Melancton

Bill, you certainly get whimsical when you deploy the smiling kitteh avatar.

There is a vast difference between 1) nobody ever dies 2) it is possible that some deaths may occur 3) important characters could die along with anyone else 4) important characters get killed for shock value.

I do not object to the death of characters, even Statesman. I do object to to the notion that Statesman would die with a Big Smile™ on his face at the hand of his daughter's murderer. Shortly thereafter, Statesman's granddaughter resurrects the evil love interest of her evil great uncle on the off-chance it will make him less evil, but not a word is devoted to why she would not resurrect her own mother and/or grandfather. This isn't Cyrus Thompson-level writing here; that is simply pathetic.

I understand that there are players who want to play their characters like The Punisher and kill, judge/jury/executioner style, every bad guy they encounter. CoH wisely took the official stance that the bad guys are simply "defeated" by the player; what that means is up to the player. If they are all arrested and left hanging in webbing for the police or all shot down a killed, that is up to the player.

But I have to agree with Sam that from the top down, the game is getting progressively more dark and futile. Regardless of player actions, various bad things happen. Indeed, in one of the tip missions, a hero who has been transformed by the Devouring Earth begs to be "put out of his misery" and thanks you for obviously killing him. So, like it or not, the player is forced to kill, whereas before, defeating a foe did not mean that. Ain't that a fine kettle of fish. Or someone dies regardless, because Life is Pain, Princess, There is No Good or Evil and Then You Die sort messaging or something. Whatever it officially is, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So I now avoid such story lines, which unfortunately, I am discovering, lets out a lot of newer stuff.

If the game "officially" flows in a neutrally-worded "Silver Age" fashion, the individual player can spice it up to "Punisher" style by simple decree that they killed every bad guy they encountered. But if the game "officially" takes the "Punisher" position, it is nigh-well impossible to play it any other way when the game says that you killed someone. Further, if death, despair and futility are going to be the rewards in an existential world in which "there are only shades of gray," that is simply not attractive writing as I perceive it. My two cents.

...and several hundred Forumites all take a drink.


Reminds me of one of my favorite threads from Yesteryear: "Generic Rant."

Besides, it is far more environmentally friendly to have Mother Nature's children do it.

She and Troy Hickman are the two most prominent creative forces that are sitting on the bench instead of in the game. Hey Devs, they could be consultants for specific projects if you don't want them on the regular payroll, hint hint.

Chariot racing done a la CoH?? The mind boggles. Tres spiffy, indeed!

The race goes on, Judah...

This comment bemused me greatly.

Darth Khasei made a point. I take it that you disagreed with him? Likewise,

I freely admit that I have been Hoist On A Semantic Petard in the title of my original post in that SSAs indeed count as Content. But here is what I actually asked in the post:

I am going to take it that you would not.

They are merely a recipient of resources, like anything else would be.

This is the key. This may be 100% the situation. I would not know.

Obviously, if the SSAs are hugely helpful to the game overall, that is the way things will roll, and that is still fine with me, as I want the game to hang around. I don't play every AT or powerset, so I am fine with content that may not float my particular boat.

That is what I was curious about. Nice discussion going.

I zero'ed in on this phrase because I had not considered this possibility: Perhaps my lack of enthusiasm for more SSAs and their non-interactive mechanics was due to my dismay over the actual story as presented in the now-completed SSA.

At this juncture, I am having difficulty imagining a rip-roaring story that I would have enjoyed that entailed my lack of participation in a similar way. But that could easily exist and I just don't realize it.

My thought has been that if we are going to go the "episodic, non-participatory content" route, then revive the CoH comic with Troy Hickman and David Nakayama, put it online and charge for it. You could even hold a contest and have the winning player character be a participant in a story arc. I have every confidence that Troy Hickman could take any PC and make a compelling story with them. Look what he did with Statesman!

What??? I always thought the correct response was to watch in awe as he summoned his light saber, leapt high into the air and cut me in half! I never thought about doing what you just said there!

*writes feverishly in Villain Notebook*

But wait, he planned this for ten years, perfectly anticipating every move and countermove and countercountermove so that Batman, Nemesis and Jim Phelps were all impressed.

You mean in ten years's time he forgot to check out whether the whole thing would actually work??

That would be "Let Me Murder Malaise While In Legal Custody" True Hero Manticore?

Boy, is he ever putting on airs if he cannot tolerate Vigilantes and Rogues and must therefore attack them.

Well, within the storyline it was.

This arc has introduced some great graphic advances, but it was, shall we say, not exactly a shining moment for the story writers. Here's to better things overall with the next arc.

You were supposed to walk into the Obvious Trap(tm)!

*mashes "Devs, Hire This Woman!" button several times more*

********SPOILERS for the "Who Will Die?" arc herein**********









Well, part of the problem was that they PUBLICIZED the storyline, both by revealing "Who Will Die" and then commenting a good deal about it, as I detailed previously. So I was told that the "how" of Statesman's death was going to be of major interest and the death scene itself would be "stirring." It proved to be the opposite.

Positron's published comments about "killing off" the Statesman character told me that Sister Pysche, the other of Jack Emmert's creations, was as dead as a red shirt on Star Trek at that point. And gosh, she got killed. Again. By Manticore. What does that make, THREE TIMES?? But the third time is the charm, apparently.

As you said, there were any number of positives that Marketing could have focused on regarding episodes 6 and 7, but could it be that the feedback from the playerbase suggested that things were not being so well received and they just held their piece? Or did they just not have a plan?

I can think of a number of instances in which the death of a major character in an established franchise was 1) a surprise and a shock and 2) noble and heroic and the public responded quite favorably. Here, we did not even have the Joss Whedon random knockoffs for shock value-- it was apparently Jack's creations only, with shock value as sort of a bonus.

There is still lots to love about CoH, so here I am still, but the way this whole business was publicized has me as mystified as yourself.

*****My response does get somewhat Spoilerish for some smaller aspects of the arc, so be advised before proceeding.****





I had a number of feelings about WWD, and they changed as a result of the marketing, and have gotten progressively more negative.

Initially, I thought that the "Who Will Die?" concept was pretty gimicky, but it looked like it had the potential to be interesting and innovative in the game play.

The Ante was considerably upped when on December 13, the Loader splashscreen announced that Statesman was the one to die. Poor Zwillinger was selected as the messenger, and dutifully delivered this spin:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...4&postcount=21
That raised the bar pretty high right there. A stirring death scene? I imagined Statesman heroically holding off hordes of foes who killed him bit by bit but in so doing, he saved a) you b) the other members of the Phalanx and/or c) the world.

I cannot describe what a Crash and Burn my expectations did when Statesman talked some smack and then WALKED into an Obvious Trap(tm) and "welcomed his death" with a big smile on his face in the space of a few moments at the hands of his daughter's murderer.

Big, big black mark right there. For me, the death scene was not stirring, it was infuriating.

But then to add insult to injury, here comes Positron sounding utterly petty about the motivation for "killing off" Statesman:

"Veterans of the game know that the character [Statesman] was the namesake of Jack Emmert, who was the lead designer who originally launched City of Heroes in 2004. Jack posted as Statesman in the forums, came up with his backstory, and was instrumental in the character becoming the original poster-boy for the game's marketing. Killing off the character meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me it was the ultimate declaration that City of Heroes has grown up and left the nest from which it was born." -- Matt Miller, Intrepid Informer Issue 17.

That sounded horrible, whatever the intentions were. Another black mark.

Even the great graphic by David Nakayama for episode 5, showing Statesman and Wade in combat turned out to be something else entirely within the presentation. Talk about a bait and switch.

Then there was the whole way that Alexis was summarily murdered with the Idiot Ball for the heroes thing and the utter impotence of the player character in the story, and a bunch of other sloppy writing. To coin the meme for this sorry arc, DO NOT WANT.

So here I am, paying my VIP stipend each month to support an arc that has left a bad taste in my mouth every time, instead of something else I might like, ie, costumes, powersets, etc.

I have no plans to play episode 7. I am utterly indifferent to it. Big whoop. I will hold out a small hope that the next arc will not be the train wreck this one has been, since I get to pay for it anyway in the course of enjoying the aspects of the game that are great.

I always heard this was a sign of staph infection as opposed to staff fighting.