Kitsune9tails

I see what you are saying here, but I have a different perspective:

First of all, most events can that are inserted into lower levels are not truly global effects, and are easily things my character could have missed interacting with or not known about. Many players already do this with their bios:

"I was never arrested and thrown in the Zig, I was an established villain with my own volcano base long before I decided to pull Recluse' chain by pretending to work for him."

One of mine is, "I was a hero in Paragon back in the 40s, but retired. Now I'm back, fedora and all, to show the youngsters how it's done." As opposed to being drawn to Paragon by Statesman's call in 2004, or in Galaxy City at the time the meteors fell.

It's up to me as a writer to see to it that my bio jives with canon (or not, and risk the ridicule of Venture). The same thing is evident with many characters that are robots, sentient clouds of gravity and plasma, animated porcelain dolls, or other ...things that then have to shrug off storylines that deal with them catching diseases or having DNA samples taken from them.

Already it is possible for the player to perceive cause and effect in reverse order in the game, and it will always be possible to do so, because you may simply not be at your keyboard when an event happens, and return to see only the aftereffects, then not experience the causative event until you Ouroboros or the event comes 'round again or something. Sure, you can choose to think to yourself, "My character would have been around for that (or NOT, even if they were)" just like you do now when that happens.

Suddenly, Street Justice exists. What, there was no 'bare knuckles brawling' combat style back in the 40s? No, you just hand wave it and move on, just like you do powerset proliferation (or ignore it, like you do with the Origins of Power). Or is it the plan to have future additions to the game happen in Real Time?

"The Rikti suddenly now have battlesuits! News on the latest developments on the war front at Eleven. But first, E!ntertainment reviews the stylish new Circle of Thorns robes. Alastor, take it away."

Now the Devs may have planned truly global effects, like: the planet Earth explodes. History is rewritten so that Paragon City never existed. Your character (whomever or whatever they may be) was hunted down (wherever and whenever they are) and assassinated. But in a world of alternate universes, Ouroboros, and reality-warping psionic devices, do we need these things to happen on a date (Mar 13, 2012) as opposed to a level (Level 35)?

If the Devs are making this move to make things easier on their writers, then cool. I understand that, and canon history may just not be something (like patch notes, which to be honest are greatly improved from launch) that they are going to be able to get a handle on soon.

But honestly, I think the idea of gating certain content behind certain story arcs (similar to how Ouroboros is done) is a better idea.

I am currently playing through Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines for the first time. I am not using a guide. So are some of my friends. As a result, we are getting radically diverging gameplay. Entire lines of inquiry or chunks of story are being sealed away from various characters, because when they choose to let x npc live or not, or take this route as opposed to that, or develop Hacking before Stealth ...it matters. Sure, we can share the experience and discuss things that one character did that another did not, and spoil things for each other and give advice. But the history of each character's progress through the game, and my gameplay experience as a player, is unique.

The effect I am looking for here is sort of a "Crying Game" or "Usual Suspects" effect: sure I knew what the spoiler was before I saw the movie, and the movie was good enough to pull it off anyway, but I was able to go back and experience the story as a whole and as a unit. The player should be able to have the emotional experience of carrying an alt through a story 'for the first time'.

What I fear the Devs are moving toward is more like "Lost" or where you can miss an episode or two, come back to the story, and be ...lost. "Oh, you weren't around when Back Alley Brawler died? Too bad, it was awesome. He used to be in this Strike Force we're playing through, but now he never was."

And as I said before, I respect both you and Venture, and if your perspective is that this is impractical, I'll accept that. I just wanted you guys to see my perspective and why I think it is not only practical, but worth one more try.

Well, let's back up a moment, and ask that question:

How would you balance Katana and Broadsword numerically, without adding/swapping mechanics, if the mandate was that Katana should continue to be faster with higher DPS, and that broadsword should have higher burst and/or higher DPA?

The sleep effect is a 'saving throw': you never want to see it, but if you do, it's because you needed it and the alternative was having no effect at all.

I like it.

Arcanaville is referring to teaming. A level 1 teaming with a level 50 is going to be seeing things that "haven't happened yet", while the 50 is seeing things they might have already done.

Personally, I don't see a problem with that, but that is technically 'imperfect consistency'.

You didn't, and I'm not saying you did.

Alright, if you and Venture both say it's impossible, I'll concede the point for now.

But I don't think anyone is asking for perfection here, just improvement; possibly retconned improvement.

I definitely want to see a dynamic storyline that changes. Heck, I want them to put the players in the drivers' seat of such changes.

I'd love to see some sort of 'indirect pvp' where villains are running an arc, collecting badges in order to get x to happen, while heroes are running the other side of the arc, collecting badges to prevent x or cause y to happen. Or something.

I just have this delusion that such things could be inserted into the storyline somewhere, complete with foreshadowing (at lower levels) and repurcussions (at higher levels).

I understand that spoilers will be spoilers, and that teaming breaks the storyline consistency, and I am perfectly okay with that gameplay compromise and ignoring it for purposes of mission writing.

Here is me acknowledging that.

The thing is, I don't mind content being added to the game that allows a path of progression I am personally not into. Let it exist for those who want it, that's fine.

I don't PvP often, but I would love to see the PvP improved in ways that brought hardcore PvPer's to the game in droves, so long as it did not negatively impact the PvE.

I don't base build much, but I desperately want Base functionality fixed and developed for those who love that aspect of the game.

I just don't want the parts of the game I prefer (mission/story/lore/history/customization/alting/soloing/easy teaming/casual play, etc) to be abandoned, so here I am, on the forums championing them.

Heck, I'd love them to launch an expanshalone for the asian market if they could get it to work, even if I could never actually play it. More money for them = more fun for me.

Love you. Don't ever change

My immediate thought is: make the subsequent story material locked behind a badge, then give a badge for completing the prerequisite story.

That way, you don't have characters who have never learned anything about the Rikti suddemly being thrust into that storyline with no background for it (teaming with players who have being an ignored aspect). You could even leverage it to include story elements such as running gags or returning nemeses that would only mean something to someone who had played through the prerequisite story.

Level progression = story progression could work the other way, too. Want to foreshadow the Rulu-shin? Just write a new story arc involving them at a lower level, and voila! Retroactive foreshadowing!

Cheap? Maybe, but done consistently, it would work.

I'd love to someday see a feature where I could review a character's history and follow their progression through the story, like reviewing back issues of a comic book (you can do this a little tiny bit with Clues and Ouroboros, sorta kinda). That can't be done if my previous adventures are bouncing all over the timeline without benefit of Ouroboros.

And I love them for that; seriously, don't ever change. If these people did things according to what is likely to be popular, we really would be playing "WoW in spandex" right now, and I'd rather have what we have.

But that brings up a good point. With Manticore the Dev gone, who is driving the story bus right now? Positron? War Witch? Black Pebble?

Xenosaga.

Your thoughts?

Thank you very much for the clarification.

It looks like you are going to get your wish: "Who Will Die?" is going to be the stake and the garlic. Whoever dies is not going to die in the 'level era' of post-50 content, but apparently retroactively throughout the game. Therefore, content that they took place in, they will suddenly never have been in, because that content will now have taken place after they died...

But that just feels inconsistent and bad to me. YMMV.

At such a point, I personally would rather rename the game City of Quantum Leap, start everyone off in Ouroboros, and have the entire game be about us leaping into different time periods to solve various problems. Just replace all of the 'mission entrance' blurbs with the date and time that the mission was written.

Do I think such a 'magic bullet' would be flawless? No.

Do I think it's still an interesting question because someone, and probably someone within the USA, will give it a try during our lifetime? Yes.

I personally knew a young genius as much as 30 years ago who was interested in working on what he called "a beneficial form of cancer". No idea where he is or what he's up to now...

It's a theme that came up in a D&D 4 game also that I ran, where I took Hickman (not you!) and Weiss' Ravenloft 2 and converted it to the system. In that module, our local Baron Frankenstein expy invents a machine that can extract evil out of people. In my adaptation, his original idea was to extract evil from people, install the evil in helpless, limbless reanimated corpses, then kill those bodies. But then, one of the evil essences (his own, of course) managed to get ahold of a useful body, and then ahold of the device...

Mad science gone awry aside, my group had a great time debating the ethics of having a device in their hands that could literally abolish evil. The fact that one of the party members was a Paladin, and another was Lawful Neutral (dashing headlong at full steam toward evil) made things even more interesting.

Personally, I find it interesting that no one mentioned the possibly deleterious effect of a genetically-derived conscience on the military or law enforcement.

If this hypothetical tech were invented, choosing NOT to use it would also be a moral/ethical choice.

Speaking of which, the responses seem to be overwhelmingly in favor of not curing psychopathy or sociopathy with a retrovirus.

Is that because medicines should not be developed that can potentially change the human psyche and personality? Because that particular ship seems to have sailed...

I beleive the walls of text are a way of addressing a player complaint.

If you are not the mission holder in a mission, much of the text explaining what you are doing and why is not visible to you. One answer? NPCs that give exposition in dialogue. To a point, I think it's an improvement.

One of the symptoms of ADHD is an inability to restrain emotional responses to appropriate levels, so for the purposes of this discussion, let's call that aspect of ADHD an intermittent sociopathic disorder.

In my mind, the retrovirus works like this: when you consider an antisocial act, you should trigger a chemical reponse in your brain that causes an emotional aversion proportionate to what society has taught you.

For example, an experimental scientist starts poking you repeatedly in the ribs with a finger. You think, "If I beat him unconscious, he'll stop that." You then suffer an appropriate level of aversion: fear, shame, etc.

If you are from a stereotypically British society, this aversion might be so strong, you will ignore several pokes before it becomes appropriate to ask why you are being poked.

If you are from an equally stereotypical prison, the aversion is probably so weak that you scarcely notice it, because beating a person down for that is appropriate or even required in your culture.

A sociopathic person's chemical generators and/or receptors (in this scenario) are damaged, so the aversion feeling is never generated or felt. They may choose not to beat you down for logical reasons, or seek revenge in some more subtle matter, but they certainly feel no aversion to the inappropriate response.

A psychopathic person's pattern recognizers are broken. They don't trigger an aversion response because they do not recognize that beating you down is in fact inappropriate.

The imaginary retrovirus repairs the generators, receptors and recognizers, so that the subject feels the normal degree of emotional aversion.

In this case, the ADHD sufferer may still want to beat you down, but the ADHD does not prevent them from feeling an aversion to doing so. If they do beat you down, you can rest assured it is a conscious decision and not a reflex. If that makes you feel any better...

Can you clarify, please?

You mean like a given month's SSA and holiday events are the only things going on that month, and other missions you take happened years ago, quite possibly before you were ever a superhero (if it is a new post Galaxy character)?

Although a content update would be nice, I think a lot could be done just by organizing Contacts by content, and having a few new 'hub' Contacts that send you to the appropriately levelled guy in the chain.

Perhaps you misunderstand.

In my idea, what is 'current' is determined solely (or at least primarily) by the level in which you encounter it, regardless of the memories of us old fogies. This is similar to how Franklin Richards has only aged 5 years since 1968, while in the meantime, Kitty Pryde has gone from a precocious young teen to a young adult since her debut in 1980.

So if you are level 35, the missions you get from Technician Naylor or Indigo or whoever are 'current'.

Something like Twinshot's arc (levels 5-20) would need text rewrites to happen 'before' characters start arriving en masse from Praetoria (20+), which event would happen prior to being sent there by Tina MacIntyre (35+) etc.

These are just text changes; hopefully immune to the Code Rant.

THIS!

Oh and welcome back!

Maybe someone similar to Hero Corps/Fateweavers, that allow you to select a chain of enemy groups and follow that story.

BRILLIANT!