Mr_Squid

Nope. In fact, you could easily let players have their cake and eat it if you said the REAL world was destroyed by you, but there's an alternate dimension where you decided to let everything be, and that's the one you can keep playing in. You could still go visit the apocalyptic real world any time you wanted though.

Hrm. Valid point. I'm not exactly sure that sort of redefinition has happened with CoH yet except with a very small percentage of the playerbase, but I will agree that viewing the story as an integral part is a perfectly valid way to play the game.

Okay, shutting up now, I jacked this thread to hell and back.

You're both humiliating yourselves. None of this is making you look any more intelligent, it's only making you look whiny and pretentious.

Taser, I admire your guts for calling out Venture when so many other people seem to be afraid too for some reason, but going "LET'S SEE YOU DO BETTER" is in no way a rational response to the original argument. Now you're just attacking him to try and make him look bad, not trying to refute his original points.

Venture, you're just as bad because you fell for it. Did you honestly think Taser was going to end up liking your arc? No. He's just trying to knock you down a few pegs. Yet for some reason you played right into his hand and now you're in the middle of a shouting match that's going nowhere. As they say elsewhere: "Don't feed the trolls", and you seem incapable of following that rule.

God, you're all like a bunch of 12 year olds who think they're smart because they can quote things and write walls of text! Get down off your high horses, and grow the hell up. Nobody likes your holier than thou attitude.

That goes for you too Eva. And Sam on bad days. Golden Girl...uh...you have a completely different problem.

Because story is useful for giving context to the player's actions. And unless the game relies on a very simple set of mechanics, a story is helpful to show the player what needs to be done. Games are almost always build around mechanics, and stories are added in later to justify the existence of those mechanics.

To use a recent (unnamed) game as an example: Why give the players a gun with a chainsaw attached? The answer the game gives the players is: Because you need that chainsaw gun to kill the dino-men living underground. But the actual answer is "because it's cool". Story is merely used to provide context, the game is not built around it.

Now in City of Heroes, a player can use the narrative to provide justification for why they're running through warehouses beating up robots made of junk. But one of the reasons that City of Heroes works so well, is that that justification is unnecessary. A player can justify their actions based on the simple fact that taking those actions is fun.

You seem to be acting under the assumption that me saying City of Heroes is not an RPG is a slight against it. It's not. In fact, it's better off for not requiring the player to role play, because it's nature as a digital game and not a tabletop one would require it's creators to put far more effort into creating role playing systems then they would on well designed and meaningful content. That's why I consider story to be secondary in this game, and in fact in any game. The main reason to play any game is for the interaction between the player and the game's mechanics and systems, not between the player and it's story, and if the creators of games operate under the assumption that story is more important than mechanics, the mechanics will end up suffering for it and the game will be less enjoyable over all.

I've only seen a few videogames ever come close to true roleplaying, and frankly, they're rather boring. Take a look at Facade for instance. This game's hook is that it has an incredibly complex conversation algorithm which allows the characters to react to just about anything the player types in a realistic fashion. I would call this a true video role playing game, because it requires the player to act in character to win. But is it fun? Not really. All the effort clearly went into making the character's actions as realistic as possible, not on creating anything that looked good, sounded good, or was in any way remotely fun.

Let me sum up my thoughts here. A true Role Playing Game requires the player to PLAY A ROLE. They must embrace the mentality and characteristics of a fictional character and act out that character in order to win. The story in such a game is essential because without it, the player cannot base their actions upon anything.

City of Heroes is not a Role Playing Game because it does not require the player to act in character to win, or even to follow the story to win.

Now granted, some people play D&D just for the combat really, and then it stops being an RPG and starts being a character building game. That's perfectly fine though; if the DM is fine with just running a good ol' fashioned dungeon crawl, then go for it.

However, every D&D game I've been in (and run) has always kept the story as the primary focus, and the resolution of the narrative is the primary focus of play, as opposed to the killing of monsters. I've seen many a DM get fed up by a player who keeps trying to stab the king, or just run around naked the whole time, and threaten them with the infamous falling rocks of death.

But even better is when I've seen a DM take such things in stride, and actually work the player's nonsensical, random actions into the game. The story keeps moving forward no matter what the player does. Yeah, the story might end anticlimactically with the player being hauled off and beheaded for urinating in the throne room while yelling "I'MA FIRIN MAH LAZER PEW PEW!" but it never grinds to a halt and waits for the player to make the correct choice before moving forward. A story will be told, no matter what.

True. A good role playing game needs a good story. Except that; and I'm fully aware of how crazy this is going to sound:

City of Heroes is not an RPG. It never was. And neither is any other MMO on the market.

Why? Because role playing games use the ability of acting in character as the primary means of interacting with the game and advancing the story. A role playing game requires the player to act in character at all times, in order to keep the world immersive and unified. City of Heroes is not like this, and neither is any other MMO. Acting in character is not required at all, in fact, almost nobody acts in character while playing. Why? Because there's no point to it. Unlike in a tabletop role playing game where the GM can dynamically react to each PC's actions, a digital game by it's very nature must have a limited set of responses. You can run right up to your contacts and pretend to pick their nose, and absolutely nothing will happen, until you agree to say exactly what you are supposed to say and do exactly what you are supposed to do.

Not only that, but role playing might actually make the game more needlessly difficult when interacting with other players; because let's face it, unlike in a tabletop game where a GM can go easy on players if they do a good job role playing, a game like City of Heroes will keep an even level of difficulty the entire time. Staying in character and having in character experiences isn't the game's main hook, winning is. If a group of players took it upon themselves to never ever act beyond their character's own knowledge, or use explicit knowledge of the game's mechanics to their advantage the game would become nearly impossible.

To put it bluntly, the reason City of Heroes is not an RPG is because there is no incentive to role playing. There are plenty of incentives for acting out of character though, and can you really blame the player's for doing so when they know that no matter what actions they take or what things they say the game's world is always going to remain static? You could never read any of the flavor text in the entire game and still get all the way to level 50. If you can do that, then it's not a role playing game.

This is an ongoing debate in the game design community, in that a lot of people (myself included), don't think that there has EVER BEEN A ROLE PLAYING VIDEO GAME. There are games that let you build characters, yes, and games that let you decide your character's characterization, but because there are only a limited amount of responses to any one of your actions, the game can never evolve past what was already programmed into it, and the character's actions can never have any effects beyond what effects the game's creators programmed in.

Perhaps the entire genre needs a name change. Maybe "Role Playing Game" should be reserved for games in which creating and acting in character is essential, whereas video games that try to emulate it should be called something else. I would say the central focus of City of Heroes, and in fact any so called "RPG" is character BUILDING, not character PERFORMING. Actually, that might make a good new name; CBG, for "Character Building Game". Perhaps we should call City of Heroes an MMOCBG? I'd be content with that.

He IS nothing. The space beyond reality, though it contains to actual matter, has a sly, malevolent intelligence. As Lord Kron grows more powerful the physical world around him begins to decay and atrophy, as the void begins to leak through. One he hits full power, he won't even have a physical form anymore, he'll just be a humanoid shaped hole in reality.

Man I really wish the forums would take a page out of Facebook and let me like posts, because this made my freakin' day.

Actually, hell, new sig.

SQUID'S LIST OF THINGS THAT BUG HIM ABOUT MOVIES!
1. Post-converted 3D.

Now don't get me wrong. I love 3D when it's done well. Every movie I've seen that was filmed in 3D and made from the ground up for 3D (a.k.a. Avatar and Transformers: Dark of the Moon. So...uh...all two of them) has looked amazing! The problem comes in when movies that were clearly not intended for 3D are converted after the fact. This annoys me not because the 3D is hard to notice, but because it makes the movie DARK AS ALL HELL! Seriously, I couldn't see a damn thing half the time in this movie because the damn 3D glasses dimmed everything down! That big fight they had on the ship was in broad daylight, yet because they didn't bother to up their damn contrast and brightness it looked like dusk!

2. Really fast editing during fight sequences.

For some reason a lot of fight scenes nowadays seem to be nothing but a series of one or two second shots all strung together really damn fast. Apparently this is supposed to make the action "frantic", "visceral", and "gritty". It doesn't. It makes it so I can't tell what the hell is going on. Fight scenes seem to be at their best when they're not too detached from the action, but the camera takes enough of a step back to observe. Look at the Star Wars prequels or the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies to see fight scenes done really well. They're creative, fast, but allow the viewer to take time to see what's happening.

3. The sidekick.

Why does every damn movie need a sidekick? Nobody likes them, they're annoying and contribute nothing! This movie was especially egregious (hurr hurr, I love that word) with it, when that thief guy just kind of showed up for the third act, did some utterly superfluous stuff, and then left. What was the point? He just picked some locks and screamed a bunch, why did he need to be there? It's like Hollywood execs think that there always need someone for the hero to talk to, onscreen, ALWAYS. And speaking of people to talk to...

4. The "strong" "independent" damsel in distress.

Granted, this trope is so old that picking on it now is kind of a moot point, but it needs to be said. Every damn adventure movie has a love interest. Every damn one of these chicks acts all "Ha, i'm a strong and confident young lady who's a role model for the little girls!" And every damn one of them has to get kidnapped because they make a bafflingly stupid decision. Like in this movie, why did princess whatsherface just run off after she and Conan had the obligatory sex scene? I guess she was going back to the ship but why did she go through a forest then? Why didn't she just poke Conan and have him escort her back? I mean, it kind of has to happen now, the chick has to get kidnapped, but could you at least have her get kidnapped because the villains are smart? Not because she's dumb?

So yeah, all in all an alright movie, not one I would say anyone would have to go see right now, but if you've got an afternoon to kill and can find it in 2D, well, there's far worse ways to spend two hours.

Ah...yet another reminder as to why I've stuck around on these forums for seven years.

And in Mender Ramiel's first mission you fight it out with a bunch of Archvillains on the remains of the Citadel of Ouroboros, halfway sunk into the sea, while a bunch of Hamidon tentacles flail about, which would kind of imply to me that all the other echoes you fight bought it already, ruling them out.

Granted that's a big logical jump to make, but I do like to think of that mission as taking place in a future where the Hamidon won.

Though maybe that's because City of Heroes gives you essentially an unlimited amount of freedom with your backstory, which I would consider to be a good thing since it allows players to play the sort of character's they've always wanted to. The game actively encourages you to create these bizarre backstories in fact, just take say, Demon Summoning for instance. Demon Summoning is clearly themed around summoning magical creatures though magical means, but the game lets you give a Demon Summoner any origin you want.

Though that does lead to some problems in that people who are very protective of their backstories tend to get a little miffed whenever the game directly contradicts them. I don't think there's anything that can be done about this though, as the game as a necessity has to operate without any sort of knowledge of your backstory. I guess the game COULD be written so that it remains completely neutral in terms of all your character's traits, but that would probably end up making the writing rather bland in the end.

Personally I would say write the backstory you want, regardless of the canon, and just mentally disregard anything that clashes. I mean both of my favorite characters are essentially creator gods, one who made the entire universe and one who tried to destroy it. That screws canon eight ways from Sunday, but I do it anyway since I like their story concepts.

I've started to hear this argument a lot and I've normally assumed it to be semi-sarcastic in nature. But the more I hear of it the more I begin to wonder if people who make it are actually being serious. Do you for instance actually enjoy this sort of inconsistency? I mean I doubt this sort of this is intentional, but as long as there's a large enough population of players out there who actively enjoy the crazy, CRAZY world of comic book style continuity then the less reason I see to go back and iron everything out.

Huh, I really guess it depends on which people play more, the comic book geeks or the RPG nerds...