[url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/157993#comment-157993]In another thread[/url], saw the proposed name "Yeti," and that got me to thinking how would a character named Yeti look? Would he or she be big-browed, scowling and hairy? That would fit. Then it occurred to me that most peoples' ideas so far I've read about are all relatively attractive characters.
Does anyone plan on making unattractive, ugly or monstrous characters?
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[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Not me. All my characters will be beautiful or handsome...perfect specimens of humanity.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
I plan to make an ogre/orc type of character and a couple of demons. I’d like to make something that looks like a Balrog :)
Name: Safehouse
Ranger: Gunner
Primary: Force Blast
Secondary: Atrophic Aura
Tertiary: Kinetic Melee
Travel Power: Parkour
Status: Traveling. Following rumors of a huge city in Massachusetts that is teeming with supers.
I'm tempted to make a valiant knight type of guy, that just looks like an orc.
I had a Gargoyle/Grotesque character in CoX (and in CO, but frankly ALL CO characters are ugly cause the basic face is ugly, so it was less "I'm going to make an ugly character" than "I'm going to cover as much of this ugly ass face with stuff as possible"), so I'll probably remake the character in CoT as well.
Most of my characters, I tend towards plain or unremarkable, rather than ugly. I am, however, planning for at least one to be what a beautiful woman would look like if you hybridized her with a crocodile. I doubt that'll turn out very pretty.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I also have created a Balrog style character with black skin and flame aura/fire control. A Goblin style character, a posessed demon (a kitten shoulder pet posessing the ugliest bald demon woman...), an imp with an alien head with horns and so on...
Ugly had its place for Heroes as it can portray the force of a Brute and instill fear in their opponents. It also works well for RP/Character development allowing for naturally feared/misunderstood individuals, villians turned virtuous, accidents which turned the righteous wretched etc...
Meh. Bah!
My first planned character is going to be monstrous. A nightmarish, lanky, shadowy creature that is drawn to the darkness in people's hearts consuming them with it. Haven't exactly decided if he's gonna turn out to be a 'good' guy or not...probably more of an anti-hero that falls somewhere on the border. Hehe
My CoH main, Foresight will probably be more conventionally good looking. But planning for him is on hold for the moment until I see what the full powersets look like since Mind/Time isn't an option and sadly it doesn't seem the Commander control/pet subclass will be available for a while.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
I was planning on doing a Yaga Baba style hag at one point
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
I'll probably do the standard cliché of making some of my "villainous" characters be undead-looking and/or otherwise monstrous. But I usually like to mix up the various concepts of characters being physically young and attractive and/or old and withered.
For instance I'll probably do at least a couple "vampire" type characters who normally look seductively beautiful but also have few costume slots for them looking old and zombie-like to RP them having gone too long without "feeding" on whatever they feed on to maintain their power and youthfulness.
I'll probably also do a few "Billy Batson turns into Shazam" type characters where a plain looking wimpy boy/girl turns into a super powered (and of course physically exceptional) adult.
Back in CoH I even did a "Princess Fiona" (from the Shrek movies) type character where I RPd she was cursed to be a normal looking human during the day and green orge-looking creature at night.
Another idea I'm thinking about for CoT is to have a hero who locks himself into a classic "iron mask" because he's been convinced his face can kill people (like a Medusa) but the twist would be that he actually has very handsome normal face and has just been tricked by an evil nemesis who's been trying to keep him down his whole life. Maybe the hero is actually a prince and was kidnapped at an early age and duped into the Iron Mask thing to make sure no one would recognize him to deny him his birthright.
Lots of ideas really... :)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Step one - Old, wrinkly guy
Step two - Loincloth and club/shield only
Step three - Die
Step four - ???
Step five - Profit
So like the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "Man in the Iron Mask?"
20041004-20120910
As well as [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_Iron_Mask]the original real story all that was based on[/url] and the several dozen other movies/TV shows, sure. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Not only will my characters look good, some of them would likely make comments to fat heroes, like, "How are you possibly that fat, when you work out every day and jump building to building." :p
In Korean mmo, everyone is a supermodel. Very strange to see a bunch of guys with lip stick and glowing skin charging an ogre. Very believable..
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
If those heroes' powers are based on magic or tech it'd be pretty easy for them to be physically out-of-shape and still be able to fly around all super-human like. It's only those silly "natural" type heroes that have to become as fit as an Olympian to be able to do anything. ;)
Well I wouldn't bother to judge a character's "gender orientation" but the same would apply - if they are "super" because of magic or tech their physical capability is immaterial.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Oh, I'll know the type when I see them :p
I've always considered Comic book heroes to be a cut above ordinary men...hence the perfect physiques and looks.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Why? I get that traditionally "heroes" are drawn to Olympic ideals and "villains" are usually drawn to be physically "undesirable" in some way but what law says things must always be that way? That's just a tradition, not a requirement.
It's pretty clear that in comic books (especially in the last few decades) that -anyone- could have super-human powers for -any- reason. Therefore a character's physical looks really tend to play no bearing in how much super-power they have.
If you want to make all your characters in CoT be "perfectly pretty" there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just saying that's a limited, one-sided view of the situation. Frankly I find it fascinating to see "plain wallflower" type characters become more powerful than the "obvious" Ken & Barbie doll types. Everyone expects the Prom King and Queen to be special, not the class nerd...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I partially agree about how anyone could have powers for any reason. But I also think that pretty or not, if someone is the physical type of hero, where their using their body for everything, such as in Brand X's example of building jumping. Then being out of shape doesn't make much sense.
Sure it might not make "much sense" but it's still certainly possible. Plenty of super powered people get around via much less "physical" means (i.e. flying, teleport, vehicles, etc.). I'm simply saying there's no law/requirement that super-powered people in a superhero universe must -always- be perfect physical specimens or even vaguely physically fit.
If it's important to you you're going to be free to make your characters look as physically fit as you want. Don't get me wrong - I'm probably going to make plenty of Olympian-looking characters myself. I'm just not going to [i]limit[/i] my concepts to that.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think Beast (X-men)
original:[img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/92/Uncanny8.jpg[/img] and blue: [img]http://watchmojo.com/uploads/blipthumbs/Fi-M-Beast-480i60_480x270.jpg[/img]
Thing (Fantastic Four):
[img=240x240]https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/b/ba/Benjamin_Grimm_%28Earth-774%29_from_What_If%3F_Vol_1_2_0001.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091212050143[/img]
and Skin (Generation X):
[img]https://uncannyxmen.net/sites/default/files/images/spotlight2/skin00.jpg[/img]
are perfect examples of existing heroes who are not attractive. Moreover, they are examples we will probably be able to emulate.
I'm not counting uglies like Spawn or Deadpool, because with their masks on they look like perfect human specimens.
I personally am going to create a stickman kind of like a cross between Jack Skellington:
[img=240x240]https://www.writeups.org/wp-content/uploads/Jack-Skellington-Nightmare-Before-Christmas-a.jpg[/img] and a vampir from Tera Online: [img=480x480]http://tera-cdn3.enmasse-game.com/datastore/images/2012/07/16/19/35/27/888/VT5.jpg[/img] as an evasion tank. I think that would be pretty cool, but I don't have a name for him yet.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I'd say, some of it just goes with the job.
Even the guy in the power suit (tech) like Stark. Needs to work out.
So, what happens when one actually takes care of their body?
They generally, not always, start to look good.
Of course, they could still have a face only a mother could love :p
To clear I never said there "shouldn't" be physically fit super-heroes. Like you said many of them probably would become buff just as a "side-effect" of what they do even if that wasn't a primary goal. Stark's a perfect example of this because he wears the presumably weighty suit(s) that give him his super-human abilities. He's got to be able to move around while in the suits so it would behoove him to not become a Homer Simpson styled fat-ass.
But again I suspect for just about every character you can think of that has to be "physically fit" in order to do whatever they do I could probably name another character who [b]doesn't[/b]. I'm not going to bother to list them here because there are plenty of [url=https://www.ranker.com/list/fat-comic-book-characters/ranker-comics]online lists for that sort of thing[/url] already.
I'm just simply saying that physical fitness is not a requirement (or even an automatic side effect) of possessing super-human powers.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I hope to make heroes with visually arresting personalities and exquisite tailoring. Nucky comes to mind.
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
Deprived build I see ;)
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Avatar by MikeNovember
I actually preferred the secondary description tied with Natural origins.
"or perhaps you are not human at all, and possess powers natural to your race."
I liked the idea of Superman being Natural origin, and others like him, because it was inherent to who they were. Just like I would consider a divine being Natural rather than magic, because it is inherent to them and not necessarily pulling from a magical source for their power. They are the source.
I also wanted to comment that I agree with the physique not necessarily having to fit the Olympian ideal for them to be powerful, but that includes Natural origin. Hehe.
Look at Kingpin from Marvel comics as an example. I remember Spiderman always making quips about his weight but one time, as he was crushing Spiderman he mentioned "Approximately 2% of my body is fat, allow me to demonstrate what 350lbs of muscle is capable of..."
He's considered to the be peak of human strength for his stats without superhuman abilities. Like sumo wrestlers.
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
I simply just wanted to make the point that the only super-powered people who are likely going to be "physically fit" are the ones where being physically fit is a main part of how they use their superpowers. When you've got a character like Professor Xavier you don't even need to be able to walk to be able to be a "super-powered" character.
But you did bring up another reason for why the old Origin system from CoH never completely worked. There was always a question of how "aliens" reasonably fit into that system. In the case of Superman it was "Natural" for him to be superpowered on Earth whereas a normal human "naturally" has no powers at all.
I had a character in CoH who was basically what would be referred to in D&D terms as a Cambion (a cross between deamon and human). Even though I choose "Mutant" as an origin for this character I always struggled with whether it should have been labeled a "Magic" based character or even as a "Natural" because I could rationalize arguments for all 3 origin types.
With paradoxes like those I'm continually glad the Devs of CoT have moved away from having hardwired Origins.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'll be extremely disappointed if I can't have scars or a missing eye or the frail wizard look.
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
Seeing as ugly and attractive are completely subjective it's hard to say. Especially when it comes to being sexually attractive or just visually attractive, which can be, though are not always, completely different. For example, the hulk. I can make the argument that his physique is 'attractive' if his size/symmetry are done right, along with color, but someone else might consider that ugly. A real world example would be Jay Cutler, the bodybuilder not the QB. He had arguably the most 'attractive' and symmetrical body on any Olympia stage, in my opinion, but many consider that body style ugly. But yes, I'll admit, most people that live in the same culture have very similar opinions of what ugly is due to cultural conditioning...for example having bad skin conditions usually isn't considered 'attractive' by the majority. But I digress.
So, in short, I'm sure some of my characters will be considered ugly by others.
Compulsively clicking the refresh button until the next update.
Well yeah and I'm not sure scars and missing eye count as ugly and could just be cool looking. Frail wizard look though...ugly :p
Clearly you haven't seen some of the types of scars people can get.
But no, I was thinking imperfections in general. Too many games force everyone to be 22 year old model/athletes.
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
Yes, but that generally fits the narrative of the games story as well. :p
TOR for instance, none of the characters are old story wise. They may be old in your head, but if you pay attention to the stories, not old at all :p
Old characters are almost always experienced as well, so "Welcome to Titan City new hero!" will generally be in the young category, though I'm sure CoT won't limit one to being young.
This is unfortunately one of those conceits we have to accept for the sake of storytelling a lot of the time. Being "young" and "new" gives a latch-point for the writers to work with in the narrative. One of my favorite storylines from CoH actually did that. It was INCREDIBLY early on, like right out the gate. you joined up with another team of up-and-comers, and after accomplishing a few things, you end up catching the eye of Manticore, who decides that your team could use some proper training to foster your abilities. It falls apart soon after, but it was awesome while it lasted, introduces you to the dynamics supers have in the world, lets you have an in with one of the city's greatest supers, and still had high enough stakes to feel like it all mattered.
But that story wouldn't have worked for an older character coming back onto the scene. It ran with an underlying conceit that I think did really well.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Yes it is. However, like CoH and TOR, players either ignored the story or changed it in their head, to fit their desire for an old character.
Though, for CoH, one could more likely fit an old character into the story than TOR. With CoH, one could say the powers just recently popped up or their powers just made them look old or what have you.
[img=300x300]https://i.imgflip.com/11y9mp.jpg[/img]
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think we're going more for obvious uhhh....."blemishes" such as scars, deformities. Facial asymmetry goes to "ugly" pretty fast.
Comic books have a long history of very conventionally attractive bodies, being the thing.
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[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
At least for heroes at any rate. When it comes to villainous characters in comic books it's almost a requirement for them to be "physically unattractive" in some aspect or another.
Villains are often depicted as either scarred, short, bald, old, withered, freakish, etc. Relatively few of them would be considered as "physically perfect" as most heroes and of that subset many of those often have some kind of quirk of vanity that drives them to consider themselves superior to others largely in part because they are beautiful/handsome. For them their "attractiveness" is another way (either consciously or unconsciously) they can set themselves above "normal people" (in the same way a stuck-up prom queen might unsympathetically believe she's the hottest girl in school).
The good news is that CoT should provide us unprecedented freedom to create either "classically perfect" characters OR something less than that. :)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Gave "marvel villains" a google: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/profile/idea/lists/top-100-marvel-villains/49380/
Took me until Enchantress to find one that's not "scarred, short, bald, old, withered, freakish"
I think the thing is to be either be obviously intimidating (Red Skull, Galactus, Thanos) or wronged somehow (Dr. Doom, anyone with a scar, Lex Luthor). Because sublty is newfangled :p
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Avatar by MikeNovember
I was agreeing, point was that it took until halfway through the list to find a counterexample.
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Avatar by MikeNovember
Yeah my bad on that - I deleted the offending post. That's what happens when you're tired and assume the worst of people after misreading their post. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I must have a text tone issue because I run into that a lot :p
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Eh it wasn't you... this time. ;)
Somehow I just didn't see the "not" in your sentence and mistakenly thought you were implying it was hard for you to find an "ugly" villain. Anyway since I took the trouble to find it I always liked the following scene from Unbreakable describing this basic comic book "rule of thumb":
[youtube=600x350]98BYiChrtW4[/youtube]
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Part of me doesn't mind the preference for old white guy villains though :p Dr. Doom, Doc Oc, Red Skull ( he counts :p), Magneto, Lex Luthor, Hammerhead, ...like all the humans basically.
Institutionally ( I was like 12 so I didn't have complicated appearance choices), in making Galrithius, my main villain, I went for otherworldly, but still human:ickly pale skin and pupil-less eyes, standard horror stuff.
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Avatar by MikeNovember
I don't mind that some people always want to play "default perfect" characters in MMOs. Let's face it most of us aren't "perfect" looking IRL so I get that it's fun to look handsome/sexy in a computer game. Nothing wrong with that. ;)
But when it comes to "villainous" characters I've often been drawn towards the classic "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" scenarios where, based on the circumstances, the character can shift from appearing "normal/desirable" to appearing "ugly/horrible". There are all sorts of ways this kind of thing can be handled spanning from ideas like an innocent normal person being "cursed" (kind of like the Incredible Hulk) to maybe like a vampire/demon who's naturally ugly but uses a glamour of sexiness to trick/seduce victims.
Even though a game like the original CoH provided multiple costume slots it was still kind of limited in the ways you could make "multiple personas" for a realistic Jekyll/Hyde type character. For instance I always wanted to create a character that looked like an innocent young girl but when she got pissed would transform into a hideous old nasty hag/witch. The problems with that were two-fold in CoH: first the game never allowed you to create truly "flat-chested" females so it was hard to create a "young girl" that wasn't already sporting a D-cup sized chest. On the other end of the spectrum the game only provided like one "old face" option and didn't really allow enough control over the body shape to make something that convincingly looked like a withered old hag.
As I've said before I'm looking forward to the expanded capabilities of CoT's costume creator. Being able to have more control (via body sliders) will let us play around with far more possibilities than the default perfect bodies we were effectively "stuck" with in CoH.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yeah. I ran into that problem myself. Made a stone tanker named something like Granite Granny (? or something. been a long time and I never really got invested in her), but while I could get her to look right from the shoulders up, somehow she was still sporting the body of a 20y/o model. It was... quite the juxtaposition.
I'm gonna say again that I'm really looking forward to the chance to play as a giant lizard woman. Earlier today I discussed with some other people the fact that there's very few games with particularly memorable character customization options, and yet there's still a few characters from CoH that I remember, most of a decade later because they had particularly distinct looks. I don't know if my character would fall under being so distinct, but it'd be a far cry the 'normal' look most characters have to be a nine-foot tall crocodilian hybrid woman.
Being visually distinct has become surprisingly important to me lately. I'm fine with being a relatively ugly character if that means I stand out from the crowd.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I will most definitely be playing ugly characters. I adore a wide range of appearances. Along with those intentional uglies, I will also have a nice selection of handsome and beautiful characters. My favorite part about superhero comics is the variety of styles of heroes.
I promise to refrain from listing all my ugly characters from CoX and CO, but be assured there are many,
If I am going to spend countless hours staring at some characters ass.....its going to be a damn hot one....
"It's a common conceit in games: play, die, reload, and ride the karmic wheel of kick-ass, until you get it right"
through a cape? ;)
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Avatar by MikeNovember
Heh, reminds me of a forum signature I saw when playing Star Wars Galaxies, though more aimed to males playing females than playing ugly characters. Paraphrasing here since I don't remember it that well.
"Yes, I'm playing a female character. If I'm going to see the behind of my character for several hours it sure as heck not going to be a hairy Wookie's ass."
The irony of this of course is that I remember at least one time (might have actually been in CoH) where I had just created what I considered a fairly hot character and became so distracted zipping around looking at it to notice that I had just run into a MOB that promptly kicked my character's hotness into an instant faceplant. During that moment it made me wish I had not made my character [i]quite[/i] so hot. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Couldn't have been that hot, fire aura should have killed them all. :P
Allos ;p
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Avatar by MikeNovember
See now that's funny to me, because my character on SWG was in fact a wookiee. Man, I miss Daracca. Master Ranger, nearly Master Sniper... Barely useful, but boy was he fun.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
Well like they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Whatever turns you on... It's all good. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Well, he was a big hunk of fur, handsome as far as carpets go.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty