Samuel_Tow

Exactly. What the word "mutation" might mean in colloquial English is irrelevant, because the way City of Heroes defines the Mutation origin is as powers which are innate and yet significantly different from what is native to the character's species. This wasn't a character who got powers. This is a character who was born/made with those powers to begin with.

As with all other origins, players are, of course, free to re-interpret what Mutation means, but once we start down this road, arguing what origins mean becomes pointless since we're moving the goal posts.

When I say drama is a balancing act, that's exactly what I mean. If you make your audience convinced large parts of your story will be unpleasant, a not-insignificant number of people will simply decline to participate. Call me squeamish, call me a care bear, but it's like seeing a movie that has a torture scene in its trailer. Yeah, I don't care if that's the best thing since the PowerPuff Girls. I'm not going to watch it. And that's exactly the sense I get out of City of Heroes stories - regardless of what the plot is, regardless of what I do, someone's going to die, and it's probably going to be the one whose death would be the most poignant.

The real irony here is that I actually do enjoy stories where the good guys seem in real danger and face real adversity, and I enjoy those the most. But that's because these stories strike a very careful balance between the danger and dark themes and the success and light themes. I've often quoted Oban: Star Racers as one of my favourite series of all times, and it's probably the one with the most oppressive sort of feeling of said favourites, just because the entirety of it has our heroes down on their luck, struggling against impossible odds and following every success with a massive increase in difficulty. The whole show has a very pervasive feel of helplessness and powerlessness, and yet nevertheless, it's one of the strongest, most positive series I've ever seen. Despite all the drama, there are enough positive moments to make it worth watching, because you never know if what's up next will be good or bad.

I don't know what has to happen to convince me that every new City of Heroes story WON'T be depressing, unpleasant and one I want to avoid, but it would have to demonstrate a desire to lighten the tone, not just hand-wave requests by tossing in a token joke character or a very rare, ultimately meaningless "big damn heroes" moment.

As I said, they can always make more. Just look at the Twinshot and Graves arcs - two relatively mediocre arcs, yet both of them together introduce a good dozen other heroes who, annoyingly, keep showing up in future unrelated arcs. At two to three heroes dead per arc as is the SSA standard, that'll last for another four to six arcs. Hell, look at what happened with Sister Psyche - tossed into a fridge, to be replaced with Penny. How hard would it be to toss Penny into a fridge and replace her with Praetorian Penelope Yin?

You can always make more characters to kill. The question, as Jurassic Park would ask us, is not whether we could, but rather whether we should.

How much is that going to matter past the ED cap for slotted defences, though? I realise Alpha boosts ignore ED for some percentage, but assuming I stop at I3 (T4s are intentionally designed to be time sinks), is that percentage really going to matter? For said Stalker, I was actually looking at more in the realms of recharge, because getting Assassin's Strike back up faster with just a single recharge reducer made a WORLD of difference in a way didn't think it would. I managed to down an even con Adamastor in 20-30 seconds. I'm assuming he's weak to Lethal damage, being a giant naked zombie, but even so - that's faster than ANY other character I've ever fought Adamastor with. And I managed to take down Marauder through is Unstoppable, which - again - I've never managed before. I've only ever been able to survive long enough for the power to drop.

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As for Incarnate content being only for those "worthy," that runs into the same old problem of trying to judge player worth in a game, which is an inherently non-practical activity outside of an entertainment context. As I see the games I own in the same light as the toys I own (say, the various Lego sets I've paid significantly more for than I probably should have), I just don't agree with the need for me to prove I'm worthy of enjoying a product I'm already paying for. From the looks of things so far, however, I probably won't need to. Tougher though the Dark Astoria critters may be, they're not unbeatable, and there are always way to game the system on the few occasions where the odds are stacked against me. If I have to disable bosses and drop the difficulty down to -1x1, I will. If that's what it takes then that's what it takes, but in either case, I WILL do this my way.

There was a database error of some sort which would insist your password was wrong. I don't think they ever fixed it, but you could avoid it by simply changing your password from your PlayNC account, which would fix it in the forums database.

This isn't the case with Viking, however. His password is being accepted, he's being told the log-in was successful, and the very next thing he did would once again show him not logged in. Effectively, the forums claimed the login was correct, but the process never happened, as far as I can infer.

*edit*
Correction: Viking just informed me he has an e-mail from Customer Support about the problem, which is something I've been trying to facilitate for a few months now. It apparently arrived last night at some point, so it looks like the issue is finally being addressed. Zwill, if this is your hand at work, thank you

I've not been impressed with new content since pretty much I18, and really since I17 and Dean McArthur. I liked Praetoria somewhat, and I was even willing to meet it half-way on the depressing, grey, crapsack world theme just because... Well, it's a fascist state with a face of superficial perfection belying a rotten core of corruption and oppression. That's more or less exactly what I wanted a "Nemesis Island" zone for City of Villains to be. And it it had been left at JUST Praetoria, it wouldn't have been too bad, even if I found First Ward to be so depressing I don't want to run through it again.

But everything since has just been getting worse. As you can tell from my other thread, I'm not in the slightest interested in interactivity. I like City of Heroes when it stops being pretentious with its mission design and just sets me in an instance with lots of enemies to kill, without a scripted sequence always getting in my way and distracting me from the action. That's what makes SSA7 about the only decent GAMEPLAY experience that new content has offered for a couple of years now. Whether it was so rushed that the mission designers lacked time to pollute it with trite custom scripts or whether someone finally understood that the more you interrupt people's gameplay, the more irritated people get, I can't say, but it's easily the least intrusive arc I can remember, and that makes it entertaining to play through.

But all the content we've gotten since Going Rogue fails to enthral me. I've run the Praetorian Warden storyline a handful of times so I somewhat remember it, but I've run the Power, Responsibility and Crusader lines precisely ONCE, and I'm really not interested in running them again. Power, maybe, up until Mr. G, but no later. I ran through First Ward once and I'm never setting foot there again. I ran Roy Cooling once and swore to never run his horribly-written, illiterate arc again. I made the mistake of running it a second time, and it only reminded me why I chose to avoid it. I ran the new Atlas Park about twice until I realised it was both repetitive and insulting to my intelligence when the narrative chastises me for playing the game as it's designed to play. I ran the new Mercy Island once, and I never want to touch it again. I've run the DFB about twice, really out of necessity as a means to skip the first five levels, but it transpires that it's far easier to level up just off street hunts anyway. I ran an iTrial once and I really have no interest in running one again. I probably will, but probably when I forget why I chose not to run them.

The fact of the matter is I've run new content since I19 onward roughly once, and each time it's left me uninterested to return. The stories are bland, yet trying to shove in angsty drama they didn't "earn," the technical quality of the writing is just poor, and getting worse, to the point where it embarrasses me to be the non-native speaker pointing out obviously faulty grammar and horrid sentence structure, and newer content's utter disregard for continuity with old content is just disgusting. I fell in love with City of Heroes as it was in 2004, and I fell in love with the stories of the time. Seeing them entirely abandoned, or worse, contradicted, removed and redone into something considerably less interesting, is just disheartening. I don't describe the current development trends as "a systematic destruction of everything that made City of Heroes good" for no reason. That's literally what I feel it is.

I want to see more about the Nemesis, I want to see more about the Rikti, I want to see more about Crey, I want to see more about the Warriors and the Outcasts and the Trolls. I want to see more done with Dr. Vahzilok, I want to see more of the Clockwork King's story. I'm sick and tired of introducing a new "big thing" with every issue and abandoning all the good old things that never got the time of day as if Neuron were in charge of setting priorities. The old stories may not have been particularly well executed, but at least they were still good stories. The new ones simply aren't. About the only thing I'll remember about the SSAs a year from now is how much they pissed me off.

Yes, many things happen in Paragon City other than "rocks fall, everybody dies." In Missing Melvin and the Mysterious Malta Alliteration, Melvin Langley is eventually saved, and he is seen fighting the good fight with enthusiasm later on. Both Crimson and Indigo are pleased. In Division: Line, C'Khelkah is kidnapped multiple times, but she is never tortured, killed or mind-broken, and indeed ends up brokering some degree of peace that was previously thought impossible. In Corporate Culture, the Freakshow are sent to kill Kimberly Kellerman, but she is eventually saved. Later on, Crey kidnap her and her sister, Tracy Templeton, erasing all records of their existence, but both women are eventually rescued and their records restored. In The Library of Souls, Akharist manages to defect from the circle successfully. He is recaptured once, but never suffers for his noble intentions, because he is rescued in time to be saved from a grim fate. Not only that, but the reason Akharist defects is because he has realised the error of his own ways. In The Envoy of Shadows, many policemen are kidnapped to serve as sacrifices for the Envoy, but are nevertheless rescued before they can be murdered.

To say that City of Heroes has ever been all rainbows and unicorns is absurd, of course. The game's story has always had its dark moments. But it kept a balance of positive and negative emotions. When bad stuff happened, the story had enough legitimacy to earn it, and earn a genuine emotional response. I knew bad things may happen, but I also knew that bad things MAY NOT happen, and this made me care. It made me wish that the characters I liked wouldn't die or get horribly tortured. With the new storytelling, that suspense is gone. I know characters will die in a horrible fashion, it's just a question of who they will be, and the answer to that seems to be "just about everybody." At no point have newer stories had the legitimacy to deserve that kind of drama because at no point have they done anything to earn it. It's just one shock death after another until we're no longer exhibiting emotional responses and just keeping a body count. There's no balance in the storytelling at all, and this is what utterly ruins it for me.

That's the best explanation I've heard so far. Thank you

Somewhat sideways of the subject, though, it's discussions like these that provide ample evidence as to why Origins should never have a stronger gameplay effect, and should never "mean" more than they already do. Their definition is so broad and open to interpretation that to try and give them a specific "official" meaning and thus an effect associated with it will just make a lot of people's characters "wrong" all of a sudden.

Like I said - if you want to go with the specifics of the in-game definition, a robot is Tech. But you don't have to go with it. If you can make an argument for Science or Natural or even Magic and it works for you, then you can and indeed should go with it. You just need to be prepared that some people will ask you for an explanation.

As I understand it, Viking tried different machines from different locations with the same result. I'd have to double-check, but I remember those tests were exhaustive and their results perplexingly non-productive.

If you want to respect at least the general spirit of what the origins are supposed to mean, you should go with Technology. If you read what the Science origin entails, it pretty much consists of taking a character who has no super powers and then exposing him to a scientific experiment which grants him powers. Robots do not apply, because they were not born powerless and did not gain their powers through scientific experimentation. They are creatures of Technology, and should carry this origin.

There's some room to argue for Natural, as was already suggested, if said robot is actually a member of a legitimate species in the sense that the Transformers are, but that's a fringe exception.

If you don't like the description of Science and want it to mean something else, then your question becomes invalid. Once you're ignoring origin meaning, you can use whatever origin you want and you'd still be in the right, since you're moving the goal posts and defining your own rules. When you make the rules, everything you do is correct. There's nothing wrong with it, just so long as you expect that people will occasionally speak up to correct you and you'll need to either explain this to them or ignore them.

That was my point, as well. Good writing and "everybody dies" are not the same thing. You CAN have a good story where lots of characters we care about die, of course you can. Just as you can have a poorly-written, ugly mess where lots of characters die. The point is that character deaths don't make a story good, and they actually only serve to make a bad story worse. What character deaths do is add drama, but a story first needs to deserve this drama, and the SSAs failed to do this in a spectacular fashion.

Also, character deaths should be treated like a precious commodity, and not because you can run out of characters - you can always just make more. No, character deaths should be treated like a precious commodity because they lose their impact the more you use them. The trick grows old, audiences grow cynical and people grow to expect it. Though a horrible thing to say about the real world, Stalin's famous line is very much true for fictional worlds: A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. Contemporary writing is pretty much on the verge of making signature character deaths trite and mundane, and that's just bad all around.

I've often said that there are two people who play City of Heroes - those who see it as a sport and those who see it as a toy. Those who see it as a sport care about the challenge, the thrill of the hunt, overcoming adversity and a sense of achievement. Those who see it as a toy care about self-expression, convenience and getting their own way.

I'm entirely and unambiguously one of the latter kind of people. In a very literal sense, I care absolutely nothing for "winning" anything. On a logical level, I realise that games are all fake and our achievements in them are just as fake. I don't, therefore, look for achievement in my games. To me, they're a way to experience what I want out of life but can't have, they're a way to experience stories, adventures and sometimes even puzzles that I would normally not be good enough to tackle.

I enjoy this game because it lets me leap tall buildings in a single bound, take a bullet in the teeth and keep grinning and punch a hole in the side of a tank. It's a power fantasy, and I don't need actual, tangible achievement in order to feel it. So long as it's fake, I can pretend it was difficult to do when it was mechanically easy.

As such, I don't need to be able to lose. Every time I lose, I'm simply reminded that, yes, I really do actually suck in real life. The illusion disappears, the fantasy ends and the game loses its magic. Games entertain me because they allow me to forget that I'm not good enough, because they let me win.

Thank you kindly I realise it may be a bit selfish, but this kind of feedback really makes all the headaches and long hours involved in a story like this worth it.

Hmm... I hadn't thought about it that way, but you have a point. That may probably extend over most of what I write. I have a very introspective personality, so a lot of my characters end up going through at least some process of conscious self-discovery without me even planning it. It can be a bit melodramatic at times, but I find it makes for characters who are comfortable in their skin, so to speak. I'm not sure how compelling a character is without inner torment and self-doubt, but it works for me

Thank you! I'm partial to the ideas, as well, but what was really suffering was the technical side of my writing. Generally, I like to be able to "feel" the emotion I'm trying to describe, because then my mind conjures images and it's much easier to find the right words. When I can't feel it, however, I start to ramble, and everything suffers. Word choice, sentence structure, good pacing... Hell, even basic grammar when I'm tired enough. I'm close to seeing English as a native language, but it's still a second to me

Speaking of which, the final chapter has still not been proof-read. What you see is what I ended up with when I put down the final period, and I just know there's a lot to fix on it. I couldn't "feel" a lot of what I was trying to explain and I'm sure my writing has suffered for it. The story may technically be "complete," but there's still one final pass left to make on that last chapter just so it measures up to the rest.

I wonder if I can maybe somehow change the thread title so I can add the word "complete" to it when I'm finished, but I don't think that's possible for entire threads.

Regardless, thank you guys for your feedback and for your support. It really helped me pull through. If you spot any errors or if you see any parts that are badly written or badly expressed, be sure to let me know. I'm always eager to improve, and it's often difficult to spot my own mistakes just because of creator's bias.

That story was an ordeal, but I think it was worth it

I think her new "awesome" costume in Dark Astoria is the ugliest, most ridiculous thing I've seen in this game since Vivacious Verandi, and I would hate for one of the last remaining non-scantily-clad females in this game to be reduced to a metal bikini. And I especially don't want an otherwise pretty character to get horrible make-up and a campfire on her head.

"Old stuff is old" has never been a convincing argument in my book, and a basic costume designed well is often better than an overly-complex, shader-laiden extravagance. There's a reason Ghost Widow's costume remains one of the game's most popular designs. I personally happen to like Diabolique's "Numina" costume more than the costumes of pretty much any of the other Praetorians, and indeed more than most of the Freedom Phalanx. Well, maybe aside from BABs/Marauder, but that's a personal thing.

Between new Penny and new Diabolique, I'm starting to question the tastes of whoever's in charge of the game's art direction. I sincerely hope that's not David, since I actually like the guy and I'd hate to come down on him like this.

Getting two years of something different means the only stories I'm able to enjoy any more are eight years old, if they're not wiped away to be replaced with new, "better" stories. If this were a question of variety, I wouldn't object, but it's not. It's a question of someone on the writing table being convinced that this is a superior way to tell stories, to the point where EVERY SINGLE STORY to come out since I19 is exactly like this.

Maybe if there were a story more recent than 2009 which wasn't obsessed with killing canon characters and preaching doom and gloom, I'd be more inclined to be understanding, but there really isn't. Everything since Praetoria has been the same depressing, drab shade of grey and, from all evidence, it seems like all new content will be more of that kind of storytelling until someone gets fired and replaced.

I'm all for variety, but not if said variety is hugely one-sided. If you'll notice, I didn't start complaining until after First Ward despite all of Praetoria being exactly the same. I was willing to extend that idea a LOT of leeway, to the point where I was willing to accept "morally grey and depressing" is just what Praetoria was. It's not just Praetoria any more. It's everything, and you can't argue about how everything being stories you don't like is bad yet everything being stories you like but I don't is better.

The problem is that this breeds a very real sense of cynicism in people who are prone to being cynical, such as myself. Rather than outrage me and spur me into action, what the SSAs have managed to accomplish is ensure I don't give a rat's *** about any of the game's canon characters any more. I refuse to be invested in a character whose life can be thrown away to feed some writer's obsession with re-enacting the entirety of Countdown to Final Crisis.

Yes, knowing that characters will survive does undermine dramatic tension somewhat. On the flip side, knowing that characters will die serves to undermine emotional investment. Both lead to the same result - I lose interest in the story, instead shrugging at supposedly "powerful" moments and just moving on. As I've said many times before - drama in storytelling is a balancing act. You need to prevent your audience from waling away in disgust at your angsty drama (something I've failed at in the past) before you can even begin to worry about making them fear the worst. People are not going to feel the emotional downs if they don't care about the story.

Most of the villains I make - at least the ones who aren't loyal to other villains I've made - are more the "my way or the highway" type. They care about not just what they want, they care about getting it their way. If, for instance, my flagship villain wants an artefact held in a museum, he's going to take it. If it's guarded, he'll kill the guards. If it's warded, he'll break the wards. If it's suggested to him that it might be easier to sneak in and steal it, he'll scoff at it and wring he neck of whoever suggested it. If it's suggested that another artefact that's almost as strong is considerably easier to obtain, he'll probably obtain it, then chuck it into the sea and go after the one he wanted anyway.

In other words, the villains I make are drawn up to be wilful, stubborn and uncooperative. Why would they need to work for or with other people when they clearly know best and everyone else should clearly work for them? See, Dean McArthur knows his place. It's at at the back of my villain's hand. He's useful, and that earns him a place, but he's not ambitious enough to want to take credit for any of the achievements. Sadly, what happened with Dean has consistently failed to happen again, and that's just disappointing.

Here's the thing, though - none of the villains I make care about the status quo. Not on the Rogue Isles and in Paragon City, anyway. I don't need any of my villains to be "the one" to kill Sister Psyche because none of my villains give a crap about Sister Psyche. What I want to see happen for my villains is for them to grow stronger and thus better able to carry out plans of their own. Of course the game can't read my mind and anticipate what those plans are, which is why I don't ask it to. I want the game to reward my villains with the ability to carry out "other" plans of any sort I might have in mind.

I don't need my villains to "achieve" anything in canon. As a point of fact, I rather dislike them being tied into canon this way. I have my own canon that's completely separate. These villains are just guest-starring and looking to snag a benefit of some kind. To be honest, for as badly as they are written, Newspaper missions are about as close to the kind of self-motivated enterprising villain as City of Villains has ever gotten. They show a villain learning of an opportunity and taking it.

Hey, there's a magic book. Maybe you want it? No? Maybe you want to sell it? There's a black market for those things. No? Oh, I know! You want to cut it up and make paper aeroplanes out of it, right? No? Well, I'm sure you have your own reason for wanting a book of powerful magic. I'll just tell you where it is.

I don't want to work with Malaise on working for Darrin Wade. I don't like Wade, and I don't like helping other people with their evil plans. Most of the villains I make are even less cooperative than I am, and arrogant besides. These are the claims I refuse to accept - that the SSAs somehow empower villains. They don't. It's still Darrin's plan to get powers for Darrin, and my villains are tagging along and serving as muscle. That's not better. It's worse. Whether someone else's plan that we technically existed in changes the status quo or not doesn't really motivate me, because it's still Darrin who changed the status quo. It was his plan, it was his idea, it was his doing, it was his direction.

Again, I point you to paper missions, and possibly maybe tip missions. Their format is more or less perfect for what I personally prefer a villain to be doing. Circumstances present an opportunity, and my villain proactively seizes it. Well, or passively ignores it if it doesn't work, that's a possibility, as well. The point is that neither paper nor tip missions specifically give me a "boss," a "partner" or a "mentor." They exclude the contact very much entirely and present their briefings as though my own character is the source of the idea.

Frankly, I'd sooner have my own plot in words only than someone else's plot in word and deed.

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Something else I should point out is I don't really have a problem with people who like the SSAs. I don't agree, but that's what personal preferences are for. What I object to is arguing that they are somehow objectively superior because they're "edgy" or because they rope our villains into serving someone else this time around. This is not the sort of entertainment I'm interested in, and I don't much care for the kind of entertainment I AM interested in being painted as somehow inferior. Happy endings and light stories aren't necessarily bad and changing the status quo isn't necessarily good.

I don't pay to play a video game to "work" for anything. I work to be able to afford this game. And I don't give a crap about the "true beauty of victory." If I want a harsh mistress, I can find one. Maybe not for cheaper, but still.

Personally, I'm sick and tired of City of Heroes re-enacting the dork age of comic books where everything's morally grey, everything about the world is dog eat dog and everyone wears pouches and face plates. And I'm also sick and tired of passive-aggressive emotional blackmail to the effect that if I wanted a story of any real value, I should just bend over and take it like a man, because true art is unpleasant.

It's entirely possible to create pleasant, uplifting, positive stories that nevertheless have depth, complexity and engaging plots. Doom and gloom is not "better" than a happy story.

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And, by the way, I was so pissed off at SSA6 for killing off Sister Psyche when I spent all of SSA4 trying to keep her alive. So, if I'd just stayed in bed and let Malaise kill her, would anything have been different? Actually, come to think of it, Malaise killing psyche in that warehouse would have made things BETTER, since Wade wouldn't have been able to steal her power. There's nothing satisfying about a story which forces me to struggle to accomplish something and then laughs in my face as it fails me in a cutscene anyway.

If you mean other players, that's unlikely to happen. I don't get many requests for people to come help run my missions If you mean NPCs... Eh. I don't like companion NPCs, especially on my Stalkers. There's an AI quirk where if your "team" grabs aggro, your Stalker runs a high risk of grabbing aggro, too, even if said Stalker is invisible and idle away from the battle. It makes using Hide to get a drop on enemies annoying when you have spastic NPCs rushing in to "help." That, and I don't like uncontrollable pets if I can help it. Other people at least have basic human intelligence... Sometimes, but AI helpers are just terribad.

Besides, I don't really mind a slog. Truth be told, I prefer it. A long, hard, slow mission gives me a much greater sense of accomplishment than a single, fast, hard challenge. Like I said - so long as not having NPC helpers doesn't make missions impossible and doesn't cause me to fail them, I'd rather leave them out of the picture.

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For the record, I have a grand total of TWO Incarnates, one has T2 Alpha, one has T1 alpha, and neither of them will likely be the one I attempt this with first. When I approach this mission, it'll be with a fairly basic level 50 with just an empty Alpha since I don't believe I'll be able to grab a Common by then. I definitely won't have any level shifts, that's for sure, but I'll also definitely be playing at -1 so I don't get level 51 critters in my missions. I get that Dark Astoria has no such thing as -1 enemies to a fresh 50, but I'm also told this ensures no-one ever spawns higher level than me, which is a functionality I've wanted to see for YEARS. If that means my companions spawn as level 49, meh. Let 'em die.