Zemblanity

This makes alot more sense than the Black Queen turning out to be evil Warwitch (at least that's what happened in the Beta, haven't played it on live yet). Brad, you should PM this post to Dr. Aeon, maybe he wouldn't mind changing it in a future patch.

What am I getting at with those?

First, I'm pointing out the cheekiness of Primals claiming the moral highground in this war when their bestest most amazingliest awesomest and all-around red & blue *kisses&hugs* Paragon City can be as corrupt as Praetoria - without even the excuse of having an evil giant goo monster hanging over their heads. And that's in Paragon City, the atrocities happening in the Rogue Isles are ten times worse than whatever's happening in Praetoria, and yet here we are in typical me against my brother, me and my brother against my cousin, signing truces with Recluse because Cole's the real bad guy. There goes your multi-culturalism... Why aren't we attacking Praetorian Hamidon instead? If Cole and his goons still want to oppress Praetoria *after* that happens, then sure, off with their heads!

Second, j'accuse! When blatant corruption happens in Primal Earth, you're perfectly happy to chalk it up to anomalies in a free society, and yet when it happens in Praetoria, you call it systemic behavior in a fascist society and brand all Loyalists as evil! Why aren't you demanding we take down all Primal Loyalists as well, when Primal leadership is *clearly* working for Malta and Nemesis and trying to enslave us all? You don't do it because you acknowledge that western society is inherently good and refuse to blame it for the crimes of a few unscrupulous individuals, no matter how high up the power ladder they are. Responsibility (and to a lesser extent, Power) Loyalists are also trying to do the right thing. Theys detect corruption and authority abuse, they deal with it. Just like heroes in Primal Earth. Why the differential treatment?

Third, it's an answer to Fista and Venture's childish insinuation that I wasn't able to back up my words with facts. There are only two biological responses to a perceived threat, fight or flight. I chose the former, sorry for being human...

Southern United Manufacturing Company

A major Paragon City corporation in the 1920s, Southern United once controlled most of the Steel Canyon district. The company used coercion, blackmail, and numerous other immoral tactics to gain a stranglehold on the city. It also openly supported Paragon City’s corrupt mayor, “Spanky” Rabinowitz . Statesman eventually discovered that Southern United was actually a front for the villain known as Nemesis, who was subsequently defeated by Statesman and local law enforcement. Although Nemesis escaped capture, it’s believed that Southern United was dissolved after his disappearance.

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Might For Right Act

Inscription (413, 8, 890), Galaxy City

In 1967, these streets were filled with protestors railing against the Might For Right Act. The country had united behind the cause of three African-American heroes, who claimed that the CIA was discriminating against minorities by targeting them for conscription.

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Project: World Wide Red (49-50)
Souvenir - Crimson

The thanks of the World

(...) Acting quickly. you were able to find Dr. Lamarr at the Malta base where she was being forced to work on Project: Wildflower. She explained that Wildflower was a perversion of her own work. a symbiotic invisible nanotechnology-based ecosystem that Malta wanted reprogrammed to kill on their command. If released. it could infect the entire world. invisibly placing it under Malta control. Their first strike would be to kill thousands of heroes. yourself included! As you rushed to the site where Malta was letting the nanites multiply before releasing them. Malta unleashed their Kronos Titan! Undaunted. you made it to the nanite factory and reset all of the nanites to break themselves down. nipping Project: Wildflower in the bud.

(...) You also found out that Director 17. the head of World Wide Red. was in the city and that his cover identity was within the CIA.

(...) Crimson used his ex-CIA contact Melvin Langley to learn the identity of Director 17. and when that contact was captured. you went in and rescued him. Melvin told you that Director 17 was none other than Jack Firenze, the head of the CIA's China Bureau.

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In your opinion.

This argument won't die because you keep messing your analogies. The role of these "true monsters of history" should be assigned to Hamidon, not Cole. Cole was just the defeated general forced into unconditional surrender and tasked to enforce whatever unfair terms Hami came up with, even if it meant oppressing his people - the alternative was the complete and utter anhilihation of the human race.

If you're talking about world history, go refresh your memory on what the romans did to tribes that refused to surrender. Go ask the japanese if they'd rather have their cities nuked one by one or accept whatever terms the allies might come up with in the future. Liberty, civil rights, suffragism, free speech, all these things we now take for granted were earned through force of arms, they're priviledges of more civilized times that can (and often do) get swept away when someone stronger comes along and prevents them from being upheld.

You forgot to mention he also had a very big gun pointed to his head, one that had just wiped out 90% of the human race and was (as far as Cole knew) unstoppable. Any leader forced to accept unconditional surrender only gets two choices, bend over or watch his people die. Cole chose the former.

There are countless examples of decisions being made in Paragon City, both local and federal, strictly to benefit criminal organizations and profiteers instead of serving the best interests of its people. Unlike in Praetoria, however, no one has a gun to our leaders' heads, it's just plain old corruption at its best. Authority abuse to prevent impending destruction? Regrettable, but I can accept it to a point. Authority abuse for profit? Much less acceptable.

I'll direct you to the trial of Gaius Baltar from the Battlestar Galactica series, almost a carbon copy of what's happening in Praetoria. If you've never seen it, a race of evil machines called the Cylons had just nuked 12 billion humans, and the 40.000 or so survivors elected Gaius Baltar as their president. Eventually the Cylons caught up with the human survivors, and Baltar was tasked with making sure no one misbehaved or they would nuke them as well, which he did through ruthless oppression and government sponsored murder. Brought to trial to answer for his crimes, once all the spite and righteous indignation was over, the jury was forced to conclude that any sane man in Baltar's position would have prioritized the exact same thing in that impossible situation - survival.

P.S. The question I would now pose is why did Cole fail to learn that the Primals had managed to defeat their own version of Hamidon?

Tell them we're busy, come back later...

Agreed. Corruption in Paragon City is completely out of control, and Primals claiming moral highground in this conflict is pure hypocrisy. Retaliation against an unprovoked assault, maybe, but even that's sketchy, considering Ultimatum, Malta, Longbow, Arachnos, Vanguard and the Freedom Phalanx had all been wreaking havoc in Praetoria long before Cole gave the order to invade Primal Earth.

Now that all these interdimensional wars are over (against Praetoria, Axis and the Rikti), I'd very much like to see an effort to restore law and order to Paragon City and depose Lord Recluse in the Rogue Isles - if the Coming Storm doesn't mind waiting a few issues, that is.

The smashing part went ok, the saving part... not so much. I guess we were too busy zinging Cole and his goons to stop them from nuking the city. But hey, the people said freedom or death, at least they got their wish ^_^

Didn't see anyone treating the employees like dirt here. That said, and borrowing Traska's example, if I paid in advance for a pizza that openly advertized a free soda with the package, I'd expect that soda to be delivered with the pizza, not at a later date. If that happened with a store I didn't know or trust, I'd be asking for my money back and never order from them again.

I trust Paragon Studios, but I've also been here since Good vs Evil was released in Europe. New players might not share that trust.

Never said they did. I said it's annoying that the points don't get delivered when you're first billed for your subscription (which can happen any time of the month), and gave an example on why this current delay in point delivery can negatively affect the value of the VIP subscription - by delaying whatever use I might come up with for those points for at least a month.

Deny it if you will, but I still say there are a lot of problems with the current implementation of the Paragon Store. For instance, I've temporarily cancelled my VIP subscription last month for personal reasons, but I'm delaying its renewal in hopes that the Who Will Die full pack will be put back on sale once the SSA #2 - Pandora's Box hits live - since you can't buy anything already included in the VIP package while you're a VIP. Wishful thinking, I know. Now, am I qualified to determine if a specific problem is costing Paragon Studios more money than it'd take to fix it? No, I'm not. All I can do is share my opinion.

We shouldn't be tiptoeing around these problems for fear of scaring away potential customers or whatever, but rather do our best as players to make this game into the best thing it could be - through bug reports, suggestions, constructive criticism, by being friendly to new and old players alike, by helping everyone understand the changes that took place in the game, and yes, by sharing with everyone why we like this game. And I do like the game, even if I don't say it enough.

Anyway, went a little off-topic, Forbin, but I felt that your post was an extension of our previous word exchange a few days ago. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize.

It's payback for you driving on the wrong side of the road

Considering we actually *pay* for that VIP subscription, considering new costumes and powersets *used* to be included in the normal subscription and now cost extra in exchange for those 400 points a month (a fair trade IMO, assuming the system works), I think this goes beyond your Nekonominicon yada emo stuff. No one's claiming this is a conspiracy to rob us of our points, either, just a schedule problem in delivery. I really don't get the fuss from your part...

Or are you the type of Neko who orders lasagna or whatever cats eat for dinner and doesn't mind when it gets delivered the following month?

I guess we'll just have to disagree here, Sam. What we're looking at is someone telling the writer that "this, this and this needs to happen, this NPC needs to take part in it, this NPC needs to die halfway, this NPC needs to kill that NPC, this powerset needs to be introduced and these map textures need to be used - now come up with a plot to tie all that together." I seldom like how these kind of stories come out, because more often than not the plot (assuming I understood your definitions of story, plot and storytelling) ends up full of holes, forces characters (including PCs) to do atypical actions, and ultimately funnels the conclusion of a branched story into an undesireable outcome for at least one path (usually villains, who always end up roped into saving the world...). If the storytelling (again, assuming I understood your meaning) appeals to the player, you might enjoy it nonetheless, but once you sit back and think about all the plot-holes and out-of-character actions that took place, you'll either dismiss the story as goofy (killing all the emotional attachment it might have had when you first played it) or feel cheated and start disliking it altogether.

It's often said that writers lose control of their stories if they're not careful, but that only happens to good writers who respect the rules they themselves created - because they refuse to allow established characters to suddenly bend their personalities just to accomodate the direction you intend them to go. Good writers have enormous power to alter the direction of their stories, but to actually direct a story "carrot-on-a-stick" style they have to accurately predict every consequence of every plot they set into place - and certain plots are so inconspicuous that their effects are only felt much later in the story, meaning plot decisions can come back to haunt you when you least expect them. Bad writers just make free use of the idiot-ball and suspension of disbelif - whoops, let's all pretend that didn't happen, alright? Good writers either follow Walter of Chatton's anti-razor advice and keep adding variables until the story heads back into course - or they let the story evolve to its natural conclusion.

A perfect example of a terrible plot spoiling a story? Mass Effect 3. The writer was told in advance that 3 things needed to happen - Shepard needed to die (artistic integrity), the Normandy and its crew needed to survive (marketing demanded it so they could keep selling DLCs), and some big plot revelation needed to happen at the end (because the masses are suckers for plot-twists). Had the writer allowed her own integrity to supercede her bosses' demands, she'd have realized that Shepard would never bend over to the Reapers after that pathetic explanation, that the Normandy would have never turned tail and run away from the last battle, and that introducing the AI kid at the end without making it seem like he was pulled out of a hat would have required some sort of foreshadowing in the previous games. IMO, good storytelling, terrible plot, bad story.

P.S. Sam, I'm not saying you aren't right in demanding better storytelling - just saying it shouldn't be at the cost of a well-planned plot.

I wouldn't go that far, I kinda like cutscenes and in-mission dialogue if they bring something to the table. I loved the press conference at the end of WWD, for example, and that little cutscene warning us that Frostfire is hanging in the next room was both useful and hilarious. Maybe some middle ground, like a "skip" button you could press or something.

That's part of what I meant to say when I said "cutscenes", not just actual cutscenes, but also the two examples I mentioned of unrelated things pulled out of a hat in WWD because they seemed new and shiny (Penny and the Moon map). Sorry for not being clear on that.

I agree, but I liked Dark Astoria nonetheless. Could have been better, and the Dream Doctor makes for a terrible letter writer (I'd much rather it had been someone our PCs had previously interacted with, and Doc's apparent connection with Agent Nance and Jenny Adair is sketchy at best), but it still managed to entertain me. That said, if I absolutely had to choose between horrible mechanics with a good story (go rescue 12 hostages, click on 20 glowies, deal with 6 ambushes, then kill all enemies in a city block within 30 minutes) or good mechanics with a horrible story (go beat up Statesman to prove you're the Destined One), I think I'd log off and go take a walk on the beach instead

Yes they are (assuming they've fixed the lag problem in Cole's PoV), and I'd like to add that the new cutscene in SSA #2 has a pretty cool new feature - it actually includes the player character in it! The PC just runs for a bit before standing still, no dialogue or emotes yet, but it's a good start to including the PCs in the action, assuming they're still planning to use these cutscenes to advance the plot.

Most of the plots we consider "good" in CoV involve our villains accomplishing something special without having to resort to brute strenght, no "might makes right" bulls**t, just simple cunning and opportunity that allows us to outsmart our adversaries. That kind of scripting takes time to come up with, or it ends up requiring extensive use of the idiot-ball for things to fall into place.

You say we need more storytelling and less plot, I'd argue the opposite. Most of the new missions seem like a sequence of unrelated cutscenes glued together in haste, and the plot is just an afterthought to make them seem connected. That might be how scripting is done in a video clip, but an actual movie or novel isn't just a random collection of cool scenes - those are born out of necessity as the script demands it, not the other way around. Could these scenes have more feeling, more emotion, more involvement? Certainly, but let's make sure the mission objective actually makes sense before giving our pixeled actors a tryout for the academy awards.

Now, I understand it's difficult for the animators to come up with cutscenes on the spot, and it's tempting to just adapt the script to what's already been coded, but at some point the writers are going to have to start banging their hands in the table and demand that decisions aren't made before they're actually included on the script. Does that mean leaving out the cool NPC with her flashy new costume? It's a shame, but yes. Does that mean not putting to use the newly created moon textures that everybody at the graphics department spent the last month working on? Sorry, maybe next time.

Absolutely nothing, which is why I said if in a suggestions forum. If it does require alot of work, I'll manage with the names I already have. Don't worry too much, it's just a suggestion, not a crusade. I'm saving all my bullets to get States, Psyche and Miss L. back among the living

You realise I was just using X as a generic example, right? Thought we were buddies, Sam, and here you are flaming me along with the goon squad. That hurts

What's unfortunate is me reading all those "don't like it, go play another game" comebacks everytime I visit this suggestions forum. *You* going away would actually make me happy, and I'm pretty sure alot of the people you've been bullying for kicks would feel a little karmic joy as well. Anyway, I've wasted enough time in this thread. A future name purge or global name identifier instead of unique local names both seem like good ideas to me, so for whatever it's worth, /signed.

If the occasional wrongful rep loss is the only thing stopping this from happening, then it's a non-issue in my book - all the game would have to do is require that you type the global name instead the local name when you /ignore an offender. It's not that hard to find out, anyway, just click a toon's name in the chat box and pick the /getglobalname option. Plus, it's about time the chat channels start showing the global names instead of the character names, which, IMO, should only really show in /local text balloons.

Well, I'm tired of having to play Mr. X or Captain X instead of just X because of a silly system limitation. If there's a way around it that doesn't require extensive work, I'd love to see it implemented.

I'm with you on this.

@Randomtrialaccount1234 has as much right to reserve a name as any of us, but let's make sure that account actually gets logged before letting it block a name off our list till the end of time. Who knows, with a warning in advance, it might even give some people a reason to come back, if only to cheat the system and keep their favorite names.

Or this. It works for CO, maybe it could work here.

Statesman and Psyche are featured prominently in the comics, in the novels, in all official artwork and promo videos, in the main screen picture, in the character creation screen, in the official chronology, in the web-site, they're the main antagonists of vanilla City of Villains, their evil alter-egos are the main antagonists of current incarnate content, and even the forum picture above features States fighting a Warworks droid...

Minority, huh?

If they allowed Primals to play them, then tweaked the level range of Praetoria / First Ward / Night Ward into a broad 15-50 (unlocked after completing Twinshot's final arc), those zones would have alot more use. You'd lose the option of starting out as a Praetorian, but I certainly wouldn't mind playing a Primal that got to infiltrate Cole's creepy little garden instead.

Echo...

I do. I'm the type of person to consider whether to stop watching a show when one of the main characters gets innexplicably canned. Who the hell would want to watch the X-Files without Mulder and Scully? How about Two and a Half Men without Charlie? 24 without Agent Bauer? MacGyver without MacGyver? USM without Peter Parker? Is the game really better without States, Psyche, Miss Liberty and Malaise? I don't think so.

Mainstream fiction on a serial basis is different from a novel or a movie - once they end the audience moves on. But a weekly show or comic book (or MMO) has to continue to attract its audience after each episode - killing its most popular characters isn't generally a good idea on the long run.

OP, while I hated it myself, I'm really glad you liked WWD, and hopefully there's more people like you out there. Lately I've begun to question whether City of Heroes is still being designed for its target audience - with every aspect of the game tested to exhaustion to ensure the players' maximum enjoyment. Some of the most recent decisions stink of "artistic" integrity and all the crap it entails, and I really don't want my favorite game to degenerate into "art" that no one wants to buy.

On a side note, they've begun testing the SSAs on beta before they launch, which is a step in the right direction - assuming the testers themselves aren't sycophants or blatantly ignored by the devs, things like WWD #6 cave-escorting nightmare shouldn't happen again.