Olantern
-
Posts
1114 -
Joined
-
Quote:Have Lex wear a suit while doing it. If a guy in a suit does it, everyone knows it must be evil. Even if "it" is, say, walking down the street or drinking a glass of water.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
But the real estate market has collapsed so now it's screwing around with the oil refineries to hike up the price of gas.
I know, lets divert a significant amount of agricultural resources toward ethanol production thus hiking up the price of corn chips to wage war on childhood obesity. No wait, that sounds like a good thing. Got to come up with a way to make it sound nefarious. -
Quote:This is about my reaction exactly, right down the points on the fanciful technology.Originally Posted by Seldom
Just saw this: pretty darned good movie, overall. The plot offered no surprises but I knew the comics, so that doesn't help, but the overall character arc was a bit predictable. Not in a dumb way, though. The characters were well acted, the actors gave them decent depth and feeling. Evans made a cap you could admire and empathize with, and the love interest had good chemistry. Side characters had good moments to stand out, making their existence more than just simple background/plot devices. (Wel, Bucky was a bit on the plot-devicey side) Weaving was an interesting villain, and made what could be a flat *insert evil laugh* "I am evil nazi!" into a believable individual. The tech looks both advanced and era correct in most cases, not something that is easy to pull off. The flow was such that the hours flew by, and left me wanting more.
Stay for after the credits, as per usual.
Plus, it had an Alan Menken song! -
This isn't something I've followed that closely since the '90's, and not all that closely then, but I agree with the previous two posters. When I hear a term like "bat-family" (taken from the name of the series' main character) tossed around, I think of it as a core group of protagonists, not "every supporting character in the milieu."
As for the argument over whether this is good or bad, all I can say is that the upshot of every Batman story I ran into during the Dennis O'Neil days, as well as versions of the character featured in the recent Nolan movies, is an outraged, "How DARE anyone but me, the ****ing Batman, do anything about crime?" This may well be at odds with the way the character is portrayed in the comics these days, but it remains the reason I despise the Batman character so intensely. -
Quote:I'm not sure I understand the question. Can you please clarify?Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Let's see if I can't refine the question a tad:
If you completely ignored the game's plot, would your characters and their actions still make sense in the game's existing setting? -
Aside from the horrendously clunky set-up and an apparently somewhat confusing interface (it reminds me of the Incarnate system in that way, in fact), this looks pretty good.
-
Quote:I agree. I've always really liked the clouds, in particular, in those images- very atmospheric. I suspect we'll lose them from this site when the franchise officially gets "renamed" City of Heroes Freedom (a horrible use of rebranding if ever there was one), which will be a shame.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
THAT is what should be the official ones, frankly. Not the 'meh' they've decided is fitting for Freedom. Nicely done.
-
Quote:HBO requires this by contract in all their series. (Seriously, I've noticed that about most of the HBO shows I've seen, and it's one of the reasons I'm so disdainful of them.)Originally Posted by Gobbledygook
I haven't been following this thread, mostly cause I just now watched the first couple of episodes. You know the one thing that stuck out in my mind the most?
Man, these people really like to do it doggie style.
***
Still need to watch the Game of Thrones show sometime, but I feel like taking a break after reading the equivalent of over 5,000 pages of the books over the past couple months. Speaking of "equivalent," this was the first book where I was glad I was toting around an e-reader rather than the physical books. -
If I read the OP correctly, you are arguing that thermal shields draw aggro to the shielded character, not the Thermal. I have played a Thermal mastermind on and off since Going Rogue released, and I have not noticed what you're describing. He and his teammates seem to get attacked no more or less than any other character. His pets, which are almost always shielded, don't get targeted by ambushes or otherwise draw aggro in an unusual way, either.
I've also teamed with a (petless) demon/thermal mastermind while playing my stalker, and there, I had some trouble keeping the thermal alive, due to stalkers' tendency to shed aggro even when firing off AoE's frequently, as well as the frequent DoT and debuffs of her whip attacks. Damage over time and (especially) debuffs seem to do odd things to enemy AI, causing them to run in and out of melee, run across the map, change targets to the debuffer, etc.
In a mechanical sense, I'm not sure the system allows for a character to build aggro based on what buffs it is carrying. All existing forms of aggro I can think of are based on a particular target's actions (normally, some form of attack). The closest thing I can think of is the (unused) "heal aggro" setting, but that would cause enemies to attack the healer, not the healee. -
Quote:If we are going by "villain containing most sheer awesome," then yes, definitely.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
Fin Fang Foom
If villainous organizations count, too, I'd suggest HYDRA (at least in the '80's; not sure how it is now). -
While I'm not a huge Galaxy City fan (started my first character in Atlas Park because I felt it sounded more interesting), I will miss it. I don't really see much "storyline" to Galaxy, contrary to what others have stated, aside from a few plaques, and I don't get the hate for Atlas Park as a zone (though I agree it can have annoying broadcast chatter and could be more dramatically laid out).
I did rather like the layout of Gemini Park, and I generally prefer the starting Galaxy contacts (Rick Davies, the epeeist who fights crime; Gregor Richardson, the straightforward alternative to the touchy-feely, pseudo-profound Azuria; the fantastically named Prince Kiros Nandelu).
Quote:I agree. I imagine they just won't appear in the game again, but you never know. Notably, Rick Davies is married to a fellow contact (Susan, I think). This actually happened along with an issue release; they even hyphenated -Davies onto the female contact's name, a rare example of a minor, ongoing change to the game world. In ongoing fiction, especially comics, "getting married" invariably means "signing one spouse's death warrant," and it looks like that's what'll happen here. Unfortunately, I'd be shocked if anyone on the dev team even knows that these characters are connected in any way- that long predated our current story team. Anyway, roleplayers and lore complainers, take note!Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I think that maybe not all of the contacts will make it out alive from the Freedom Corps building - which would be another way of making the destruction more dramatic, and explain away the removal of the Galaxy contacts
On a more mechanical point, what about the slightly higher-level Galaxy contacts? Yes, their missions are all duplicated in all particulars by contacts' in other zones, but what happens to a character who has, say, "Escort homeless people from sewers" from Rachel Torres when i21 goes live? Developers, take note! -
Well, I finally finished it, after reading all the rest last month. This was the first series I'd ever read because non-geeks kept bugging me, asking if I'd read the book this Game of Thrones show was based on.
I enjoyed this volume, after liking book 1, being tepid on books 2 and 3, and being spectacularly unimpressed with book 4. I don't have much interest in the political scheming (a strange comment, I know), but I like the descriptions, the characterizations, and the fact that because the series is so drawn out, things can happen gradually, making changes in characters much more believable. Hopefully, things will continue to be fairly well-written from here on out.
But there are still questions to be answered!-
Will Martin ever stop introducing new plot threads and tie up a storyline for once? (I think probably not.)
Will he come up with a better ending than "and then everybody died?" (Again, probably not. For some reason, people seem to think such an ending would be meaningful.)
And if he doesn't, can he kill off the entire cast in only two more books? (At this point, the characters have him so outnumbered that, to paraphrase Sitting Bull, if he killed one for every sentence he wrote from now until his passing, he couldn't wipe them out.)
Find out in the next thrilling installment of A Song of Ice and Fire! Coming soon!*
*i.e., April 2025.
-
Quote:You haven't seen nitpicky until you've read Holmes fans bickering over, say, how many times Watson was married, or where Holmes actually went when he was "dead." As befits a group devoted to an intellectually driven character, Holmes geeks put the rest of geekdom to shame in their obsession with minutia. The fact that they spent all kinds of time doing this for decades before the advent of internet fora makes it all the more impressive.Originally Posted by DLancer
And they say that comic book fans are bad. XD
Looking back on my high school days reading the empty, scholastic debates in the footnotes of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, I realize what great training it was for being a law professor.
-
Quote:That was pretty much my experience, too. I went to the four-day "they show all the movies" event my theatres did, just because they're right across the street, it was relatively cheap as movies around here go, and I hadn't seen parts 5-7. Last night was the two parts of seven. It was the busiest I'd ever seen my movie theatres, even though it was the middle of the night, as well as the most enthusiastic audience I'd seen in a long time. It was mostly teenagers, and I found it strange to think that particularly the younger ones can't even remember before Harry Potter.Originally Posted by BrandX
Watched it.
In fact, I watched HP 7.1 and then 7.2 in 3D (just because I wanted the HP 3D glasses) and I quite enjoyed it.
Some parts I wish they left in and didn't see why they didn't, but overall, it was quite well done, and for what was left out, they added some nice things in.
the theater was packed, and the crowd was clapping, cheering, whooing...everything. I didn't hear one negative complaint about it from anyone in the theater, everyone seemed to be coming out of it, quite enjoyed talking with strangers about it.
The movie itself was quite entertaining, particularly in comparison with the first half of Deathly Hallows, which suffered from an hour-long hole where nothing happened worthy of Antonioni. -
That looks as if it might have potential. Certainly, I recognized a lot of things from the books. I can pretty much guarantee, though, that it won't have the books' level of gore and nudity, which out-Conans Conan.
At this point, I'm at least willing to wait and see. -
Quote:This sounds good in theory and even technically workable, but I wonder whether it could be made to work. The devs don't have the manpower or inclination to do large-scale review of the main mode of players' content creation at the moment, AE. There's just too much of it and not enough time or people. Wouldn't having a review system for chest emblems run into the same barriers? Perhaps not; everyone can string a few characters together and populate a map, but not everyone can Draw A Hexagon. Would the difference in submission rates make having a Chest Emblem Reviewer in Paragon Studios' best interest? I don't know.Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
It's true that most costume elements would be out of the question but it seems to me that chest emblems are the exception, being that they are basically decals. I find it conceivable that there could be a process for submitting and approving custom chest emblems and charging a few hundred paragon points for the privilege.
-
Quote:I'd also argue that a supposedly-comic villain who isn't actually funny is also a "bad villain." Many characters from The Tick, in my opinion, suffered from this issue.Originally Posted by starphoenix
Exactly. A bad villain has to be created seriously. Parody villains have to work extra hard to be a bad villain. Also applies for parody villains being good villains. Although Hank Scorpio has to be my favorite Bond-style villain and he was in only one episode.
-
Quote:I strongly agree. Lemur Lad put it rather more gracefully and politely than I could.Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
This is where the whole thing breaks down though. You treat the ongoing process like it's a boat that changes direction, and make assumptions about where that direction is leading. A lot of complaints do that. I'm guilty of it too on a few occasions.
But that's a mental construction that stems from our attempts to understand the development process. Our dev team is very open, but not when it comes to the day to day of what they're doing, and not when it comes what things they're working on for tomorrow.
These things you love now? The ones that you say indicate a change in direction? They were always going to arrive when they were done, and they were being worked on at the same time as a lot of those other things you happen to not like. Getting worked up over the fact they weren't done sooner or before other things ignores the fact that the people who did this probably had to learn the things they used to make it while doing those other things. The Whole is a process, and the process is ongoing, and you only get to see the tip of the fin above the water.
And a lot of the time, people weren't telling you your feelings about those other things don't matter, but that getting worked up about it was ultimately pointless, because there were indeed things coming you would like, its just a matter of which things got done in what order.
People would be a lot happier if they just packed up their tea leaves and stopped trying to guess what every change means for the game as a whole.
This is why I rarely bother to provide serious feedback on "strategic" development decisions (e.g., Should we have raids? How many costume pieces should be in a booster pack?) as opposed to "technical" ones (e.g., Does this power's effects match its Detailed Information?). No one is going to be influenced by my opinion. I affect development of this game no more than I affect the production of any other product I choose to buy. All I do is choose whether to consume the end product. Writing an angry (or positive, for that matter) letter is not going to change things. At most, it might make a moderator angry with me. Certainly, it won't affect what a developer who is in no way beholden to me does.
Having dealt with irrational and high-handed bureaucracies for all my adult life (working in government and education) has made this somewhat easier for me to accept than I suspect it is for the majority of players, many of whom seem to be somewhat younger and haven't had to face this kind of thing yet. And that's the other thing that makes me try to avoid complaining: in my experience, the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease. It gets the entire cart thrown away and replaced, which ruins things for all the wheels. (I admit I included this paragraph just because I like that metaphor so much.) -
I've taken to trying my "challenging" Nemesis AE arc with my incarnates, solo, even level, as a team of 8. In fact, soloing anything as a team of 8 can be entertaining for an incarnate who can't find a team.
Also, don't forget the Apex and Tin Mage Task Forces. I ran both the other night with a team of incarnates (a few with just Alpha, several with the higher slots), and they seem to be much more balanced, dynamic, and interesting with such a group without being a complete cakewalk. -
My suspicion is that the first "Signature" arc will focus on Sister Psyche (boo! hiss! [I loathe her only slightly less than Hamidon]) and BAB (not bad!) and continue the "Galaxy City Fallout" story. So, my prediction is that he'll head off into only-in-missions-land, like a number of the less-hated signature characters.
-
Quote:He does, however, have those neat ear-fin things. I don't think that counts as a "power," though.Originally Posted by Nos482
Worst Villain ever?
Abomination. He´s bigger, stronger and more intelligent than the Hulk... yet he got pummeled whenever those two met.
It's still difficult to think of villains worse than, say, Codpiece, mentioned in the older part of this thread.
For a character who's ridiculous even once you get past the initial oddness of the concept, consider the Porcupine, already mentioned above. Yes, he dresses as a giant porcupine. (Actually, his original outfit looked more like a pile of sticks, or perhaps a supervillainous version of Cousin It from the Addams Family.) But even beyond that, his powers are silly. Aside from the quills, he also had the power to emit various chemicals from his suit. Including ammonia. For what, cleaning up the place after he robs it?
Edit: An honorable mention for the obscure Spider-Man villain The Conquistador (not to be confused with the Astro City villain of the same name). As a kid, I had a Spider-Man record that featured him spouting the wonderful line, "Insolent dog! Die the death of a dog!" This is how I learned the word "insolent." An equally embarassing Spider-Man villain from a record was Draco, who was mutated into a neat-looking creature by being bitten by a radioactive dragon. He somehow managed to make this seem lame. He was notable for having legions of rubber-suited minions who chanted, "Draco, Draco, Draco ..." -
I am not a fan of continuous music, and I've never understood why so many games use it. There's nothing worse, for me, than having to hear, say, "The Song of the Fearsome Lava River" for half an hour because it takes you that long to walk your character across the Fearsome Lava River. Frankly, I'm not a huge of fan of even the "clips," if that's what they are, that we have now; I'd be happy with no in-game music at all, though I've never bothered to turn it off.
I do like Ominous Voice's work, though. I don't think I'd appreciate it as much if it were playing in the background while I blasted things, though. Returning to my original point, the game interferes with my appreciation of the music. -
The transcript was funny, but my favorite part was the way the Skype on my machine rendered 1-800-Moron as a callable number.
-
Saw it. Thought it was not terrible, though not ideal, either.
My only major criticism is that every frickin' thing in the movie shot out glitter stars with comets (a fireworks term for those explosive things that look like comets) when struck. I'm fairly sure I saw an explosion with glitter stars with comets when a window broke. Sheesh. But that's Michael Bay for you. Anyone remember when Rikti Drones were bugged to explode continuously when smashed? Someone filled an AE mission with them and called it "Explosions: a film by Michael Bay." -
Quote:As Tymer noted, Mom's Boys are Hellions.Originally Posted by Samothrake
Now if we can just identify Mom's Sons and those other kid mutants.
And who Lisa the Waterwheel Bot is supposed to be.
The kids in the tube are Grunka-Lunkas, from the "Fry and the Slurm Factory" adventure. I'm not sure what mutants they're supposed to represent.
No clue on the waterwheel-bot. -
That's Fry's ex-girlfriend (get it, another x-pun?) Michelle as the Black Queen and TV Chef Elzar as Spiral, with the Decrepit Lady as Dazzler and That Guy Who Adds an "S" to Everything as Longshot.
But who's that playing Polaris, or Kwanzaa-bot (at least, I think that's him) on the robot horse?