  But there's still more to it than that.

 

I don't want to undermine the feelings or concerns which may lead anyone to be afraid of additional customization options being explored, but I'll have to be honest:  I really don't want that to limit us in this context, and I know expressing that opinion can be kind of dismissive.  The abuses will happen, as they already do, and the price of that is some discomfort (which is not equivalent for all players, I know) and greater vigilance in reporting those abuses and trusting in the GMs to dole out appropriate judgements.  I happen to believe that price is well-worth the benefits of greater customization, player agency, and gender representation.  And I do mean that.  I know we live in the era of Poe's Law Made Manifest, but I truly believe that the strong and positive representation would greatly outweigh the abuses.  It's a small step for a much bigger cause, but I feel it's a step in the right direction.

[Galaxy Brain]

37 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

If your position remains "We've got bad stuff in the game, so let's add MORE bad stuff! There's no reason not to!" I dunno what to say, GB.

 

I've said my piece. I don't want it in the game because I don't want to be exposed to what we both know will happen 'cause people are often awful.

Meta has a very good response to this as well, but I do not see this as adding more bad stuff. I see this as an overall positive to have more diversity and player choice.

[Bossk_Hogg]

13 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

The live devs had a good reason to keep female MM pets out of player hands... I feel like they were right.

 

Not the "Violence Against Women" thing. But the knowledge that time to penis is measured in milliseconds. 

That's frankly a terrible reason. It implies that whatever violence/sexual behavior that is unacceptable towards women/female pets is somehow acceptable towards men or the existing male pets. 

 

This isnt COXG, we actually do have mods to sort that stuff out. It's like not wanting global chat channels for fear someone would say something crappy...