Olantern

That was a nice story, especially since I got chewed out this evening by a fellow vet for answering questions in the Help channel. I was told that "don't talk in Help unless you need help." How one is supposed to respond to requests for help via tells when trial accounts (the only ones who seem to use Help) can't receive them is beyond me.

Also, this thread made me crave pancakes.

Nice to see, and an excellent choice, too!

Another problem: I always felt the original series, along with all its other flaws, had far too many protagonists. No one got much development time, aside from showing a single personality trait once per episode. For a half-hour show, I would cut it down to four or perhaps five characters.

Confining myself to individual signature characters, rather than factions, some characters whose looks I like include:

Captain Mako- He's an anthropomorphic shark who enjoys eating people, and that's exactly what he looks like. I particularly like his rendering in the "conceptual art" book that came with the CoV DVD edition.

Hero 1, as portrayed in the "fan art" and conceptual artwork- That flowing, multi-tiered Union Jack cape conveys plenty of things at once: classic hero, British patriot, classy mystic. I always imagine him using its strands to trip and entangle villains as he battles them with Excalibur. I wish the spirit of Hero 1 seen in the hero cape mission had a cape that beautiful. As it is, the in-game model seems overbalanced by his helmet; it makes his head look too big. The Honoree doesn't have these issues as much, both because his cape is in tatters (a great touch) and because he's more muscular than the original Hero 1.

Nemesis- I love the idea of steam-powered automata, but the Fake Nemesis/Nemesis design also conveys several great character aspects: imposing power, both literal and figurative, from the size; a certain regal demeanor, from the gold color, the sceptre-like weapon, and the elegant scrollwork on the armor; and a sense of another time, just because it's hard to imagine a modern techno-mastermind bothering to put a belt buckle or a humanlike face on his armor. Despite the fact that we see this look all the time because a generic boss uses it, it's still instantly recognizable as Nemesis and no one else.

Scirocco- Despite having a rather fussily elaborate costume, his look displays a good sense of mysticism. Also, apart from the character, I just like the design.

Lord Recluse- Another extremely busy design that still works well. He has a cape and a fur chapelet and spider arms and heavy armor and a helmet, yet instead of clashing, they combine to suggest an overwhelming physical presence. Those arms enable him to loom over even very large ordinary characters, and his blank, recessed eyes suggest an inhuman, implacable evil (the classic CoT minions do this for the same reason). I consider it a success of Recluse's design that every time I see him, I find myself trying to imagine what he looks like without the helmet.

Ghost Widow- In my opinion, hers is the strongest of the Silver Age/spandex designs in the game. Her costume is simple and memorable. The coattails suggest a skirt, making her outfit look feminine yet still believable as something someone could wear while fighting. The two-color look has a strong visual impact; she's always looked kind of like a photographic negative to me. And, like Recluse, she makes good use of the "looking into the abyss" villainous blank eyes.

Noble Savage- His lopsided, haphazard design suggests that despite his tremendous size and strength, this is a character who's been a victim of something in his past. The cat-like face is the perfect addition to suggest "savage" in the sense of animalistic fury.

Statesman- I like everything about this design except its most unique part, the faceplate. This is odd because I love the faceplate on the redesign of Tyrant's armor. Perhaps the plate just needs a slight tweak.

Malaise- I include him because I consider him to have a great spandex/Silver Age design. There are no huge armor pieces or special monocles or funny capes, just tights, hair, and an eye detail. Yet the strange color ("mauve and lavender?" I hear his fellow characters thinking), the wavery pattern, and the long hair all go together to imply that this guy has mental powers, that he's got an unusual "vision" of things, and that he might not be wrapped too tight.

Characters whose designs I find unsatisfying:

Sister Psyche- Not because her design is "old" or "low-res," but because it leads me to think in a different direction from the design team's stated intent on the character's personality. The in-game material on this character seems meant to show that she is a wise, all-knowing guide to us mere mortals. Aside from the fact that I don't much care for such characters, that isn't the impression made by her outfit. The outfit is just "a superhero costume." Nothing about it says "psychic" or "immortal being." Indeed, in some renderings, it seems meant to suggest "body paint." I remain unclear on why a character who's so easily offended by people thinking about her body (according to more than one piece of game-related fiction) wears such a revealing outfit; the combination of her explosive, easily-offended personality and the overexposing outfit suggest to me that she might not be the most mentally balanced character out there. For a much better treatment of this kind of character, consider Sister Solaris, where the numerous floating veils suggest a kind of ethereal serenity, which is what I think we're meant to get from Sister Psyche.

One thing I do like about her outfit, though- nice colors.

Positron- This is a tough one. I want to like Positron's outfit, but it just doesn't live up to its promise. I get the impression that the idea here is the armor panels themselves are meant to fade into the viewer's mental background, with the eye drawn to the glowing lines surrounding the plates, suggesting the raw power contained within. I've seen some renderings of the character that accomplish this, but I have yet to see it work in-game. I also find the fact that his face, the only unarmored part of him we ever see, is so bland and ordinary-looking. Nowhere do I get the impression that this man is a genius with the ability to manipulate the fundamental particles of the universe. Good conception, not the greatest execution.

Infernal- Though a very minor character, I think Infernal could be much improved with a "signature" design. He wears armor made out of living demons! Yet it's simply the Medieval costume set, colored black. I'd like to see some suggestion that the armor is not just otherworldly, but alive. Perhaps a unique texture could be applied to it, or the armor could periodically change shape slightly as the demons try to break free.

Frostfire and Odysseus- I class these two together because they suffer from the same problem: they look just like ordinary members of their factions. That's fine for characters like Director 11, whose faction is meant to be "faceless" anyway, but Odysseus is portrayed as a master schemer, while Frostfire is the centerpiece of the "tip arc" and has his own, time-hallowed mission. Despite these things, Odysseus looks like an ordinary Warrior with a fillet, while Frostfire is essentially another blue-skinned Outcast. A change as minor as different facial hair could be used to make these guys stand out as "special." (For a "unique" rendering of Odysseus that uses only non-signature costume parts, see AE arc #175660, "The Heart of Talos." The Art subforum has already done a "redesign Frostfire" thread, too.)

Mother Mayhem- Her costume simply has too much going on. Long jacket, cutouts in the tights, chains on the shoulders, highlighted ... attributes ..., streaked hair, all crammed together in a design without a particular theme, unless it's "Eighties band member."

That's all for now. Hope you found that helpful, or at least interesting to read.

I'd keep the cloak that turns you invisible when you put up the hood, the bow that shoots energy arrows, and the idea of a show set in a fantasy world, including the fairly good array of monsters that showed up (i.e., the dungeons and the dragons).

I'd scrap the rest. Even at the time, I never understood why this show dealt with an annoying group of kids traveling through time and space and not characters like Strongheart and Kelek, "regular" D&D heroes and villains from the contemporary LJN toy line. This would have also enabled the show to feature a character called "Melf." I love everything about that idea ...

Wow, if there were a Wyvern code with a bow, you could finally make Dual Archery!

I'd still have to pine for Shield Attack, though (including Shieldy Breath and Rain of Shields).

Back in i5, I got level 40 Paragon Protectors (the all-PP faction, not Crey) in a paper mission. I nearly held onto it, since, at the time, that was almost the only way for a villain to find Paragon Protectors, but since I was 24 at the time, I eventually got a GM to clear it (no "abandon" or "complete" mission feature back then).

I've also seen Storm Elementals, as well as otherwise unbroken missions to defeat the nefarious BOSS_NAME and guards.

I'm not sure if the devs remember it or not.

I think the previous poster nailed the way Hero Corps was originally meant to be portrayed. As several of the responses here imply, business in the comic book world is invariably evil. The existing information on Hero Corps seems to fall into this pattern. Those plaques couldn't shout "they encourage crime!" any louder if they had sound files attached. Further, remember that Crey was the primary antagonist in the pre-alpha days. It essentially controlled every faction, and I'm sure this would've turned out to be the case with Hero Corps. Probably, this notion eventually evolved into giving Crey the Paragon Protectors and their attendant story. I suspect that this is one reason Hero Corps was never developed further. We already have an "evil suits" faction (Crey), and most players seem to be believe our "hero" faction (Longbow) is also evil. I suspect that every time Hero Corps comes up in a meeting, someone says, "But we already have that covered."

Frankly, as you can probably tell from the tone of this post, I don't like the self-righteous tone of the anti-Hero Corps characters featured in the Hero Corps plaques, and I don't like the notion that every heroic organization in the game is really evil (with the exception of Vanguard, the one supposedly "unaligned" organization, which paradoxically is the one everyone thinks is "good"). I get to read the devs' pontifications on how "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!" in the neverending stream of Praetorian content. I don't care to get hammered over the head with "wanting to make money is evil," too.

Plus, I have a Hero Corps character, and I don't want to see her entire background invalidated the way my entire supergroup full of Praetorian Earth characters (created circa 2005) was when Going Rogue came out.

I don't know how they'll explain it away (if at all), but I can guarantee that it'll be one of countless things cited by the forum's Content Police as "terrible writing." (If I were the devs, I wouldn't even bother to write things any more, the feedback on new arcs is so hostile. Of course, every time I think that, I remember that the devs don't generally read the fora, except through the broad summaries developed by the OCR team. I think that's something that more forumites need to recognize when they claim to give feedback- it's just going in a hole someplace.)

Edit:

Oops, forgot to comment on how they'll explain it. My money is on the previously suggested "they port you out instead." Personally, I don't require an explanation.

Now I know why Arachnos can build giant buildings out of solid metal but can't pick up the frickin' trash lying in the streets of the Rogue Isles: there's only one guy tasked with picking up all of it.

Great character.