Wordmaker

Paragon Times

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Alan Drake and Aluria Careros were married today amid rumours that the now Mrs. Drake is pregnant with the couple's first child.

Defying all expectations, the couple enjoyed a small, private ceremony attended only by friends and family. No press were allowed into the church either before, during, or after the ceremony, with security provided by the renowned ZorTel Industries Security Force. Guests refrained from lengthy comment to reporters, wishing only their best for the newlyweds.

After the ceremony, the wedding party retired to Drake Manor, where a private reception was held.

The Drakes have informed us that they are planning a more public wedding party in the near future, to which the press and many other city and business representatives will be invited. Alan Drake had this to say: "While my wife and I understand the desire for those in the public eye to make such an occassion as this open to all, we felt the need to celebrate our wedding in privacy, away from prying eyes, like a normal family."

We at the Paragon Times wish the new couple happy and long lives together.

Well, without getting too psycho-babbly, the amount of negative comments that come out due to people complaining and arguing over a competetive game (whether it be sports, computer games, etc) can have a serious psychological effect.

People become aggressive towards one another, it stops being a game and becomes a proving ground for people's egos. And new, often younger, players will see this, and either become intimidated by the attitude some players can have (bearing in mind children as young as 12 play this game, and possibly younger), which can have a seriously damaging impact on their confidence. Alternatively, they may start to believe that this kind of aggressive behaviour is acceptable in society, and meet all of their challenges in such a manner.

Just call me Dr. Wordy.

The benefits to running a big SG are:

- Easy teaming in large groups to get more XP

- Easy teaming for Task Forces and Archvillain missions

- Enhancement trading

- Plenty of potential lower-level characters to exemp down to for bonus Influence/Infamy

- Plenty of higher level characters to coach new players or to help them out with missions and Influence/Infamy

That should be why someone joins or runs a large SG, not for an impressive base. If SG membership and activities become focused on Bases, which they may well do at this rate, then people who aren't interested in PvP or who don't own CoV (like myself) will miss out.

You got 2 rooms and some furnishings? That's it? How big were the rooms?

My character is very Batman-based, so I want a big, underground Lair for him, something with different rooms for different purposes, an infirmary, technical laboratory, central control room, library (all non-functional), with lots of space to move around.

See, that's the problem. Too much of CoV has been introduced from the perspective of a "new game", and little consideration has been given to existing players.

As a roleplayer, all I want in a base is somewhere we can go to RP in private, should we want to, something to represent where my SG operates from. I don't want all the big, fancy features, apart from medical teleporters, which I'm more than happy to work towards. But at the very least, a purely decorative, non-PvP intended base should be within reach for everyone, regardless of time commitment or SG size.

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There was no insult and I was trying to be constructive.

Maybe you could try following your own advice.

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Saying something is "tough" is not constructive.

Bases, for those of us who aren't in large SGs and don't choose to spend several hours a day gathering Prestige, are unaffordable. The loss of Influence for such small amounts of Prestige when compared to the cost of items which are purely decorative is simply uneconomical.

First Icon, now the non-functional base item costs. Why do things which have no effect on gameplay whatsoever need to cost so much?

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It's just smack talk and part of the fun.

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And exactly the reason I don't play PvP games...

Why is it that nearly every thread discussing the two main new features of CoV devolves into childish insults just because some people happen to disagree with the post?

Honestly, if you can't post in an intelligent, mature, and constructive manner, don't bother.

*kicks stupid Brighton*

Birdy actually doesn't look his age at all.

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I'll be the aging hippy with long hair and (probably) a beard attached to the 6 foot younger woman

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You're sticking a beard onto Aisla?? Bad Birdy!

So don't say "clique". We happen to be a group of friends, and we respect each others' opinions, as any group of friends would.

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I'm going to jump in on this one, and probably shouldn't as it conflicts with the GG crowd, however it explains why I've never really got stuck in there....


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Responding to pretty much everything you said here, so bear with me.

That's fine, you prefer to play the "mask" side to superheroes. I think a lot of the GG crowd enjoy the dual-identity element of trying to balance out a normal life with their other activities. I know I do. It's my favourite thing about the superhero genre, trying to find a balance between incredible encounters with criminals and monsters with a normal life, pursuing a normal person's desires and goals, while at the same time trying to help others.

But that's my preference. I like to play out as many aspects of my character's life as I can, really get a full feel for the storyline.

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This medium is not limited in the ways IRC are, or limited in the ways P&P roleplay is - you have a full environment to play with!

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This is the only part where I feel the need to disagree. I think a computer game is always going to be more limited than IRC or pen and paper roleplaying. The only limit to IRC or PnP is imagination, and you can literally do whatever you want. Sure, CoH's chat system allows us to do that, but people will always place a great emphasis on the visual representations on-screen, not to mention the fact that we can't actually effect the game world.

Aww, but you gotta do the accent!

Thank you.

The offer still stands, come to GG tonight, watch or take part as you wish. If you can get past your dislike for people using OOC comments to inform others of disconnects, or other such things, you may find yourself enjoying it.

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Edit: A long post that made little or no sense. I don't dare leave this here for Wordmaker to nitpick over.

Will return tomorrow. Hopefully then the spelling police will have refound some dignity.

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Actually, I thought it was a very good post. Probably in the wrong place since it'll get lost in the thread and the only ones who'll see it are those already involved in the conversation, instead of new roleplayers. You would have been better posting it in Roleplaying or Union.

Incidentally, I apologised for commenting on your grammar. I don't take kindly to the sort of comment you just made there.

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I'm Danish, you're Irish (or at least your location says you're in Ireland). Let me see you do better in my native language. Until that moment I would be a bit more humble about correcting grammar or spelling mistakes.

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Ah, I see. Fair enough, I'm sorry. Apart from those few grammar mistakes, your English is good enough that I had no idea it wasn't your native language.

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As long as it is characters meeting it is fine but the moment there is an undercurrent of players meeting everything falls apart.


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The end of that sentence is a mess of bad grammar, so I'm hoping it was meant to go along the lines of "players meet and everything falls apart".

Yet you've given no proof. No examples, just ranting.

Come to GG tonight. I'll be there from 9pm as one of the following characters:

Nevermore/Alan Drake
Memory/Richard Karsten
Alcatraz

I'll have my logs turned on. It'll be a quiet night since a lot of the regulars I roleplay with will be busy for a lot of tonight. We'll see what happens, okay?

Okay, I -have- to ask specific questions, since you're clearly not willing to come up with examples of the kind of thing you've seen at GG.

1: Do you think characters talking about mundane things like their daily lives is "light" or not "immersive"?

2: What do your characters talk about when they're not in a mission or otherwise trying to help people?

3: What do your characters do in their "off time"? Do you actually play that sort of thing out?

4: Do your characters become emotionally involved in any way with other characters? We've had character fall in love, get married, lose their faith in humanity, be arrested, even die.

You keep saying that we've attacked you for stating your opinion. Is it not a better statement of opinion to say: "GG isn't my thing, but others may enjoy it, I'm not one to judge", rather than, "GG isn't as enjoyable as the other RP in CoH"? One is stating your preference for something, the other is degrading what we do.

To be honest, you seem very unwilling to even make the effort to see what it is that we do. No-one off-hand remembers either character you've mentioned, and you blow your statements far out of proportion, making yourself look bad in the eyes of anyone reading this.

You can easily say "my friends thought GG was rubbish". That's fine, I can say "my friends think cars are rubbish". What does that prove? I don't know your friends.

Even if you could give us some specific examples of what you don't like about GG, it would help. And the reason we focused on your comments about the ratio of IC to OOC chat, was because it was the only point you stressed in order to prove your argument. And now, another forum user has proven that your assessment is clearly wrong.

Please do come along and see what things are like. I'll be logging everything anyway, and will be able to provide evidence that we do spend the vast majority of our time IC.

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Please remember my point: Just because RP is light at GG doesn't mean RP isn't great elsewhere.

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You know, we've asked you several times to stop doing that. You're basically saying that RP at GG is rubbish, without ever having actually joined in.

Sounds like you do just about exactly what I do, and most of us at GG do, when logging on to play our characters. I don't personally RP much on missions because it's awkward, and takes up time. I'd rather do a full-RP mission if I'm going to do that, one in which we don't bother with an actual mission, and simply roleplay through our characters actions, usually with one player acting as a GM. It's a lot more fun and the posibilities are far more varied.

Yes, I use OOC in Local chat, but only when I'm not RPing (ie: just killing some time and getting some XP). As I said, you have yet to back up your claims that anything at GG differs from how you like to roleplay.

No, I don't roleplay constantly when I'm in-game. There are times when I just want to hit things a bit. But if someone comes up to me and speaks in character, I'll respond IC.

Given what you've told me, and judging from Ravenswing's look into his logs, I don't see how you can back up any of your complaints.

I can think of -maybe- three times in the last four months that I was present for a GG meet where IC talk stopped and became nothing but OOC chat.

One was very recently, and happened because there was a very emotional scene being played out, and one of the participants' connection failed, and didn't come back. We decided to spend some time waiting for the person to return, since it didn't feel right to just suddenly ignore the scene.

The other two were actually caused by individuals coming along and insulting us OOC, repeatedly, generally spoiling the mood. Yes, we're roleplayers with a deep love for our characters and our plotlines, but we get angry by people verbally assaulting us, too. We are just people, after all.

We try to keep OOC chat out of local as much as possible. We will often keep OOC chat to SG channels, or form a Team to chat if several people want to talk about something OOC.

That said, if someone comes along to their first meet, and has questions about roleplaying, we will tell them, OOC, usually identified by typing within a set of brackets. We're there to help new roleplayers, as well as enjoy our own roleplaying.

Kirgan, I think I see some of the problems you have with how we roleplay at GG, based on your most recent post:

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It is very obvious that this is real life persons meeting up, not vibrant Heroes of Paragon City meeting up at a fabulous statue of one of their famous own.

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Can you clarify this statement? It sounds as if your issue here is with players roleplaying characters who talk about their daily lives. To that, my only response is: Why shouldn't we? Heroes have lives, too, you know. They have friends, hopes, dreams, fears.

We don't all play "vibrant heroes". Some of us play characters who have suffered great loss in order to protect the city. Many of my characters are not registered heroes, and object to the manner in which the city handles its superpowered population. Some of us are champions of good, toehrs are grim avengers. Others still are just regular people who happen to have fantastic powers and do their best to live a good life, driven to fight crime by the danger their loved ones may be put in, or a sense of guilt or responsibility to use their gifts for good.

There is a veritable rainbow of variety in our characters and their motivations. Not to mention the fact that some people like to play characters who, while involved in the lives of superheroes, are not actually heroes themselves. Friends, lovers, sisters, etc. What exactly about the gatherings at the statue do you not enjoy?

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the GG roleplay and atmosphere is on/off - it is not consistant and enduring. That's my point of contention.

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Our take on it would be that the atmosphere at GG is dynamic. It changes. The atmosphere down the local high street is never the same from day to day. The atmosphere at your job isn't the same, day to day. You have good days and bad days. Days you love your job, and days you just want to pack it all in.

Can I ask you what kind of atmosphere you would prefer?

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I feel you're being overly defensive here. Roleplaying is a very varied activity and various schools or methods will naturally form in such a basically free-form activity.


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You say this, and yet you slandered us for how we choose to roleplay.

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I have outlined my preferred school in my edited post in this thread. What I find amusing is that I find I'm more in agreement with the RP Guide presented on the Player Guides forum (and linked from this forum) than I do with the on/off roleplaying going on daily at Galaxy Girl.

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Actually, all you really said was you enjoy immersive roleplay. That can mean any number of things. There are live-action events where you're not allowed to bring anything remotely modern with you when you roleplay, even a watch. Some would call that immersive. Immersive can also mean you don't like to speak Out of Character. Or, it can mean you enjoy concentrating as much of your free time as possible onto your character.

You haven't been very specific about why, exactly, you dislike GG.

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Roleplaying is the ultimate end-game to me. It allows me to create an alter ego with a personality completely unlike my own (or similar to my own, whatever I want) and if you let the game world envelop you for the hours you play, you have entertainment and amusement for many hours beyond the "boundary" set by the 50 levels of Experience.

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I agree with you. For me, Roleplaying is more than that, however. It's the very reason I still play. Roleplaying is far more fun than any computer game can ever be. And had I not met many friends with whom I roleplay regularly in CoH, I probably would have quit by now. Not due to any problems with the game, but just my own personal tastes.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt because you had the decency to admit you were wrong to make your original post in such a manner, but you still haven't backed up your views all that well.

Ah, ignore. It's like paracetamol for the internet!

Splitting the party isn't all that bad.

Splitting a part of EIGHT, on the other hand...

Ellie mentioned something to me about the IC time for the mission being about 18:00 on TUESDAY, not Monday.

Four hours is nothing! Our BESM game regularly goes on for SIX hours at a time!

Ellie was kind enough to let me see the logs. Nice stuff, very creepy, fun to see all the different reactions, and how everyone reacted to their personal nightmares. Not going to repeat any, but again it was nice to see how different characters reacted to them, especially in Z's case, who had to have four different characters, all of whom reacted differently.

Only question is, what's everyone gonna do for tonight's GG?