Jophiel
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Posts
1991 -
Joined
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Being able to say "I've mitigated the weaknesses in the system by spending additional time playing additional characters and spreading the rewards thinner among my ineligible characters" is great from a "I'm glad you found a way to be content" perspective. As a defense for the weaknesses in the first place though, it's rather lacking.
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Now that you mention it, the SWAT team were one of the few times I've had much luck keeping non-hero NPC helpers alive. Usually they run off and do something stupid.
Speaking of, right before you enter the infamous sewers of rogue PPD, you have some cop following you. Was he supposed to enter the sewers and help ('cause he doesn't). If not, why is he following me on the streets? -
Here is the result of the Attache Contest from a few weeks back, featuring Scarlet Finch (my Praetorian Tally-Ho/English Sparrow for those keeping score). The original is much larger but I'm at work so I haven't gotten around to hosting it yet.
Thanks again, Attache! And to BakArt for the excellent job of rendering an idea I've had for a long while.
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Quote:More often than not, I'm playing it to solo with people to talk to in the meantime. I can be "selfish" about my goals (not that I won't help people but if I got on that night thinking to hit level 32, I want to work on that) but don't want to play in a bubble. As a result, I spent a bit of time soloing while chatting in various globals.Originally Posted by Le Blanc
This thread has got me thinking. MMO's draw a pretty diverse crowd (It's that first "M"), and I am now wondering how many people could not care less about leveling and actually playing the game, but instead use it as a way to just chat with folks?
Hate voice chat in MMORPGs for various reasons, chief among them being the total blowing of immersion. I used to play another MMORPG that had native voice chatting and 75% of the time joining a group meant "Turn your voice on!" and then listening to some guy approach fighting three mobs as though he were Patton planning his North Africa campaign. People usually don't seem to type that out (because all the mobs would be dead before you finished it) but when you can just say it... Hhhoooooo-boy. -
Quote:I mentioned radio/newspapers earlier but anyone calling those "content" needs to be examined by a professional. They're filler material with throw-away joke plots ("Find the PLOT Device!") meant to plug the holes between the real content arcs.Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
If you're a "tourist", you can get the radio/newspaper contacts for the side you visit and run those missions plus Safeguard or Mayhem missions, whichever is applicable. you can also earn contacts by doing those, though you won't be able to speak to them until you fully switch sides.
Being able to "explore the shades of gray that lie between Heroes and Villains" was one of the selling points of the expansion. There's very, very little to explore and they should work on that.Quote:That said, Vigilantes and Rogues are designed to really just be middle points on a player's way to fully switching the alignment of a character. -
Quote:Goldbrickers? You'd need to spread them around the game though.Originally Posted by Signpost
Trying to think of a group which would specifically be rogue though.
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Quote:When my sister did equestrian events, there was always some joker who would "show name" their horse something like Wish I Was or If Only I Could Be.Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
Indeed, some names are fun just for the amusement of sticking the name into NPC dialog.
Faultline: Hey, a fuzzy kitten! Wait up!
Kadabra Kill: What is a fuzzy kitten doing here?
Mindspider: Oh, it's a fuzzy kitten! I'll do them for free!
Fortunata: Oh, no! She sent a fuzzy kitten!
Dr. Aeon: a fuzzy kitten! AHHH! Where's my armor! Where's my armor!
Wolf Spider Enforcer: Calm down, girls. We'll show you how to deal with scum like a fuzzy kitten.
"Now showing, number seven... My Dream Is To Be... owned and ridden by Sarah McDonald..." -
Quote:Even worse when you consider your usual "vigilante" style comic character. So you have your stereotypical tough as nails, evil-crushing obsessed lone wolf loose cannon half-crazy guy who throws villains out of windows and blows up their warehouses. He decides to carry his vigilante crusade to the enemy's own land. Makes his way to the Rogue Isles and...Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Since the benefit of being a "tourist" (as the "grey" alignments are called by devs) is supposed to be access to the other side's content, they should probably actually have access to the content, and not have it locked away behind forced teaming. After all, not everyone can team all the time.
"Any villains I can join up with?" -
Quote:Unfortunately, you can only "buy" one A-merit per day and you have to spend 20mil for each exchange.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Now that is a very good idea!
How much that matters is up to the individual but collecting merits via rogue alignment missions and exchanging them isn't really comparable to just earning them the traditional hero/villain route. -
As opposed to a post that doesn't invoke TVTropes
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Quote:Real simply, you can do five "tips" missions per day (roughly*). Every ten tips missions, you can do an alignment mission. Successfully doing a hero or villain alignment mission gets you an "Alignment Merit". Special vendors will trade A-Merits for rare recipes. Most are 1 A-Merit, some are two and PvP IOs and purples can be bought for considerably more (but are unavailable at all through normal reward merits like you get from task forces).Originally Posted by Clouded
This might be a bit off topic but I have no idea what Hero or Villain merits are...I'm assuming it was something introduced in GR that I have yet to read up on.
Anyone care to provide a helpful link for a returning, ignorant player?
If you do a Vigilante or Rogue alignment mission, you get 30 reward merits. Vigilantes and rogues can not access the A-Merit system without becoming true heroes or villains.
*It's more complicated than that but close 'nuff for a simple explanation. -
Quote:You can't do anything though. You can do your side's content or go to the other side and try to find someone to tag along with because you're still locked out of doing any content yourself.Originally Posted by Sailboat
My impression is that, speaking strictly in terms of pure powergaming, the gray alignments can do anything and the other two are "trapped" on one side.
I believe someone said previously here that even doing a full arc on the other side with someone else won't award you the rewards (badges, merits, etc) because you're not "doing" the arc in the eyes of the game since you're ineligible to receive the missions. They ran the entire new Coralax arc (Ross?) with a friend and got bumpkus at the end. -
Quote:Sure they can. The developers just decide that they're trusting you (or that they don't know you from any other true hero/villain).Originally Posted by Golden Girl
They couldn't have too many blue or red arcs open to them, as it's unlikely that a lot of the Hero or Villain contacts would trust people arriving from the enemy side.
I mean, I can take my rogue on the Statesman Task force and have Statesman say "You need at least six people.. let's see... tank, two defenders, scrapper, blaster... oh, hey, brute! Just coming along? That's cool..." and not have him worry that Brute will stab everyone in the head and ruin the mission, right? Why? Because there's not squat Brute can do given the confines of the game. If Darrin McWade trusts my vigilante, so what? It's not as though I can bring the wrath of the Midnighters down on him.
Even better but I'm thinking small.Quote:Originally Posted by gec72
I'd still love to see rogue/vigiliante contacts. -
I agree with the OP pretty much completely.
I know it's not as cut & dry as this but being able to start arcs on either side would make the gray alignments an attractive option. Being restricted to radio/newspapers or else hoping you can get in on someone else's team makes them largely worthless in my view. I don't doubt someone finds them really useful for the sideswitching (especially being red and able to go visit blue) but I can't say I've experienced it. -
Without name threads, I wouldn't know that CoH isn't worth playing if you can't have Fire Boy nor that the original Fire Boy's computer was infested with weevils while he went to Afghanistan the day after launch to rescue orphaned kittens -- but he'll be back any day now and will ragequit without Fire Boy waiting for him.
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Quote:My personal test is to actually say the name in a few comic-booky style statements.Originally Posted by mousedroid
See the difference? I don't expect I'll ever pick up a comic book and see the superhero In Silent Lucidity fighting an evil plot to conquer the world by he villainous Not Without Incident.
"[Name]! I knew you had to be behind this!"
"Robots attacking the zoo? Quick, call [Name]!"
"The royal rubies stolen? Only [Name] could pull off that caper!"
"Get that vault empied before [Name] arrives!"
Needless say, this means I usually stay with short, one or two word names in the [Noun] or [Adjective Noun] style. "Let No. 6 Comes With Eggroll know that they're attacking the lab!" doesn't roll off the tongue for me. -
Quote:Grr. Bark. Bark. Grr.Originally Posted by MiniNukette
New animal sound/roar emotes. Meow. Wroof. Hsssss. BARK-BARK-BARK.
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Quote:Good point. While fighting the Titan, you should be constantly getting strafed by turrets!Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Considering the fight takes place on the same Sky Raider base that is covered in turrets in the Silver Mantis SF...yeah, that pretty much writes itself, doesn't it?
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Quote:Really, the arc doesn't know what it wants. In it, you're told:Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Admittedly, I had taken it as the Tsoo wanting to take over the Paragon underworld, but otherwise you have a lot of good points.
"It looks like the Tsoo are planning a major hit on both the Family and the Warriors. Character, get out there and stop the Tsoo from taking over all the gangs of Paragon City!"
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"I am afraid that if the Tsoo are successful, Tub Ci will be mayor of Paragon City tomorrow."
-and the souvenir text says-
"During these skirmishes, you learned that the Tsoo were planning a takeover of Paragon City"
Beyond the ridiculous premise that taking over the Family and the Warriors is akin to taking over all the gangs of Paragon City (hey, have fun now with the lvl 50 CoT, Malta, CoS, Nemesis, etc... after all, you beat up some anonymous Warriors!), I had to laugh at the "Mayor of Paragon City" bit. Tub Ci's end game is to leverage his awesome power from defeating the Warriors into an elected position as mayor? Way to dream, Big Guy. Good thing I was there to stop you.
Also amusing, Amanda warns you to bring help for the five building run. Normally this would imply that there's going to be something, anything, of note in these runs. An elite boss, heck a named regular boss, some ambushes... something. Nope. It might as well be five chained radio missions. Scratch that -- at least radio missions have named bosses.
Edit/Correction: In the very last mission, I guess the Tsoo "boss" was named Teal Death. I actually saw him and tried reading his info but it was generic and I didn't even realize he was supposed to be the boss. Checking Paragon Wiki, I guess he was a named Fire Dagger. Also according to Paragon Wiki, he was fighting Heracles, but not the same Elite Boss Heracles you fight in the Stephanie Peebles arc. If I fought him at all (which I must have to win), he must have been far less powerful and died from my AoEs because I have no recollection of seeing or fighting him. Their conversation consists of standard "We're going to beat you up" one-liners to each other. The other four buildings had no named bosses. -
Hoooo-boy. I just found a new low in pointless writing. The Tsoo Coup from Amanda Loomis in Independence Port.
The entire plot is "The Tsoo are going to beat up some gangs and somehow take over all of Paragon City by defeating the Family & the Warriors." I'm not sure how defeating a pretty generic bunch of mafia goons and the one villain group that's the joke of the game (haha... look at those Circle of Thorns guys beating a Warrior with a baseball bat!) is going to take over all of Paragon City but I suppose I should stop them.
To stop this brilliant scheme, I need to defeat the bosses in five locations. You wouldn't know that they're the "bosses" since no one is named and you only know you're attacking the right people when you find a group of Tsoo actively "fighting" a group of Family/Warriors. I guess defeating their rivals gangs didn't include actually defeating any of the leaders or anything, just a bunch of jamokes rumbling in various buildings. There's no clues or anything, just beat-em-up and move on to the next faceless bunch.
Despite being told that the buildings on Talos are empty, "which makes them perfect meeting places for the Warriors", the last building is actually full of civilians running about. Nice intelligence, Ms. Loomis. I guess the Warriors don't actually need an empty building though because there they are. The Tsoo have decided that their brilliant strategy of "Conquer Paragon City by defeating nameless stock bad guys" can only be improved with a dose of "Split our strength by taking hostages all over the building instead of actually fighting the Warriors." Well, maybe the hostages know something. Rescuing each one gets you an illuminating "Man, those guys are crazy!" Haha, don't I know it, Mr. Pointless Hostage!
Problem solved! I went to five locations and beat up their generic inhabitants! What now? Oh... that was it? I won? Someone named Tub Ci put out a hit on me but it's irrelevant since no one will do it? That's... good, I guess. Kind of pointless but then "pointless" pretty much described this entire arc. They didn't even try.
Any chance we could get a Zeus Titan in here? -
Quote:A free Damage, Accuracy or EndRx IO. Level 10, 15 or 25 I think (I think it's lvl 20 that's missing for some reason). The tutorial provides the salvage and recipe.Originally Posted by Void Spirit
Several posters mentioned running the invention tutorial. I always skip this and haven't noticed any ill effects. What do you gain by running the tutorial so that you need it for every character?
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Quote:Of course I can. It still has multiple components, it still takes up a chunk of time to run and it still had dialogue and text throughout including between each section. Writing is writing and dialogue is dialogue regardless of the game mechanics behind it. Giving me a spat of xp at the end of each section of the mission and putting a book icon on it wouldn't change the writing. That's purely a game mechanic which, according to you, doesn't really matter. It was worth putting a badge at the end so it was presumably intended to be memorable.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's not an "excuse," you simply don't judge single missions against story arcs.
I think you're working too hard at justifying a terrible piece of writing by trying to exclude it from the conversation.
...after you run errands for him and do his dirty work by beating up piles of people he has a personal vendetta against. Not because you've caught them doing something wrong but because a villain demands it of you before he'll turn himself in. Like I said, it's the same thing as the red side writing (arc or mission or multi-mission or whatever). It's a terrible piece of writing and it's stupid that your hero has no option except to do a villain's dirty work for him. It's not even presented as a moral dilemma, it's just "Hey, go get this guy to turn himself in" followed be "Ok, I'll turn myself in, aaafftterrrr....."Quote:The story in that mission, however, is one I like. I've always been a fan of the concept "honour among thieves," so having Alexander give himself up willingly... -
Quote:Meh. If that's the excuse for it being stupid as hell and God-awful asinine writing, I'm not sure how it's supposed to change anyone's opinion.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Alexander "The Great" Pavlidis' mission is not an arc, but rather a single multi-part mission. I'd appreciate it if we stop calling it an arc, lest we insist that Crimson gives out about 30 arcs, plus one really long arc.
I don't really care if it had a merit at the end or whatever. What I care about is that I wasted a good chunk of my evening on it and thought the entire time "This is the stupidest thing I've had to do in this game that I can think of". Adding another two parts and throwing a book icon at it wouldn't have changed my opinion of the writing one way or the other. Hell, judging from the rest of the writing, the extra parts would have probably involved walking across the Shadow Shard to wash Alexander's car. -
Quote:Short of settling down with Paragon Wiki over a warm cup of cocoa, there's no getting at the writing without slogging through the content. Given how much of the conversation has been dominated by "I had to fight Castillo THREE times" and "There was a Zeus Titan my level 22 had to fight", I think it's fair to view them jointly.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
That depends if you're discussing old content or old writing.
Not that I think much of the old writing was any great shakes regardless. There's a reason I don't choose Paragon Wiki to read over my hot cocoa. Strip away the inane street hunts and Fed-Exs and 90% of the missions boil down to "Sorry, the princess is in another castle". Much of Cooling being no exception. -
Quote:"Could be" but I would bet a sizable sum that it won't be. And so any discussion about that old content deserves to include "I had a defeat all in the Cake Cave" as part of the discussion.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Granted, the original trilogy didn't make you sit through the film equivalent of fed-exes and hunt missions, and you didn't have to watch our heroes defeat every single last Storm Trooper on the map, but a lot of what people hate about the original content could be solved by simply cutting all that stuff out.