Samuel_Tow

Something occurred to me that I really should mention, a kind of "crafting" system that I really, really enjoyed. It's the one that comes from Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, and it's easily the best combat system I've seen in any RPG I've played. It's probably not literally the best, but it has everything I want, and it actually made me quite passionate about crafting. Well, the resource-gathering side was still horrid, but baby steps are good enough for me.

How that works is each weapon or piece of armour is made up of a base item (blade for swords, vest for chest pieces, etc.) that has the base stats, then another mandatory component, then two more optional components, then a jewel. These components could be bought, but primarily they came from breaking existing weapons and armour. And when breaking weapons and armour, what came out of the forge were pieces that carries some of the attributes of that weapon, with different values depending on the quality of the piece, which in turn depended on the quality of the weapon. So, for instance, if I broke a Steel sword that had an additional fire damage component and extra life, I might get a steel blade with the same base stats or a grip that does fire damage or grip wraps that give extra health. Or, really, any combination of the above.

Why I like this system is I can take a randomly-generated item that's a package of effects, crack it open and keep the individual effects as individual salvage pieces. When I wanted to make a new item, I could assemble it using only the effects I wanted, taken from the salvage I'd gathered. This is the fine detail that got me fired up about crafting in that game - I didn't have to keep making things that other people designed, or otherwise keep making things and hoping the result would be halfway decent (curse you, Diablo 3! You ruined crafting for me!!!), I could gather enough resources and make EXACTLY what I wanted. Character customization done right... At least for me.

In City of Heroes, that might involve creating my own multi-aspect enhancements to be part of my own set that had set bonuses of my choosing. I could see there being restrictions, such as certain set bonuses only appearing at certain "tiers," like restricting defence bonuses to only six enhancements or such, or restrictions on not repeating enhancements, like not using Dam/Rech four times. I'd gladly deal with those if it gave me any semblance of control over what I slotted beyond just using other people's ready-made work. I swear - if that were the case, I'd gladly do the math, educate myself and figure it out. If it could be made how I want it, I'd be all over such a system.

To offset my Karma somewhat, I like to take the opportunity to praise the game, and specifically the game's writing, whenever I can. As such, I REALLY need to praise the writing and story behind the arcs of Graham Easton and Laura Taggart. I don't know who wrote these, but my hat's off to this person's effort, because both of these are... Actually quite good. Honestly, after the unmitigated disaster that was the SSA1, I wasn't sure the game could ever recover, but I keep running into really good stories. And those aren't even the ironic type of good, where it's a bad story badly written but I can kind of give it a pass since I like the idea. No, these are genuinely good AND they appear to have been proof-read. Amazing!

Now, I played both of those with Morten, my Dark/Dark Scrapper, so her personality has slightly coloured the way I ran these missions. See, Morten is a type of good-natured succubus demon who spends most of her time in bars, wooing both men and women and searching for an actual true emotion to replace the fakeness of her own illusions. She needs to feed on the life essence of others, but will not feed off the innocent, reserving this only for those who'd bring harm to others. She is largely motivated by fun and cute people to work with and isn't the kind of person who'd kill indiscriminately unless her "victims" are actively trying to ruin the lives of others. Keep that in mind.

Graham Easton:
This was a... Weird story arc. Easton reminds me of a character in one of my own Architect arcs, as does the way the mission progresses. The man is an idiot who can't tell his head from his ***, so most of what he says is quite inconsequential, leading most of the initiative in the arc to fall on the hero. Hey, you people who insisted that this game can't have a story arc without putting the player in the direct service of an NPC? Yeah, here's how you do it. This mission is awesome for just that reason, and I couldn't be happier to be able to just shut an incompetent contact up and do the competent thing. It's a great way to put over our characters, and I LOVE it!

As to the end decision of "kill" or "don't kill," that was actually a pretty interesting choice. On the one hand, the man I was given the choice to kill is a bigshot in the Tsoo, and they're villains. Besides, he's been trying to kill Morten since the arc started. I mean, he deserves to die, right? So they why did I choose to spare the guy? Well, partially a failure of RP, in that I let my own personality make the choice for the character, but it makes sense in-character, as well. I figured Morten was just about to put her hand through his chest and pull his soul out when he goes "You shamed me, now go ahead and kill me!" and her response would be "You just had to go and say that. Now you took all the fun out of it! I'm going home!" Besides, he technically kind of owns the urn his men have been trying to steal the whole mission. I chose to not have Morten snark at Easton at the end because... Well, he does legally own the thing, even if he's a jerk about it.

Overall, this was a really fun arc. The "story" isn't all that, but the way it's written really pulls it together, plus putting the hero in an active position is refreshing and quite pleasant. The moral issues it brings up are also interesting and unlikely to have an easy answer for everybody. Essentially, it's the light-hearted cute little brother to what comes next:

Laura Lockheart:
If you haven't run this arc, stop reading and run it now, because I'm about to spoil the hell out of it for you. And this REALLY is an arc that's worth playing.

I didn't have a very good reason for Morten to run the Easton arc, to be honest. It was just sort of there so I went for it. I DID, however, have a reason to run the Taggart arc, in that... Well, Laura's kind of cute, and Morten is a sucker for that. Reason enough to fight Nazi and Fascists over at the same time! And I have to say that the way Leon, the irritating hero who's also opposing the Column, is written quite well. He's a right *******, but at least he's doing the right thing... Right? When Morten first met him, she snarked the hell out of the guy, because she's not exactly a polite and reserve person. Higher morals? Phht! Please, that guy deserves the ribbing. See, most of my other heroes might try to keep a cool head and not be reduced to childish bickering, but not Morten. She's out there to have fun, and if you're a jerk, she's pretty much going to say that to your face.

For as fun as the Leon interaction is, though, the base attack and Laura's eventual fate are NOT fun at all. That was actually quite a heavy scene to run across, really not something I expected... Even though with the Doc Aeon style of writing, people dying should have been the norm. But I do feel that this was pulled off successfully, though. Unlike a lot of the other pointless deaths that serve no purpose in the story but to let the writer beat his chest about being "edgy," this really does help set the tone of the final mission and lead into a pretty heavy decision. It was, to my eyes, a sympathetic character's death done right. The character wasn't humiliated, it wasn't gratuitous or pointless and it wasn't one of a dozen deaths.

Character deaths are a precision weapon, in a storytelling sense. You can very easily shoot yourself in the foot with them, but if you use them right, they can be very powerful, and this was powerful as opposed to aggravating. Simply put, it made me want to wring Leon's neck, as opposed to punch the writer in the teeth, and I can't really say that about many of the game's other character deaths. Good writing there, definitely.

Speaking of Leon, the decision was pretty easy. My own irritation with Aaron Thiery Jr. aside, this really is how Morten would operate. If you're a good and innocent person, then you have nothing to fear from her, other than maybe a date you won't remember much from the next morning. If you go ahead murdering people and causing disasters, though, you're fare game. And if you go ahead and kill people that she actually LIKE likes? Kiss your soul goodbye, because you are feeding the darkness. That's pretty much the path I sent her down, and I had her pick the most direct death threat options available. I'm sure the mission might have allowed me to talk the guy down and have a less bloody ending, but that's a decision I couldn't afford to make. Again - this is a person who doesn't do "morality." Solidarity, maybe, though even that's pushing it. She's more or less just a good-natured party girl demon of pure darkness whose heroism extends to wanting to help people she likes, more or less. So of COURSE she's dining on Leon's soul

---

I get that my personal experiences with those arcs are largely informed by the character I was playing, but at no point did it really feel like said character was being portrayed in an incompetent or morally ambiguous light. Not unless I chose the option to be, of course. I can't imagine what kind of character you'd have to play for this to completely not make sense... I'm sure there are at least a few, I just can't imagine there'd be many.

All in all, those two arcs were great. Yeah, you know those SSAs you guys were selling for, what, $5 an arc? Yeah, they weren't worth the money, but those two definitely are. I'm glad I played them!

This is something of an observation of mine. Call it an attempt to explain why I enjoy visual customization in this game so much more than practical customization. Now, I've gone over this before, and the fact that there's no "wrong" way to dress yet that there very much IS a wrong way to build is still a big reason. However, having made peace with there being no good way to handle character builds without objective values of what "works" and what "fails," something else keeps turning up to bother me that's a lot less abstract at its core - "packages."

When I say "packages," what I mean is sets of stat boots or abilities that come in one overall "set" such that I can't break the set down into its individual components, keep the ones I want, toss the ones I don't, break another set open, pick the ones out of there and generally only keep the benefits I want. As soon as I say this, you think I'm referring to Inventions, and I can see why that might be the first thing to come to mine given my history. But it's not JUST Inventions. This is a wider game phenomenon that Inventions are just part of.

Once upon a time, I suggested creating a set of non-Set multi-aspect enhancements that players would be able to put together from aspects of their own choosing. Do you want Total Focus to deal more damage AND cause a longer stun? Mash a damage enhancement with a stun enhancement and produce a Damage/Stun enhancement. Want four of those? Do that four times, then toss in a custom Accuracy/Damage and a custom Accuracy/Endurance and go for it. But I can't really do that, because such a system doesn't exist. I can somewhat ape this with various Inventions sets, but those are limited by what exists in the game, and what level it exists at. They come in packages and they revolve around levels and their own sets.

How about Incarnate powers? Alpha, specifically. Say I've looked at my build and deduced that I can benefit the most strongly from more damage, more accuracy and more healing. Alpha enhancements often boost three or more stats in the rare and very rare variants, so can I use one of those? Nope, because an Alpha that boosts damage, accuracy and healing doesn't exist. I don't get to pick the effects, I can only pick from one of several packagaes of effects and stick with the one that most closely resembles what I want.

Or, hell, take a basic powerset. How many times have people asked to be able to use Energy Blast, but without the knockback? Many, as I recall, but you can't do that since that's just how Energy Blast is. Even ATs suffer from this, to some degree - there's a reason some of us keep asking for an Assault/Defence AT, you know.

Now, Arcana has spoken about this in the past, I hope will do so again, but the problem with this as I understand it is that such a system is too easy to optimise and thus too easy to game. If you can pick just the boosts you want, then it's trivial to figure out what's best for most people and then everyone would be taking that and nothing else. The old 1xAcc/5xDam problem. It's largely impossible to create a system where there isn't a "best" option, but this best option can be obfuscated such that people can't easily deduce what it is. By doing this, you force people to make judgement calls and build by feel, which gives the impression that there's much more variety.

My problem is that this just disables my desire to mess with builds by making the system more complex than it needs to be. Instead of building for what I feel I should be building and just picking the options I think are best for that, I have to instead build for a little of everything by taking many packages with many attributes and instead worrying about how they stack with each other. I like a system that's flexible, obviously - I like to have what I want. But a flexible system doesn't have to be complex to figure out, I've found. League of Legends, for instance, has a pretty intricate build system, but almost all of the benefits that system grants come in a single-aspect variety and it's up to the player to pick which aspect to increase by how much. And, frankly, once I figure out which kind of stat works best, I DO want to keep raising it, and I can't always do that.

Essentially, this is what bugs me about character building in not just City of Heroes, but in a lot of modern RPGs, as well - packages. I can't pick what I want on a case-for-case basis like I can with SOs. I have to pick packages and worry about sum totals. And honestly... I've always preferred problems that I can solve one part at a time, rather than treating them like puzzles and requiring me to solve everything in one go by having it all click into place.

I'll leave by saying that, yes, I'm aware that things are interconnected in costume design, as well. Theme, colour scheme and good taste dictate that some things go well together and some just don't. That's true, but I can still love this problem by changing one item at a time, looking at the result and going from there. I don't have to worry about using entire costume packs. In fact, I rather dislike costumes made up entirely of a single pack just on a principle level. Even though some combinations of colours and costume items work better than others, I'm still not restricted in what I can use on which costume, and THAT makes the actual process of putting one together as fun as looking at the end result is.