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Vorlonagent

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Posts posted by Vorlonagent

  1. Posted

    4 hours ago, mlooney said:

    Just an thought.  We have not seen Magus cast any spells in combat.   He dodged Elliot's attacks and then grabbed his hand. His actions so far vs the golum is to do acrobatic combat actions.  It may be possible that in a spell on spell battle he isn't as good as he thinks he is.    His dependence on physical attacks may be part of why he has his whole "male forms are better combat mages" thing going on.

    BIG IF:  If magic works in Magus' world the way Magic works in EGS, at least as far as magus getting spells appropriate to who he is, maybe most of his magic is melee combat spells similar to ASMA moves but without shouting the attack names.

    Or maybe he's really enjoying having a body again so he's simply favoring physical stuff just for the feel of it.
     

    11 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    I do see the problem. I think our main difference is in how severe we think it is. I respect your opinion in this and perhaps writing Dan about it would not be a bad idea. I may do so myself.

    A query to Dan might be appropriate....After all Elliot has this shiny new spell in his book and I keep expecting it to be important at some point...

    The Old Hack reacted to this

  2. Posted

    33 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    Please note that Noah couldn't hurt the dragon either. If this was meant to show how tough Noah was, it failed. It was Greg and Grace who ended up saving the day.

    Elliot knew she couldn't handle an opponent skilled at flying fighting and quite sensibly chose evasion. This is also known as intelligence.

    It is also noteworthy that neither of these two situations were fights as such. They were attempted murder -- aimed at Elliot. Colonel Sanders very carefully chose opposition that Elliot would not be able to handle. In both cases outside interference saved his life.

    This one?

    This one, actually.

    My complaint is that Elliot has only been put in unwinnable situations for a long time now.   Voltaire isn't trying to kill him and he's still completely overpowered and marginalized.

    51 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    I see what you mean and I get how it could be understood that way. I just happen to think it is less serious than you believe. The Worf Effect came from a show where you had fights nearly every goldarn episode and where Starfleet Security, supposedly trained elite, got made laughingstocks of. EGS is a character driven dramedy and we have, what, one fight a year at most if even that much?

    And as to that, how often are EGS fights won based on raw power? Let me see. Damien self-destructed because he decided he couldn't live with not being a god. Ellen megazapped Vlad -- that might count, only Damien was already dead so there was no further reason to fight. Elliot beat up bullies, but mostly in flashbacks. Though he did squash the Bloodgrem's skull a little. Nanase ultimately talked Abraham down. The first fire elemental admittedly got kicked into the river, which did for it. As to Not-Tengu, once again Nanase and Ellen beat it with brainpower. The second fire elemental attack and the bulldog dragon got ended by superior power, but again applied with careful thought rather than just have Grace kill poor Dex. Dame Tara, as demonstrated, got first outmaneuvered and then talked down. The spider vampire got outgriffoned, it has to be said. The big abomination fight... Susan killed an abomination and outwitted another. Raven killed a couple through skill and experience. Pandora's finishing move can safely be said to have been raw power. As to Sirleck, he didn't as much get outfought as outright executed by Magus.

    About half of all EGS fights are ended or even averted through intelligence and/or intelligent application of available power. And there is less than one fight a year. I can see what you mean, I just don't think it is a huge problem yet myself.

    Maybe a better way of putting it is Elliot takes a back seat even when he's center stage.  Against the bulldog dragon he's just the damsel in distress.  With Dame Tara, it's Ashley that gets the de-conflict ball rolling as it were.   Elliot is again helpless and in need of saving.  Current story, Elliot's contribution is a Cheerleadra transformation that was used to tell us how weak he was.

    yes confrontations in EGS are rare, which is what underlines the problem for me.Elliot doesn't get many chances to shine and each time he gets sat on by the GM to give the spotlight to someone else.

  3. Posted

    37 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    Elliot saved quite a few lives by interposing himself between the traffic and the explosive fireball. I call that acquitting himself well.

    • Elliot got one-shotted to show how tough the bulldog dragon was and to give Noah a good entrance
      .
    • Elliot was chased around the mall to show how dangerous the griffin was and to give Ashley a moment of awesome.
       
    • A few weeks back Magus catches a Cheerleadra punch without effort. 

    None of these are bad of themselves, just as no single time Worf gets beat up (or the Enterprise-D is nearly destroyed) is itself bad.  It's when the dots are connected and it's happening over and over again.

    This last one also sets up a universe mechanic that really bothers me: the idea that you have to be a man to really be a butt-kicker.  Previous evidence suggested that magic was a great equalizer of gender differences and suddenly it isn't.  I don't mind that Magus' world works this way, but the implication is that EGS-Prime's magic works this way too.  Not only does that short-shrift Elliot whose abilities are dominated by female transformation, and Nanase to a lesser degree, it's also potentially sexist. 
     

  4. Posted

    20 hours ago, Scotty said:

    Elliot's been portrays as the person that fights bullies, he's won his fair share of battles in that regard, but now the fights he's finding himself in are more serious and he's learned that what he knows isn't working as well as he'd thought. I'm pretty  certain he needs to do some more training, especially learning how to fight while flying, before he can be more effective.

    Yeah Elliot needs a little help.  Dan's made the point that he's in a whole different league now.  But Bulldog dragon, Griffin, and recently Magus.  ALL that happens to Elliot as Cheerleadra is he gets overpowered.  I'd like to see him at least lose better...

  5. Posted

    Just now, Scotty said:

    I gotta wonder what actual experience Magus has though, cus aside from Sirleck, this golem is probably Magus' first real fight. So far so good, but will he be able to handle it, or maybe we'll see Ellen step in again?

    I'd like to see Elliot step in.  Dan's kind of used him as the Worf of EGS...he gets beaten up or shut down to show how tough someone else is.

  8. Posted

    when I visited Scotland a few years back my very patriotic scottish tourbus driver told us that the movie Braveheart rekindled the scottish sense of self as "scottish" rather than as british.  The Scottish independence vote was mere days away, which might also have something to do with it.

    He complained about being ruled by people two hundred miles away as if that were some huge distance.  I repressed a snicker.  As a Californian,, my *state* government is 200 miles away.  Washington DC is 3000 miles away.  But the real distance is mental not physical.  My tourguide left me the impression that the mental distance was a very wide gulf, as if the british empire were long gone but the imperial mindset still lived on. 

    The Old Hack reacted to this

  11. Posted

    2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    On an only mildly related note: if you play a rogue in World of Warcraft, do not attempt to pickpocket faction leaders. They do not seem to appreciate it.

    At least Lady Sylvanas, Banshee Queen of the Undead, did not find it amusing.

    I worked on The Realm, a proto-MMO put out by Sierra On-Line about the same time Ultima Online came out.  We were silly and naive enough to think letting players pick the pocket of other players was a good idea.

    We quickly learned how wrong we were...

    mlooney and The Old Hack reacted to this

  12. Posted

    6 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    It sorta does.

    25: No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.

    27: I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.

    Personally, I also think somewhere along the line Sauron ate a power source bigger than his/her/its head.

  13. Posted

    14 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    Okay, these are good points. That volcano was totally an unsafe work space. Also security was awful. Anyone could waltz right in. "The Eye of Sauron sees everything" my ass.

    Nobody lives up to their hype, especially not Sauron. 

    "Melkor's dead!  I'm the new Melkor!"  Saying it don't make it so.  Especially if you can't even defend your home from random numenorian punks or keep them from lopping off important appendages sporting the key to the entire plot.   If the Evil Overlord List doesn't cover this it should.  Sauron really needed a copy.

  14. Posted

    42 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    Technically, so was the One Ring. And then some hobbit vandals dumped it in an active volcano. Some people.

    Damned art thieves.

    This is all Saruman's fault.  "Hobbit bait?  Who need to put out hobbit bait?  Let them breed out of control.  It's not my problem. " It sure turned into your problem, mate.  Hobbits, they get into everything and gum it all up.  For all their destructiveness Maiar are easy to deal with.  A regular spraying is all you need.  Once an infestation of hobbits gets going they're far worse than any valinorian pest you could name.  Worse than mimmoths, even...

    The Old Hack reacted to this

  19. Posted

    13 hours ago, Illjwamh said:

    I agree. The sad part isn't simply that we haven't had a female president, but that we haven't even had any serious female candidates except for that one time.

    Minor correction, Geraldine Ferraro was a candidate for vice president...

    to have a good female president we first need a choice to vote FOR rather than someone whose whole premise is "I'm female and the other guy's worse."  If you want a ovarian Prez just to have one, I've already addressed that.

    We makes fewer mistakes being meritocratic, but it's a perspective that can be depressing especially when applied to politics...

  22. Posted

    11 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

    I had so much fun with this game. I created involved backstories for my characters. Some of them serious, some less so. It was not uncommon for me to undertake adventures based on motivations similar to your outfit run and your cosmetic surgery patient. I approve wholeheartedly of both; the former reminded me of the time where I -- but I think I'll save these tales for Off Topic.

    I did similarly.  I had characters with deep stories, sketches of stories and experiments in powerset combinations. 

    As I contemplate a midlife shift from the tech sector to writer, I find my pen and paper RPG characters and my CoH characters are a great reserve of story characters.

    The Old Hack reacted to this

  23. Posted

    16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

    I miss City of Heroes. Darnit.

    You and me both.  There is Paragon Chat if you at least like the looks of your characters.   And a group of enterprising individuals have announced a very basic reverse engineer of a CoH server they intend to build on.

    The costume run I'm describing was before there was an Icon in Atlas park, so I had to make my way carefully through Kings Row and then VERY carefully through the little bit of Independence Port between the Kings Row Gate and the icon store. 

    The character who wanted the reductions was about 8th level and a Brute to boot, so the  Cap au Diable run wasn't so bad.  I may have already had her working on the zone.    Mercy Island and Port Oaks were low-level zones I just got through as quickly as possible.  Cape was always a fun place.

  24. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

    The overwhelming majority of writers who've commented on this in my presence at sci-fi conventions agree that somewhere in excess of 80% of the time, the writer loses the argument. A few said they've lost every time. I've only encountered one who denied ever losing such an argument - and he denied ever *having* such an argument.

    I've only had one argument with one of my characters. She pointed out that it didn't make sense for her to be physically capable of what I was asking of her. She was absolutely right. The solution is a drug... with side effects and after-effects. Which leads to a possible sequel. All in all, I'm happy to have lost that argument. That is, aside from the fact that she began by whacking me across the back of the head... with claws... and she's a 30-pound felinoid tree-dweller...

    That tracks.  I don't think I've ever outright won an argument with a character.  But I think there's one time when I didn't completely lose either..

    Sometimes online characters argue or ask for stuff.  In City of Heroes I once carefully navigated a level 4 character through a level 21+ zone to get a costume change she absolutely wanted..  I've had another demand a boob reduction.  Twice.  A different character absolutely refused to wear any costume I made for her but the first one.  The last time a character asked me for something was about a year ago on Guild Wars 2.  An Asura I was playing wanted to level up the cooking skill.  She didn't need it.  I had other characters with cooking maxed out, but she wanted it, dammit, and bugged me about it until I gave it to her.  The irony is she doesn't do anything with it now.  :)