Arilou

We did the COP trial in twelve minutes...

Danke.

Suffice to say: I disagree. Politics is morality in action, so to speak. It's the art of the possible, and where the true test of your morality lies. When it comes down to "So, given these restrictions, how do you *actually* act?" rather than a theoretical construct.

Because, in the context of Praetoria, these are what your options are. You're either with the regime or you're opposing it. It's not black and white (because it's not really that kind of question) but it's definitely a stark choice: Which is typical of totalitarian systems. You can try to improve things from within, you can try to exploit the system, or you can try to overthrow it: There's no real other option because totalitarian systems have no middle ground: That's what makes them totalitarian.

Of course, nothing in the game forces you to create a praetorian character. I'm just saying that, given the setting, having the choices be rather stark is perfectly acceptable: Indeed, doing anything else would compromise the setting.


Err... no? It is not unique. In any shape, way or form. Really. Honestly. It's actually fairly common.

But no matter what you decide, certain assumptions are made: That you are in Paragon City (or the Rogue Isles), that you go through a certain finite possible story arcs or missions, that you live in a particular world, etc. etc.

Of course, there's AE if you feel like using that (a wonderful tool I think) but likewise the COV and Praetorian origins makes certain other assumptions.

I kind of see what you're getting at, I really do, It's just that generic choices don't neccessarily fit a character any better than specific ones (they may fit a greater number of characters, that's why they're "generic", of course) I personally don't mind them trying out various approaches of storytelling in the various different game areas.

I absolutely, fundamentally disagree: If there is no pressure to choose either way, morality becomes meaningless: The truly moral choice is to elect to do "the good" *despite* any consequences. People's true colors only show when they decided to do good despite the advantage lying with doing the bad. Morality cannot and does not exist in a vaccuum: Your every action has consequences and judging them precisely is exactly what morality is about.

EDIT: basically, my PNP experience has pretty much left me disillusioned with the possibilities of computer gaming and choice: They just can't offer the kinds of freedom of choice that would make it particularly interesting to have, so they might as well just focus on telling a decent story and introducing what elements of choice they feel are approporiate for it.

Err, from what I'm reading here you're saying the opposite of what you're saying. You think the Praetorian morality is too narrow and specific (tailored to a specific context that makes certain assumptions about your characters) and you'd prefer a more generalized, "universal" set of choices, no?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that an accurate representation of your concerns?

From where I'm standing that would make the system *more* simplistic (although not neccessarily worse, simple can be good) but that's quibbling about semantics I guess *shrugs*.

There are advantages to this kind of writing (it's general, fits-all, etc.) There are disadvantages too (it brings far less flavour, and, depending on the writing quality, can make you far less interested) Personally I rather like City of Heroes and it's various storylines (even the jumbled, cut-off, and contradictory ones has a certain charm about it) I like *City of Heroes*. Not "generic superhero MMORPG". And I think the Preatorian stuff has some pretty interesting dynamics, situations and concepts. (The end of the Warden decision is golden, and the Power mission where you bump into Arachnos completely without warning is great as well)

But I can certainly see your objection: It's a matter of generic freedom of choice vs. telling a more interesting story. Where I fall on that debate tends to depend on how much I like the story.

I rather liked the concept of the Jade Empire "karma meter", they kind of botched the execution but the original idea was that OP and CF weren't "good" and "bad" as much as two different philosophical approaches to things. Paragon/Renegade in Mass Effect does something similar.

But then again, I don't see the "morality missions" in Praetoria as moral choices in the first place: These are choices of who you align with. Who's good and who's bad is (largely) up to you to decide (although they could/should have made this more apparent) any path supports a hero, any path supports a villain. The generic tip missions are actually a lot more stifling in that regard.

I don't think that's quite the case: We're not supposed to see them as binary "good-evil" choices, they're moral choices yes, (in the sense that they have moral ramifications) but they're moral choices with political repurcussions (eg. "If I do this, that guy won't like me as much.") Which I think is perfectly fine: If you want to be Calvin's best friend you'd better do what Calvin tells you to do. If you want to do what is right you're probably going to criss-cross a bit more.

Moral choices can and should have consequences, otherwise they're kind of meaningless. That is, if there's no cost of doing good/advantage of doing evil, why would anyone do anything other than good? (Advantage in this sense can and does include pure schadenfreude, obviously) Ironically a lot of tip missions I think fail in that regard becuase there is no consequences at all: You go to these extraordinary lengths to steal the Mystic Artifact of Doom and... You get nothing for it.

Not *directly* no, but it assumes that the archetype choices are average. Eg. if a significant number of new/less skilled whatever players pick a particular AT it would definitely show up in the statistics, no?

Again, this assumes that the population (soloing blaster vs. soloing defender) is identical: It's quite possible (for instance, just throwing this out) that a large number of blasters solo "casually" while defenders by and large only solo once they know exactly what they are doing. (presumably because well, it says "blasters can solo" and "defenders can't solo" (well, not exactly, but almost) on the char select screen)

(Which again, I'm not saying is the case, but this is one of those tricky bits you have to keep an eye on when doing statistics)

Correct me if I'm wrong (it was some time) but isn't blasters also among the most popular archetypes? That would certainly skew the numbers.

One would immediately figure solo defenders (or even corruptors) would fare similarily (depending on powerset). (this is probably offset by the fact that defenders, by and large, do not solo unlike blasters)

Daedalus is a greek name, and not a roman one, for instance.

Did you ever look over at a game called Alpha Protocol?

It's fairly buggy, not really that amazing, but it is *very* responsive. Pretty much everything you do gets referenced at some point (smash a guy's face in a bar and you get marines guarding the US embassy rather than the regular security folks...)

Now, why this works is that the game is *heavily* railroaded: There are certain things that you can do, but you can't do everything. The reason is simple: For every possibility they program the amount of work they have to do rises exponentially.

(because you have to take into account previous choices, new choices, and future choices) it *quickly* becomes very, very bothersome (and what's worse: It's not easily automated, it's all "manpower work", and can't be handed over to a script)

Even Mass Effect (MUCH simpler than Alpha Protocol, and far more similar to COH) has a ******** of programming to keep all those variables in check. It makes for an awesome game, but it also requires a LOT of work.

The Praetorian story is a stripped down version (for a single-player RPG it's literally years back, but it is rather interesting for trying something like that in a MMORPG) but it *still* requires a ton of work.

You ask "Why can't I join the Syndicate?" the reason is "Because it would take a ******** of programming to do so."

They decided (rightly or wrongly) to make a somewhat stripped-down choice system (basically a binary one, with a bit more thrown in for flavour) because they felt this would be manageable (which it is, mainly, it's not THAT buggy, because the thing is, the more code you have to write the bigger the chance it gets buggy somewhere) they didn't have to: They could have done a completely railroaded storyline instead. But they tried introducing a bit of choice, as much as they felt the engine, their schedule, and their budget could handle.

The result is... (I think) fine enough: It's certainly a vast improvement over previous COH modes of doing things. Is it Dragon Age or Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol or Fallout: New Vegas? Of course not, but then anyone expecting it to be is, to be quite frank, delusional. Game designers operate under limits: This is fact.

It really comes down to this: "Why didn't they do X?" The answer is, 99% of the time, "It would be too time consuming/expensive."

Then what is the point of a difficulty slider?

If you have to fight three ambushes at a time *you are doing something wrong*. (There are three exceptions: The mission where you have to defend the news network against a horde of destroyers, the one with the ghoul horde and one with the syndicate, and all of those are very unusual (they're not normal spawns and they give you a big honking warning and a time limit)

All the rest of the time the ambushes are staggered. *Precisely* to ensure you never have to fight more than one spawn at a time. (Unless you go off aggroing another spawn in the meantime ofc.)

An ambush will be 2-3 (either 3 minions or 1 LT/1 minion) critters.

EB's would disproportionately affect certain classes (controllers and dominators, mainly, although most of the good ones probably can lock down an AV)

What you give with one hand you take away with the other.

Well, the Syndicate isn't really a monolithic organization, and given how effective Cole's crime-prevention programme seems to be it seems pretty decent a setup: You simply can't function without psychics shielding your activities, and I suspect the Syndicate would be rather ruthless against any psychics who didn't join them. (Basically, I suspec psychics have it tough in that universe: If you don't want to be drafted as a Seer you pretty much HAVE to go with one of the organisations that are willing and able to take you in... And that means either Syndicate or Resistance)

The destroyers are operating on some level with the connivance of the authorities, so their existence is explicable.

Add to that the fact that the world population is probably significantly smaller than that of Primal earth's.

They're not the oly mez-resistant early game foes (try taking an earth/storm controller through th Hollows nad learn to curse Igneous and their slow res)

Pfft, their love is so familiar!

Hence why Mother and Pedojar should get together and raise Penny together

To be honest, I've always had that problem with "exploding" enemies (and worse: objects like crates and stuff) admittedly I play Nec (arguably one of the squishier sets) but every time I kill a sky raider generator I have to resummon.