Samuel_Tow

You know, I just thought of something: A problem that I've had with the game for a couple of years now - it's shoving theatrics down my throat.

Let's not feign ignorance here - City of Heroes is a pretty standard click-n-kill dungeon crawler where the majority of the meat of the game is going into window dressing dungeon and killing for spoils and money until you reach an objective and kill or click it. Everything else is dressing up the core gameplay in distractions.

To some extent, these distractions are good, in that they enhance the experience, but TOO many distractions actually distract from the actual game with fluff. You see this with the "continuing tutorial missions" that are 90% dialogue trees, you see it with contacts like Roy Cooling whose arc is 90% gimmicks, you see it with Praetoria where half the missions are awkward and devoid of enemies, and now you see it in the new "Tutorial."

The old actual Tutorial had you do things you'd be doing in-game - fight enemies, use enhancements, use inspirations, con enemies and so forth. It was like the game, but with instructions. The new "Tutorial" is - as someone said before - little more than a commercial, shunning actual gameplay in favour of shoving flashing lights, spastic voices and big explosions in your life. It's as if we had Michael Bay design our new tutorial, but without the robot balls. It's all flash and no substance. It's not a tutorial so much as a slightly interactive cutscene. And you know what? My original City of Heroes CD from 2004 came with an intro cinematic. If that's all the "Tutorial" is supposed to be, then why not make a pre-rendered CGI cinematic or a big cutscene or some such? Because that's all this really is.

The funny thing is that the more you try to present an MMO like this action-packed thrill ride of constantly pumping adrenaline and high-octane excitement, the more you'll have people crash and crash hard once they come to grips with what an MMO really is - slow, calm, sedate and methodical. Once upon a time, the old Tutorial was a lot like what the actual game was - you standing around fiddling with your settings, reading text and trying to decide what to do. That's the game in a nutshell, and no amount of theatrics is going to change that. This IS what City of Heroes is. And yet they choose to dress it up like an action game that City of Heroes simply isn't, and in the process serving only to hamper actual gameplay.

You know what a proper Tutorial SHOULD teach players? How to fight and how to run missions, because that's what they'll be doing for the majority of their gameplay.

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Also, I'm pretty sure the new Tutorial NPCs do have info on them, but not on their right-click menu. You have to select them, then expand the Options dropdown at the bottom of the Target window. There's usually an Info link there. For some reasons, someone decided not to put Info on the right-click menu of any of the new NPCs dating as far back as Praetoria, which really makes no sense whatsoever.

You know what's funny, though? Almost every time custom weapons come up, a comparison is drawn between the many options Broadsword and Dual Blades have and the few options the set in question has. But it isn't Katana or Claws or Archery that has too few options. EVERYTHING that isn't Broadsword or Dual Blades has too few options. And of the sets that have a few, most of those are either Legacy weapons (Legacy Katana and Legacy Ninja Blade) or they're direct prop dumps from NPCs (three quarters of pistol options) which look really bad because they weren't designed for player use.

Broadsword and Dual Blades should be the benchmark of weapon customization. Please, developers, make ALL weapon sets have at least roughly comparable numbers of customization option to that set. Hell, devote a chunk of a whole Issue to adding more weapons. Have you any idea how many new characters a sufficiently large dump of new weapons could make possible? Of all the sets in the game, weapons are the most reusable, because you can pick a different weapon, slap on a recoloured secondary and you have a radically different character. From broadsword to scimitar to Rikti sword to Tech Sword, these are all fundamentally different characters.

To be quite honest, there are few things I want more than more weapons. In fact, the things I want more than that pretty much come down to "muscular women" and "giant swords," in that order, with "more weapons" being a very close third. This is a massive opportunity for more variety that doesn't come with nearly as much of a workload as making new content or new powersets. The costume editor is your baby, Paragon. ALL of it.

See, and people ask me why I always complain. I don't, but WHEN I don't complain, my threads sink to the bottom of the world and no-one remembers I made them in the first place

I found the whole cast of Twinshot's arc, including Twinshot herself, to be quirky but very much likeable, even if they're a little too heavy on the funny talk. Whoever wrote this did a bang-up job, I'd say, as there is a quite a breadth of concepts that work well together, even if I feel they lack a more dramatic cast member (the emo, in other words) and possibly lack an angry one. Still, good job all around.

Speaking of Pia Marino, I still feel her arc is one of the best-written in the game, and is easily among my top five favourites of all time. It's not very mechanically complex, save for one cutscene, it doesn't really any dialogue trees, interactive or otherwise, it doesn't have intricate threaded objectives. It's just a simple case of going into a mission accomplishing several objectives in no particular order.

And yet this simple arc is still one of my favourites solely on the strength of its writing. Actually, no, not solely. It is one of my favourites on the strength of its writing and because it actually allows me to play the game without being interrupted by a pseudo cutscene every five minutes. It allows me to appreciate the amazing writing when I sit down to read it, and it allows me to appreciate the great game when I'm actually running a mission.

If Veluta Lunata was a fun, well-written experience, Pia Marino is that, times ten. Call me a Luddite if you will, but I don't think any of the new starting content has anything on those two very basic arcs. I keep finding myself going back to the oldest of things to rediscover my love for City of Heroes, it seems.

Well, Veluta is technically not I21 content, but it's I21 content that's letting me play her when there was absolutely no chance I could have done that prior. If this keeps up, I'll run arcs from the famous slot machine and even Viridian soon, and possibly even other contacts I didn't even know about. Should be sweet

Plus, Veluta seems to be very well written for. A bit anti-climactic, ending the act with her getting kind of what she wanted and saying "Beat it!" but the writing was absolutely solid and I didn't say stupid things along the way, plus I got to clear a few very large maps of all enemies. All good stuff at the end of the day

And I haven't even started gushing yet. Wait till we get Street Fighting and eventually Titanic Weapons. Then my head might just explode with sheer awesome. I'd say City of Heroes is heading for success, judging from how things are shaping up right now.

Oh, yeah, and that. I thought they were a cool idea. You can theoretically take any in-game model and make it a ghost, but I liked the fact that they matched the storyline. Someone's making ghosts, so it makes sense that these ghosts would look like who they were in life.

Actually, continuing to play Veluta Lunata's arcs now, I'm reminded of another aspect that I really liked - her missions are very simple. I typically only have one or two objectives, there are no complex mechanics to interrupt the flow, no conversations to stop me in my tracks, no distractions. Just get to a building, kill everyone inside, go back out and continue the story from there. I really missed this aspect of older content.

And, yes, not having to unlock unlockable contacts is sure to provide a bounty of "new" content for me

You know what one of the best parts of the new "Find Contact" feature that rolled out with I21 is? Once unlockable City of Villains contacts no longer need to be unlcoked. They just show up in the Find Contact window, ready to speak with you whether or not you've earned the badges needed to unlock them. Earlier today, this allowed me to work with a contact I barely even knew existed - Veluta Lunata. Imagine my shock and amazement when a blond Fortunata Seer with a pretty but stern pale face popped up in my contact window. I'd heard the name, but I never really thought that's what she was. Based on the name, I expected a Sorceress of some form, though not being a visual person, I can't tell you what exactly that form was.

Veluta's origin story is pretty dark, having had an affair with a Wolf Spider, whom Ghost Widow made her kill, then helped Veluta bind his soul to her forever and ever. This is the story that showed up for her in the Find Contact window, and I expected the woman to be a tragic, sad figure in the vein of Pia Marino, but I found her instead to be a bitter, spiteful, slefish person with a giant monkey on her back about big bad Ghost Widow and how we must always keep her happy or she'd have both our heads. Surprising, but given that this is CoV Launch content, I can't really attribute this kind of darkness to new trends and therefore feel incapable of complaining about it. And, to be honest... It kind of works for her. Veluta is just not a very nice person, which really does kind of come with the territory.

Veluta's story arcs aren't anything to write home about, in the sense that they're not AMAZING!!!, but they are competent, they are interesting, they fit the setting and at no point do they feel gratuitous. As per usual CoV Launch content, they assume I want to serve Arachnos - and I don't - but also as per CoV Launch content, they don't really assume anything about my character beyond that. Veluta gives me tasks, I bring back clues to her and she gives me more tasks. I get to choose why I'm doing these things and how I behave while doing them, and that's a MAJOR plus in my book.

But there's something more about Veluta Lunata, something about her writing that really intrigues me. A lot of the Launch City of Heroes contacts come off like Mission Terminals (which is what was originally intended to give us our missions back in pre-beta times, predictably enough), in the sense that the contact is nothing more than a means to deliver text to the player, said text written as though it has come from a disembodied narrator and in no way seeming to be unique to the character speaking it or reflect said character's personality.

Well, Veluta is different, and different in a non-trivial way like for instance Grant Nylor is. She doesn't just have an eccentric speech quirk or an accent, she actually has a personality as a character, and this personality comes out through her speech. Of course, this is the personality of a whiny, demanding, prissy brat who just had her toy taken from her hands, but that too is a legitimate personality. Everything she does, she does reluctantly and because she feels she has to for fear of consequences, and every conversation she has is clearly unpleasant to her.

Considering I've spent so many years criticising the writing and storytelling in City of Villains, I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying Veluta Lunata's story and writing, considering she dates back to 2005. I'm also surprised just how bad of an idea locking contacts really was back in the day, and how much more fun I'm having now that I'm experiencing these contacts for the first time. I wonder if even Viridian became thus unlocked?

Anyway, I was due to find something to praise, and I feel compelled to praise good writing wherever I see it, hence this thread. Veluta Lunata's story arcs are awesome, and I'm happy to have been able to do them.

Hey, if that works for you, you should. I am, however, kind of disappointed the new update got rid of Kalinda and Moongoose. I mean, they still exist, but they won't speak to me. I honestly would very much prefer to rerun their arcs, or even the Burke/Creed path.

I'm not interested in being EEEVIL, I'm interested in being dignified, and say what you will, but there's more of that with Kalinda and Moongoose.

I first heard about City of Heroes from a review on SomethingAwful back when they were actually funny, and it was one of the few things that wrote a positive review for. The article writer basically talked about being a troll to other players, but the game itself seemed good enough to research. I looked through a lot of screenshots and failed to find two player characters who looked alike. Having been bred on games like Diablo where you picked from one of 5 existing characters and then looked like your gear, that was AMAZING.

I then heard the game had swords AND guns, then I heard there were no items, then I heard you didn't have to keep taking powers over and over again and that they scaled up with you, that nothing you picked ever became deprecated and so on. Plus, it had a modern setting in an actual city, as opposed to a Fantasy forest or jungle or crypt or old medieval town number eleventy billion.

I tried City of Heroes back in May of 2004, just a month after Launch, and I fell in love with it immediately. The gameplay was cool, my character was strong, I had a unique look and everything was pretty simple. I DREADED playing an MMO because I thought those were always an overcomplicated mess that emphasises your woodcutting or embroidering skills and that bogged you down with grind and repetition and time sinks. As such, I got City of Heroes, plus a two-month time card, wholly convinced that I'd be bored of the game within a few weeks of playing it and I'd never have to "waste" my money paying for a game over and over.

Seven years later, I'm still here and I don't regret (almost) a moment of it. Turns out I was completely right about MMOs in general, but City of Heroes was simply different and much better. Turns out I was wrong in my reluctance to pay a subscription. You get what you pay for, and a game that I was continually subscribed to could have bugs fixed, mistakes recitifed and new content added. And considering I bought the original game on a single 750MB CD and I'm playing a ~3GB game now, I'd say a lot has been added indeed.

City of Heroes is one in a million, and I'm very, very happy I caught it in its early life. It's been a fun ride

What I have to wonder is how "New Mercy" hasn't bumped up the age rating of the game. Within my first day there, I witnessed Arachnos soldiers piling graphic Longbow corpses into a mass grave, throwing out graphic Longbow corpses in the garbage, cakling about "Time to take out the trash." and a man who had a Longbow woman down on the ground and was kicking her in the face. When did City of Villains turn into GTA?

And all the while, I'm running that god-awful stupid Dr. Graves arc that makes me feel like a complete idiot and crippled incompetent who needs to have his hand held the whole way through and is caught between being the lackey of one of two people I do not care about.

If the idea behind the new villain experience was to make me feel EVEN WORSE about playing a villain, then congratulations. It's a smashing success. I never want to deal with any content in Mercy ever again. I might just have to break my own rule and start all my villains in Praetoria. The gameplay there might not be fun, but at least the story isn't so degrading and unpleasant.

While I generally like the new Circle of Thorns look, I still don't really like the minions. The complex textures and multiple layers make them feel less like people wearing clothes and more like people whose skin has been replaced with some kind of mould. The first time I ran into these guys in a Port Oaks paper mission yesterday, I first thought I was fighting the Devouring Earth. My first question was "Why am I fighting an army of swamp things?" Only upon reflection did I think to look at their faction given and realised these were supposed to be the Circle of Thorns - people in robes - and not walking mounds of seaweed and dried leaves.

The lieutenants are much better, I'd say, as they have a two-colour design which makes it obvious they're wearing clothes, but the minions just look like coral reefs on legs. Also, I really liked the bosses. I fought a mage with a strong pink motif, and yet somehow that didn't really look out of place with the overall villain group. I'm impressed

Funny how these things work. Currently, Dr. Graves is LITERALLY hurting my brain. I have a mental time bomb! Hurry, my head could explode! I'm a useless idiot!

Oh, good god... They turned my character into Tidus from Final Fantasy X. Why do I bother trying to make cool, sinister villains when the game turns around and makes them into whiny, spineless, all bark and no bite SISSIES!?!

Whoever you were who told me that these arcs get better after the first, YOU LIED TO ME!

"Phew! Thanks! I might actually live another day!" Who writes this stuff? Honestly - who wrote this? Because resisting my urge to demonise you, sir or madam, is proving very difficult right at this moment.

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It's amazing to me that I can pine for a meme, but this arc is making me find brand new appreciation for "hoorb." Dillo, I'm sorry I ever spoke against you! You were annoying, but at least you were funny! You were entertaining and clever! You didn't make me feel like a ten-thumbed cripple! Dillo, please! Come back to me! I'll never complain about memes again!

First of all, I like actually HAVING these choices. Having run through Twinshot's arc on Beta and Dr. Zombie's arc on Live, I'm sick and tired of seeing dialogue "trees" with only one branch ever.

As for your duality, I could go with either, depending on the situation.

If we're talking about actual, practical choice that determines the outcome of an encounter, I'd say I prefer the more generic options, because they determine what I DO more so than what I say. However, City of Heroes is limited in how much your decisions can change, as one way or the other you're getting the next mission.

If we're talking about cosmetic choice, then I prefer specific lines. The better and more detailed these are, the more they enhance the cosmetic feel, because they determine how we act more so than what we do.

In fact, if I had my way, most dialogue trees would always have at least three different paths to the same conversation, depicting the same events and reaching the same result, but representing three different character types. To borrow from Alpha Protocol, let's call these Professional, Aggressive and Suave/********. Professionals would get straight to business and end conversations when they're no longer necessary, aggressives will yell, growl and threaten while smartasses will joke around, toy with people and occasionally spout nonsense.

Having my character's words written for him or her is a bad idea unless there is enough variety to match at least one option to my character's personality even just roughly. For instance, a contact of mine was crazy and murdered the woman he loved. I had the option to console him or tell him he's an idiot and I used him. I'm not sure what effect the different options would have had, but I'm glad to see I was given the option to either be nice or a jerk.

I don't really need functional freedom of choice outside of some very specific situations where decisions really matter, such as whether I want to kill people or take them in. I do, however, want cosmetic choices in as many places as possible.