AzureSkyCiel
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Quote:Well, Positron was made an honorary Commissar of the CCCP supergroup on Pinnacle...Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Waaaah, commie devs stoled your rightful double ex pees! -
So, throughout my time of playing this game, I've noticed there are some NPCs that have potential for golden dialogue, but it's never quite capitalized on, so, here's just a few daydreams I've had about what I'd love to hear some NPCs say. And feel free to share your own.
1. Statesman (or Reichsman or Tyrant) winding up for a KB Blow on a PC and shouting "HERE COMES THE COLE TRAIN!"
2. Positron telling someone "Back off, man. I'm a scientist!" Synapse or Aeon doesn't work because it's too easily expected of them.
3. now this would take a lot of programming and some copyright permissions, but if possible, to have a new dialogue variable with Kalida's dialogue in the VEAT arcs when you fought her so before the fight she demonstrates her 'psychic powers' by saying "So, I see you like to play [Insert Steam or another NC soft game here]!" a la Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid. -
Quote:I had actually thought that this would make an interesting alt-power selection for robots, at level eighteen you'd be able to merge all your robots into one, super killing machine, the more robots you have, the more powerful it becomes to the point where you've got a pet EB.Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
At first I thought this was about merging pets like Voltron.
The catch would be the long recharge time, high end drain, and that you can't summon new bots until either the duration expires (I figured maybe two minutes like Unstoppable or Elude), or it dies, in which case you'd be a sitting duck. -
Quote:Clearly then, the morality of the DC execs and writers is decayed and rotten as they keep a horrible monster of a person alive, keep making him an even more horrible monster, keep forcing Batman's neurosis to to become worse, and all to keep making money and because they find Batman's suffering as entertaining.Originally Posted by Slashman
I don't think anyone here truly thinks that comics are deep philosophical wells to draw from. But they still reflect someone's views of morality and justice, no matter how skewed.
This fails to go into the evils of the reader who, by supporting the franchise, have also brought this upon both Gotham and Batman.
You sick, creeps. -
Quote:Decorum seems to have it right.Originally Posted by Decorum
I hope you don't actually believe that, though. None of them were working alone or in a vacuum nor were using totally original ideas.
Sure. But, I doubt it would have saved the Jews either. Anti-Semitism is as old as Semites and there were a whole lot of people working on The Final Solution. Hitler wasn't any more rabidly Anti-Semite than the people around him and likely the spot he held would have been held by someone similar. Eliminating Hitler doesn't stop the Nazis from forming and doing exactly as they did. You'd have better luck killing Goebbels, but even that...someone would have stepped in. The Jews have been scape-goated for everything under the sun for almost as long as they have existed. It was an easy and obvious propaganda move.
Worse, Hitler was pretty incompetent overall as a leader in the end, and the Allies actually STOPPED TRYING TO ASSASSINATE HIM DIRECTLY when they realized Hitler was the greatest detriment to preserving his own empire.
So, unless I could make the Treaty of Versailles go differently and manage to stop the Great Depression... I would leave Hitler alone on that battlefield.
Actually, in the other scenario I would still leave him alone since it would theoretically mean he would end up rather voiceless and powerless. -
Quote:... I love you... Specifically I love how you put that.Originally Posted by Starjammer
I'm going to disagree with the basic premise. It reflects upon a couple of problems I've always had with analysis of heroic fiction of all stripes, though comics are simply the most obvious.
The fiction that good is simple, evil is complex and the "real world" is rendered in shades of gray.
I tend to find that the opposite has more heft to it. Evil is, in fact, extraordinarily simple: It is simply selfishness writ large. I do what I do for my own ends, damn the world. The reason that villains often seem complex is that their rationalizations are often complex; as are most peoples' reasons for choosing to be selfish when they know they shouldn't.
Good, on the other hand, is complicated. It's why the world has many scoundrels and few saints, instead of the other way around. It's about choosing to pay a price to do something that you don't directly benefit from. When writers ignore this fact, the heroes are two-dimensional. When good writers explain it well, the heroes come alive.
Shades of gray are often writers' attempts to construct the plot in such a way as to preclude the heroes from making a clearly "good" choice so that they can create drama through conflicted morals. Will a good man steal to save his family is such a story. But IMO a better story is the lengths a good man will go to avoid stealing and still feed his family.
The very best Superman story I ever read was Elliot S! Maggin's novel Miracle Monday. Basic idea: A demon tries to tempt Superman into choosing the lesser of two evils by wrecking both Metropolis and his life as Clark Kent. All Superman has to do to stop it is to kill the innocent woman the demon possessed; one life for millions against his personal morality, the classic greater good choice. Superman chooses instead to sacrifice everything in his life to avoid choosing either evil. And Maggin makes it make sense. Epic.
EDIT -- Props to Eva for beating me to the "evil is selfish" premise. -
Quote:That's not old, that's new.Originally Posted by Durakken
I thought I might have imagined it, but if someone else saw it... then it was the Baron Jacket.
I think it was meant to be available with Going Rogue but was added early by mistake.
I have a controller on Virt using it.
Hopefully when GR proper launches, players will get it back -
Quote:Such comments might be better put in down in this thread here.Originally Posted by Noyjitat
Clean up boomtown.
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Quote:It's the same blueside... Except we're not told that if we want to get anywhere in Paragon we have to put our face in Statesman's lap, or even Ms. Liberty's, and she's the head of LONGBOW.Originally Posted by Jake_Summers
While some people might not like the flavor of CoV Story, it is a consistent storyline from level 1 to 50, which City of Heroes does not have. And the story makes sense. As a little Level 1 Villian yes, you are not very powerful compared to the major players in the story, but as time passes you become stronger and stronger until you exceed Recluse himself. Unfortunately for that story, at that point the story ends, so you have a difficult time seeing that you are now a powerful figure beyond the powers of Archanos.
Seriously, if you want your Villian to be ultra powerful from level 1 at the beginning of their career with no need to sacrifice anything for that...well we call that a "Mary Sue" in the roleplaying world...
I understand that we don't start out powerful, but one thing I do like is that blueside, ironically, has more freedom.
What could really help Redside feel more proactive is maybe a repeatable contact, sort of like a newspaper, only instead, you got to him and tell him what you're looking for, and he helps arrange things for you.
Tell him you wanna bash some heads in?
He offers you a choice between Longbow, Arachnos, Freakshow, and tells you that the soup of the season is Gazpacho.
You want some dough?
He gives you a list of a bank that got a recent huge deposit, a pawn shop that got in some high value jewels, or that Malta's got a place storing some of their funding information that you can tap.
Need mystical artifacts, weapons, high tech gear?
He'll hook you up with that too.
Wanna fight with the big dogs?
He tells you which hero's in town today and if you'd like him to arrange a fight. -
Quote:Yes, they say she's a dominator, but she uses dark miasma, a support set for defenders, corruptors, and master minds.Originally Posted by Scythus
As a fan of Ghost Widow, I have to point out that her archetype is Dominator. Scirocco is the Corruptor in Recluse's Five Bad Band.
She also uses dark blast lacking ANY melee whatsoever with the exception of a few PBAoEs.
She also does not use Domination, ever.
She also has grotesquely high HP like any other AV that makes the big challenge of her that she has a nearly irresistible hold, and has dark regeneration.
Long story short: GHOST WIDOW IS HAX! And so is Scirocco, Mako, Black Scorpion, and especially Lord Recluse! (I mean, he's supposed to be an MM and half of his encounters don't even involve him summoning pets!) -
Quote:Oh god, this is one of the biggest nightmares I have about Going Rogue. To some degree it might be nicer if there was no "realistic transition of alignment" and it was basically flipping a switch.Originally Posted by Olantern
Of course, I haven't played through the arcs, either, but I suspect that the point of the Praetorian content will be, "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem." I expect to have it hammered into my head that anyone who supports the Praetorians is either a stupid sheep or someone without a shred of compassion, and that the Resistance, while some of them might be a bit nutty, is the "heroic" way to go. That is, if you're a Loyalist, no matter how noble your ideals, you're still on the road to villany because you're supporting a group that's bad, deep down, even if they perform the occasional good and useful deed. The choice I expect to be presented with is "support the guy who made sure all the trash is picked up in the streets, even though he has a torture chamber, or rebel [psst, the right choice is 'rebel']," which is no choice at all for anyone outside a comic book, in my opinion.
This makes things simpler from a mechanical point of view, too. If "ultimately support Tyrant" corresponds to Villain and "ultimately fight Tyrant" corresponds to Hero, then only two "morality" play paths need to be created, probably as arcs in the upper teens. (Note that such arcs could operate independently of whether a character starts off tagged "Loyalist" or "Resistance.") If both heroism and villany are open to all characters, regardless of their attitudes toward the Praetorians, then that's at least four paths: villanous Resistance, heroic Resistance, villanous Loyalist, and heroic Loyalist.
I suspect that the vaunted "moral ambiguity" of the Loyalists and Resistance the devs have mentioned is more along the lines of the way most players seem to view Longbow (i.e., they're supposed to be good, yet everyone treats them as a more colorful version of the Council or the Malta Group) than the lines of "the Praetorians are neither good nor evil."
My main concern is that the "right" and "wrong" choices remain clear. I don't want to have a character I see as heroic sent down the villanous path or vice versa because I disagree with or just plain don't understand the moral system the devs are pushing. For instance, one choice mentioned in an early Going Rogue interview was, "Do you let the despot who's killed hundreds of people and will do it some more go, since it might destabilize things, or do you kill him, to save the lives of some specific people you know?" I can't say which of those choices is the heroic one in the context of a computer game, since both are pretty awful. They could tell me upfront that we're using Batman Morality and Killing Is Always Wrong, No Matter The Circumstances, but that sort of defeats the significance of having a moral choice. It's a challenging design problem with no easy solution, unless you believe that the player base has a much more universal code of what's right and wrong than I think it does.
This is partly because everyone in the world has their own moral alignment and their own sense of justice. Sure general points are made, but in the end, they are often irreconcilably different.
This means that we won't be doing things that count as moral from our standpoint, but from the DEVS' VIEWS OF MORALITY AND SLIDING ALONG IT ITS SCALE.
And this isn't just a possible problem with City of's upcoming installment but other games as well with morality...
Let's take Bioshock 2 for example...
(WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD)
As subject Delta you're supposed to make moral choices which ultimately shape your daughter, one of them is the choice to spare or kill a man who had, when he was saner and foresaw his own insanity, ASKED TO BE PUT OUT OF HIS MISERY.
Guess what the "wrong" choice is? No, it's not fulfilling his final request, it's sparing him and leaving him to suffer his own insanity.
... only to likely be killed anyway later, but you would lack the foresight to see that so that's a moot point.
(SPOILERS END) -
Quote:Well, part of it is just that the original Preatoria was meant to be the "kick puppies" brand of villainy, but when Arachnos came about they got pushed out of that niche and all the Praet arcs became good for was to get the Portal Jockey padge.Originally Posted by Cantatus
Right. When the Praetorians were originally added, they were basically "Bizarro Freedom Phalanx". Now that Going Rogue has come out, they're getting a whole lot of paint and glitter.
I have to say, and maybe this is intentional, but I think it does a disservice to the whole "Loyalty" and "Resistance" thing and trying to portray the Praetorians as now a morally gray faction. It's hard to be open to the idea that the Praetorians are anything other than bad when that's how they've been portrayed in the game for the past 6 years.
Perhaps this is how it's intended. I don't know as I haven't played through any of the arcs or anything, but I'd think it would be much cooler if a morally gray faction wasn't colored by previous and obvious villainous actions. It'd be great to have some debates on the boards as to whether or not the Praetorians are villains, but any debate seems like it'd include, "Yeah, but Dominatrix drugs people." or "Yeah, but Siege has a torture chamber."
The story behind them was weak ("Statesman needs your help since he can't affect Preatorian technology!") and the missions were painfully bad poorly designed to fit Jack Emmert's old vision. (close these dimensional rifts that look NOTHING like some para-scientific phenomenon but rather like the Circle of Thorns has been setting up shop here in this recycled to ad infinitium map!)
The last nail in the coffin was Reichs TF/SF.
Suddenly, even the niche of an evil alternate universe counterpart got better filled and Tyrant and his Praetorians were left out in the cold with no over purpose than to be farmed for a badge. -
Quote:Wait... It's that a direct contradiction of what you just said?Originally Posted by Cantatus
To be overly critical, I'm not particularly wild about Tyrant being "rebooted". It sort of goes along the lines of what I said with Lord Recluse. The game already has tons of fantastic characters, so it feels like a missed opportunity to essentially create a new character by retconning an old one.
I suppose it also strikes me as odd to have an expansion revolve around the Praetorians when they've never really been that significant of an enemy.
Not that I won't get it because of the lore or anything, just nitpicking.
You said that you were annoyed with City of Villains for shoehorning in a new villain and enemy faction.
But here you're saying you're annoyed with GR for using an existing faction?
Am I reading this right? -
Quote:Actually, it would be really cool to see what actual armies are really like in the City of universe.Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
Good bye UN protection, hello occupation!
I see a nasty cross of Vanguard, Malta, and PPD. Debuffs galore peppered with hit from a sapper for those pesky super foes, and then everyone gets flattened by hails of gunfire, grenades, and rockets. -
Quote:I meant "better options" as in what do you think would be a balanced solution? This is a forum thread that I had hoped would be open and rife with discussion on its topic (which I thank you for carrying on with me).Originally Posted by Leo_G
Not sure what you're referring to about a better option. IMO, elemental weapons is just a bad idea and we really don't need the balancing issues that'll come with it. I'd love custom weapon options to use a flaming sword or an ice mace and what not but we don't need the damage to be changed for something like that. Unless you're a combat-log Nazi, you'll never tell what type of dmg you do.
And personally, yes, I can tell the damage type I'm doing often enough, because I play lots of lethal damage dealers, I know it's my damage on a team because it's always the one that does jack-@#$% against everything but carnies and wisps at level 50.
And PLEASE for the love of god, do NOT tell me to just "play something other than a lethal damage dealer" because that is NOT how this game should be at all. NO game should be like that.
Let's look at the facts here for lethal and smashing damage dealers, when something is weak to a damage type, it's weak by about 20-30%, with lethal and smashing? It's weak by maybe 10%
I know it's a matter of realism that Smashing and Lethal, the most conventional damage type, would be the most commonly and heavily resisted, but I've learned from my MA arc and custom critter creation that there comes a point where a game developer has to say "reality is not balanced or fun"* and let the guys in powered armor get as equally damaged by the guys with a pair of knives as the guy summoning tentacles from the netherworld that do no apparent harm besides wave around you and sound annoying.
*And it really isn't meant to be. The whole point of combat technology is to make sure its as one sided and unfair as possible. Okay, the great Nuclear Weapons Nerf of the 80's caused a lot of calls to the WHAMbulance but that's a bit different.
Well, I could try, but you saw how poorly I made out the assualt rifle set, a balance nightmare, but if insisted, I could try to come up with something, I've had an idea for fiery melee for a while.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
It'd be interesting to have a discussion on some of the possible alternate power choices just for fun. You got Assault Rifle up there, how about another blast or melee set? (let's pretend this doesn't extend to sets like control/armor/buff/pet sets...)
But I should also point out that I think at least buffs should gain some alternative options too. This could really help the problem with Forcefield or Empathy's soloing problems by providing alternative option selections that would allow them to be able to do just that. -
Quote:Might also be that Statesman is just such a sharp juxtaposition wearing brightly colored skin-tight clothing next to... Women in skin-tight clothing/armor.Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
Good point... though in art like the NCSoft promo with GW, Aion, and States back to back, it just feels like he is very... tacky next to other game mascots.
But I do understand what you mean. -
Quote:One the first point: That would be true, but another balancing possibility is that the debuffs/secondary effects from elemental weapons would not be nearly as great as it would be for the proper elemental melee set.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Because Claws can effectively stack lots of -ToHit on a crowd while the premiere utility melee set, Dark Melee, can only effectively debuff a couple if not only one.
Seriously, Spin, Shockwave and Eviscerate all debuffing nearly everything within melee range?
I was talking about the tier 9 nuke. You'd be able to choose Full Auto in any circumstances but the other 'bomb' nuke would probably be balanced in conjunction with the bomb attacks. But it was mainly a generalized balancing statement. Who knows how these powers may or may not be balanced unless we're coming up with theoretical sets.
And that still fails to answer the question I proposed to you on your opinion for a better option.
One the second point: yes, what a lot of arguments would boil down to is simply that besides the propose alternative for Assault rifle I posted already (that Sam pointed out was a nightmare), we simply do not entirely know what the alternatives for other sets would be.
The biggest hope for this is to give new options to old powersets, because as Sam pointed out, fire/fire blasters can differ in small ways from one another, but at the end of the day, they are and play exactly the same as one another, even with IO sets. -
Quote:Because the attack speed of claws would stack the to-hit debuffs too high?Originally Posted by Leo_G
Well, taking the weapon sets mentioned, Claws with -ToHit is equally as broken.
Well, would you propose instead just the damage property change and there be no additional effect? I had come to the conclusion of the different effects just to give a difference between a "pure" energy weapon set and a "Electrical" energy set.
But there kind of is a difference, from what I read, you were saying that you would HAVE to take one power to unlock another at a higher level.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
Really, it's the same as what you posted in the OP about making a Katana user and getting to choose between Lotus Drop and Focus...except with theme powers to branch out on powerset concepts. So Fire Melee would have choices of 'Fire swordy' attacks or 'just plain close-up fiery like incenerate' attacks, AR would get a few more grenades/bombs in place of some shotgun powers, so on and so forth.
My proposal would be that it wouldn't matter if you picked the fiery broadsword hack at level one, you would still be able to pick regular broadsword slice at the next level, you just wouldn't be able to pick out the regular broadsword hack. -
Quote:Well that's just it, yes, Statesman looks generic, but it kind of drives home the image and mindset that this game has super heroes, perhaps a bit redundantly so, but none-the-less if its one thing I can say about States, it's that his image is almost as synonymous with "Super Hero" as Superman's.Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
For States, it is not such a big deal. His 'ooh I had to invent a restricted origin to explain my being so strong' schtick is kind of pathetic, but it doesn't hamper the game like Recluse does, other than his use in promotions. They ought to consider using other heroes to promote, since States kind of screams 'generic' or 'Cap wannabe.' It doesn't make a case to potential customers that they can create their own ideas. Some better promotional heroes would be BABs, Posi, Psyche, Mako, Maelstrom, GW, WW, or Synapse.
Well, okay not quite, but the point I'm trying to make is that I'm pretty sure if you see Statesman, you'll know he's a super hero.
BABs is badass, but he doesn't quite have an iconic hero look, or positron, or Sister Psyche. Synapse might work though.
But seriously, close your eyes and imagine seeing Back Alley Brawler with no further context for the first time. Does he exactly scream hero? Maybe he's a character in Fist of North Star? Maybe something else.
Try that same thought exercise with Positron, or Sister Psyche and War Witch, though the Sister and Witch is closer, but with what all people will put fictional women in to pass off as a costume? Either one could be anything.
Though if we did replace States... Bring out Apex, he's a got a heroic look and needs more love.
On the villain front though, we do have some good picks, Mako, Black Scorpion, etc. etc.
P.S. @ GoldenGirl, yeah, but that was kind of part of what you said.
I understand that as a blueside only player Lord Recluse seems to make a good ultimate adversary, but it's flatout painful Redside where we're always shoehorned into being in Lord Recluse's shadow. -
Quote:*Points to link in sig*Originally Posted by Mad_Cow_Milk
The set up will not be all too different from the katana or the broad sword sets, but with a key difference. It will adopt the damage type changing effect like the dual pistol set. Energies would probably be Fire and Ice, and maybe one other.
So I know this has probably already been covered, but I thought I'd put my take on it, however little it was up. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I like them both, for different reasons
Absolute proof Golden Girl has never even played the Redside tutorial...Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
When this would include Lord Recluse -
oddly, I can agree with the Lord Recluse dying part, but I'm okay with Statesman.
Why? Because for about 40 levels of gameplay blueside, all I've even SEEN of Statesman was the cover art on the box of the game and maybe passing the guy by in IP.
I don't hear a whole lotta of the same crap that I hear about with Lord Recluse, who's shoved down your throat from level 1-50 redside, as I do Statesman.
Statesman... Maybe he loses his powers for good and finally gets to live the remainder of his life as a normal human, maybe assisting in directing others towards what they need to do.
And Lord Recluse finally gets killed off, Arachnos crumbles to dust, etc. etc. -
So, I'll reiterate some of my own views of what might be good for a magi-tech themed booster...
sorry about the BlazBlue spam... -
Quote:Nothing special needs to happen to Manticore. He's a natural origin hero, and natural origin heroes and villains can be nearly a hundred years with grey hair, wrinkles, and a shortened stature and still kick endless butt.Originally Posted by 2short2care
Well I don't know how old Manticore is in 1986, I haven't read that far yet or it doesn't say, but even if he is 18 that would make him 42 today, well the devs better think of something "special to happen to manticore" for his age to slow or stop. Nobody wants to see an old guy in spandex with an adult diaper on. :P Or maybe they don't plan on anything happening to him except he get Sister Psyche preggers and there is a new generation of a manticore.
See this trope for more information. -
Quote:Well, my personal advice is try playing warshade. They're challenging and can still be amazingly fun.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Huh... Well, I guess I must have misread something from the Kheldian arcs. As I said, I got about mid-way before I gave up.
The big trick with Kheldian ATs is that they're a Swiss Army Knife of Batman of ATs, at a high enough level they have a tool for every situation, and they're great for those situations when you're thinking "damn, I wish I had brought my [other AT here]."
But for the lore parts, it's covered on Paragon Wiki, they even have the old version of the souvenir summary for the Path of Darkness.