rian_frostdrake

I looked at the pattern in the paragon market. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn’t. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.



(just to be clear, this is a watchman reference, the doctor that was giving Rorschach a Rorschach test said a variant of this. just a joke on the "pattern" thing)

Alternate animations.

elemental animations would be nice for weapon/non weapon options, as well as more martial artsy options. right now elemental combat is made up of the same 4-6 generic punching animations, can we time out some kicks and maybe some less brawl-y hand techniques?

also maybe "styled" weapon moves. katana, dual blades and titan weapons are good, they fit their theme, but broad sword, and axe and mace to a lesser extent look kind of generic. a chinese wushu styled broadsword set would add variety, as well as a set of animations that use more traditional European sword fighting styles(ok thats kind of vague, but the stuff you see the ARMA guys doing who do their homework, "good" sword fighting if you will). katana could even benefit from a set of animations that look less like kendo and more like the one handed "cocky" style of swordplay they use in anime or fighting games. mugen from samurai champloo or sol badguy from guilty gear are good concepts for this. pistols could also use a set of animations that look more close to the depictions from cowboy movies. timing the animations to still work would be an issue.

Pool powers..man, too long a post to go into detail. short version, would like a magical and magical with kanji version of medicine pool powers. give kick and boxing new animations that work more for a trained fighter. give jump-kick a different animation, maybe a pro wrestling drop kick, and give flurry the option of using the old storm kick animation.

Finally my personal crusade, martial arts. Many of you are likely saying, those already got alternate animations and while true..its kind of a thing. They got new punching animations, largely more brawling moves than something that would be something a skilled martial artist would use. they were seemingly concessions to the crowd that wanted street fighting, and before sj existed, they were fine, more concepts the better, we can come back to it..right? Well sj came out, brawlers now had their moves, but martial arts was now a system that had old mechanics, and animations that were either ancient or were not really "martial arts". i know martial arts covers a huge number of styles, and broadly applies to any way of fighting, regardless of refinement or weapon. In this case i'm referring to striking arts, either European or asian, such as the various styles of karate, savate, tae-kwon do, the huge number of arts operating under the umbrella term of kung fu, basically the recognizable stuff that people have heard about, but not capoeria, since apparently that would cause the animators to explode, as per the ustream. A reason it sticks out to me as martial arts are real world things, i can't tell you how to project fire out of your hands, because i have never seen anyone do it, but real world and stylized depictions of martial arts, seen them all the time, so bad depictions dont work.
thunder kick is very bad, its kind of a roundhouse kick, but is delivered completely wrong. the angle is bad, supporting foot only turns halfway and the hips are completely absent from the follow through. Throwing a kick in real life like this would cause more abuse to a player's groin than the collective costumes of desdamonda, mother mercy and sister psyche.


(after editing book sized posts down twice now)
really, rather than bore everyone to death with a bunch of ultra technical martial arts stuff that you either already know or dont care about, id love to see the moves to take closer inspiration from real techniques, tae kwon do and muai that would be good places to start. street fighting has their set now, future brawling animations can go there well, but I'd love to see better ones based on real fighting styles, and for the love of all that is holy, delete the current animation for thunder kick, just kill it... it is indefensible.

that tells me cc's are dangerous, all those people are wearing armor to them, we need better security.

here's mine. she is also a former superdyne user, but due to her unique genetics, she became a "huldra" rather than a troll, retaining her intelligence and gaining greatly advanced strength over what even a supa troll can accomplish. The outfit comes mostly from her being a major d&d fan before the change, so she is kind of a hyper active fantasy-trope fangirl more than a particularly serious portrayal.


side note, can you imagine the wrist pain of drawing my overly-detailed characters in an actual comic?

hmm thats a shame, i like those animations, nothing too drastic i hope.

it has been on youtube for ages, just search city of heroes staff fighting.

one serious question that does come of this is what exactly states' death will do for recluse. If the stated reason for states dying is to push our characters into the forefront, will recluse die as well so that villains similarly become the big bad?

Also, recluse has always maintained a balancing relationship with states, while neither one really has done much in lore for a very long time, both are kind of the silent figureheads of their respective sides, now with states gone, does that mean recluse diminishes because his parity with states was what justified him, or do they try to make him more aggressive to make the newly "in charge" heroes have something to do. We have been pretty much told that the next big arc is the battallion, so recluse would be getting side burnered pretty fast anyhow. so is the other option that recluse is going to die as well, maybe even be killed by states in a final act?

noted, thanks.

pieces. honestly that was the original appeal of the game to me, socket stuff together and use your creativity. these days, i like a lot of the sets, but they flow horribly if you dont use a full set. I made rian a dragon long before we had dragon wings, heads and reptillian skin. We got great stuff with the mutant pack, but there are clear lines that look inorganic.

to add my personal grudge that silver's post brings up..animators.look at that ending shot for thunder kick... is that an animation we should have? it's hideous. for the love of all that is holy, we need an alt animation(maybe even a better animated roundhouse kick, which is what that moves seems to be tortuously attempting to be) for that move and quickly.

while i think the spandex thing is done here to abundance, cant say no to johnny's dionsaur island and dinosaur enemies. It would be a great place for my anime-inspired katana scrappers to go fight enemies. also, emblems on backs , particularly kanji ones on backs for my martial artists.

moo hits a good number of options i want, good show.