ChaosExMachina
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:They aren't astute expressions of artful thought, and have plot holes, but they get the job done and do quite a lot to address the complaints being made here. They are fun to play, which is the utimate measure of game writing.Originally Posted by VentureThe new arcs are, contrary to popular opinion, clumsy and ineffective at working around the system's limitations.
Last I checked, this is a game dependent upon subscriptions. Again, if it were appropriately titled the City of Lackeys, there would be no subscribers. Already, despite vastly superior class and gameplay mechanics, its population is much lower than its predecessor.Quote:Originally Posted by VentureThe game can't allow you to do as you please. It's not possible. Even a game driven by player initiative as opposed to Contacts won't let you do anything other than mess around inside a defined framework. You need to adjust your expectations -- make characters that work within what CoV actually is, not the game you wish you were playing -- or accept that CoV doesn't do what you want (and likely never will) and move on.
The point is that the writers should work towards making it so, as they HAVE been doing in I17.
Great examples and suggestions. It can be done even with relatively simple edits.Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's true, but once again, I argue that this is much more a question of presentation and writing than it is of actual game mechanics. The game doesn't have to let me do as I please as long as it makes it seem as MY CHARACTER does as HE pleases. Tavish Bell's arc is a good example. "Go do something!" says Tavish Bell. "OK!" responds my character. Promptly, I am given a waypoint in the door behind them. I step inside, and "Yeah, might be a good idea to snoop around. Let the contract expire, who cares?" My character doesn't necessarily do what I wanted, but he still defies his contact.
Willy Wheeler is a ALMOST another good example. He's a slimy nobody who basically serves as an information vending machine that you make use of to pull jobs, and eventually screw over by turning in Ace McKnight.
Basically, it comes down to the contacts not saying "Har har har! I'm so great! You there, loser! Come do my dirty work!" but rather saying "No, not in the face! I'll tell you what you want, just please don't hurt me!"
For instance: When Daos says "Do this or Arachnos will be cross, the mission ought to have my character give him the finger and walk away, pointing me to a building where I'll get jumped by Arachnos soldiers. I wipe the floor with them, come back to Daos and he tries to save face and still act like he planned it all along.
Mission structure doesn't need to so much as budge. Writing needs to branch out. -
Quote:I wouldn't want to talk to or be in a room with somebody it did appeal to.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Not only would anything like that only appeal to a very small minority of red siders, it'd also rip up the T rating, and quite possibly get the game banned.
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Quote:They could use it as an opportunity to make end drain useful for those who don't have Short Circuit, such as every elec powerset other than Elec Blast, or Power Sink.Originally Posted by DaveMebs
I find it very useful on my elec/elec blapper. Hop in, Short Circuit and Power Sink and none (except bosses) can attack.
Elec Melee
Elec Assault
Epic Pools
To do this it must be made non-binary in some way, such as attack debufs, which would improve it for others while having no effect for those who can drop enemy energy to 0. -
The funniest text in the whole game:
If there's anything Dean knows, it's what gender somebody is! -
I couldn't tell at first if it was WAI, but the results in post 2 suggest it isn't. Why would it care more about the inbox of the sender than the recipient?
If it is, it should definitely be changed to only count emails with items. -
Yup, I just thought of that a few minutes ago after posting.
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Quote:I thank you for that. Why would it be considered a bad thing for somebody to recreate it? That's something I don't understand but want to.Originally Posted by Castle
When Castle was placed in Peregrine Island as a contact, there was a lot of concern from various people that players could copy the costume completely. I had to insist on the costume not getting a unique piece added to it. While I'd love to get unique bits added, it wouldn't have been *his* costume anymore.
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Quote:They could use it as an opportunity to make end drain useful.Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon
I hope not. I hate all my experiences with End Drain being weak everywhere else in the game.
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To elaborate further, I was also unable to send emails to the local names of alts.
Send to your current local name: Any alt can do it other than the main with a full inbox
Send to some other local name: Any alt can do it other than the main with a full inbox
Send to global name: Any alt can do it other than the main with a full inbox
Send to local name of alt with full inbox: Any alt can do it other than the main with a full inbox
In other words, it is the inbox of the sender that determines it, rather than the recipient. -
There wasn't much complaining after I12 either, because it was awesome.
I17 is probably up there as one of the few issues that come close to it, because QOL is everything. -
Quote:Thank you. (Beware coming overdramaticness)Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The more I think about this, the more I feel that the game misses what it means to be "a villain" in this context by a mile. While it may be some people's "thing," I dare say that most of us don't log into a game to be belittled, abused, ordered around and made a servant basically constantly, and this is all City of Villains is. It's a game where we play someone's manservant butler. We're Recluse fanboys that the game assumes will do anything to "get brownie points with the Spiders" (you don't know how much I'd like to kick whoever wrote that in the ***) and nothing more. At all.
Basically, we're the short, fat, impotent third-rate villain in the story who spends a lot of his time plotting, a lot of his time acting big and tough and a lot of his time failing and getting his *** kicked. It doesn't matter how "evil" we are as long as we're mere lackeys of the bigger villains. In fact, the more "evil" we get, the more pathetic we become, like the disgruntled middle manager who's sitting on a dead-end career, but still tries to act tough by abusing his employees and playing big boss while at the same time shrivelling before the actual big boss who's off building a stellar career of his own.
A good villain is the protagonist of his own story. A good villain is the one you want to watch out for, the one who moves things, the one who creates all the trouble that the heroes have to face. That's what I want for my characters when I play the villain. I don't want to be second fiddle to someone else. I want to be the one the heroes are here to stop, I want to be the one who's setting down the death traps. I want to be the one's building secret military bases, I want to be the one who's managing his own evil organisation, I want to be the one who's running illegal businesses, I want to be the one who's looking for the ancient artefact that must not fall into the wrong hands. At the end of the day, I want to be the one who bosses people around and for whom people do missions. And CoV fails at this so spectacularly that it basically catapults me out of any sort of sense of immersion when I try to get into pretty much any mission on the Isles.
They talked about villains being proactive and delivered exactly NOTHING on that front. Oh, sure, we get self-starter paper missions... Half of which are mercenary work for other people anyway, and that's it. Oh, sure, we got the BAD side of proactive content, in that we have to "earn" our contacts, but the story simply ignores that.
I shouldn't be working for Angelo Vendetti for his scraps and blood money. He should come to me and beg me for my help. I shouldn't be asking Billie Heck for any dirty work I could do. I should be swinging him around by his jacket collar and "asking nicely" for information. I shouldn't be working for Westin Phipps. Period. I should be punching the guy's face in. And if recluse has a problem like that, he can kiss my ***. THAT is the kind of proactive villain that would get me excited about getting into the stories. Even when I play a villain, I still want to be cool and awesome. I do NOT want to be a slimy imp running errands for someone else.
IMO, it was a failure largely because of this. I mean, what many of us say is that it has better archetypes and gameplay, so why is there no population? Why did it fall so short of its predecessor commercially, other than a temporary bump? If it were a standalone game, it probably would be closed by now.
What I would like to ask somebody on the inside at the time is WHY? I'm honestly confused and want to know why somebody thought this was a good idea or that people would want it. This isn't exaggerating or just being rhetorical. I am curious and want to know how it could become a design philosophy.
My theories aren't particularly plausible. Did the guy from D&D not understand superheroes? Did Jack Emmert go ego crazy and actually think people would want to pay money to worship his alter ego's nemesis? There are probably some other explanations, but none I can think of. -
Quote:Nice summary. That you can say that misguided morality isn't even relevant to CoV gets to the point of my anger. That's exactly what I want to create.
The problem I see here -- which I frequently see in the whole CoV concept, unfortunately -- is that "evil" just isn't a goal for most folks.
Villainy frequently comes down to one of three things: misguided morality, amorality and psychological disturbance.
We can discard misguided morality for purposes of CoV. It occasionally makes an appearance in CoH.
Of amorality and psychosis, they're hard to convey in a motivating manner. Especially given that most of CoV's motivation comes from outside the character.
But "evil for evil's sake"? It's like Satanic cults, you hear about it but it's rarely real and usually juvenile.
Or perhaps you want to be misunderstood and misguided like Magneto, or one of the best villains ever, Baron von Wulfenbach of Girl Genius.Quote:Honestly, here is what I want and it would be a bit of work by the devs but Going Rogue is a first step.
I want a villain path that gets branches off from being a lackey who becomes a trusted lieutenant (the path we have).
Perhaps you want to go the path of a Westin Phipps/Lex Luthor/King Pin. Outwardly decent, inwardly evil beyond repair.
Perhaps you want to go the path of a Vivacious Verandi/Joker/Green Goblin. Nuts and evil.
Perhaps you want to merely be criminal like a Catwoman or Black Cat.
I think each of those has a place in a supervillain game, OTHER than lackey who becomes a trusted lieutenant, which is eactly what got priority. Again, even the ancillary power pools back it up.
The i17 arcs do a good job of being generic enough to satisfy many concepts, though branches for types of villainy would probably help.
He will, if players don't end up having to serve him to become villains. That's one of the things I want to learn about GR. Tyrant is just what a good villain would be in a passive story, but in a game about creating, the bigger priority is the player's ability to create varied concepts.Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
This is why Tyrant will be an awesome villain
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I don't want to be evil.
My standard for a great player villain is Magneto. Most good villains are heroes in their own opinions.
The i17 arcs are practically ideal because they don't assume much about your motivations or how evil you are. The only thing they don't do is let you come up with your own schemes (which is what I would make the mission computer do: something like a wizard to create a scheme). I seriously appreciate them, and they're impressively written considering what they have to juggle.
I often say that I hate lackeyish villain content, but to be a bit more specific, I hate those that make an assumption that you want to be Arachnos.
Arachnos is a terrible protagonist group. They're fine as generic cheesy enemies for heroes to fight, but their primary role is as an organization some of the game text, most of the zone themes, and most annoyingly, patron pools!, practically declare you part of. They're the TOTAL OPPOSITE of Magneto. They're just a bunch of jerks who want to be "evil," whatever evil may mean, with no consistent beliefs. "Anarchofascist" is about as coherent as "communazi."
Westin Phipps, who was probably created as a reponse to the "I don't feel like a villain" complaints, misses the mark. It's some of the worst content in the game to me, because, besides being unpleasant at best, I'd say sickening, it is just a bunch of petty evil for evil's sake. The arc I like least is probably Mender Tesseract's, in which you are assumed to want to help Recluse take over... for no reason, while being insulted by her and threatened by Recluse. Why are you taking over the isles just to give them to him? Why is an advanced future being with an extreme superiority complex over everybody from the past helping Recluse?
I suspect, probably wrongly, that some of the blame may belong to that D&D writer they hired who took the name of Lord Recluse. Villain content takes 2 things from D&D that absolutely do not belong in a supervillain game:
1. The D&D concept of an alignment, where a character may unrealistically be evil just to be evil, rather than being a VILLAIN, IE an opponent of heroes. Even psycho villains are usually more interested in serving themselves than some kind of "greater evil."
2. Evil characters wanting to serve an evil "god." Imagine a Marvel MMO that advertised being a villain, but when you play it, the game takes every opportunity to remind you that you're actually just a Latverian soldier serving Dr. Doom.
I've never even played D&D, so this may be totally off, but wherever these aspects come from, they're the pet peeves.
One of my big wants for COH2, if it's not feasible for COH1, is for Arachnos to be toppled and become just another villain group with a sphere of influence in a Rogue Isles that actually live up to the rogue name. Something like Nerva where you can run down a street and find yet another group claiming the zone. -
Quote:Haha, good point. After seeing how great Praetoria looks, new players probably will be going there.Originally Posted by Fulmens
... introduction of AE suggests otherwise.
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Ice Armor. The arc just gets more awesome with every mission.
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Quote:I'm wondering if the legal and logistical hurdles may be even bigger than the technical.Originally Posted by Dante
I remember before he left, Ghostraptor saying something along the lines of "It would be horrible to do, forget it." But I don't like being defeatist.
This would be my number one wish for the game above all the extra shinys... just being able to be one community.
But I too would love to know the precise technical reasons too. Just to know whether they're really insurmountable or just too much work for such a small part of the community. -
Quote:This.Originally Posted by Tokyo
I sympathize with the development team, they have a metric ton of work preparing for GR's release.
I am much more irritated with MARKETING sitting on their thumbs and twidling the anniversary week away. Where the hell are our GR sneak peeks? Come on... a picture of a zone, a new biography..give us something other than NOTHING. -
I have a ton of emails in my inbox. If I try to send another email to myself, either by local name or global name, an error reports that there is a limit of 20.
This SOUNDS like it is working as intended, except:
1. Those emails are entirely text only, with no inf or items.
2. I can send them to myself with other alts whose inboxes aren't full, so it's strange that sending to my global would be blocked.
May I suggest that the count of 20 should only include email with items? -
Quote:Oh BLEEP yes... if this means what I think it does, GR will be amazing.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I thought that was one of the most interesting bits of infoQuote:Originally Posted by TonyV19:46 Golden-Girl: will the new GR system content use existing contacts, or new ones?
19:47 Ghost Falcon: gg, the GR system doesn't use contacts....
19:47 Golden-Girl: so where do the moral misisons come from?
19:48 Ghost Falcon: GG, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be talking about the GR system, and how it works....
Great transcript. They picked good questions to answer. -
Quote:That is understandable as a bug that wasn't known, I assume.Originally Posted by Leandro
Missing doors in the Grandville tower in i7. This was pre-ouroportal, base porter, or Pocket D porter. Since the hospital was inside the tower, if you died you were locked in the tower with no way out unless someone used Recall Friend to get you out.
That one took the prize. Small enhancement numbers are annoying, certainly, but we've had way worse bugs that made it live over the years.
This was known, and deliberately classed as unimportant or working as intended. It's not that big of a deal, but it is hard to understand. -
Quote:Resolution is 1400x900, so a 50% increase is weird.Originally Posted by Master-Blade
1680x1050
As proof of concept, I took a screenshot of my full screen and resized it to a 1024x640, the numbers became 4 pixels high and unreadable, just like yours. -
Why?
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Quote:I can't speak for most hero content, but villains, yikes. Before i17 introduced its very excellent arcs, the most respect you get is from Matthew Burke at level 1. Your reward for defeating Recluse is... the ability to work for him!Originally Posted by EU_Damz
So being treated like a lackey would in a way, make sense. The higher up you get, the more respect you seem to get.
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What resolution are you running?
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At least, there is no last objective map icon in the guest author arc by Bill Willingham, Quest for Magic. This may be related to optional objectives.