Samuel_Tow
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Posts
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Joined
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Are we sure it's a Live publish?
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Quote:Presumably, because she's an OBJECT of affection for another man, and an OBJECT of responsibility for another man besides that. Alexis is a plot device, essentially, which makes her death extra undignified. I guess the story is shooting for gritty realism, but I'm starting to develop road rash from so much grit in games these days.Originally Posted by Issen
Also, anyone who did it Redside. Do we know WHY they wanted Alexis dead? Was there any reason given? -
Quote:That's not a bad idea. I have a better one, though. How about I play none of them at all? That will solve pretty much everything. Well, except for First Ward and the new low-level content, but I can simply not play that, either. I'm starting to wonder at which point I will "not play" the vast majority of the game. Because it's getting there.Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
If you hate the villain-side SSAs so much why don't you play the hero ones?
*edit*
And I'm the only one who feels this way? Have you read the thread you replied in? -
Quote:That's a pretty big fallacy you used up there.Originally Posted by BrandX
Not to mention, this SSA gives the villains the chance to do what they say they've wanted to do (kill people) then complain when they get the chance to? o.O
"Villains" are not a monolithic whole with common goals, ideas and preferences. To present "kill people" as the villainous thing to do is, to me at least, a profound misunderstanding of what villains have needed since day one of City of Villains. Check out any FPS and you'll find good, unambiguous heroes killing people. Torture, murder and **** do make people evil and do make characters into villains. They just don't make them into villains I want to play as.
By contrast, what villains have needed since villains have existed in this game is independence. For all time, they have been lackeys and henchmen and fall guys for the various named characters, and regardless of what Darryn might say, this is still the case. A truly interesting, cool villain is independent, free to plot his own schemes and through his cunning, audacity or success is he a great villain. Murder doesn't have to enter into it, not intrinsically, at least.
Example: Let's look at the Teen Titans animated series and resident bad guy Slade, aka Deathstroke the Terminator from the comic books. I'm struggling to remember, but I'm pretty sure that at no point did he actually kill anyone. Excluding that one Zone Sama flash animation, he mostly just manipulated people and ran a sinister organisation which came close to success on multiple occasions. Granted, it's for kids, but it still manages to be very dark at times, very powerful at others, and still have a cool villain I'd play as in a heartbeat. And all of this without needing any "mature" themes.
Pushing your rating once is a sign of an edgy idea. Pushing your rating all the damn time is a sign of pretentious writing. -
Quote:The War Wolves have their own unique animations. To make this work for players, who have close-fist animations, would require new tech - a new hand rig in this case.Originally Posted by Slaunyeh
Dibs on not telling the war wolves!
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Last I checked, around half the Titan Weapons idle animations were still bugged. I doubt we'll see a new publish with fixes that didn't show up on Beta or Test.
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Quote:The moment Jean said "You are next." is the moment I knew I wouldn't be playing any of the other SSAs, because what you describe is probably what's going to happen. I simply have no interest in seeing that. I've had enough of characters being tortured and dehumanised to pander to the public's bloodlust.Originally Posted by Arctic_Princess
He'll either drive her mad - cue Heroes fighting her and trying to find a way to restore her sanity. Or he'll attempt to override her and then we've got extremely unstable psychic, possibly capable of mindriding (wonder if mindriding would work on States with his 'mind of a god'?) on our hands.
And they probably will.Quote:Originally Posted by Ironblade
Really? Who?
Alexis is irrelevant to the 'Who Will Die?' title. They can kill 10 other background characters if they want. One of the 'big name' heroes will die. -
Quote:Honestly, I wasn't expecting the SSAs to be great. Nothing told in three missions could, and the disjointed nature in which they come together as a cohesive narrative prevents the whole set from coming off like a single episodic story. At no point did I ever believe those would actually be worth paying for - again, three missions and all that.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Edit: It's OT for this thread, but some folks are of the opinion that because the SSAs are "paid for" content, that they should be a step above in fiction. I can't say this view is wrong, but that's not the only mark of something that, in theory, had money "set aside" for its development. Time was clearly invested in these arcs in terms of creating contacts, mission environments, applying unusual mechanics, and yes, writing a story that's (for better or worse) more complex than normal. I think it's completely fair that we should expect that time to be invested well, but the balance is going to be all over the map in what each of us thinks should have gotten most of the investment. Should it be the writing? The mission map tilesets? The critters and their powersets? I am not jumping out of my seat about what we got here, but I don't hate it, and I don't expect great shakes from its fiction. There are things I'd like done differently in the future. Hopefully the creators are reading these threads and will improve them over time. If not, well ... I guess VIPs will probably still play them and gripe, and Premiums won't buy them.
But what seems to have come of them is even less than I expected. It's not necessarily "bad," in the sense that these arcs clearly had very high production values, but like Spider-Man 3, they seem to have focused too much on sensationalism in both design and storytelling and too little on making something that we'll remember fondly and, above all else, go back to. We have deaths of established (sometimes) characters, we have large extravagant custom maps, we have unique gimmicks galore, but it all comes off like a shock and awe thrill ride in an amusement part - lots of fanfare, but very little substance.
In essence, the SSAs are trying so hard to shock me, they shocked me out of my desire to play them. At one point I might have accused the writers of not trying hard enough, but now that I've seen them try way too hard... It's actually worse. -
The "self-targeting cone" has me a bit concerned. It's not the difficulty of using it that concerns me, but rather more so that my character has to be facing in the direction I want to aim the attack, therefore facing his or her back towards me. I go to great lengths to rotate my camera around my battlefield as I fight so I'm not constantly staring at my character's back, and this could potentially upset this.
That said, Judgement powers are on too long a timer for an occasional quirk like that to make much of a difference. -
Majin Buu sells keyboards? Awesome!
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Quote:That one story or, hell, the whole SSA morbid fascination with brutal killings of beloved characters isn't my gripe, really. If it were JUST that, I'd have seen past it, but it isn't. Everything since Going Rogue has been like this. At one point I thought that... OK, Praetorian Earth is a crapsack world where nothing ever goes right and everyone is always miserable. I guess that could work. But then it started creeping into legacy content. First it was Alignment missions, with villain missions always disgusting and unpleasant. Then we lost the original legacy content, to be replaced with mass graves at Fort Darwin where armour-clad men kick dehumanised women in the ribs repeatedly and with hideous moral ambiguity in the Atlas Park content.Originally Posted by UberGuy
They're doing it because they were asked to. CoV was cartoon villainy. This is dark villainy. Everything is going to lie somewhere on the spectrum. Could they have chosen some other spot in the spectrum? Yeah. Could they give us (more of) a choice? Yeah. To me, that about execution, and less about the goal they were shooting for. I don't think this had great execution. But I think the target was where people have been asking them to shoot for a long time. I get that it might not appeal to you, but I also think that might just be unavoidable.
My gripe is that we DON'T have a choice, because all new content for the last year has been depressing. And, yes, you could say "Well, they're just making up for lost ground!" but I don't buy it. It seems to me that this is just what whoever is writing the stories thinks is "edgy" and "dramatic" because if that weren't the case, then maybe we'd have seen SOMETHING less depressing for a change, but we just haven't. In fact, the First Ward was so depressing that I have no interest in replaying it, and the SSAs are right next in line.
People keep telling me how much better the game is becoming and how much more content we have now, yet I see the content I actually want to play has only diminished. And the future looks to bring the same. -
Yet, much as I don't want to argue... I kind of have to.
Quote:Originally Posted by Liquid
I understand your opinion, and accept that it matches the decision that was made when Power Customization was implemented, but I'd like to say that for a lot of players, City of Heroes' strong point is customization. This game, more than any other game, allows the players to define what is "signature" to their character. It was disappointing when these decisions were made for us, when we could have used the sets to create so many more concepts (full Ruby Armor, bright energy clouds) if we'd had access to the color options that other sets have. Also, dark options were allowed for Energy Blast, Energy Melee, and Energy Aura, which are supposed to be positive energy; it seems inconsistent to not allow light options for negative energy.Both of these people have a point. I get that Dark powers are "abstract" and so harder to give effects for, but if people want to reinterpret them as something else, then it feels like they should be able to, provided there isn't some technical limitation (and there isn't: bright themes already exist as a "thing"). To my eyes, having someone pick a Dark power and give it a dark colour is no different than having someone pick a female character and make her very tall - it may not be what the development team had in mind when they made the thing, but ultimately, WE are the ones who play these things. If we like the look... What's the problem?Quote:Originally Posted by Kyriani
I'd like to point however that the limited palettes for what you consider "thematically correct" for "dark" powers are actually BRIGHTER than a "bright" option would give you. The limited "dark" palette is dull and flat. Any color you use is a pastel and so soft and wishy washy. A "bright" option using a dark color can actually look rich and powerful. Consider warshades. They use negative energy powers but their powers are of a "bright" palette yet still dark and negative themed.
And again - Warshades and Council Galaxies are proof positive that negative energy and dark powers CAN look very good in bright colours. Actually, Ghost Widow's "pastel darkness" in Soul Storm and Soul Tentacles isn't "dark" at all, yet that exists and it does actually look pretty good. Darkness is an abstract concept, and if someone interprets that abstraction as a brightly-coloured effect, then who does this hurt? How is this any different from (positive) energy effects being given a Dark theme? Why is it not odd to have dark fire or cold fire, yet it's odd to have bright darkness? Why, when it actually looks good? -
Quote:I want to dodge the argument about "controversial decisions" and instead focus on something I feel is pretty self-evident: Dark (Armour/Blast/Melee/Miasma) powers should be able to be coloured black. Based on your assertions of what constitutes a dark theme, I am justified in saying this, correct?Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
For a few powersets, we've decided to use unique palettes that give you more appropriate options for the theme. Personally, I feel that Dark powers, with all their in-game references to terror and the netherworld, as well as their Negative Energy damage type, should remain dark in color. This is important in preserving the theme of the power, and to distinguish it as a Negative Energy attack. That being said, however, there are a number of brighter, more saturated colors available in the "Dark" palette, so you can still create colorful combinations with Dark powersets.
Per chance I am, I have to point out that neither Dark Armour nor Dark Melee look good when coloured black. Moreover, neither Dark Melee nor Dark Armour look good when coloured any dark shade of any colour. They don't look good because they are almost entirely transparent and barely even there. I would assume that the visual effect of darkness would grow stronger the darker the effect became, but the opposite is true. The strongest most visible, solid effects are actually those which have been given bright primary and secondary colours. I mean, for instance bright blue darkness.
By contrast, Dark Armour and Dark Melee are barely even there when they're coloured black, leading me to suspect that Dark powers don't actually use a Dark theme, hence why they become more transparent as they grow darker. I can live with Dark powers not supporting bright colours, but if they're not going to support bright colours and white, they NEED to support dark colours and black much better than they do now. -
Quote:A couple of points.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Clearly, you rail against this sort of thing. I, on the other hand, appreciate it. Things like this make me hate villains. I like hating the villain, and I enjoy it more when they get their *** kicked if I hate them. The worst thing a story can do is make me not feel the antagonist is very villainous, in which case I will care less if they are defeated, and ultimately be less invested in a story which revolves around that goal.
1. I WAS that villain in this story. It's kind of hard to play a game in which I hate the character I made. That's why I've always rallied against requests for "more villainy" that comes down to GTA/Saint's Row random violence against innocent people. Ultimately, I still have to play through this game, and I won't if I'm disgusted.
2. If a story is too unpleasant, I won't get to its end. Period. I have a hard time hating villains, because the approach most authors take to making villains I'm supposed to hate makes me hate the authors more than the villains. And indeed, I am no longer interested in the SSA. If I could, I'd trade the Paragon Points these would have cost for something else, instead.
3. I, personally, have never been interested in villains I'm supposed to hate. They come off as two-dimensional cartoon characters, and it feels like the author is beating me over the head with what I'm supposed to feel. Once I realise that a villain is evil and he's supposed to fall, the story is essentially over. Unless the finale is right there, right then (and for the SSAs, that won't be for another five months), I'm no longer interested. Everything is clear, everything is decided, there is nothing more for the story to deliver but to repeat itself and to try to gross me out more.
When it comes to a good "hero vs. villain" story, I'm interested in complex, interesting characters on BOTH sides. I want a hero I can root for openly, and I want a villain I can envy secretly. I want a hero whose cause is justifiable, but whose motivation is still personal. I want a villain whose cause is wrong and reprehensible, but who's nevertheless so cool that I can't help wanting to see more of. I don't like one-sided narrative that tells me who I'm supposed to hate and who I'm supposed to like. I want a narrative that's fair to everybody, such that I want all of these guys - good and bad - to make it to the end and have an epic brawl right up to the credits. When a story makes me wish a character would just die RIGHT NOW in the middle of it, that's story is essentially over for me, and any length of time thereafter is simply unpleasant.
Building good stories through unpleasant plot twists is not something I'm interested. If a plot twist is unpleasant, the whole story becomes unpleasant, and if I'm expected to sit through it and hope for a resolution which never comes (and it won't, if someone HAS to die because the gods of the Final Destination movies will make it happen), that simply won't happen. When a comic book has a nasty plot twist, I flip ahead to see if it's resolved within the same issue. If a story is unpleasant, I skip ahead to see if it becomes less so. If a movie hurts me, I fast forward to see if it gets better. And if the result is either "no" or "not for a very long while" (as in Naruto, not for another five years and not for another 350+ episodes), then I find something better to do with my time that doesn't leave me walking away from my computer disgusted and depressed.
I don't need fiction to depress me. I actually do have a life outside this game, and that's plenty good enough to depress me and to give me people I hate. I don't know why Paragon Stuidos writing has been in the emo mode gutter since Going Rogue, but I'm simply not interested, and I never will be. That's not dramatic, it's just mean. So much for new content. -
Quote:That's precisely WHY it's exploitative. They introduced this woman into the game proper, did what they could to make her sympathetic, all with the sole reason of killing her off as a shock (or obvious, as the case may be) death. This is not good storytelling. It's little more than emotional blackmail. It strikes with me a similar cord to the young children in Soldier being forced to watch I think it was dogs beaten to death for no reason other than because it was gruesome and likely to sock them, which was something they were intended to become desensitised to.Originally Posted by Spectral_Ent
It wasn't exploitative in the least. She's showed up for all of 1 mission which odds are good you haven't done because it's an Oro task force, and that was her in the past. There's literally no emotion to exploit there apart from "someone died".
Actually, scratch that. Alexis' death strikes me more as similar to Lian Harper's death from Cry for Justice or the Wasp's death from Ultimatum - pointless, aimless shock deaths superficially intended to outrage their loved ones but practically intended to outrage ME as the audience. It's emotional blackmail because you have a character built up as good, yet this character's sole reason to exist in the story is to die horribly so as to torture others.
I never approved of the "Yay! We are going to kill an established character! Ratings!" mentality behind the SSAs, but at least I figured that something bad like this would make for a stronger story, like the death of Lt. Sefu Tendaji. Nope. We're diving head first into malicious comic book tropes of murdering, maining and ****** people (not yet, but soon, I have no doubt) for the sake of audience shock. Pass.
I didn't have to pay for these stories, and I'm glad for it. -
Quote:Wanna' bet?Originally Posted by Seek_Trouble
More like eat the sandwich your mother made you or go hungry. She will not make you a special sandwich with the crusts cut off just because you are picky.
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Quote:The descriptions on NPCs are often horrible, almost always recycled and very rarely interesting at all. Smoke and Mirrors Baron Zoria still has Akharist's old bio, all the Rikti still share the same description and few new critters are given anything more than a couple of sentences to their names. The few that are, like the Tsoo, are quite interesting to read about. The Council may have inherited the Column's vast and varied pool of descriptions for their old enemies, but all Mexican Lucha Libre wrestlers - otherwise known as the Galaxies, and all the Voids have the same descriptions between ranks. Hell, Alexis Cole-Duncan doesn't actually have a description in the first mission she shows up in, instead having the "This citizen has gotten in over her head!" placeholder.Originally Posted by LastLeprechaun
It may be worth pointing out that (I believe) all of the NPC's great and small in-game are held to the same restraints - and I don't recall myself feeling uninformed - and I get pretty click happy when it comes to COH content.
I stopped reading critter bios around four years ago because I'd read all the good ones and none of the new critters were given very interesting bios. Granted, the Pratorian critters are a nice exception some of the time, but even then critter descriptions can really use a lot more work. It took, what? A month before the Galaxy City Shivan bios stopped talking about Bloody Bay?
How much space do you think this constitutes? My PC has a 1TB drive. By my calculator, that's 1*073*741*824 bytes, or a billion characters. Even if we assume every player has 100 characters, that still comes up to 107 million players. I'm not sure even WoW has had this much through all of its churn. And that's MY hard drive.Quote:Originally Posted by Silver Gale
No there isn't, because the bio isn't a separate file on the server, it's a field in a database. That means for every character ever created in game, there is 1Kb of space in the database reserved for a bio, no matter how much text the player actually put in the field.
Doubling that would mean having to reserve an additional 1Kb for every character that exists on the servers currently, including those from Trial and banned accounts, and redoing all the estimates for "how many more characters can our databse hold before we have to get a bigger HD". It's a lot of work just to let a small segment of players write a little more about their characters.
Additionally, let's take a look at SG bases. One of the original justifications for base rent was that bases cost a lot of space to store, therefore players would have to show some activity, or else bases would be "archived" if left unpaid. Why not do this for the bio space? If so many people do indeed not make use of the bio field, then stop handing it out by default. Make it so that people have to specifically tick an option to make their bio field available to be written in, and until it is made available, simply don't reserve memory for it. That might actually save hard drive space if so few people use it.
Actually, let's look at space a little bit more. A costume file is around 7KB and a regular powers file around 11KB. I'm allowed to have ten of both, so JUST in appearance, I take up, what? 180KB? That's as many as 180 character bios, or 90 bios of double size. When I go into the architect and make a story arc, that story arc can take up to 100 or 200 KB (I don't remember). By default, I can make three of these, and I can buy many more. I'm not even sure if there's a hard limit to them, but I suspect I can buy at least up to 10 slots, and thus take up 1MB of space. Probably more. Yes, those are per account, but have you any idea how many characters I'd have to make to take up this much space with their bios? Over a thousand.
Of all the things associated with our characters, bio space strikes me as the least taxing. Well, probably short of name or title. But I shudder to think how much space just my badge information takes up, and I don't even have that many badges. -
Quote:I'm sure Superman was an icon of his time. Even though I'm not a Supes fan, I still see him as... Well, if not THE original super hero, then at least one of the grand daddies who started it all. Back in the day when people being faster than a bullet was amazing and Superman freaked people out by lifting a car, that sort of character would be perfect for his audience.Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Fair enough. Just to give you the background, that's the final version of the announcer's introduction to the classic Superman radio program (which was later adapted for the TV show). When the show debuted, Superman was only a couple of years old, and the superhero phenomenon as we know it today was just taking off. That opener presented not merely the protagonist to a new audience as a novel kind of legendary hero, but also his alter ego as his inverse - which is what makes Superman a compelling character. That's the authoritative character sketch that essentially introduced Superman, and the whole concept of the superhero, to the mainstream.
The original version was a bit shorter.
The problem is that this kind of simplicity is often lost in modern day fiction, for the simple reason that almost anything you come up with has been done before and said before. I've had much praised over the years for my original ideas both in character writing and in costume design, but the truth of the matter is I DON'T have any original ideas. I never have. The original Samuel Tow was, at the time of his creation, a mixture of Zero from Megaman, Samurai Jack, Konoko from Oni and I forget what else, if you put them all behind the wheel of speeding tractor trailers and smashed them into a single pile at enough speed so that a single character walks out of the wreckage.
I'm honestly not sure if there even ARE any original ideas left today, but even if they are, it takes a genius or a visionary to find them. What's left for relatively untalented people like me is taking other people's ideas, smashing them together until they stop resembling the source material and then focusing on presentation good enough to hide the evidence. Almost all of the characters I've made, and especially those I've received compliments over become incredibly stupid and silly if you boil them down to their core concept. The truth of the matter is... I got nothin'. So the only thing I have to offer, original ideas having failed, is presentation.
If I can spin an old idea in a new way, that makes for a good story and an interesting character, but if I simply list all the properties of the old idea... Well, it's still an old idea that probably wasn't all that good to begin with. Case in point: Insane Rick. As a gag, he's funny... Somewhat. As an idea, he looks original, but is really just one of a hundred thousand headless character that came out at the time. As a story... There really is no room for any depth, any character or anything that's actually interesting to read about past laughing at a silly caricature. For what it's worth, Insane Rick still exists, as I haven't gotten around to deleting him (if anyone wants the name on Victory, let me know), but he's just a stupid character I no longer want anything to do with.
Granted, his bio isn't short by any stretch, but I could have summed it in a single sentence, and it would have been WORSE. At least when it's long, I can mask the flat character behind jokes and attempted wit, but when I sum him down to his actual personality... He's a joke. And not a very funny joke, at that. Rick, it turns out, is a lesson in writing: Always think before you commit. I will not make the same mistake twice. -
Quote:This was a bit weird for me. Granted, it was mostly weird because I played it with Tyler, who is believes that all humanity needs to be removed from the planet for his new race of machines to be given a clean start, so I'm obviously errant of the plot just to begin with, and I can't really hold it against the writing. What was weird for me, though, is that this arc still found someone for us to serve. I was about to complain that my character is all buddy-buddy with Darryn and eager to please, but then I remembered I'd sold myself to the Marshal from the start, and it got me thinking...Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
When I did the villainside version, I ran it with Profiteer, my Mercs/TA MM. When I got to that last mish and she's in the circle, and Wade goes, "Go for it," my response was to reply in-character, "Sorry, dude, you didn't contract me for a hit, just for a kidnapping. You want her offed, do it yourself."
Why do our villains constantly get roped into serving in someone's grand scheme? I know Darryn goes out of his way to say "You are an equal!" pretty much out of context, just so that I can't make that complaint. It's just the same way all the Freedom Phalanx in Maria Jenkins' missions say "This is your mission, I'm just here to help, you lead the way, I follow, you're the hero of this story, now stop whining about it on the forums, ya sissy!" But even so, it's his plan, his plot, his story. I'm just tagging along. WHY am I always tagging along with other villains?
For heroes, I get it. You want to do the right thing, other people know how you can do the right thing, you do what other people say. It makes sense. But for villains? I got a bad taste in my mouth being asked to kill Alexis (even though Tyler would offer without a second thougth, since he sees humans as vermin), but when that was done, I wanted to punch Darryn, too. I don't know if I'm playing a Chaotic Stupid character who just wants to screw over everybody of if the story just made me hate Darryn, but being all giddy to follow his plan just seems... Odd.
This is a recurring complaint of mine that dates as far back as 2005 - we're henchmen. When I say that we can still use the existing contact system and just claim that we're following our own plots, I mean for the NARRATIVE to say this. Because even though Darryn says "You're an equal..." I still followed his plan, I still followed his orders. We're equals... But it's still his plan and his story. It is, in essence, Dr. Graves all over again, minus the humiliation.
Honestly, I'm too tired to argue the same points every time, but I just feel compelled over and over again. If we're going to involve player villains in major storylines, they need to be involved as progenitors, not opportunistic side characters. You can give them all the limelight in the world, but if they're following orders, they're still second fiddle. Dean McArthur and Leonard did it right. Sure, it was railroading. Sure, I were still following contact instructions. But at the same time, both contacts were working for me and were helping me and, when push came to shove, this was still MY story. I didn't get to pick what it was, granted, but it was still ABOUT me.
Oddly enough, I wouldn't have minded if our villains were superfluous to the events in the SSAs. I got involved, I busted some heads, I made some waves, but it turns out a guy with an Easter Island head is weaving a grand tapestry. Not interested, so I turn around and leave. Yes, it would have wasted my time, but I'd still have liked it, because I'd sooner waste my time by my choice than devote it to someone else's cause.
It's 3 AM and I'm not making any sense, but here's the jist of it: I wanted an option to punch Darryn Wayde, but one didn't show up. I get why we can't kill him, but at least reminding him of the third option would have been fun. -
Quote:I mean no disrespect, but that's neither informative nor gripping.Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Incidentally, here's one of the most magnificent superhero biographies* of all time:
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! Yes, it's Superman! Strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!
It's gripping, informative, and not even 500 characters.
It's not informative in that it describes just what Super Man can do in the style of giants like John Henry or Paul Bunyon, but leaves off pretty much everything that actually makes Superman a compelling character, as opposed comic book mascot. I'll freely admit that I don't know all that much about the Man of Steel, but I DO know that many people dislike him, feeling that he's overpowered, bland and boring, and this really couldn't be farther from the truth, nor could authors who set out to "bring him down a peg" ... Like Frank Miller.
It's also not gripping, or at least no more so than, say, Segata Sanshiro or, more directly, Hong Kong Phooey. It tells us he's strong, he's great and he has super powers, but it does so in the same way one would market a fast sports car. What makes Superman gripping and compelling isn't his absurd power, it's how he uses it and what he uses it for, it's his solid upbringing and the lessons he learned from his parents, it's the responsibility he takes for a world which is, practically, not his own.
Superman, the mascot, is nothing more than a tank-mage. Super-man, the person, is what's interesting to read about, and Superman the person isn't really part of his famous intro any more than Spider-Man's actual depth of character is in "Spider-Man, Spider-Man. Does whatever a spider can." That snippet of information really only tells me that I'm going to read a comic book about a super hero, and that description can fit a great many of them.
Superman's "Is it a bird? Is it a plane?" is iconic of his character in the same way as "Oooh, yeah!" is iconic of Macho Man Randy Savage or "Wooo!" of Nature Boy Rick Flair - not because it's gripping or informative, but because we like the characters in question and this is simply what's most readily associated with them. This works for established characters, but for new unknowns, it is entirely pointless. Especially in City of Heroes, that kind of bio is dead air, because you can get the same information by checking out the character's powers directly, available in the next tab over.
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Many people here talk about judging not just people's characters, but people themselves by their bios. I try not to (aside from Engrish bios), but if I did, I'd look for something that told me this person had an idea more substantial than "I will be yet another generic hero in a city filled with generic heroes" or "I will be a villain in a city of heroes but pretend to be an anti-hero." As players, we don't have the benefit of previous comic book runs that people know us by.
I don't recall anyone talking about "better" ones. I recall people talking about worse ones, but not about better ones. Of course, I could have missed it. My point, though, is I don't think a longer bio field will lead to better bios for those of us who want it. As far as I'm concerned, it will lead to bios of the exact same quality. These will just become easier to write.Quote:Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
There's no guarantee that 2048 characters would actually lead to better written character sketches, just longer ones. -
Quote:I have a sneaking suspicion that the Praetorian content was actually originally designed to be Incarnate content, or at least high level content for Incarnates to play through, back when Incarnates equalled Praetoria. It would certainly explain the enemy difficulty and level balancing, as well as the relatively small collection of content. It would also explain why we start off fighting super-powered monsters, professional soldiers highly-advanced robots, as opposed to street thugs, beggard and snakes.Originally Posted by Dante
The more I think about it, the more it seems that Going Rogue was a waste of time and resources. Twenty levels of fun missions in a beautifully designed city that go nowhere. Two alignments that get dropped the moment a character gets to Primal Earth and a storyline that meshes with the current game about as well as icebergs did with the Titanic. Given how poorly the murky, 1-20 content of Praetoria relates to the Evil Goatee Paragon seen in the Incarnate content, I can't for the life of me see why the time was spent on developing that end of the game while the Incarnate System was launched with so little content. Especially as Freedom has now stolen the ability to roll up as any AT on either side.
Frankly... If 1-20 Praetoria were actually Incarnate content... I might have really gotten into Incarnates. -
So, let me get this straight. Have we answered the "who will die" question yet? Does "Alexis" answer that? Well, no, not really, since there are four more arcs left in the queue, and I find myself less and less motivated to go through them. It's become clear to me that these arcs thrive on shock deaths, and I'm honestly just not interested in that. Especially since they introduced a character who had no appeared in the game prior to this, showed her for all of one mission, and then killed her pretty much as suddenly as they introduced her. I guess you can't waste a character who would have to show up in missions or hand out missions, but this just seems unnecessarily cruel storytelling. So we have a mission the sole purpose of which is to explain how Alexis is a nice person, just so we'll feel worse when she gets a bridge dropped on her by the end. Classy.
Though, honestly, is there anyone who DIDN'T expect her to die? The frikkin' loading screen pic is the Statesman looking at a corpse in the morgue (charming visual, by the way, that's exactly what I want in my escapism, guess I can't complain about the mass graves at Fort Darwin any more), what did you think was going to happen? Someone who ISN'T Alexis but is still close to the Statesman dying? Yeah, if I didn't know we were watching torture porn, that pic set me straight. I hope we'll get something less depressing when this arc is over, but given that this kind of depression seems to be in all new content, I worry that someone at Paragon Studios is about to commit suicide, judging by the tone of the writing. Either that, or they're preparing to pull a Ginax ending.
Really, though, as a story... This was solid. Aside from the last mission, the objectives of which are essentially "55 Puppies to Kick" at least on the villain side and a side order of "I want to take orders from you!" this was actually well structured. The contact for it was incidental and unimportant, but it had relatively straightforward missions, it had a lot of action and the events therein were logical, for the most part. Can't really complain about that. In fact, I'm pretty sure Darryn Wayde proved to be the man behind the curtain, and I'm OK with that. The game has been building him up to be a big shot, so it fits. However, with City of Heroes borrowing from TNA Wrestling's booking, I fear that BECAUSE this makes sense, it'll turn out he wasn't the man behind the curtain and Malaise is using him, that Darryn Wayde never went to the Shard and doesn't have any magical powers, and "Jean" just gave him a many-years-long illusion that he was someone he wasn't, and everyone instantly believed it.
But, hey, Darryn makes sense. It involves Rularuu (and thus promises to break us out of the Praetoria rut), it's big, it makes sense. Can't ask for more than that
Really, as a standalone, this is pretty good... Or would be pretty good if not for the suspect writing. I'm not talking about storytelling or narrative or exposition here. I'm talking just basic technical writing flubs, like suspect grammar, spelling mistakes, the word "Rogue" used in a sentence it has no reason to be in in-between two words and so on. As a foreign speaker of English, this honestly comes off as having been written by someone for whom English is not a native language. On multiple occasions, the writing seems to be shooting for regular expressions (like "keep the cancer under control") but misses and goes for the uncanny valley of expressions (like "maintaining the cancer") where the words are properly spelled, the grammar is correct and the sentence has a meaning... It just doesn't mean quite what it was supposed to mean and doesn't really sound like something that's natural to say in English. It's like an uncanny human face simulacra robot. I get what it's trying to represent, I get that it's not actually real, but it's still just... Weird.
Honestly, of all the SSAs, this one seems like the best, but only as a standalone. The others felt pretty much like "Your Princess is in another castle!" The same one mission but repeated three times. Find the Obelisk! Now find the Obelisk! Aha! Now we can find the Obelisk! This one actually kind of sort of follows a three-act structure, it makes sense and, technical errors notwithstanding, it's pretty well written. It's just a shame that we seem to be getting off on killing characters. That really ruins the whole experience for me. Frankly, I don't think I want to play the rest of the SSAs. Which is just as well, I suppose, since I'm not actually paying for them.
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Yeah, and when an insane psychic who sucks people into his mind to torture them with their greatest fear says "Read my mind." ... Yes, Admiral Ackbar. Would you like to say something, sir?
It's a trap! -
Quote:What I meant to say is I hope these will be purchaseable through the store account-wide, as opposed to earnable through an in-game event per character. The dog actually is something I'd pay for, believe it or not. I don't have characters who are supposed to have pets... But I might. I've never had to think about it.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Since they were granted by request and not through the store, don't know how much nor when... though given the seasonal nature of the Pilgrim Hat... I'd say next week.
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Quote:I agree with you in general, but I feel there's something more at work here than just how much content can be produced. Over the last few years, as Paragon Studios sold the game to PlayNC, they founded NC NorCal, and that then became Paragon Studios, the development priorities seem to have switched up, and these days we're seeing an EXTREME case of quality over quantity. And while I won't go as far as to say that new content is BAD (it isn't), I'll go as far as to say it's nowhere near enough, nor anywhere near what it used to be once upon a time, and that's Incarnate content and regular missions. What do I mean? Well...Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Let's get back to our trusty team of 15-20 folks, they can never win the content battle and never should have tried. You have 7 years worth that you completely trivialized leaving you with 4 trials.
Back in 2004, the original Paragon Studios ended Beta in a mad rush to release, hence why there was comparatively less do in the 35-40 range and what was there wasn't very well tested. However, in their scramble to produce an entire game, they made a LOT of very simple, very straightforward, largely average to pretty good content. At no point in the game's life time since, with the possible exception of I1, has this density of new content repeated. Even City of Villains fell far short, with the game having fewer contacts and each contact having fewer missions, with fewer new enemies being introduced and many of those fading very quickly. CoV was the first time, I think, when the studio shot for making smaller zones with less content in them, relying on said content to be better to compensate, and it's been getting more and more extreme since.
I think the ultimate expression of that "quality over quantity" mentality was the revamped low level missions, especially hero-side. Sure, most people will describe the new starting content as good, perhaps even better, but almost no-one will ever describe it as being "more." Because it isn't more. It's significantly less, as a point of fact, and the reason for this is it simply takes more time, more money and more people to make great content, thus if that's what you're shooting for, you can't make as much of it.
Flash back to I19 - we got two Trials. They were huge Trials with unique mechanics, special cutscenes, eccentric powers, complex scripts... They clearly took many people much time to create, and it shows. These are great pieces of content. But they're still two Trials, each less than an hour long (unless I misremember). It reminds me of Matt Miller rebuffing suggestions of revamping old zones because it would take as much work as making new zones, with the idea that the old zones would be changed so much that they may as well have been made from scratch. It reminds me, as well, of Roy Cooling, the arc of a thousand gimmicks. Every mission is over-booked, every mission has a gimmick, every mission is special, every mission is complex. And yet for all their complexity and the time it took to make them, they're still, what? Four missions? Five missions? Not many, in either case.
Where all the different arguments merge together is right back into Incarnates. By committing to only ever make these horribly expensive, overly complex Trials for Incarnates, the developers shot themselves in the foot. I have no reason to believe that they couldn't have created fifteen arcs, each a dozen missions long, each lasting for days on end, if they'd simply resisted the urge to make them so expensive and instead stuck to simpler designs like what makes up much of the Legacy content. Sure, it's not always very good, but "not very good" is still better than nothing or worse, horrible stories told through invasive gimmicks like, again, Roy Cooling.
As far as I'm concerned, Incarnates should have been treated as a brand new release and had a great body of simple content made for them just to provide a base on which to build the speciality raids thereafter. The simple truth is that content doesn't have to be complex or expensive. It can be basic, as long as there is enough of it. And only when there's enough content should more elaborate content be made to refine what's already there.
To be honest, the Incarnate system is the purest representation of a problem I've had for a very long time: Quality over quantity only actually works when you have sufficient quantity to work with. Playing this game is becoming like going to dinner and being served only orderves with caviare. It may be an expensive, fancy delicacy, but I'm still going home hungry. -
Quote:That's precisely what I wanted to know, as well. Thank you for doing this. It honestly does look quite a bit more complex than I'd anticipated, but the results should be interesting.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm also curious to know the answer to the literal mathematical question: to what degree did inherent fitness reduce the total number of possible builds if any, and at what levels, assuming stamina and its prerequisites were taken as soon as possible.
Believe it or not, I didn't think of it. I kept insisting there had to be some way to figure this out mathematically or through analytical statistics. It never even occurred to me to write a programme to do it. I can't imagine the logic would be that labyrinthine, but I also can't really say what it is without doing a lot of work that your computer is already doing.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That may take a lot of run time unless I rewrite this code, and I'm kind of busy right now and inclined to just let it run for a week or two. I'm actually a bit surprised no one has been crazy enough to do this yet. I mean, the computer is doing pretty much all the work: I just have to wait for it to finish.