Blue_Mourning

So you want to ... what? Have the entire server only do the LGTF once? Because then the Rikti invasion is over?

What? There are concessions that we have to make for it being an MMO. That's one of them. Just because it's only happens once in game history, doesn't mean they can only make it able to run once in game history.

We did end the Rikti invasion. Just because you can play it more than once, and it keeps on going in the metagame for other people to be able to play it, doesn't mean your character *keeps* ending the Rikti war.

Can we get off the whole "Good writing", "Bad Writing" thing? Because if you like the writing for what it is - a well produced, well made "we have to stop this invasion right now!" thing it's actually been quite good. It doesn't offer you the depth of choice, but depth of choice does not equal good writing either.

There's a difference between "I like the writing/don't like the writing" which indicates subjective opinions and "I think this writing is good/bad" which indicates that it's objectively bad.

I would like to see a greater attention to the people of Praetoria in the 50 content, but I don't think it's especially badly written. I can see not liking it. I can see not liking it because it doesn't give a depth of choice (although to be fair they never do assign motivation to stopping the invasion, other than "it's an invasion", so they let you come up with your own, much like the STF or LGTF). There's a lot about this stuff that I like in the 50 content. I think Tin Mage shows how far you've progressed as a character really well, when they show the Freedom Force lined up to back your play as you go into Praetoria. Apex and Tin Mage was the first time that I felt that each of the zones are connected because they told you what was going on else where while you were fighting. So, yeah, there's a lot for me to like in the writing of the level 50 stuff.

That I like it doesn't make the writing "good". That you don't like it doesn't make the writing "bad". And save for the occasional plot hole (and I've seen Oscar winning movies and award winning books with them folks - plot holes do not necessarily mean bad or even lazy writing when you're talking about a lore this complex), and probably the transition between Praetoria and Primal at 20 (which I understand why they had to lay off that a little since they didn't want to give motivation for either one - otherwise they would have had certain arcs lead to only to one and not the other) is a bit awkward - but overall the writing in this game has gotten better produced, and better artistically.

So if you don't like it, can you please just articulate why you don't like it, instead of implying that everyone who does just can't understand what bad writing is? Because I can articulate exactly the reasons I do like it. I can probably write a thirty page essay on it. I can also probably do that for the reasons I don't like it (gasp!!!! I can have conflicting opinions!). Neither one make it "bad" writing.

The thing is though, she has a point. GG I mean. Praetoria is portrayed as a simpler world in the 50 content, but it doesn't hold true that the 1 - 20 stuff doesn't also exist in the same world right? And if you could side with Tyrant in the 50 content? Well....how could you resolve it? People want the Praetoria stuff to end eventually, and how do you come to a good resolution of that storyline if you can have the players help invade the multiverse? Because someone there would have to lose. You could have competing TF's, and in one Tyrant invades the multiverse and succeeds, and in the other you put him down. But to make content happen after that you need to figure out which side wins, so the game is going to declare one side the victor.

So the game has made it easy on us, and I think that's why they decided that they want him invading the whole multiverse and not just Primal. Primal he can try and justify, but worlds that he's never even come into contact with become much harder. In face, it's bad for his "I must be here to protect Praetoria" thing, because he wouldn't be there.

You were never on the Praetors side really, I don't think. Responsibility is given in terms of protecting the people from the most harm. Power is given in terms of gaining the people's love and gaining your own power within the system. I would like to see a greater explanation of why the Resistance doesn't hook up with the Primal Earth, but I'm okay with that. The Syndicate.....well, they're gangs anyway. And gangs go away on Primal Earth by level 30 - the Tsoo, Warriors, Family. So they're not ready for prime time.

He is seen a hero though. The people in the know can ask those questions. Powers division can start the figure out that he's not the hero that everyone sees him as (or he is equal parts savior and corrupt ruler). The moral choices about Praetoria aren't the ones that engage with Cole at all, but rather ask the questions about what's okay to stop his regime.

Is it okay to take down the seer network? Okay, probably yes. Is it okay to cut on Seers (and not just one but multiple) and experiment on them until your method is perfected? Is Cutter Cain a hero or a serial killer (or is he both?)? Is it okay to subvert the clockwork? Okay, maybe. Is it okay to make pacts with the Destroyers and blow up hospitals all in the name of Freedom? No. But is it okay to associate with them and use them to accomplish your goals? Maybe? Those are the questions that are asked from 1 - 20.

Those are also the questions that you and Venture, and those who agree with you, seem to be ignoring. Maybe they're not convincing to you or to Venture. But they are to me. And they seem to be to a fair number of people on here.

As I said to Venture, the complexity is both less deep than some people on here seem to believe (seriously, I don't know how you could justify most of what Cole does), and more complex than its detractors see it as (the moral questions that are most interesting don't have to do with Cole at all, but are rather something that comes up - should a resistance be responsible? Is it possible to be a proponent of law and order in Praetoria and not fall victim to the system's excesses?

EDIT:
Also, I never did say that Cole is fit to lead.

Yes, but you're also belittling them. They don't not matter, because when you're in a world where if Cole goes down you might be seeing a reinvasion of the DE. It's not a question of "Are the thought police okay?" it's a question of "Do we have to suffer the thought police because if Cole goes down he is the last and only line of real defense against certain existential threats." That's interesting. What's also interesting is the responsibility storyline - what Cutter Cain does is truly horrible, but if you play the Warden storyline he's doing it for the greater good. In fact, in that storyline he's a heroic figure. So how do you come to terms with that? He can't be both can he? Or can he?

That's the interesting bit of the Praetoria storyline. The Crusader and Power arcs are at strange extremes, but the Warden and Responsibility are extremely naunced compared to the legacy redside/blueside content.

Hence what I said that it was a necessarily simple reading of it. We're dealing with a macro story right now - an invasion - at level 50.

The other stuff is told and, I sincerely hope, will continue to be told at lower levels. But the war will be the war.

This is a necessarily limited view on it actually.

Whether you think it succeeded or not, 1 - 20 is Praetoria from street level - we're looking at the microcosm of the world. What neighborhoods are doing, what the PPD mean in every day life. What being a part of Powers Division means in every day life. What are the threats that are fought off in every day life - the Destroyers, the Syndicate, rogue clocks etc. From the resistance's point of view it's what kind of targets that a subversive group end up doing.

The ramp up in power that our characters engage in from 1 - 50 isn't just a ramp up in power - it's also a ramp up in scope that the stories are telling. One of the things that have always interested me about the journey from 35 - 50 is that the stories get much broader in scope. You go from helping stop a bomb plot and a soldier in Levantera's arc, to trying to stop the whole Rikti War in Dark Watchers.

From 1 - 20 it make sense to have small focused stories - in Praetoria as a Responsibility Loyalist, I go from fighting the syndicate and stopping a bomb plot in Nova, to tracking Cutter Cain in Imperial (I haven't gotten beyond this yet, will soon). Everything after that gets far broader in scope because it's necessary.

One of the tragedies of war is the generalizations that come from seeing an entire people as the enemy (and I know it's not the only tragedy and in some ways it's a minor one, but whatever - bear with me). Look at how Americans justified treating Japanese Americans in WWII. Look what we did to Vietnamese non-combatants in that war. Look how we treat Arab Americans after 9-11. Look how they see us. When you consider yourself at war you frequently don't stop and look for small moral intricacies because you're far too busy fighting for your life. That's how some of these war crimes happen. In a comic and a game about super heroes, telling stories about war crimes is...well, not really all that fun and not really genre - or at least it's indicative of a sub-genre, but it's not really indicative of the genre as a whole.

They're not telling a story about how we Primals see Praetorians because they already did that from 1 - 20. They're telling an invasion story and that makes sense right now. What I would like to see is an expansion of the Praetorian/Primal storyline from 20 - 40 so that we can get a good idea of how the refugees from Praetoria see themselves in Primal Earth and how Primal earth sees them. Do villains resent Praetorian Redsiders because they're snatching up all the contracts and crowding the market? Do Primal Heroes distrust Praetorian ones because of where they're from? But that's not the story they're going to tell when, from the very beginning of I18 we knew Tyrant was going to invade Primal Earth (I mean look at how the trailer ends!, and not only that look at how the 1 - 20 arcs end - with Tyrant trying to jump start a war!).

The question was never "Is Tyrant a good man?", and anyone who ever thought it was wasn't reading the flavor text. The question has always been "Is he a necessary evil considering the threat we face on a daily basis from the DE?" from the Praetorian side. It becomes really hard to morally justify the seer program, but it becomes an interesting side question about whether the seer program is necessary when you look at what might happen if it fails. But that's not a question that should be asked or answered in the middle of an invasion by the side that's being invaded because the answer is invariably going to be "I don't give a @#%^, let's beat the stuffing out of these $%#%ers."

Whether or not you wanted another invasion storyline is something else entirely. With all this being said though - and I wasn't uber excited to have yet another group invading - Apex and Tin Mage probably tells the invasion in the most compelling way I've seen in this game. The text flashing across the screen in the first mission in Apex about something that just smashed down in Blythe Square from space was one of the coolest bits of text I've seen in this game. And for all the coolness of the LGTF, it never had that kind of immediate-this-is-getting-serious feeling.

So in answer to your question - Praetoria doesn't suddenly become a simple place just because that's not the story they're telling right now - all that stuff still exists and the world is still complex - we're just at war with them.

A few people have been talking about the writing quality going down. I can't help but wonder from when are they talking about.

Fair enough. I was just trying to find a palatable way for these things to be in the game.

I would like to see a revamping of the zone. Yes, the shard is gorgeous, and yes it's huge, but it's also incredibly uniform. While it's gorgeous, one small island looks much the same as another small island so even though you're traveling it doesn't feel like you are. It's like staring out at Ohio and realizing you're looking at corn. And you've been looking at corn for the last 300 miles. They're big and they're gorgeous, but it's also really easy to fall into the idea that they're also really boring and not just because it lacks content. So yeah, a revamping of the zone - that's what I mean by accessible to the playerbase.

Doesn't need a mob revamp, an art revamp or most of the other things you mentioned - I would like to see more interesting mission maps. I seriously hate all the caves not because they're caves, but because they're boring caves. I love the Leviathan cave in the villain SF I can't remember the name of (the one with Calystix), I love the crystal cave in Ice Mistral on the last map. I love the cave in Eden. But those are interesting. yet another cave map with no distinguishing features that look much the same as the rest of the caves in the game? Bleh.

It does need more content (Darrin Wade, a coherent Non-TF storyline, a revamp of the TF's, etc).

All of those things will take a really long time to accomplish.

I think the two teams were split off into end game content, and non-endgame content. So it's not just "preatoria" and "non-praetoria".

Yeah, I edited too. Like I said, we appear to be close in what we want in the shard, just not necessarily how we want it.

How does saying: The shadow shard is a big undertaking - No it isn't, it takes work!" make any kind of sense? You can say that, and it still remains a statement that is not consistent.

But you know what? Whatever. If we both agree that it takes work then fine. But even with a jetpack, which is by the way a slow way of travel, it takes a really long time to get anywhere in the shard. If they add content I want them to do more than add content - I want them to make it usable content. As it stands right now, it's not all that accessible, even with the Jetpack vendors (which I do use...and I do go to the shard. I like the shard. But it has a lot of limitations to being a usable, and accessible, zone.

EDIT:

There's no point in adding stuff to the shard unless they're going to do it right. Which WOULD be a huge, and not easy, undertaking.

I was more annoyed by your mostly dismissive tone about how much of an undertaking it would be. But whatever - we appear to be closer in conclusions than it would first appear, we just disagree on the amount of work it would take tot make the new content attractive for people who haven't been in the shard before.

That's fair. I would have really liked to have seen them wrap up the sky raiders in a good way, and I would really like them to look at War Witch's story.

I'm not the hugest fan of them subverting the earlier levels to the Praetorian storyline, but I understand why they're doing it - but somehow lost in all this is that it's my opinion that we're kind of viewing some of the old Praetorian stuff with rose colored glasses. I....wasn't impressed with the old storyline. I mean it really was just a generic goatee universe. The world they set up is much richer and much deeper - even if it doesn't interest everyone. I understand that there are plot holes, and making the old arcs cannon muddles things up a little bit (and I kind of understand why they kept those as well, but I don't like that they did). I would like to see an end to the plot holes, I would like to see the entrance into Paragon and the RI from Praetoria be a smoother transition. But overall, I think the earlier stuff lacked character. It didn't feel like another world - it felt like Primal but with different set dressing. The new Praetoria feels like another world with a more fleshed out history and a deeper look into the morality there.

Which is the one thing that I wish was more delved into with the level 50 stuff - there's not a whole lot of moral choice stuff going on - and I don't just mean "Should you side with Cole or not". I mean I would have really like the BAF to be a real moral conundrum; I would really have liked it to be something like - we're in a fight for our lives and we have to do this horrible thing to the Praetorians to survive because otherwise they're going to overrun us. It not only would have been an awesome way to integrate a more villainous tone to Co-Op content, but it would have opened up some of the moral issues that come up with the earlier stuff.

Ah well. there's always the later stuff.

You said, and I quote:

You just said right there "No it isn't." Writing content takes up a lot of time, otherwise we would have more every issue. So yeah, you said it wasn't a big undertaking. When they're talking about revisiting the Shard, they're talking about making the whole thing more attractive to visitors. Because right now if they added a lot more content? It would still be empty. Because it's not attractive to anyone who uses SS or SJ, and it's not all that friendly a zone anyway. And it's huge. Seriously, have you ever seen anyone traveling the length of IP for fun?

You know, I'm really $%#ing tired of people saying what most people think. You don't know. I don't know. You can say what you assume, but considering the number of people that avoid certain mobs in this game because they're too hard, and the number of people that come here on the forums and talk about writing stories and RPing, and the number of players on Virtue that will spend hours doing stuff for the fun of it that has absolutely no effect on leveling whatsoever, can we come to an agreement not to speak for people that you don't know?

Becuase it only does one of two things: Sets you up to be a morally superior martyr, or sets you up with a silent unspeaking majority who believe only the things you say they believe.

That's fine. But telling the story how you want to tell it isn't exactly the story they want to tell.

EDIT:
More specifically filler is there to set things up the way they want to set it up. They wanted Praetoria from the beginning to be an epic storyline - and epic journey and an epic fight. That you don't find it epic is fine - not everyone will. But cutting out the filler so that they can tell another epic storyline that you want to read is kind of selfish. Especially when there are people like me who actually kind of like them setting up an epic and existential threat - would I have been happier if that threat had been Rularru? No doubt. But just because that threat isn't what I wanted originally doesn't mean I can't appreciate how they're setting up the story they're telling.

You're right. Revamping an entire zone is easy. When you add two more, 4 Task Forces, Geometry that's not good for all travel powers, it gets even easier!!!! Add in enemies that most consider some of the hardest in the game, and it gets even easier!!!!

Wow, you mean all you have to do is add content!!!! WOW.

Seriously. It's a big damn undertaking.

EDIT:
I'd also like to point out that "Bringing a member who can stealth" is a lot more broad than "Bring a stalker." Everyone has access to the stealth pool, lots of people have superspeed, and lots of people can simply stealth by bulling their way through. So it's not an AT requirement. This is like "Bring enough damage so you can take down an AV".

He (she?) does have something of a point though. People have been complaining about the Praetorian content pretty much constantly, while also complaining that the have stuff unfinished in this game. What do they propose? Completely dropping the Praetorian stuff in favor of...what exactly? I want them to finish up this content and if that means spending another couple of issues on this, or whatever, that's fine. I'd prefer them to be done with this eventually then have the story not move on it for a really long time.

It should be said, however, that Martin Luther King Jr. isn't exactly the kind of hero we want to play in this game. You don't level by making speeches or performing marches, or by signing petitions. I mean, Mahatma Ghandi would be a weird figure to play too, but he definitely was a hero as well.

Were they exemp'd?

Just wondering what server your on? Even on Liberty as long as I advertise on the global channels I can usually find a team doing something (at least blueside - redside is basically dead over there).

On my other "home" server, Virtue, there are constantly teams at basically all levels, so while things have gone down across the board, there are usually things for lowbies to do.