Halorin

The Prelude to Justice. There before it starts, the reason it's served.

Background:
The Prelude to Justice began as part of Halorin’s stipulation to work as a hero in Paragon City rather than face time in prison for his exploits as a cat burglar. The group would be a government funded entity and would conduct itself as a task force against crime throughout Paragon City. The group also, however, acted as a collective of covert agents that would carry out assignments for the benefit of the government’s interests. These assignments are strictly confidential and all knowledge of the Prelude’s actions would become disavowed should they become public. With Halorin’s recent return to Paragon City, the government has expressed interest in reforming the group.

Out of Character Information:
The idea behind the Prelude is to create a group of heroes that lead a triple life. They have their personal lives. They have their life as a hero, and they also have the life of a government agent. Think the Avengers meets Mission Impossible, and you have an idea of the group’s intent.

We are a medium to heavy roleplaying group who intends to conduct storylines on our website.

What We Are Looking For:
We’re looking for active players who can play at a consistent time. We’re looking to grow through quality over quantity, so we fully intend to be a small group at the start and slowly expand from there. We look to recruit players who agree with that philosophy. We’re looking for team players, and people who want to contribute to the group through roleplay and advancement in the game.

The Prelude is a modern era group, and in that regard we’re looking for modern era heroes. A good word to describe the nature of the Prelude is ‘realistic’. In that, a medieval knight who time travelled to the present may not be a good fit for the Prelude, as we’re looking for each character in the group to relate to each other on some level. Not to say that we don’t want any ‘stand out’ characters, but if you were looking for a specific theme to match your own that’s not in the modern category, the Prelude may not be the group for you.

We’re looking for players to commit to the character they have in the Prelude. There will be an ‘Affiliate’ bracket for alternate characters that are seldom played, but look to have players use characters that they will play on a fairly consistent basis. We want you to tell a story about your character, and we want the Prelude to be part of that story.

Applying to Join the Prelude:
Applicants will go through a one week application process before they officially become agents in the Prelude. We have a ‘Recruit’ bracket that you will be invited to join, in which you will be in the Supergroup and will be able to chat with the members of the Prelude and interact with them. We do this to ensure that the Prelude is a good fit for you and that you are a good fit for the Prelude.

You can contact me in game if you are interested in applying for the Prelude at @Halorin. Also, check out our website at www.preludetojustice.org!

We're also looking to coalition with other roleplaying supergroups!

Thanks for your time!

Supergroup Name: The Prelude to Justice
Website (if any): Prelude to Justice Website
Leader or Recruiting Officers: Halorin, Daniera
Preferred Method of contact: In-Game e-mail to Halorin, or on Global Chat at @Halorin.

Background:
The Prelude to Justice began as part of Halorin’s stipulation to work as a hero in Paragon City rather than face time in prison for his exploits as a cat burglar. The group would be a government funded entity and would conduct itself as a task force against crime throughout Paragon City. The group also, however, acted as a collective of covert agents that would carry out assignments for the benefit of the government’s interests. These assignments are strictly confidential and all knowledge of the Prelude’s actions would become disavowed should they become public. With Halorin’s recent return to Paragon City, the government has expressed interest in reforming the group.

Out of Character Information:
The idea behind the Prelude is to create a group of heroes that lead a triple life. They have their personal lives. They have their life as a hero, and they also have the life of a government agent. Think the Avengers meets Mission Impossible, and you have an idea of the group’s intent.
We are a medium to heavy roleplaying group who intends to conduct storylines on our website.

What We Are Looking For:
We’re looking for active players who can play at a consistent time. We’re looking to grow through quality over quantity, so we fully intend to be a small group at the start and slowly expand from there. We look to recruit players who agree with that philosophy. We’re looking for team players, and people who want to contribute to the group through roleplay and advancement in the game.

The Prelude is a modern era group, and in that regard we’re looking for modern era heroes. A good word to describe the nature of the Prelude is ‘realistic’. In that, a medieval knight who time travelled to the present may not be a good fit for the Prelude, as we’re looking for each character in the group to relate to each other on some level. Not to say that we don’t want any ‘stand out’ characters, but if you were looking for a specific theme to match your own that’s not in the modern category, the Prelude may not be the group for you.
We’re looking for players to commit to the character they have in the Prelude. There will be an ‘Affiliate’ bracket for alternate characters that are seldom played, but look to have players use characters that they will play on a fairly consistent basis. We want you to tell a story about your character, and we want the Prelude to be part of that story.

Applying to Join the Prelude:
Applicants will go through a one week application process before they officially become agents in the Prelude. We have a ‘Recruit’ bracket that you will be invited to join, in which you will be in the Supergroup and will be able to chat with the members of the Prelude and interact with them. We do this to ensure that the Prelude is a good fit for you and that you are a good fit for the Prelude.

Thanks for your time!

That is -straight- Troy McClure right there. Man. That made my day.

Out of that list, I chose Costumes.

I almost selected Storylines, because while they are high quality, the uniqueness of them fade sharply when you feel accomplished at saving a character's life and then you walk down the street and five people did the exact same thing. It makes everything seem like a moot point.

Content from here on really needs to veer away from being static and move towards becoming dynamic for me to really pick storylines, or even to really continue playing the game.

I want a rogue's gallery. I want people to come to -me- for help. I want to do what heroes do in the comics.

You'll have to forgive me, as I haven't read everything from my last post until now. I read your most immediate post that followed mine, and I really only have point to say in response:

If Cryptic wanted to focus on PvE, then perhaps they should have never released PvP. It's hard to make the argument that PvP contains a small amount of people. If it was implemented correctly, I'm sure more people would play it.

Let's say if there was an ongoing system akin to Siren's Call where heroes and villains had to do missions to turn the tide of the eternal struggle of good and evil. Things like Capture the Flag type of indoor missions that had both villains and heroes in it and they had to fight over items or hostages. Or mix the safeguard/mayhems to have player villains and heroes to stop each other's objectives. These are things that would make PvP more appealing, in my opinion.

When Cryptic first mentioned PvP, those are the kinds of things I thought would be in the works. If I knew they were going to release a buggy Arena and then throw in a few zones that fall significantly short of their potential due to implementation and balance issues, then I'd have said scratch the Arena plans for Issue 4, and move everything else up. That was Issue 9 would be Issue 8 and THEN they could potentially work on PvP. They have the concept down when it comes to wing animations as far as showing it, then taking it away in the desire to do it right.

But the past can't be changed, and they've made the situation themselves. I think it's a crying shame that they've treated PvP the way they have. They should have never released it if it'd just forgotten the way it has. Maybe forgotten is a harsh term, but indefinitely backburnered certainly fits the situation.

I mean, I don't remember anyone really clamoring for PvP before Issue 4 came out.

I don't know, Lighthouse. The vibe I got from your post was that PvP won't be seriously looked at until at least after Issue 9, and who knows what else may come up that will push that back even further.

I've only at most had a mild interest in getting into PVP, but after reading your post, I don't see a reason to do it. I doubt that was your intention, to turn people off from PVP, but by saying it's going to take at least 6 months or more before there's even a chance of PVP getting looked at... Well. Heh. Giving me a level 40 character to try out something that doesn't work all that well isn't going to solve a problem like that.

I remember seeing Yankee Daring running around as a level 6 Tanker on Virtue. That was cool.

Hey. Not sure if this belongs in the Bug Fix or the Request Thread, but.. Here goes.

For the superhero colors would it be possible to choose whether the superhero logo goes either on the chest or on the jacket?

Thanks, and... Jay is sexy. *cough*

Well, then...

I have concerns over the seemingly changed business model that Cryptic's using for CoX. Seems like they're moving away from the free updates for content towards a constant rollout of boxed expansions. I just hope Issues 8 and 9 bring CoH up to CoV's level as far as attention and new features go.

I also hope this new box they're going to try to pawn off on everyone is a Rikti Invasion type of thing or something that's an equal threat to both Paragon and the Rogue Isles. I'd really need to be sold on a 'City of Spies' idea. I just don't see how it fits.

I'm honestly not too pleased with the tone of this address, but I feel Positron will be a better Lead Designer than Statesman was, just for experience's sake. Other than that all I got was "continue to play the waiting game and look forward to another paid expansion".

* Supergroup Name: The Prelude to Justice
* Website: The Prelude to Justice Forums
* Leader or Recruiting Officers: Halorin, Tempestra
* Preferred Method of contact: On our forums
* Guild Description: The Prelude to Justice is a medium to heavy roleplaying supergroup. While the majority of our roleplaying takes place in-game, we also conduct a good deal of roleplay and storyline work on our forums (link above). The Prelude itself is a group that has an urban-themed and street smarts vibe to it. It's a government funded group that was founded by a famous high-class thief from Cincinnati who was captured and given the opportunity to pay back society by working as a hero in the City of Heroes. We like to have fun by using roleplay to give CoH an added level of immersion and character involvement. Stop by our forums and say hello!

((The Prelude to Justice is a recently formed roleplaying Supergroup on Pinnacle. We consider ourselves to be a moderate to heavy roleplaying group comprised of mainly street-smarts and urban oriented heroes. We'll be posting pieces of our story here from time to time. Here's a piece to a scene in our first storyline, Clean Slate. If you'd like to run missions with us, roleplay, or apply to have a character join the Prelude, feel free to reach us at our forums. The Prelude to Justice Forums. Enjoy the read!))

Paragon City had been uncharacteristically warm this season. Citizens usually hurried down Paragon’s seedy streets clutching heavy coats close to them. Their cold breath huffed into the open air as they stood impatiently at the Yellow Line. Heroes could be seen high above the city’s skyline wearing warmer sets of spandex, Kevlar, and whatever else they used as protection from some of the city’s more dangerous activities.

But not this winter.

Halorin ran swiftly through the night. 2:30 AM. He liked to make his hits late. Less citizens to worry about. No cops, usually. Just less of a headache, and Hal was no fan of migraines. Steel Canyon was the city’s business district. If there was a large corporation or some bigshot using their bank accounts and political power to overcompensate for other lacking features, they had shop set up somewhere in this part of town.

Newspapers, dust, and various junk that littered a city fallen from grace swept up in an elliptic circle as Halorin raced past. Cars jostled and a few alarms would go off when Hal stepped it up a notch or two. He was agile. Vaulting neatly over link fences and springing off of cars at 75 miles an hour. Halorin jumped from the hood of a truck to an awning of a building to springboard into the air and land on the roof of the warehouse he was tasked to scope out. He landed in a graceful front flip, making minimal sound.

He stood up and looked around. Nothing. There was a bum across the street, clutching a paper bag with the lip of a bottle poking out. Halorin shook his head. Just a quarter mile away there were skyscrapers from a guy clinging to alcohol, the last thing the poor chump had going for him. Can’t save everyone’s day, Halorin figured.

The costume Halorin wore appeared flashy and heroic, however most anything Halorin did served a purpose. Serge from uptown set him up right. His outfit was formfitting, a little thicker than typical spandex. It was some sort of synthetic, durable armor. Serge ranted and raved about it for a full 15 minutes, of which Halorin heard about 30 seconds. He caught the essentials. Stops most conventional firearms, to an extent. Would hurt like Hell in the process, but it’s better to have a bruise than a window for a stomach. On the inside there was material to keep Halorin dry. Hypothermia wasn’t going to be a problem, but Halorin didn’t see himself winding up in water too often. He couldn’t control fish with his mind and he had no plans of stopping the evil Sammy the Sea Otter who was bent on robbing Paragon City Aquarium, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

His utility belt came with the works. Slots for pills, stimulants, recorders, trackers, lockpicks, handcuffs, you name it. An extra communicator was a nice touch. He’d never know if the one integrated into his costume’s left hand would short out.

The domino mask Hal wore around his eyes wasn’t to make him look like a raccoon, though a journalist in the local paper wrote an article to the contrary. However, the mask could grant Halorin night vision, infared vision, and could let him see feeds from security cameras that it could link to.

An ex-thief in hero’s clothing had many tricks for the do-gooder trade. When the powers of Jeet Kune Do, street smarts, the mutant ability to control kinetic energy, the latest technology, and an ego combined it wasn’t Captain Planet that would jump out. Halorin wasn’t one to make Saturday morning cartoons about. He didn’t mind that too much.

A smirk came to his lips as he approached the ledge of the warehouse’s roof and looked down the narrow alley alongside. There was a window he could probably get through. He doubted there was an alarm. His snitch said that these guys have only been using this warehouse for about a month now and they’ve been assured it wouldn’t be touched by whoever was funding this operation. An hour’s worth of being Hal’s punching bag didn’t produce the name of who that ‘whoever’ was, so Halorin figured he’d find that out later.

Later would have to come pretty soon, too. Wilkins has been on Halorin’s [censored] all week. He was supposed to have followed up on this lead days ago. Hal assured Wilkins it’d be looked into tonight, though. There was something about the urgency in Wilkins’ tone. He must run across assignments and jobs like this all the time. Why does he care so much? Halorin lowered his brow. Halorin was no Calculus expert, but even he knew when something didn’t add up right.

Halorin brought his left hand up to his mouth and spoke quietly, “This is Halorin. I got an assignment out here in Steel Canyon. Coordinates should be posting on y’er comms, whoever’s out there. Might get sticky so it ain’t gonna hurt t’have some back-up. Who’s out there?”

((This is just one piece of a scene called Routine Investigation. Click the link to read what's been written so far!))

[ QUOTE ]
For those who have speculated that Newspaper missions are coming to City of Heroes, they aren’t…yet. That’s coming a little later in the year. I’d like to add something different to the CoH system…

[/ QUOTE ]

As long as CoH-specific players have had to wait for some quality additions and content, I think you've about overdone that cute teaser bit. But that's just me. Start putting some real cards on the table please, Statesman.

I'm a smidge upset, I admit.

Well, I don't want new zones. I'm in the camp that what we have no needs revamping with dynamic content to make the city feel alive.

But what would I have liked to see in Issue 7?

-Newspaperesque Missions for CoH.
-PvP Instanced missions that had CTF-style objectives. Imagine of those Mayhem missions were able to be joined by heroes for a big showdown with destructible things?
-New story arcs around the city that catered to your security level. I like King's Row, but once you outlevel the area, there's nothing there. The city's threats shouldn't be so linear, I feel.

I don't think that's too much to ask for.

I can see your point, believe me I do. However, it's hard for me to swallow. I have patience, but my issue is that it's not like CoV is this entirely new thing from a technological standpoint. The engine is the same, it'd appear. Any graphical updates seem to be coming to CoH come Issue 7.

I think the core of my frustration is that I was under the assumption that this would be an issue for both CoH and CoV. It seems like CoH is getting table scraps at best this go-round. I don't think either side should have to feel that way.

[ QUOTE ]
Break my joy, I break yo' face.

[/ QUOTE ]

Straightforward and violent, but the logic is sound.

I stand corrected, then. I've never looked too much into CoV, so. However, I think the point still stands. I mean, content gaps in CoH has been discussed since before CoV was in existence. I just figured they'd have different priorities in order. But I guess those Mayhem missions are CoV's equivalent to CoH's outdoor missions in Issue 1, but I'm sure CoV has outdoor missions, so...

I don't know if the response is 'There isn't enough'. I think the response is 'Where's the balance?' There's a fair amount of content in Issue 7 as it's shown, however a LOT of it is geared to just Villains. If it was divvied up between Heroes and Villains I wouldn't mind.

The biggest example I have is that these new kinds of missions for Villains. As far as I know, they've never made previous mention of that kind of mission. However, they've been making note of CoH's content gaps for months now. Rather than taking care of what they've already pointed out, they add something completely (as far as I know) unannounced in an issue that's main focus was -already- new content for Villains.

That's my complaint.

Yeah. Newspaper missions alone might tide me over to Issue 8. But ideally, I want some new content that is dynamic in that it can adapt and change to where it's not a one-time deal. Like a PvE version of some of the PvP zones.

Yeah. I was all macho and tried playing it in the dark the first time I booted it up.

.....No. God, no.

Still a great game, though.

Completely off-topic, but. You owe it to yourself to throw F.E.A.R. into that list if you can. That game is pretty incredible.

The formatting of that page leads me to believe that the details to follow will be about the new costume options. I'm sure those new options will be the ones that were added to CoV.

I mean, I don't know. It's a free expansion and all, but I can't help but feel something ill-willed towards Issue 7 with the infomation that's been posted thus far. Like I've said, I can see why this particular Issue would be Villain-centric (namely getting 40-50 content and a 40-50 PvP zone), but knowing that Issues won't come but once every 6 months now... I don't know.

Most of CoH's content is pretty stale right now. More than stale in some specific areas. To know that it'll be another six months before any of that changes? Or even is possible to change?

It would just be cool for there to be something content related that was Heroes only, too.

This is a valid point, however you can't look at CoV's beginning as the way you look at CoH's. I still feel that CoV isn't a standalone game so much as it is a paid expansion. The numbers you've shown have proved to be just so. If they weren't going to be able to adequately provide new content to both 'games' then they shouldn't tout them as seperate products.

In this specific case, I see why this issue would be CoV-centric, however I'd like some assurance that from I8 on things will be even distributed.

Seems like a nice list of additions... to CoV. Is it just me or does CoH seem like it's getting table scraps? I hope this isn't a trend. Wait 6 months to see one side of the game get favored.

I would love for a Dev to confirm or add to this, because it seems like CoH is getting boned.

I think with 3 slots it should be as fast as Sprint and Swift, maybe a little slower. It's just hard to justify outside of purely for character concept any other way, if you ask me.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Hover is just too slow. If it were about 50% faster (whatever the unenhanced speed buff of AM or SB is) it would be a viable combat power. It should never be a viable travel power, IMO

[/ QUOTE ]Why not? Define 'viable'. Running, to me, is a viable travel power and I get that for free.

[/ QUOTE ]

To you, it may. That however doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else. I personally build my characters for concept, and my main character is a Martial Artist who's basically a powerful source of kinetic energy. He flies, and floats in combat. Hover used to be great for this concept, now it's not.

There's no real reason why Hover should be so slow, and there's no reason for Fly to have so many disadvantages in PvP.