AzureSkyCiel

No, I don't mean the first SSA killed the game, nor the implementation of Signature Story Arcs period, I mean Darrin Wade, the NPC killed City of Heroes in revenge for us thwarting him. Realizing he could not have the world, he vowed to destroy it instead!

Obvious in hindsight, but he could have associates, I think we've been thinking far too outwardly on who murdered City of's future... Only an inside job could have done this, AND MY PRIME SUSPECT IS DARRIN WADE!

>See Leandro's second set of screencaps

My big question is: how the heck did you get there?

Definitely DEFINITELY the Scirocco's Redemption arc. I would not have mind playing purely as Scirocco for a 17 mission arc. Especially if it meant we got access to some of his cooler powers and then got to basically test drive his new powers.

I either gotta go with the OP or maybe go with Cities of Heroes/Villains or World of Heroes/Villains and insist we expand from one pair of fictional cities to more across the world. (Roananpur would be the best villain city)

You wanna know the best way to get revenge?

Step 1: Invest money in NCsoft to buy up stock. That's right, INVEST MONEY IN THEM.
Step 2: Get like minded people to do the same
Step 3: do this until your conspiracy circle are majority share owners
Step 4: proceed to strongarm NCsoft into a better company with better management means for Western Market and see how the Asian market can improve
Step 5: You and your compadres become successful MMO business tycoons because you also own mother @#$%ing Guild Wars 2 and may have a better head for business on an International scale than NCsoft's present groups.
Step 6: Try to campaign City of Heroes in Asia one more time.

Edit: it's far fetched, but in theory, this would could end up the best case scenario for all sides involved. NCSoft is under better direction for it's international market and able to better expand business, city of heroes is brought back, and the schemers involved are now successful business people!

Of course your patience is running out.
This is exactly what NCsoft is intending.
They don't have to fight us till the 30th of November if we lose steam and interested by the 30th of September. We're waves hitting against a concrete wall of silence. NCsoft's got a good strategy because they don't owe even the developers of Paragon jacksquat, much less you.

You are angry, and anger wears you out. You will eventually stop, and then NCsoft will continue.
This is not pessimism though, just warning about the spirit of our campaign. If we want to make sure NCsoft at least is wounded for their callous attitude towards their Western base, we CANNOT RUN OUT of patience.

If they are a concrete wall and we are crashing waves, than let us remain persistent until NCsoft's wall has been eroded to sand.

I am a fan of GW2 as well, and have enjoyed a lot about it thus far. I am happy for those who feel it can replace city of for them should it go, I can respect those who dislike it as a fantasy MMO. I cannot respect those who only dislike it by association with NCsoft. (Wouldn't you be hurt if all the players of games like Tabula Rasa or Auto Assault bashed CoH and told others not to buy it because it was also an NCsoft game?)

But for me: Guild Wars 2 cannot and will not replace City of. I love both games for wildly different reasons, I originally got into guild wars because I needed a high fantasy outlet for my imagination that City of couldn't quite satisfy.
But there are still things I can only do in City of Heroes. Only in this game can I play the Frankenstein creature (Adam Frankenstein elec/elec tank) as a standup guy, classy doctor, and a very very bad actor, and then have him fall in love and get married to an alien woman host to a warshade.
Only in City of Heroes will I be able to make up entirely new races or run my own interpretations of certain mythological concepts ("The Necronomicon is 'Bound in human flesh and written in human blood'? What if it's not a book but instead a person?!") or enjoy venting out my sci-fi concepts.
Sure, Asura seem like that SHOULD have been in Mass Effect but instead crash landed on Tyria and decided to completely ignore they're suppose to be in a FANTASY setting, but I still can't make a beam rifle, cyborg, evil, adam jensen.
And even with Champions Online's MASSIVE costume selection or whatever the hell DCUO, or Marvel's own upcoming MMO will offer, I know I won't be able to make this in any of them:



And so, I do what I can to hope City of survives this. I repost on my facebook, vote on net polls, and pray to every force of divinity in the multi-verse. Now if you'll excuse me, I have my sister-in-law tied down and ready to be sacrificed to Lolth.

It jumped the shark during Mako Week.
And technically it was the players jumping over Mako to kite him, not the entire game because NPC cannot into PVP.

My characters are already aware of the situation. For all the lives they have in RP terms, I also tend to reuse characters a lot, so there ends up being a little place between the fourth wall and the stage, working like Osamu Tezuka's "Star System" where my characters are actors on a movie studio, here's the gist of some of their reactions.

Takezo "Akuma Ryu" Himura: *Now speaks with an English accent* Hmm, seems I'll be jumping studios again, this time to the Guild Wars 2 RP scene. I'm worried, my stint in Guild Wars 1 didn't work out so well, but, the show must go on as they say. They don't have samurai armor in the game yet and Cantha's not open? Oh... How I bleed for my arts.

Adam Frankenstein: Oh no no no no, this is terrible! I'm a hundred years old to find another gig- Continued in Freeform? The death of my career!

Ubiquitous/August Star: Hmm, so we're moving to freeform? MARVELOUS! I shall kick Recluse from his throne and I shall be the main villain over those cheap imposters! THE ROGUE ISLES CAN AT LAST BE MINE!

I find it a bit uncanny since an idea I had had for a Positron redesign was very similar:



Back:


Also, I realize what's been wrong with my Positron armor revamp ideas. I keep thinking Positron's energy emissions are more of a teal than full on blue.

Inspired by GW2's weapon skill bar, I would say all powersets would need either a chaining tier 1 power (that leads to up to two or three in a short chain) and/or instantly recharging tier one power.
This could go a long way towards letting players feel more powerful off-the-bat.

I'd also probably want to make greater use of Underlings instead of henchmen, Lieutenants, and bosses. In pretty much all action centered genres, be it anime, movies, or comicbooks, heroes don't spend a lot of time fighting each mooks, often they end up being brought down in single hits.
Naturally, to balance this, underlings would also come in greater numbers. (Even if they would/should pop like balloons on one hit)

Now on the note of the War Walls, I actually don't mind them too much, but I would change them up a bit as follows:
-Different types of War Walls
The War Walls are way too uniform and neat for what they are and the circumstances of their construction, not to mention some areas of the city would have probably been considered important enough to merit putting up emergency forcefield projectors well before the Rikti, such as Brickstown, Terra Volta, and Atlas. Also, most of the War Walls are Rikti tech and even set up by the Rikti, so that should be reflected more in the designs of some of them.
Let's not forget these are, inadvertently, monuments to a bloody war, so neighborhoods would decorate them with photos of fallen loved ones, paint them to bring a bit of sun shine into their views.
Also, some walls might have been put up after the war, or built with such hurry or thrown together so fast they had to be modified/reinforced later.
This would give us about four types of walls; Rikti, During the War, Before the War, and makeshift/after the war, with the additional variations of Decorated and non-decorated. (And variations on the decorations that could have come).
I'd also propose that instead of walls for Croatoa, it's a thick, dense fog that sets in the further out you go and slows your character down before teleporting them back into the center of Salamanca. (Or, if possibly, the opposite edge of the zone)

-Knit the city together
Basically, remove the empty space between the war walls, either be expanding certain neighborhoods or flat out moving a few off to the right (by up to a few miles!)

-Not all zones would need walls
Yes, much as I don't mind them, I think a few zones should not have walls between them. like Skyway, since it's the highway hub, should have it's roads sprawl throughout the city in tunnels into the walls of other zones, but it's immediate surrounding zones are not interrupted.

... Arbiter HAWKWARD...