Click_Beetle

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Actually, I want to address this. This is purely a CoV setting artifice. It does not exist in CoH. I never once had the feeling that Freedom Corps or any other of the organizations mentioned in the backstory had any more significant impact on the city than any one, lone hero. (Or at most, team of eight heroes.) There's never any indication of Freedom Corps keeping Malta, the Council, Nemesis, the CoT, or any other major, organized faction in check.

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Every hero in Paragon City is a registered member of Freedom Corps. 'S why our information is given on a Freedom Corps ID card. The "lone hero" in Paragon City is still working as a Freedom Corps agent under Freedom Corps auspices. Freedom Corps isn't absent - we are Freedom Corps, aren't we?

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Perhaps, but (and this isn't the first time we've been at this sort of juncture in CoX) its a matter of interpretation of the genre. What we're seeing here is that, no matter what the devs thought, a lot of people want to create Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor style villains - villains beholden to no ruler, patron, or partner.

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I'm not sure a "lot" of people is really the appropriate term. I'm a compulsive info checker, and most of the people I see in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles don't even fill in their bios. Heck, a large share see their characters as a collection of numbers with a name and not a character at all. Of the ones I see who do fill in their bios, I honestly don't recall seeing that many that were completely incompatible with the idea of accepting patronage. Some? Yeah. Lots? Not really.

I guess my basic feeling on the subject is that it feels like inviting people to make characters for your sword and sorcery RPG and then having a guy make a cyborg with laser cannons. It might be a fine character, but it's not a fine character for the setting. A character doesn't have to be a completely antisocial lonely megalomaniac to be a villain, and they usually aren't in real comics.

Even if a person absolutely must make such a character because no other style of character appeals... you really don't have to do the Patron arc. That would be keeping completely in character. Scorning the reward because the price is too high for such a character would be an impressive role-playing choice for the dedicated concept player who can't find that room to flex.

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In City of Villains, we're being relegated to be lackeys of the lackeys. How fun.

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You can look at it that way. You could also look at it as one of the handful of villains who sit at the top of the Arachnos hierarchy taking a personal interest in you, as you've come to their attention to the point where they are trying to recruit you into their own camps. None of the signature heroes in City of Heroes ever did that for me. They only noticed I was there, for the most part, if they needed a Task Force done, i.e. if they wanted to fob a problem off on someone. The Arachnos Patrons are taking time away from their own schemes to compete for my services with offers of power and support.

Arachnos isn't the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants or the Legion of Doom. It's not that small, and it's not that loose. It's Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world. It's Hydra. It's AIM, it's the Maggia, it's the Secret Empire. It's one of those classic underground organizations that menaces agencies like SHIELD. Faceless, nameless minions, signature attack vehicles, named/faced lieutenants running personally loyal factions under their own private themes, autocratic menace at the top of the pyramid.

But why do that in the first place? Why put all the villains under one banner like that? If you ask me, there's a good reason for it. The entire hero population of Paragon City is unified under one common militaristic banner, the Freedom Corps. If the Rogue Isles were fragmented and filled with loner villains exclaiming "I wrk 4 N0 M4N!!11!!!" then the Freedom Corps would take the Isles in about twenty minutes. They needed a practical reason why the Isles would be able to withstand the heroes of Paragon City, and this is it.

EvilGeko, I think it was, posted where it said that PCs shouldn't take second place to NPCs, but the quote also said that the PCs didn't by any means have to be the most powerful actors in the domain. It simply meant that the PCs should be at the forefront of the action, should be the ones solving the problems, should be the ones fighting the battles. Having an NPC named "T3h S00p4r-WIZ" fly in out of nowhere to kill the dragons for the PCs instead of letting the PCs take it down themselves is the sin to which that paragraph referred, and it's not a sin that's happening here. Developing a patron in the leadership of Arachnos isn't any different than developing a patron in the court of King Generic the Countryruler. The Patrons aren't showing up and killing off Heroes or Giant Monsters instead of us. They're just providing story direction, which is what characters like that are meant to do.

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I already have problems with how totally lackey we seem in CoV. We're super-powered enforcers for hire, not supervillains in the classic sense. Supervillains are, stereotypically, self-directed.

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I just wanted to say that I don't think this is accurate. The comic world is rife with villains who work for hire or work for other villains. For every Red Skull, there's a Crossbones. For every Supreme Intelligence, there's a Ronan the Accuser. For every Attuma, there's a Tyrak. For every MODOK, there's a Super-Adaptoid. I mean, there's Batroc the [censored] Leaper.

Lots of villains are monomanical, egomaniacal, megalomaniacal, whateveromaniacal enough that they can't work for or with other villains. Plenty more work habitually in such arrangements, like the Super-Skrull or the Serpent Society or the Hellfire Club. Even the ones who are normally loners can find accommodation to work with or for other villains when necessity requires and/or they can get something out of it, like the recently re-established Secret Society of Super-Villains or the demon Neron. Even Loki played the role of the humbly obsequious servant to the assembled villains of the Acts of Vengeance. It was a role that he used to secretly advance his own plan and manipulate events, too, so he did it because it was useful... but he still did it.

It would next to impossible to write, for instance, that Doctor Doom in particular serves a patron. It would be simple to write that Doctor Doom was allowing a self-styled patron to believe he had the upper hand while Doom made arrangements to end up with the power in one hand and the patron's head in the other.

Did you know... Guardian was the first server to conduct a successful assault on the Hamidon?

It's really not uncommon for villains to get empowered or enhanced by other villains in comics, though, especially villains of the footsoldier variety. The Grizzly gets his suit worked on by the Tinkerer. The Wrecker's crowbar was upgraded by Loki. Baron Mordo calls on Dormammu for extra power. It's pretty standard comic stuff.

I can see how one'd run into concept trouble if one wrote oneself as the UNFLINCHING DESTROYER OF UNIVERSES AND EMPEROR OF EIGHT DIMENSIONS WHO BOWS TO NO MAN or whatnot, but it seems to me a good author works with the setting, not overrides it. If one writes a guy who'd never work for Arachnos in a game where everyone works for Arachnos, that's fine and one's decision to do, but I'm not sure it's Cryptic's problem. Same for patrons.

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If you're doing it with SGmates, you could have them take screenshots of the debriefings and clues and put them on Photobucket for you.

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Clearly an optimal solution which helps to fully immerse a player in the game....

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Actually, I wish they would put in the option to put the debriefing for the mission in a pop-up window for the team members. It would help bring story to the fore for people who like teaming, but having the option to enable or disable it would work for people who don't care about the text and don't want the extra requirement to dismiss a pop-up.

If you're doing it with SGmates, you could have them take screenshots of the debriefings and clues and put them on Photobucket for you.

Isn't it a little early to be reacting with this kind of vehemence?

We don't know anything about the actual powersets yet. We don't know how many powers the sets contain or if patrons offer more than one set each.

On top of that, people got by originally without being able to respec at all. Not being able to switch APP sets will hardly be crippling even if they start up a major patch-o-rama.

Just relax and see what actually comes down the pike. It's not worth stressing over, and it's sure not worth stressing over yet.

I don't believe that the powers are permanent. The power set is permanent. Isn't that the case?

Did you know... that respecification was not always an option in the game? The Terra Volta trial was added in Issue 2. Originally powers and slotting were permanent choices that could not be changed, which meant a mistake in a build was there for life and that patches had much more serious ramifications.

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Oh and in beta you USED to be able to change AT's through the Terra Volta trial. So the tech is in place to change patron powers. Just like the tech is available to do name changes, etc.

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Actually that was the original, on-paper, plan for Terra Volta. The Strategy Guide went off the on-paper plan and said that is the end result of the trial. Thus there is no "tech in place" for this. The Terra Volta trial was not in the COH beta, it was issue 2, I believe, that it made its debut. Changing ATs has never been in the game, it was never programmed.

Hopefully that clears that up.

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That was the first thing I thought. I remember when the respec was introduced and I wasn't in beta, so someone's facts were kinda... totally wrong.

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Did you know...

Dark Astoria'a Zones is refererenced after famous horror movies directors? George Romero for example.

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The hospital in Dark Astoria is named for St. Elegius, which is the name of the hospital in the medical drama St. Elsewhere.

Considering Kings Row is meant to be a slum, it certainly says something about their opinion of their studios.

Yay! Info!

EDIT: There's a typo in the intro. You don't "council" people. You counsel them.

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This is my first computer game experience unless you count 7th Guest, which I vicariously played to help my then-girlfriend through some of the puzzles.

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Seventh Guest is an interesting example, though, because it was actually very tight-fisted with information. It didn't tell you where the puzzles were. It didn't tell you when new puzzles were unlocked after you solved old puzzles. It usually didn't give you more than an oblique hint at best as to what the goal of any given puzzle was, and it never told you how to go about solving them. Admittedly the game was set up such that you had to do all of the puzzles to win and you couldn't skip any, but it never included any sort of go-here-do-this type information at all!

In my mind it increases the replayability of the game. I don't like to plonk down the cash for a game I'd only play once. I feel better if the game is one I'd play through two, three, four times. It's one of the reasons I prefer games with multiple characters or character types or sides or whatever you can play.

For me, the hidden stuff helps with that. I'll go through it once "legit" and have a good time sloggin' through the hard way. If I really liked the game, I'll go online and look to see if there's a bunch of stuff I missed. If there is, then, sweet, I can go through it a second time with a walkthrough and see all the [censored] I missed the first time.

It's like a sequel I don't have to spend more money on.

For the record, there's one in Breakout, too, but it's an exploration badge instead of a hunt badge.

I just think of the unlockable contacts as the kinds of side quests you find in RPGs like Fallout or Suikoden or Baldur's Gate or whatever. A lot of these types of games have "contacts" that won't give you their quests unless you meet some kind of condition. Heck, some of them are only even there to give you their quests in between Event X and Event Y and if you don't go back to Place Z during this time you never see them. It's such a common gimmick it never occurred to me it would be perceived as unusual or, worse, malevolent.

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The information is available with a five second Google search.

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And thus useless to the vast majority of players.

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Yeah, because the vast majority of players don't have access to Google. I hear you have to have a special pass from the President to use it now.

Seriously, the information is there for anyone who wants it. Lots of games have hidden stuff, and it's not like Cryptic originated this idea. What in Final Fantasy VII told you that if you breed a golden Chocobo and go to a certain location you can get the Knights of the Round materia? Nothing. It was hidden. You either had to find it the hard way, buy a book or a magazine, or search the Intarweb. Does that mean FF7 was poorly designed? I wouldn't say so. What they did was pretty typical.

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The idea is fine, provided everyone knows where to find them and the requirements for unlocking them are clearly explained. Then it becomes a challenge, and a fun addition to the game. Players shouldn't have to buy a guide or access google to access the unlockable contact content.

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You and I must have completely different gaming backgrounds.

You might have just posted it in the wrong venue. You might do better posting it either in the Virtue forum or the Supergroups forum.

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Also, some regular contact missions DO make you visit some of these "hidden" contacts.

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Yeah, I had to run to Archmage Tarixus more than once while I was building the Arcano-Bomb.

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Jack Emmert: I am putting the requirements for Contacts - and their location - in the Prima Guide...

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Since this is basic information about the game and how to play, will a copy of this document be shipped to each account? Will this information be going in an updated version of the City of Heroes documentation? Will it be going on the City of Heroes web site?

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The information is available with a five second Google search.

I don't see the problem, myself. For people who like to hunt for things, the kind of people who like to find badges the hard way without looking them up and such, unlockable contacts are a way to expand their fun. For people don't like to hunt for things, the same websites that detail all the badge locations and all the task force missions and all the power stats and the like also list the unlockable contacts.

Hell, Hermod made a guide on this forum.

An important rule of roleplaying is that it's OK to lose to other players. Some people when RPing get it in their heads they have to win at all costs or be indestructible or try and make other players break character or otherwise do ridiculous things so they come out on top.

Sometimes the best role-playing moments can come out of a loss at a critical moment, either in combat or in politics or even in argument. The same for future story development. If you see someone play a victory well, that's one thing. I think when you see someone play a defeat well, though, that's when you're watching a mature roleplayer.

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I'd like to think not, as I'm an anarchist.

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Anarchical societies don't seem to get very far.

The place to use -regen is against archvillains/giant monsters, mobs that have a markedly high regen rate that has to be overcome by piling on damage. That's where you get the noticeable difference.

I see you're a fan of the pulp era.

I like the way you set up those shots, by the way.