Samuel_Tow

You forgot "raid grind."

And, yeah, the kind of mentality you're describing is pretty much the sole reason that this is my only MMO. It used to be that we didn't have an "end game" as such, and to be honest, that's when I had the most fun with the game. I WANT a definitive "game over." Sure, I want to liner on after the fact and wrap up what I didn't do, maybe repeat some of it, but what I DO NOT WANT is a game which never ends.

Every game ends. The question is whether it ends with an exciting climax or whether it ends because I can't stand to look at it any more.

I'm pretty sure a single flight speed enhancement in Fly isn't as fast as Sprint, but it definitely is faster than base running speed. However, what concerns me is getting around larger maps, such as for instance where I'm heading off to right now, which is to deposit the Outbreak virus (don't ask, with this character concept I'll never find the right missions). It's a jumbled instance of Kings Row about six blocks in size and it calls for movement about the speed of Ninja Run. I'm just wondering if I can achieve that with just Hover. Would two or three slots do it, do you think?

On the one hand, having to skip "something" would save me slots since I don't plan to add more to Fly if I take it. On the other hand, I actually spoke with Leo and he praised Shadow Meld as a decent power, which is the only thing I think I can skip and gain slots from it. Well, OK, the one other thing it looks like I can skip is one basic attack to replace with Dark Blast (turns out that's not the one with the skull), but I really can't see any "bad" attacks in Electric Melee to dump, and I'm not convinced I'll be able to afford much recharge with as many slots as I need for basic stuff.

By having him murder his own wife O_o I'm not sure I'm keen on that story...

I don't disagree with this. Far from it, it's what I've been asking for. However, I don't believe we need to DESTROY the NPC heroes and villains to achieve this goal. After all, we need to have these people around for us to be equal TO, right?

The thing to remember here is context, and I'll give you an example. If you've seen me ask help in making a goddess recently, you may have noticed I'm going for sort of a Mary Sue indescribably powerful entity. I discussed this with Viking initially, and he said something quite appropriate - after a certain level of power, the distinction about exactly how powerful my entity is becomes meaningless. That's because I've transcended all possible context and there's no reference with which to explain to people the level of power I want. The solution? Invent a pantheon of more conventional but still very powerful gods to serve as her agents and then use those as context against which to describe said indescribable entity. It's still a kludge, but it's better than nothing.

It's the same thing here. In order for us to feel accomplished, we need context about what we're surpassing. The signature NPCs are this context. However, to do fulfil this role, they need to be worth admiring and therefore worth surpassing. The higher the NPCs stand, the greater our achievement is in surpassing them. By dragging them through the mud as the SSAs have, these NPCs lose status, and the achievement of surpassing them loses its magnificence in turn. If I surpass someone I admire, this is an achievement. If I surpass someone I scoff at, this is no big deal. They need to be big in order for us being "bigger" to have meaning, so to speak.

I really feel that systematically dismantling the old legends is bad for the game. It doesn't make players feel like their characters are better, it makes players feel like the NPCs are losers, and there is a subtle but important difference there.

That, really, is the loop PvP threads seem to be going in most of the time when they show up. I really don't think PvP is failing so much because it's badly designed, before or after I13, so much as because it's avoidable, and people just choose to avoid it.

I went on about this in the other thread, but I just feel that City of Heroes' PvE environment, which is pretty much what the game is being sold on these days, breeds the kind of attitudes and the kind of players who just aren't that hot for the challenge of what is usually a superior enemy and for the dog-eat-dog environment of an actually fair fight. What you're saying - there being players whom I simply couldn't defeat because of how they've built and what they've chosen - is a situation I never want to be in. It doesn't motivate me to excel, but rather to find another game to play.

Again, that's not a good thing or a bad thing. Some people rise to the challenge and improve themselves, some people shrink from the challenge and seek alternate paths. When it comes to entertainment, especially such that we choose and pay for, neither path is wrong, and City of Heroes just seems to breed more of the latter than the former.

I don't know, that's been Sister Psyche and Aurora Borealis all along. I don't have a problem with multiple psychics on the same team, plus Penny could always have taken up that role even with Psyche alive. Or maybe the events of the SSAs could have simply shocked the Phalanx back into action and forced them to realise they can't rest on their laurels and that maybe Psyche isn't as powerful a psychic any more. I'm not saying make her a weaker psychic, just that maybe the rest of the world has simply caught up to her, more or less. Be a good way to give players with psychics a push, at least.

Personally, I feel that any story angle has multiple ways to be solved, and in much the same way as introducing ****, character deaths should be a last resort, used only when absolutely necessary or when they will make for an incredibly powerful scene. These are the kind of plot points that you don't just toss around willy-nilly like a baby playing with a loaded gun, and these are sure as hell not the kind of plot points you want to explore in stories as badly-edited as the SSAs were. SSA7 almost broke my English and I'm not even a native speaker.

Maybe I can stand to be a bit more optimistic, but I just see so much of the SSAs as ideas that got BADLY mishandled. To follow them up with taking the Statesman out of history is just the last straw, at least in my eyes.

The problem is that what you're describing is the very reason many of us DON'T enjoy PvP. Not necessarily permaholds, but the aspect of "Well, if he X, then I shouldn't be able to beat him." It's easy enough to avoid such situations in PvE, but no matter how balanced, they are unavoidable in PvP, if not because of poor balance then because sometimes your enemy is just too damn good.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't want to play that. What I AM saying is that you may not get enough people to enjoy it with you for PvP to sustain critical mass.

Fair enough

Really? The Ouroboros Portal is an Accolate, and that can be granted by one of a dozen different badges.

Actually Accolades aren't granted by a combination of badges, they're granted by a badge that carries their name, which is itself granted from that combination. The game already has a system to grant an Accolade badge based on any one of many badges. It should be possible to add a "Pal" badge that's unlocked with either Statesman's Pal or Positron's Pal, which is then used as the final one to unlock said accolade badge.

Standard code rant obviously applies for final judgement, but precedent for this already exists.

I wouldn't have suggested that five years ago when Matt Miller took over the company and was trumpeting "Give the players what they want." I supported this, and the game became much better. I CAN say this now in light of what he has personally said, here and elsewhere, and what I'm seeing is happening to the game. The wanton disregard for quality in anything but pure visuals (the art team seems to have pretty constantly high popularity, and deservedly so) does make one cynical. At this point, writing stories based on personal pettiness as opposed to any sort of artistic integrity is the norm, and I am shocked and amazed on the very rare occasions when a story is good on its own merits, rather than feeling like it was mandated by something "more important," like shoving raids down our throats or promoting Positron as the greatest thing since radioactive toasters.

And again, even IF we accept that the Statesman had to die to get people from out his shadow (so why did Sister Psyche had to die, then?), this doesn't mean that any trace of him have to be removed from the game. He existed, he as a history, he had adventures, he had a moral code and some degree of integrity. The Statesman is part of this game, and whether alive or dead, he needs to REMAIN a part of this game. Atlas died long before the game's time period, but that doesn't mean he has no place in the game. A statue of him exists, life-size as I hear, we know about the people he saved, the battles he fought and how he died. The 5th Column -> Council transition screwed him up, yes (the Indy Port Security Chief briefing still says he fought off an ALIEN ARMADA there, as opposed to a 5th Column raid), but Atlas still exists in backstory.

Talos still exists, Galaxy Girl still exists... Or existed until someone decided to drop a bridge on Galaxy City and we kind of forgot about her. The heroes of the past still exist in memory, in history and in the tales we tell. There is NO REASON to remove the Statesman's name from events that took place in the past, before his death. No reason which isn't insulting, at the very least.

We don't care about the badge, we care about the superdickery behind the change. It's just shameful for company policy to be this way, it repeats very obvious mistakes of the past and it's just jerkish behaviour. There's no need for it. Removing the Statesman of the "here and now" is one thing. He died because Matt Miller wanted to get back at Jack Emmert. Fine, I get that. Removing him FROM THE PAST should not happen.

City of Heroes is enough of a mess from the endless ret-cons because "what kind of a boss" would Matt Miller be if he expected his writers to show some kind of consistency in storytelling. Ret-conning it even more for no reason other than to be malicious is just double the wrong.

And besides, there are some things related to badges that people simply dislike. Again I bring up the Patriot badge. Originally, this was atop City Hall near the US flag and said how our characters had become patriots by saluting that flat. Because a lot of people and a lot of characters aren't American, many people complained, myself among them. Patriot was then moved downstairs to one of the statues of a super heroine who was proclaimed citizen of every nation in the world, thus people saluting her statue were patriots not just to the United States of America, but rather to the entire world. And I like it. The badge at the flag remains, but now it talks about how that particular piece of cloth was once the Statesman's cape, which brings with it a whole different kind of honour more than being JUST about a US flag. I like that, as well.

I can't wait to see that badge ret-conned into how this was Positron's first baby blanket.

This was on a SR Scrapper, and I only realised what was happening after I had been pushed away from pretty much everyone else. Because of how the map was cropped out of Perez Park, I got shoved into a niche between the "blue wall" and some trees where no-one could find me. And Break Frees seemed to do nothing against Telekinesis.

What I'm saying is that a lot of powers in PvE are very unfair against the NPCs. 40-second auto-hit no-cost Confront is always a hoot, for instance. And I like those powers. I like having an unfair advantage. That just doesn't work in PvP, so we either have to have a very different set of rules for a lot of things in PvP, or we have a system that's unfair, and I somehow keep ending up drawing the short straw on those.

Is that what the kids are calling these days?

Wait, no, I'm thinking of something else.

Wow, imagine that. And here I honestly thought I was imagining it I hate how my memory works sometimes. I remember certain things, but have no idea why I know them, who told them to me or when I found out. I'd be the primary candidate of a psychological horror movie

I agree completely. And, yes, its personal story was quite cool, as well... I just wish it had been revealed AFTER the actual reveal. Because, honestly, I know who and what the Sentinel was the entire time, but my character wasn't supposed to know and the Dream Doctor acted like he didn't know and it made the whole plot thread one giant exercise of waiting for a reveal I already knew. Putting the personal story before that reveal was a MAJOR mistake, as far as I'm concerned.

If anything, I'm a bit disappointed we didn't see the Sentinel do more for us. I mean physically see it do more, like have the thing fight a whole army of Mot's creatures to buy us time to get inside the maw, with us being on, say, a 30-second timer before we get auto-ported inside, like the ending of Jenni Adair's arc. You know, more show less tell. But again, that's me wanting more, not really hating what's there. And I haven't been able to say that recently.

See, this is kind of what doesn't work for me. I never got the feeling Mot omnomnommed Tielekku because he was stronger. I got the feeling she was just pathetically weak. Mot even says so - "You have become weaker, goddess." That's why I capitalise the word "establish" so often when I talk about how it would have been nice if the story had ESTABLISHED her power first. See, Tielekku is a clear instance of the Worf effect, where her only purpose in the story is to be strong and to be defeated by Mot to show how strong he is. I get that, and I would even be on board... If we had any reason to believe Tielekku was strong enough to matter to begin with. Yes, she's a goddess so that's sort of implied. Yes, she banished an entire pantheon of other gods, so it's implied she's even stronger.

But here's the thing - she ISN'T stronger in the story. She is described as being weaker multiple times, and she NEVER demonstrates any abnormal powers that I can actually see. I don't even think her avatar has any powers attached to it, she's just there for the cutscenes. Tielekku does NOTHING, and that's a cryin' shame. Again, her summoning is rushed and has no fanfare, her appearing is low-key and she... Really just looks like a regular half-naked woman. If it wasn't for the narrative informing me of how great she was, I would never have been able to tell. Yeah, Tielekku's godhood is an informed ability.

Take something simple by comparison. Take the Statesman's appearance in a Hero's Epic. He shows up several times as a companion NPC, he has some dialogue and he's actually pretty tough in combat, between his awesome Zeus lightning and his overall damaging attacks and his own physical toughness. I may not get the sense that he's the manifestation of Zeus, but I can tell the man is at the very least highly capable of at least looking after himself. Sure, he then shows up as a level 54 Archvillain at the end, but that's besides the point.

This is what I would have wanted to do with Tielekku. Instead of insta-porting to the Maw, why not have her accompany us on the way up there? Give her some kind of recoloured powers, make her an elite boss, give her somewhat boosted abilities and have at least act as though she's on our level. Have her DO something before she gets eaten, is my point. I get that giving Tielekku a unique, special, fanfare-heavy summoning might have taken lots of art team resources, but giving her actual powers should not have been that tough. We already have the map that goes from the graveyard entrance to the maw. Why not use it?

I get that Tielekku's kidnapping is supposed to show Mot's power, but in order for that to work, we should first have seen Tielekku's power.

That would actually have made the Talons a lot less boring, actually. See, what I don't like about them the most is... Where the hell are they coming from? Why are they all women? And why are they turning into chickens? If the Talons were presented as more of a "plague" than a faction, that would actually have been awesome. I could see their members still being enhanced with scales and wings and such, but at least have those member span more groups. Have there be angry Circle mystics, have there be angry Malta soldiers, have there be angry Crey Tanks. Hell, why not angry Rikti? The Traditionalists already operate on a culture of racial hatred.

What bugs me about the Talons is they're designed in such a way as to imply they have an actual backstory when they don't. Making them a plague would free them of this need for backstory and actually fit a lot better with what they seem to want to represent.

Exactly. I fought a friend of mine's Gravity Controller with my Scrapper. I turned on Elude and his Singularity auto-hit perma-held me through all my defences and essentially defeated me without the player's help, pretty much. I fought another match in Anto-Cat's events where I got tagged with someone's Telekinesis and I spent three quarters of the match shoved into a corner in the woods doing nothing. Anti-Cat was the only Blaster, and consistently the only one dead most of the time because he'd get held at range, dropped from the sky and killed easily since the guy had no status protection.

The last thing I want out of PvP is be the NPC to some player's personal enjoyment.

Actually, now that you mention it, this is almost the exact same picture as that one, right down to the face scowling in the same way.

It's a spoiler because it's a BIG reveal, and I just don't want someone to stumble across it unwittingly. I know I put out a spoilers tag, but there's no need to leave this in regardless. At least I won't.

Also, I don't mean to say the Letter Writer's identity should have been somebody else or that it was a bad reveal or such. Hell, I was prepared to hate on the guy for how passive-aggressive arrogant he is in his letters, but in the actual story, he acts a lot like a puppy so I really didn't mind the character or the reveal. Maybe the choice of face, but that's besides the point.

What I meant was that he doesn't really do anything which required the Letter Writer. There's nothing in the story that's specific to HIM, which is the disappointment. You could have used Montague, War Witch or, hell, even Akharist and it wouldn't have been too much different. Being the Letter Writer should have given him some kind of an advantage, and I really didn't see that, to be honest. I mean, it's not BAD, I just wanted to see what the big deal is all about. Why is this character so important that we've been dragging his sorry *** through storylines since 2007? I'm not saying he should have been more instrumental and stolen more of our thunder, but I just kind of wanted him to do something only HE could do and that we just didn't get.

When I first saw Scirocco in Dark Astoria, my first thought was "Why didn't they send Ghost Widow? She's the expert on death and her existence is bound to Arachnos." Turns out Scirocco had a stronger story to go through, and I'm happy they involved him. Where the story concerns him, it's actually very well done, but the problem is that he gets about as much screen time as Detective Hopp and, heaven help me, Miss Bellarose. He has his big emotional scene, he has his change of heart and he even helps out, but the problem is the guy really descends into just a face in the crowd a lot of the time. I don't know... I guess being able to have a conversation with him and then another one with Ice Mistral which could hint at their true emotions might have helped, but it just seems like his story arc is wrapped up far too quickly and from then on it's "Scirocco will assist the Saints in combat. He's available from your phone menu."

Dark Astoria really doesn't have anything in it that's actually bad, is the real kicker. But it's so good I keep wishing more was done with some of the plot points and characters and side stories. I wanted to see more of it

Involving a literal god is always a big reveal, just because it's a big deal. Tielekku's manifestation should have been historic event, one which brings up philosophical and metaphysical questions and which causes people to question their own place in the world. It should have been given a LOT more gravity and, frankly, Tielekku herself should have been given a lot more honours. Make it a cutscene, make it a comic book pannel, have her appear in lightning from the sky which shatters the ground and creates a crater that's there at least in the instance. Or, hell, use the "phasing" tech and have Tielekku destroy a major Dark Astoria building when she shows up.

No. She pops into existence, says a couple of words, then omnomnom and we're back to square one. Total participation time: It can't have been more than 30 seconds. Total contribution: Absolute zero. I get that that's part of the point, but she doesn't FEEL like a goddess. To get to Hequat, I need to spend an entire story arc gathering books and ritual ingredients and finding a portal and crossing over and then I have to fight through an entire instance just to get to her, and I STILL feel Hequat deserved more.

Tielekku is a frikkin' GODDES. She shaped the destiny of the entire world, she invented magic and taught it to the other gods, she banished an entire pantheon of evil gods. She's better than this. I mean, her costume is very cool, but she's REALLY underutilised here. Even if I get that we can't have a god on our side making things too easy, I'd have at least wanted to do SOMETHING with her than have her stuffed in a fridge for most of the story.

That was my impression more so than my expectations, actually. Seeing him, he looked the sort to act as a spectral mentor and mission control, kind of like what Allistor does in SSA1.1. I mean, for someone whose name gets thrown around so much and who shows up at least visually, I just thought he'd do more. I don't know, maybe if we had to go find his spirit instead of finding his oddly specific journals? That's just the impression I got from meeting him, though.

I don't like a story that has "floundering" as a major component of it, is the problem. I don't have a problem of trying something and failing as long as it feels like it was fun and it advanced the story, but I do have a problem with it when it feels like it was put there specifically to pad things out. Consider, for example, To Save a Thousand Worlds. Almost 90% of that story arc is trying to find the scientists and mostly failing, then trying to find the other half of the scientists and mostly failing, then patching up dimensional ruptures over and over again, then trying to find the source and mostly failing and finally confronting elseworld Requiem. This thing is something like 20 missions long, and it doesn't really deserve more than three or four.

That's not to say that Dark Astoria was too short. Far from it. I just feel there were a LOT of very interesting concepts which could have been explored, but weren't because we spend so much time floundering. I firmly believe that any plot point in a good story needs to serve some kind of point to the overall plot. When it comes to video game plots, these plot points need to serve a tangible, visible purpose, rather than serving as pretend-solutions to pretend-problems. The X of Vengeance making Mot stronger is just such a pretend-problem - we're only ever told Mot is getting stronger, but this is never shown to us. His minions aren't getting stronger, his powers aren't growing. There's I guess exactly one point where he omnomnoms a bunch of people where I could say his power is growing, but...

It feels like "Your princess is in another castle!" Yes, you can explain it as a story, but a lot of this is just spinning our wheels in place and occasionally sliding sideways. It's finding three pieces of the plot device instead of finding just one without any real need to do so other than so it takes longer and features more fights. The X of Vengeance are the biggest offender in this regard. If it were JUST the Talons or JUST the Knives and we only had to defeat them once, then I wouldn't mind. It's an artificial obstacle to an artificial problem, but that's how these stories go. But when you start asking me to do it twice, I start to get the feeling you're out of ideas. And I know the writers weren't out of ideas, which is just that much more of a shame why we got the same story multiple times instead of getting something more interesting.

As you say - it's a very good idea. THAT is exactly what I wanted to see explored more and that is what I feel got a little lost in the shuffle. It just feels like at least a good chunk of Dark Astoria is solving secondary problems to find the means to solve primary problems to finally get the opportunity to solve the main problem. When you start going down into third and fourth tier of importance is when I start to feel we're getting sidetracked.

A random, non-related example: You need to defeat a bad guy, but to do it you need a sword. You can't buy the sword, you need to make it, but for that, you need a special blacksmit. He also needs special toos, but to get them, you need a special toolsmith. To make the sword, he needs special materials and to get them, you need to find special monsters, but to find them, you need a guide. And so on and so forth. Yes, the main storyline might be interesting, but when I start getting sidetracked down a branching path of nested objectives, I start losing focus of the main threat. And, sadly, the X of Vengeance really are such a nested objective.

We need to stop Mot, but to stop Mot we need to weaken him. To do that, we need to stop the Talons. To do that, we need first to stop the Knives. To do that, we need to figure out where they're coming from. To do that, we need to find Max. Max will help us, but only if we help him rescue three of his BFFs, though we can skip that. So we save Max's friends, he gives us the location, we go there, we stop the Knives. Now we need to figure out where the Talons live so we can stop them. To do that, we need to kill three Keres, and then a Mother Keres. And once all of that's done, what have we achieved? We ticked one box off a shopping list.

Now all we need is immunity to Mot's power, the ritual to summon Tielekku, the god-killer sword so Tub Chi doesn't kill her, David Hazen's journal and "Guns. Lots of guns." At that point it starts to feel to me like I'm playing Flight of the Amazon Queen all over again, because that's how point-and-click adventures tend to work.

Contrast that against, say, the Eternal Nemesis, an arc which is almost 90% padding. Most of this arc is spent trying to figure out what's going on, then turning out the conclusion was wrong and trying to figure out what's going on, then turning out it was a Nemesis plot all along and stopping it. The difference is that each new step in the arc rewards us with the one thing that the game can't pretend about - information for the player. With every new step, I learn more about the plot, and I can start trying to piece together the mystery before I have all the clues, so that when it's finally revealed, I can have the satisfaction of being completely wrong. Wait...

My point is that there's almost no mystery in Dark Astoria. Consider one of the story's more obvious roots - Silent Hill. When a Silent Hill game even bothers to HAVE a conventional plot, it's delivered in small chunks hidden in hints and clues that aren't obvious at first. Most of the game is spent trapped inside a horror that is too twisted to comprehend, and that's what makes it scary. We fear the unknown, because we have no static point that we can rely on for our own competence. When I know practically everything I need to do and practically all the reasons I need to do it, the horror aspect of it is diminished and I'm no longer afraid. A good scary story tells you just enough to be afraid of the dark, but not nearly enough to know what's in the dark to be afraid of. Introducing Mot within THE FIRST MISSION pretty much wipes out any mystery there might have been and sets an obvious end goal right from the start.

I say the plot is "predictable," because the plot makes no attempt to surprise me at any point. And I get that this is getting into the "trying way too hard" territory that I've chastised the writers for in the past, but there IS a middle ground between constant Shyamalan twists and no twists at all. The one twist there is - the omnomnom of Tielekku - is both incredibly obvious just because nothing's ever this easy, and also a purely utilitarian one: We lose our plot device. It's not a reveal, it's a "supposed to lose" fight. Aside from the Letter Writer, I really don't think there are any meaningful reveals in this entire storyline. And considering this is supposed to be unknowable, unthinkable evil, that's just missing a great opportunity.

I'm not saying removing ALL of the X of Vengeance would necessarily make for the same story. As I said - the Talons have a legitimate, albeit forced reason to be there. What I don't feel was necessary to have the Juniour Talons of Vengeance involved in the story because they're the exact same faction, just with a different coat of paint. Sure, they're novel to fight, but they do not offer a novel story. Dark Astoria pretends it has two separate stories for the Knives and the Talons, but the truth of the matter is it has only one story that it reuses for both factions. And that just seems wasteful.

I forget where I read it, but I believe it was out of the game. It's possible I read it off a Paragon Times article. It's possible it's Virgil Tarikoss who said it, which makes it unreliable.

Yeah, but I wanted to see them more directly involved. I wanted to see what kind of tricks they'd pull out to fight a god, I wanted to see how far they'd go to save themselves. And I sure as sugar would have preferred to see them over the Talons of Vengeance 2.

Hey, if there's more to the Pantheon and more to Dark Astoria, I'd love to see it. Like I said, the story is great, I just wanted to see more of it However, I get the feeling that they're pretty much done. Mot's done for, the rest of their gods are still trapped and now Tielekku's back. Sure, she takes off for the spirit world because of the reason, but one has to assume she'll be keeping an eye on Earth for the foreseeable future if she almost got eaten.

See, the thing is I really don't have a problem with what was IN Dark Astoria. Pretty much everything in there is awesome, and I mean it. What I have a problem with is what WASN'T in there. I mean, if what we got was this awesome, imagine how cool it would have been to see super-Circle or super-Malta or more of the Tsoo and just... More. I don't know when and where the next Incarnate zone will be, but I just have some degree of doubt about it picking up where Dark Astoria left off.

There is, actually. It's a vertical wall with symbols on it that look like those from Demon Summoning or the Runes aura. It's red, it's animated and it's mostly flat, right along the cemetery wall, extending high into the sky.