Techbot Alpha

Originally Posted by CactusBrawler

I've seen dice rolls used to decide OOC who wins what in other games.

Originally Posted by Fanservice

But that's the problem. Soon as you set RP as something that can be "won" no one wants to lose. Deciding who gets to win should be done beforehand, else it's only going to lead to frayed tempers. How else do you decide the resolution? The better RP'er wins? Yeah I can see people swallowing that one easily.

The only other alternative is actual PvP, which people are adverse too due to it being horribly unbalanced.

Originally Posted by Rock_Powerfist

the trouble is Villains do not win .. heck they dont even get the tittle roll in the comics they are just there to give the hero something the vent their angust on .. ok it would also be fair to say the heroes never get a complete victor , the Joker or Dr Doom always coems back, but they do get a points win and scupper the Villians plot.

When RP a villain around heroes i do off screen plots. None of my villains have major world take over plots, most just want to carve out a bit of space to live in, or in some cases just to carry on exsisting. I do assume my villains can win in their day to day busines ,be it robbing banks stealing magic tomes or what ever, beyond that i do not fell the need for them to be making a huge world take over move. For major plot lines like that i prefer to use a NPC vilain, or maybe a retired RP toon.

If we want villains to take over we would need more of a RvR setup that effects the wider game, which would need its own server and rule set.

Originally Posted by Satanic_Hamster

Well, for one thing, no one likes Manticore. He's an bow defender for Christ's sake.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

There's something wrong with the order, for the simple fact that whoever is in charge of keeping canon consistent doesn't give a fish fin about doing a good job. Every new arc added destroys about as much old content by virtue of making it not make any sense as it actually adds in its own content, and this is not a new thing. Random examples that I ran into recently.

Gordon Bower, mayor of Salmacia, still insists that "this happened overnight" after Banished Pantheon allowed the Fir Bolg to exist in the world "last year." This refers back to the first Halloween even we had back in 2004 or 2005 where Eochai and the Fir bolg first showed up as pumpking head Razorvines - what I assume was a quick fix for a Halloween-themed enemy group - and they decided to make the whole zone about that in I5. That was right around five or six years ago, yet the guy still says "last year."

The 35-40 Council contact (I forget her name) says that it looks like the Council might have a connection with a "mysterious group called Arachnos." This in the same level range where "the Arachnos" are all over the papers, calling heroes out to a duel. At least it no longer says "S.P.I.D.E.R." (and boy am I glad they didn't go with that!) like it did back at Launch, but this is clearly an arc which hasn't been touched since City of Villains made Arachnos not-mysterious.

The 20-25 Agent G mission to defeat Captain Castillo (again) to prevent him from interfering presents the player with a memo between Castillo and Virgil Duray, "the leader of the Sky Raiders." This comes in the same level range as The Sky Raider Secret story arc, where much is made of the true nature of the Sky Raiders and only at the end is it revealed that Colonel Virgil Duray is their leader, and that the Sky Raiders themselves are ex US military soldiers using equipment embezzled from the military. Typically, you want to put a statement of a fact in the level range AFTER that fact is revealed to ensure players do them in order.

Levantera's arc The Stange Case of Benjamin A. Decker ends up with the Dark Watcher revealing the true nature of the Rikti to the player, something which normally takes place during The Rikti Plague in the same 35-40 level range. Following this, Serpent Drummer's arc begins with a peace conference between humans and Rikti, with C'Khelkah leading the way and a long "On Rikti Factions" briefing given out right at the start. That in the same 40-45 range that Division: Line takes place where C'Khelkah is originally introduced, the concept of Rikti factions and what they stand for is first explored and the nature of Rikti society first opened up to the player. Logically, this would have to happen BEFORE people start negotiating peace with the Rikti, meaning that that arc would probably have to take place AFTER Angus McQueen's, but the way they are placed, this won't happen.

The new Tina McIntyre' 40-45 arc has the player go into a warehouse and meet the mistress of the Carnival of Shadows - Vanessa DeVore, and have a completely unnecessary conversation with her. The 45-50 arc To Save a Soul is preceded by the revelation that Vanessa DeVore is the leader of the Carnival of Shadows, a completely pointless act given that the game treats it as common knowledge beforehand.

In the 15-20 Synapse TF, the Clockwork Kind is supposed to have been destroyed, hence why Clockwork stop spawning post level 20. One can excuse Penelope's Clockwork guardians as taking place before this event, as her arc is also in the 15-20 range, but it does not explain the Clockwork King's appearance in the Lady Grey TF in the 45-50 range when he's supposed to have been long since taken out. In fact, when sending you to her first mission on the world of the Psychic Clockwork, Tina McIntyre says: "The Clockwork King? I haven't thought about him in the longest time." This implies that he has indeed been defeated for all this time.

Furthermore, in the LGTF, the Clockwork King shows up escorted by Psychic Clockwork. The same Psychic Clockwork as in that alternate dimension, in fact. It's almost as if they couldn't be arsed to make electric versions of his old minions in the 40s. The problem with that is the Clockwork King of that destroyed world destroyed it because he realised his psychic potential, making him unstoppable. The only thing keeping ours from destroying the world is his madness preventing him from knowing he's psychic. If he's using Psychic Clockwork, then this assumes he's healed from his madness and knows his powers, either making the alternate dimension pointless, or putting a large plot hole in the story.

And that's just off memory. Paragon Studios are in serious need of an editor, and maybe a story bible, because this Neuron approach to story writing is really turning what used to be cool and exciting fictional universe into a right mess.

Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel

This reminds me a joke: A young street tough decided to join the Warriors. After proving his mettle, time and time again, they told him he could officially become a true Warrior but would need take a new name. The young member replied: "I shall be, Spartacus!" the others then glared and corrected, "That's Roman, you fool!"
The young member threw up his arms in a sheepish shrug and explained, "It's all Greek to me!"

Originally Posted by Bill_Ramey

1. More blueside content. No more expanding away from the core game with things such as COV, Mission Architect, and Going Rogue.

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction

It's funny that you bring up Star Wars, because the prequels are a lot like the new content in a lot of ways. They are shiny and stuff blows up. They don't need to worry about telling a compelling story because stuff blows up and it is shiny and we get to see Yoda kick some *** so people will go see it and they'll make a bazillion dollars.

Granted, the original trilogy didn't make you sit through the film equivalent of fed-exes and hunt missions, and you didn't have to watch our heroes defeat every single last Storm Trooper on the map, but a lot of what people hate about the original content could be solved by simply cutting all that stuff out.

Originally Posted by Dispari

As I'm reasonably sure my friend invented this phrase, I'm glad to see it catching on.

Originally Posted by Nihilii

I can't tell if the above post is serious or satire.

Originally Posted by Kiana Wolf

...Also, why has the entire thread been about Trapdoor? I spent the majority of my first post talking about how great and fun the rest of the arc was!

Originally Posted by Bad_Influence

Some of us do not wish to be trounced, tackled, pounced or bear-hugged by perfect strangers. Ixnay to enabling player closeness in such a fashion.... and 90% of the time this would be used by people you don't even know, as you stand there at the market trying to decide if you really want to pay that much for a Stabilized Mutant Genome.

Originally Posted by Dispari

Also Praetorian mobs can be jerks concerning Beginner's Luck. Resistance and Destroyers run around with +DEF powers which make them annoying to hit even when your base hit rate is 89% thanks to Beginner's Luck. On top of already having 3-4x as many attacks as regular spawns for that level range, with heavy debuffs and high damage melee attacks, they really don't need to be hard to hit too.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Much much better. Launch content is better than this, at least in terms of storytelling. Sure, it's not as complex mechanically and is sometimes padded with unnecessary bulk, but at least the stories make sense and follow some semblance of logical progression.

During the time when I could do the Roy Cooling arc, I could instead do, say, Ubelmann the Unknown, an arc which is still very good even after "Councilification" just about ruined it twice over. It's an interesting if simple story delving into Requiem's self-serving nature, as well as a very interesting plot of Nazi time travel. I could also do "A Hand of Iron," an arc which explores the hedonistic lifestyle of the Freakshow and the allure of such an existence. They're not expertly told, but they are competent, logical and interesting.

Everything that the Roy Cooling arc is not. Roy Cooling's arc comes off like it was written by someone's first attempt at writing an actual story AND first attempt at using the Architect, and I know a thing or two about both. It's sloppy, inconsistent, disorganised and really, really inept. Its game mechanics may be interesting (and that's debatable), but game mechanics alone don't make a good game when the story is bollocks. That's not to say every single story arc has to be a masterpiece of cat head theatre, but at the same time, I should not be stopping at every step asking how this or that makes sense and what the blue balls is going on. And I'm not nit picking here, either. Major plot points constitute major plot holes which are never addressed.

Why is Vincent Ross' story arc so good and Roy Cooling's arc so bad? The Vincent Ross arc is no less ad-hoc and made up on the spot. Blood coral? Yeah, that thing that's so important and powerful that we... Didn't think to mention until about, oh, 13 Issues in. It's obviously someone just trying to tack on a bit of extra canon where none existed before, but it's done logically, so it still works AND it manages to involve Merulia - the Coralax godess - into the mix. Oh, sure, I was left wondering "Shapers? WHAT Shapers? Calystix was THE shaper who kept coming back, there weren't a zillion of him!" but again - that's just one question, and as such doesn't really serve to bug me as much. The writing is good enough to make it not as bothersome.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison

Hey now, I find Team Teleport to be invaluable. You should too, knowing your bots/traps.

Tell me a better way to keep dumb bots and dumber blasters in range of your force field generator.

Originally Posted by zachary_EU

If they are making 4 legged animals I would love to see some kind of robot or cybernetic dogs. I don't like to fight against normal animals in games but hellhounds and robodogs would be great. Generally I'll agree that cox needs animals. Lot lot more animals.

edit. big YES to new skeletons!
edit2. explains are only text on screen. I can explain why we all must but bananas in our ears and why it fits perfectly in backstory.
edit3. dozens and dozens of other games already have different and great looking animal animations and skeletons. It's not so impossible thing to do and we have spiders already. Devs can do new animations. It's their job and I'm going to my job now.