Flux

I downloaded it, but haven't gotten around to trying it yet. The trailer makes it look super fun though. It gave me feelings of Sonic the Hedgehog and then Mario and then Megaman... I'm definitely going to be trying this game out.

Oyyyy, happy birthday Bibs! If I would have known this was coming I would have made you a sick new Politoed Armstrong avatar. Oh well. Maybe I still will. Hope your birthday is/was good! (Not sure if I'm late or not.)

Yeah, it came out mid 2015, but I just started playing it recently and there was no thread for it here, so I figured I'd expose it to anyone who may not have known about it. The color scheme is a bit tame when compared to games like Overwatch and Battleborn, but I think that just comes with the more realistic setting it takes. Battles take place in metal factories and underground pipe systems, so it's kind of to be expected. The game's really fun, though it takes a while to reach that point. It'll kick you around and you'll hate it until you finally start to figure out what's going on. Then it's a great experience.

Neat-o, this is a good reason for me to pop on the server again. Hopefully I don't work that day though. A quick question though - For member trivia, will the clue be about a member, and we have to figure out which member it is? Just trying to make sure I understand it right. Also, do we give permission to Rose here or through pm?

So I figured I'd make a thread for this, given the recent success of games like Overwatch and Battleborn and their popularity among the people here at Reborn. Dirty Bomb is a hero-based FPS, similar to Overwatch and Battleborn, although it feels like a cross between Overwatch and Counter-Strike to me. The game is in open beta and is free-to-play on Steam, so I'd definitely recommend checking it out at the very least. It's based more on realism for a hero-based shooter, whereas Overwatch and Battleborn head down a more fantasy-based route. The game features some standard objective modes, such as Execution, which is basically a CSGO/Search and Destroy sort of mode, and other Objective modes such as escort, etc. There are 5 main types of heroes, called mercenaries or "Mercs" in this game, being Assault, Medic, Heavy, Engineer, and Sniper, each with their own role to fill. Assault Assault Mercs such as Skyhammer and Phantom are primarily based around securing kills. Skyhammer comes equipped with Assault Rifles and the ability to call in a positioned airstrike, while Phantom is primarily based around katana play using his Refractive Armor ability, which allows him to become nearly invisible for a few seconds. Their job is to remove the enemies from the objective area so the Engineer classes can go in and get to work, and their abilities and equipment generally allow them to accomplish this better than any other class. Medic I consider Medics to be one of the coolest parts of Dirty Bomb, especially compared to other games of a similar genre. In Dirty Bomb, you aren't immediately killed when your HP reaches zero. Instead, you enter a helpless state, scrambling around on the ground unable to act until you are either finished by the enemy, join the next wave of respawns, or are revived by a player. There are some exceptions, though. If you're killed by a headshot or explosive, you won't enter this state and will just die on the spot, and as mentioned above, if an enemy gets to you before a medic, they can finish you off to prevent a revive. While any player can revive another downed player, the medic class does it especially well, as they are all equipped with defibrilators. The defibrilator is an instant revive, as opposed to normal revives, which leave you vulnerable for quite some time. In addition, each medic has their own unique abilities. Phoenix and Sparks, pictured above, are some good examples. Phoenix's Healing Pulse is a chargeable ability that heals nearby enemies in a radius around him based on how long it was charged. Unlike other medics, he also has the ability to revive himself after a short delay. Sparks, on the other hand, has med packs. She can throw three packs before the ability goes on cooldown, each restoring plenty of health to players. She also has the Revive Gun, which allows her to revive players from long distances when fully charged. The Revive Gun also doubles as a weapon, and has one-shot potential against certain characters at full charge. While medics are great at supporting, they generally have very low health pools and less effective weapons. Heavy Heavy characters like Rhino and Thunder are, quite naturally, the tanks. They have much larger health pools than the other characters, and tend to do very well at close range. However, they tend to move quite slowly in comparison to other characters and are slightly larger targets. Rhino comes equipped with a shotgun and his Mini-Gun, which is devastating at close range, but costs him even more movement speed to carry around. Thunder comes equipped with a Machine Gun and his signature Concussion grenades, which blind and stun enemies in their range. The Heavy characters are there to draw attention away from their squishy friends. Their high damage weapons (such as the minigun), large health pools, and support abilities make them very good at drawing attention. Engineer Engineers, like Proxy and Bushwhacker, are great at clearing objectives. As Engineers, they are able to perform and complete the tasks required for each objective much faster than any other class. They also have abilities that tend to be based around trapping the area and gaining positional advantage. Proxy, as her name suggests, can place Proximity mines two at a time around the map, while Bushwhacker comes with a deployable turret. Their weapons and movement speed can vary from character to character. Proxy is fast and geared around close range weapons like shotguns, while Bushwhacker is slower and uses SMGs. Sniper Snipers are a pretty straightforward class. Their job is to pick off enemies from afar, and they also excel at locating enemies for their team. Redeye has smoke grenades and infrared goggles, while Vassili comes with a heartbeat sensor to detect nearby enemies for the whole team. Their rifles are some of the highest damaging weapons in the game, and a headshot can kill nearly any other Merc. So yeah, that's Dirty Bomb. Another interesting part of the game is Loadout cards, which can change the weapons each hero uses and add extra perks. You get Loadout cards from equipment cases, which will drop every couple of matches and contain a random rarity loadout card. It adds an extra layer of customization to the game, which is pretty cool. You can also trade up 3 loadout cards of the same rarity, along with some credits (the in-game currency used to unlock Mercs and do trade ups) to get a card of the next highest rarity for a Merc of your choice. So yeah, hopefully some of you will check it out. I've been having a ton of fun with this game, though I'm still really bad at it. For me, it's much more fun than Overwatch. I haven't played Battleborn yet, so I can't comment on that, but Dirty Bomb is a super fun game. It's really fast-paced in comparison to the other games, due to sprinting options and some walljump par coeur stuff. If enough people around here like the game, we could always join together for some Dirty Bomb killing sessions. So yeah, give it a go and let me know what you think.

I don't really know who you are, but congrats on 7000 I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ jk luv you Dobbs

I already knew about Jirachi, but that Magnezone one just blew my mind. I thought it was just a nose/marking too.

I love MTG to death, but I was never really able to get into it due to not being fond of the Standard format. It just costs too much money for me to constantly be buying new cards for Standard and half the other formats, plus I love some of the older cards to death and hate to leave them behind. Unfortunately, the game has serious balancing issues in formats like Legacy, so those were never really an option for me either. I pretty much just played casually. It's been a year or two since I last played, but I'd love to do a draft with some of you all on whichever website or program we can use. That sounds like loads of fun. I will say that I'm a huge fan of the artwork and the world(s) of MTG. I don't know a whole lot of lore, but I find it super interesting and would love to learn more about it in the future. My favorite deck was a Myr deck I made, the Myr being my favorite part of the MTG verse.

She's definitely one of my favorites to play, but my honest opinion is that she's one of the worst warriors in the game right now, at least as far as 1v1 fights go. Her ult is super reliant on their escape being down, so you really have to try to bait those out if you're going to hit with it. Literally any dash or leap will get them away and leave you feeling annoyed. Her damage is also pretty subpar with her ult>2 combo unless you build her like an assassin. She's definitely more team-oriented with the nature of her ult and her auras, so she can function pretty well in team fights. You're more likey to hit with her ult in the chaos and it can create some good openings for your team.

I love this image XD

That was quite an interesting read, I have to say. There were some parts I skimmed, but I plan to go back and read them over when I'm not so tired. I believe I got the gist of most of it though. You pretty much summed up the way I view hip hop: it's not for me, but I see it as a legitimate form of music that others are into, the same way a lot of people aren't into the heavier alt rock I like. That being said, I do recognize myself as falling victim to a few of the subconscious stereotypes about the genre, and this definitely helped make the issue more prevalent to me. Solid read overall. Out of curiosity, do you have any plans to do updates on this about any other issues or topics relating to hip-hop, or will those be saved for your other thread?

RIP Roland and Lux. Q_Q

Well, I never knew this was even a thread. But it's revived now, so I might as well give it a go. I'll start with the characters that might be more familiar to some of the people around here. Zweiss (The Awakened) - The big baddy of the RP I ran for a while. Some of you know him, but none of you really got to know him, which is probably one of the things I regret most about the death of that RP. There was so much invested in his character, but we never got far enough in for him to really shine. The part you guys saw was pretty much a 1-sided, hardly fleshed-out character, while all his redeeming qualities and major roles in the story were never seen. Definitely one of my favorite OCs, though probably also the one I had the hardest time portraying the way I wanted to. Hades (The Awakened) - Another character from the Awakened, and Hades easily takes the cake for the most fun I've ever had RPing a character. The lab scientist and first documented case of the Awakened, driven from madness to insanity by his immense power. The chaos and unpredictability of every situation involving him was so fun, and seeing Keaton's (Ark's character) reactions was great. Hades was a character that was intentionally designed to be overpowered, and it was a heck of a lot of fun playing him. Sylva (Aervana) - Anyone here who knows Sylva knows her only from Fate/Reborn. She was originally a planned character for Aervana, the first RP I ran here. She was actually going to be one of the most important NPCs to the plot, and I really wish we'd gotten far enough to meet her. Her role in F/R is definitely a watered-down version of her real character. All the sadness of her backstory and her moments of wisdom get skimmed by outside of her natural setting. I'm pretty happy with the "thousands of years old immensely powerful and wise but often childish little girl" though. Gillem (Aervana) - I put Gillem in italics as an honorable mention. I never actually fleshed him out a whole lot, though I did have his part in the story planned out. Despite that, I do have somewhat of an attachment to him for whatever reason, and I'm pretty happy with how he turned out as a character in general. I feel like he turned out pretty close to my ideal image of him, which is pretty cool. Another character that nobody here would know, but a few might kind of recognize in a vague way is Sora the Divine. She's a part of the world that was planned for the Magistrate Council, which as some of you may or may not remember, was a world I tried to build with the community, to some degree of success and failure. I've still planned out much more of the world myself, and may post something that takes place in it here in the future, who knows. Anyway, Sora is a member of the Magistrate Council, a group of the most powerful mages and representatives of the elements of magic. Sora, as her full title suggests, is the Magistrate of the Divine, and definitely the character I find most interesting out of those I've come up with for that world. She strong willed, respected, and won't take smack from anybody, but she has a soft side too. She's known for her dedication, taking on the workload of a Magistrate while simultaneously running the largest orphanage in the capital city. She's got some other secrets too, but those will remain secrets for now, just in case. There are also characters nobody here would know, as I've never written about them yet. These characters are actually much dearer to me than those above, as I feel like they just have a higher quality of work put into them. They're the characters I've been working on for the last year-ish while fleshing out the world for a light novel I've been planning to start writing. I don't even have names for some of them yet, but they're stories, thoughts, and emotions have all been thoroughly thought out. That's part of why picking a name for them is so hard. I want something that really fits them. That being said, I can share a few names, namely Saya and Zenfay, two of the main "party," if you will. I don't really want to go into detail about them though, as I do plan on eventually posting the chapters up on Reborn and want to avoid spoilers for any who may want to read it. However, two of my favorite OCs to date are from this world, but don't have names yet. I can share some face pictures I drew though. Some of you may have seen these when I posted in them in the Art thread, but whatever. I'm really happy with how these two turned out. They're pretty much exactly as I saw them in my mind.

And so I shall try: What you did well: The language felt very poetic and pretty, and the various flowers and their symbols caught my interest from the beginning. The language flowed nicely for the most part, though there were a few exceptions that I'll get to in the next part. I liked the overall messages conveyed through the language, but I also like how towards the end, you came back to explain the bleeding heart metaphor you used right at the beginning. What you did poorly: As I said above, there were a few places where the rhythm was messed up for me. The red portion here is the first place that I remember. I feel like you could've made good use of some repetition here through the phrase "We should not." The contraction in the first sentence felt off to me. I feel like it would've flowed much better if both lines read "We should not." It could work if they were both contractions too. I just feel like they should've read the same way. Kind of nitpicky, but it stuck out to me. The first sentence here just felt really odd to me in general. The wording seems like it could be better. At the moment I'm thinking "It's like asking a painter not to paint with the color pink," though I still feel like that isn't the best either. I would leave out the "for whatever reason" part entirely. The second gripe here is just a grammatical thing, so not really a huge deal, but it also stuck out to me. The second sentence should end after "anyway" and then start a third sentence with "There's no point in suppressing emotion, as it will inevitably bubble to the surface." Just some nitpicky grammar stuff that would help make the wording flow better. It feels like I'm being annoying pointing it out, but it's who I am ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The only other thing would be that perhaps the symbolism goes on for too long. While it was initially interesting, I ended up lost halfway through. It felt like the point of his speech kept changing, and my brain got tired of deciphering metaphors and symbols. Maybe I'm just not a poetry guy, who knows. It was a good read overall though. The bard seems like an interesting character. ------------------------------------------------------------------ I kind of struggled deciding whether or not to post something for critique. I don't really have many long passages that can stand alone, so it came down to this one or the Aervana opening post. Both have their issues as a piece to critique, but I'll throw this one in. For those who don't know the setting, it may or may not make much sense, as it assumes some character knowledge for the full effect. I'd have preferred to throw out the opening of the LN I'm working on, but I haven't actually written anything yet for various reasons. This is kind of short, but whatever. Anyway, here you go, poof!

I have it for Wii U and should dunk all of you. ...But I might end up getting dunked because I never practice Sm4sh.

Damn... I generally hate talking about this kind of stuff because I feel like I'm going to come off the wrong way. It'll probably sound like I have a superiority complex and am super arrogant, but whatever. Here we go. My favorite thing about myself is my ability as a jack of all trades. Not a jack of all trades in the traditional sense, but better in this case. I excel at pretty much everything I do, and I do even better at the things I'm actually invested in. I'm never really the best, but I'm well above average at most things I do, and I honestly think that if I put my mind to it, I can be better than anyone at anything. Perhaps I've missed the opportunity for some of those things, particularly those like sports, where I would have needed to start at a younger age, but I do believe that I could have been good at any of them, had I wanted to do them (I did play soccer though and ended up as Varsity team captain. Never played after high school, mostly because I lost interest). I honestly have a hard time thinking of anything that I'm bad at. It sounds super arrogant and I hate that, but it's true. I guess people skills might be one of my lowest things, but I have plenty of friends and acquaintances and those skills are also rapidly growing. While there are some things I'm worse at than others, I wouldn't consider myself in the "bad" spectrum at any of them. Of course, if I just start something I'll be bad, but I pick things up rapidly, much faster than anyone I've ever been around. This will also probably sound arrogant, but in high school, I graduated at #1 in my class, taking the valedictorian spot without ever studying for pretty much anything. There were maybe 2-3 tests in high school that I actually put some amount of extra time in for, and it usually wasn't much. The same goes for college right now. It's not to say I'm the smartest person in the world, because as it is for the other things, I'm not the best. I'm well above average, and I feel like I have the potential to be the best. It's rare for me to put effort into most things, but I've always felt like if I do put effort in, I can do better than anyone else. It's probably why I can be so competitive, but this whole paragraph probably boils down to that. My favorite thing about myself if my ability to succeed in nearly all things and always believe I can perform better than others if I really try. Maybe it's not true, maybe it's an illusion or an excuse I've created for myself. But I believe it's true and that's enough for me. Hopefully I don't sound like an arrogant prick. I always try to consider how anything I say will make others feel, which might be a strength and might be a flaw, but it's why I hate writing things like this so much. Though it's not part of the thread, I think my greatest flaw is directly related to my greatest strength. I consider my greatest flaw my ability to lose interest in things, despite doing well at them. Soccer is a great example, as mentioned above. I was pretty good. Not the best, as per usual, but pretty good. However, I just stopped liking it at some point, which is why I stopped playing. I've done this with a lot of things, and it bothers me. More relevant to some users on this site is RPing. I used to only ever be active in the RP section and I was active in a bunch of RPs, some of them my own. Now I almost never enter the section. I've given up on hosting and I'm only involved in one RP, which has been at a standstill for a while, so I'm not even really active there. Most recently is piano playing. I got pretty good pretty fast. I used to play for at least an hour almost every day, usually more. Now, I almost never feel like playing, and I've lost the muscle memory for almost every song I knew. I don't know if I'm totally done with it, but this happens a lot, which is why I put it at my greatest flaw. It also makes me appreciate the things I truly do enjoy. The things I've stuck with for a long time. Melee is a prominent case, and even Reborn could be said to be a good example. I definitely never expected to be on these forums for close to three years now.

That actually explains a lot. I remembered it being Creative Writing but thought I'd just remembered incorrectly. In that case, this is all a pretty moot point, aside from suggesting other Art threads to be moved. Thanks for clearing that up, I'd never heard about the change.

While we're on the topic of threads and sub-threads, I guess I'll bring this up. It's more of an organizational thing, but if you look at the description for the Creative Works section, it says "Share your writing, art, music, or anything else you made! Or check out the roleplay forum here and live someone else's fantasy." However, the "Art!" thread and various other art things, such as Viri's Art thread are in the Radio Tower, despite "art" being listed as part of Creative Works. Shia's thread and Alice's thread both used to be in the Radio Tower but got moved, so perhaps the same should be done for other art-related threads? The other option would be renaming "Creative Works" to "Creative Writing," which is pretty much the purpose it serves right now, for the most part. RPs go in the RP section and all other writing goes in "Creative Works." Aside from Shia and Alice's threads, that's pretty much how the section is organized now. I'd actually lean more towards this option personally. Maybe this would make the section a bit too specialized, but that honestly wouldn't be much different from how it is now. I always associate art threads with the Radio Tower rather than Creative Works, and I'm sure there might be others who do too. But either way, I think some organizational change is needed.

Mfw no Puff bufffs... D:

I don't expect it to be as good as Shadow of the Colossus (different genre), but it's looking at least as good as ICO, and I really enjoyed that game. Team ICO's atmosphere and settings are always great.

Give us some info - What kind of things interest you? What sort of avatars are you looking for?