Samuel_Tow

Which I asked for when, exactly?

A) Because the Rogue Isles are a cesspool that no-one wants but the heroes, and all they want out of it is to kick Recluse out.

B) Because my plans don't involve having an overt base of operations and having to deal with UN red tape, to say nothing of being an open target of espionage.

C) Who ever talked about smacking Recluse's entire organisation? Just because you win a battle doesn't mean you win the war.

More specifically:

Not only is it NOT the only way, it's probably the WORST way to represent it. "You are a cowardly wimp who shrinks in the face of better men, so you choose to be a good little boy and get more brownie points with the Spiders" is pretty much the worst, most insulting, most humiliating way I can think of for that particular plot point to be handled, and it's only Ghost Widow that has this problem.

Scirocco is a moron who tries to change everyone in the world - including me - so of course I want to stop him. Black Scorpion is an idiot who gets me in trouble because HE is a coward, so not only was I right on board with Daos for slapping him upside the head, I took pleasure in ratting him out... Or would have taken pleasure, had the game not treated me like a complete idiot, going before Daos to say that Dr. Aeon was doing "some weird experiment." Mako is even easier to betray. He's a backstabbing ******* who betrays me. OF COURSE I want to punch him in the shark teeth. Please!

But for Ghost Widow, there's no real reason why I want to betray her because what she's doing has no real impact on me. Hell, if we go with the mentality that I want a shot at Arachnos big-time, then letting her become human and thus losing her powers, then killing her would open up a slot for me, won't it? But, no, Daos says jump, so I jump.

How's about this: Daos says jump, I say go to hell. Daos says die and I'm insta-ported to a mission with a prison where I start in said prison. It's crawling with Arachnos soldiers, Ghost Widow among them. I fight my way through all of them, beat her up because she wants to keep her ritual a secret, come out and speak with Recluse. He says something to the effect of "OK, I crossed you, you crossed me, we both took losses, let's call it even for now. You go back to working with your contact and I'll have a word with Daos." Simple as that. I win - CLEARLY - and the status quo remains.

Where are you people getting these "regime changes" and "government topplings" and whatnot? Are we reading the same thread?

I'm not really talking about continuity in these cases, actually. When I mention "I defeated a GOD!!!" what I mean is "Look - the game allowed me to win that time. Can't it allow me to win like that more often?" I bring up Praetoria because, irrespective of what other concerns I may have about it, it still represents probably the best example of our villains being treated with dignity and respect and allowed to win in the tasks they set out to accomplish. Sure, the tasks themselves are somewhat railroading - fame and fortune and mostly just fame - but at least the game doesn't expect us to be ashamed for playing it.

I don't know why it is that every time I speak about these things, people assume I want to start the game from scratch or kill everyone or some such. All I want is more of what already exists - more of the Power arcs for villains, and more of the successes those bring. More of the feeling of self-satisfaction that the Power arcs bring as opposed to the sense of shame much of CoV brings. I want my villains to be cool and awesome and powerful, not dirty and disgusting and slimy. I want them to stand their ground and win their fights, even if the gains are fleeting. Take Dean McArtur, for example - sure, we're back to square one by the end of Leonard, but damn if it didn't feel like I made my enemies lose WORSE.

All I want out of the game is to treat my character like the most important role. This doesn't mean to always hand him everything on a single platter, but it means to tell stories that eventually end up making me look good and feel good. THAT is what City of Villains needs in order to be fixed - it needs to make its players feel good about playing it. Right now, the bulk of the existing stories do quite the opposite. They make me - personally - feel dirty and sorry I bothered.

So, raiding a TEST facility multiple times, killing all TEST soldiers in there - multiple times - shutting down the Seer network, destroying the Enriche plant, exposing the War Works project... Those aren't massive victories? Come on, Guy!

Err... What? What does villains being successful have to do with heroes when hero characters and villain characters never cross paths? How does my villain earning respect and admiration equal the heroes "losing?" Why would heroes even enter into it? They don't even come to the Rogue Isles. Ever.

You make these grandstanding statements based on horribly exaggerated versions of things I never said, but they don't refute anything because no-one's asking for what you're arguing against.

Actually, there are ways. You know how the hospitals have unique floors in City of Heroes, such that you and your team-mates don't always resurrect on the same floor and the lift leading out to the lobby is one-way? Make a "hidden reclimator" that's like this, only there's just one machine per room and everyone comes out of, say, a sewer grate. Then I could claim I have my own reclimator hidden away that's just for me, since I'll never see anyone else resurrect on it.

Or why don't we take it one step further? The villain I had in mind already has his own SG and his own followers and his own reclimators in his SG base. There's really nothing he depends on Arachnos for, and Arachnos soldiers attack him on sight anyway. He no longer needs to train because he's level 50 and all of his enhancements are self-made from the Market, drops and Abandoned Labs. There isn't a single reason why he should depend on Arachnos for anything or why they should have any leverage over him.

City of Villains launched with SG bases specifically because that's what super villains are most identifiable with - having their own personal lair where their faceless goons reside, where their lieutenants bide their time, where all their weapons and earnings are stored. The whole point should have been to capitalise on this, not as some forgotten relic of broken PvP, but as a legitimate part of the game. If I could have personal SGs made up of my own characters and for which I can pay with Inf, I would never need another Arachnos amenity ever again, not even their ferry. Not with an Ouro portal and a Pocket D transporter anyway, to say nothing of base teleporters.

I never, ever talked about "defeating" Arachnos. Changing the status quo based on a single person's actions doesn't work in a persistent world. But so what if Daos makes me "Priority Target #1?" With how many villains would choose to spit in his face, he'll have a list of priority targets long enough to tie a bow around the tower. Again - Arachnos soldiers already attack me on sight and pretty much every amenity Arachnos offer I can get elsewhere, at the very least from the Vanguard base or the Midnight Club. Or from Praetoria. Or from my SG base.

Moreover, do you remember the 40-45 arc against Crey? Do you remember how your hero is said to have become the most wanted person in the city on trumped-up charges? Remember how your contact keeps telling you to avoid the main roads and keep out of sight? Remember how the missions keep telling you your reputation is shot, might as well bring Crey down with you? Remember how much that amounts to? Zilch. No-one bats an eye, not a single thing happens, not a single thing changes. Cops still wave at you when they pass you in the street and they jump to your aid when you fight next to them. There isn't even a token impedance like the Vahzilok plague.

This is why Daos' threat is empty - because there's nothing in the game that in the slightest suggests to me that he can do anything more than railroad the plot. Let me remind you that I took down a literal god, not to mention ALL of the Freedom Phalanx by myself. I ain't worried, and the game telling me I'm worried isn't changing that.

All I'm really saying is that Praetoria is a police state to the Rogue Isles' organised chaos, and even in that tightly-controlled police state, player characters and NPCs alike manage to oppose the regime violently. We always have the opportunity to give Tyrant's regime the middle finger and find some way out anyway. Not giving us that isn't a sign of realism, it's a sign of unnecessary restrictions.

As I hear, Freedom will fix much more than starting in Fort Darwin. It will start us out as genuine self-interested villains, something Mathew Burke was supposed to do but didn't really manage.

So, you're saying that the IDF don't possess far superior technology, far greater resources and don't constitute the biggest threat Earth has ever faced? Because that would make the iTrials kind of pointless. Not to mention that the lore itself makes numerous mentions in regards to how badly inferior Arachnos technology is to Praetorian technology, the only thing Anti-Matter showing any respect for being the Rikti bombs they bring.

Yes, that "nearly" happened... But it didn't actually happen, did it? And if we're being fair, the reason it didn't happen is because "we" stopped it. What does that say about the scary Arachnos military?

Here's a question: When WE are playing the bad guys, why can't the game let US win? That's one of City of Villains' biggest problems - it's a moral lesson teaching us that playing City of Villains and enjoying it is wrong, because evil is wrong. The game expects us to feel humiliated and depressed at the end of the day and consider that to be a GOOD thing. And it just isn't.

You lack imagination. On Praetorian Earth, our characters manage to be enemies of the state and still survive just fine despite opposing a government of VASTLY superior technology and material means, not to mention one of much tighter control of its territory. "Oh, but you're a double agent." Beladonna Vetrano isn't. Everyone knows she's Resistance but they just can't catch her. Calvin Scott isn't. Everyone knows he's Resistance but they can't find him. This stops neither of them showing their faces in public, they just have to be careful.

Off-game example - Gordon Freeman, "a man who had barely earned the distinction of his PhD at the time of the Black Mesa incident, and who I have it on good authority was in a state which precluded such training in the intervening years" appears to have no problem taking on the full might of City 17's Metrocops, Overwatch, pretty much every Antlion there ever was and a whole city full of zombies time and time and time again. Do we need more examples? How about War from Darksiders? He appears able to fight hell's forces head on, powerless on top of it, and still come out triumphant and even destroy the Destroyer himself. How about Red Faction: Guerilla's Mason? He manages to take down the EDF dictatorship pretty much on his own, with only occasional, futile help from the resistance for anything more than lodging and supplies.

You lack imagination in much the same way as the original City of Villains writers. There was no reason to tie our Reclimators to Arachnos, there was no reason to have all Vendors be Arachnos-sanctioned and there was no reason to have what amounted to our entire end game up until I19 consist of kowtowing to the Arachnos power structure.

Just as there exist "Abandoned Labs" and the Black Market isn't Arachnos property by virtue of being illegal, so we should have been given "illegal" Reclimators waking us up in the sewers or in a cave or in an old building or any place where Arachnos aren't likely to look and so we should have been given vendors that don't wear Arbiter uniforms. Like in Praetoria. Praetoria itself has no reason to exist because everything which takes place there should have been taking place on the Rogue Isles all along.

You don't need to punch every Arachnos soldier in the face in order to defy Arachnos, as Going Rogue proves beyond the strongest argument. Arachnos don't run a tight shift. People hide from them all the time. Hiding from them and opposing them covertly is not a difficult thing. Everyone does it all the time.

Congratulations on quoting one of the worst movies ever made. I'm not sure that has the effect you're after.

I stand corrected.

Wait, what?

True, but you saw what Arilou said:

It's a cool victory, and pretty much the ONLY one from the old content which has any amount of dignity to it, but it still leaves the door open for people to argue about why I should be afraid of Arachnos. Recluse, in turn, comes off less as scared and more as bothered, like I'm becoming too much trouble for what I'm worth and he's cutting his losses.

I still like Praetoria when it comes to satisfying, conclusive finishes. Reese spends the entire time being a grade-A jerk, and at the end, you get to kill him. Twice. He gets better, sure, but he's quite humbled by the end. That's what I believe City of Villains needs to fix it - giving our villains back their dignity and even letting them be arrogant when the situation calls for it. Because right now, most of CoV's content is humiliating.

"To me." I'm all about options in villainy, and Arbiter Daos playing tough guy doesn't give me any options. My only option is to shrink from the challenge and tell myself I'm so totally not a coward because Arachnos are so big and scary.

When I say what a villain "should be," that's inclusive. I've never tried to argue what a good villain SHOULDN'T be, since everyone's preference is different. But old-game CoV fails in providing only a very small subset of what villains could be, and the excuses for it are growing lamer with every Issue.

It's not as contradictory as it sounds based on pure logic, because people rarely spend their money logically. I know that from personal experience. I've paid for quite a few F2P games in my time, and these have always been games I've "respected" in one way or another. If a game can do enough for me to earn my respect, I'm willing to do enough to pay that back in real cash. By contrast, a game that demands my money, even just a little bit, is not going to get any because I won't feel it "deserves" my hard-earned cash.

You may think subscription-based MMOs are different, but they really aren't. I will never again pay for an MMO without a free Trial, and the only reason I subscribed to City of Heroes without one was because my brother bought the game and a two-month time card for me as a birthday present, so I didn't actually have to pay for it for over three months, and when that three months expired, I was already enamoured with the game enough to want to pay it. If I get into a game via a Free Trial and THAT convinces me the game is worth my respect, I'll pay for it.

Maybe it's just me, but any game that's willing to give me just that little bit more is much more likely to make me feel like giving back to it. Any game that I can respect is worth paying for, even if it's free. You know what they say - "If you like the game, support the developers."

Why says I do? Completely on the contrary, I DON'T, and the game doesn't ask me to. Mother says "Kill Vanessa!" and I say "Up yours!" and let her go. Neuron says "I'll build a cyborg to make me famous!" and I say "I'll make you build a cyborg to make you infamous and make ME famous when I kill it." Much as the Going Rogue storyline is railroading - and it very much is - it's still much more about US because, restrictive as the decisions may be, we are still given the option to be awesome and take lip from no-one. That's the whole point of the Power storyline.

*edit*
Before I forget...

I don't and I shouldn't. What sells City of Heroes to me is that my characters are the coolest, baddest, most awesome characters in the game and the ones the game is about. Old content may not be like that, but new content understands the value of catering to the players' own ego. I didn't come to City of Heroes to play somebody's lackey or somebody's fool. I came to City of Heroes "where YOU are the hero!"

Yeah, so the argument goes, and it's still just as much nonsense now as before. Heroes don't seem to have a lick of problem invading Grandville all the time by themselves and not facing anything from Arachnos and it's not like they're the only people with a mediport system. Nor, for that matter, would fighting about a million Arachnos be all that much of a challenge with the aggro cap where it is. The game teaches me that I can come in and rip their bases apart any time I so please, yet all of a sudden I'm supposed to be afraid of them?

This is the ultimate in god-modding GM ******** - but thou must, and constitutes the single biggest fail of the entirety of City of Villains' story as planned out ahead of time - we're small-time weak-willed thugs who want to suck up to Arachnos while they are the big fish who really matter. Tying vendors and reclimators to Arachnos was a mistake. Tying US to Arachnos was an even bigger mistake.

For all the bad things I've said about Going Rogue, at least it has the right idea when it comes to self-serving agendas. "Sinclair will use you!" says Beladonna. "Sinclair can't use you. No-one can use you! You'll show the Resistance what you're made of, and if Sinclair tries to mess with you, you'll take him down, too. NO-ONE controls you!" That's what a good super villain is. That's what a good super villain does. He doesn't shrink from one bald old man. He punches him in the mouth, takes on the full might of Arachnos and shows Recluse that he's not to be messed with.

It's been six years now, and I'm not any more interested in accepting that Arachnos apologist rhetoric. The game shouldn't be trying to explain why my character is a chickenshit coward. The game SHOULDN'T put my character in a position to be a coward in the first place, and that it does is a fail for City of Villains. The whole narrative treats us like lowlife scum, with every other contact calling us stupid brutes and acting smug and superior. I sincerely hope that Freedom includes as much contact-killing as people are saying, because that's precisely what villains do with contacts who talk back.

Would that we could have that, but you run into the problem of switching powers between using different TYPES of weapons, such as customizing Assault Rifle to instead fire from dual pistols. It's something I'd like to see, but is also something that may not even be possible in the current system and definitely something no red name has ever so much as mentioned or acknowledged.

That said, I probably won't criticise a gun + blade combo, but I doubt such would get made just because the melee weapon could stand to have too much variety in appearance and fighting style to pick just one. Not gonna' complain, though.

The TechBot has a point - we shouldn't be discussing a pistol melee set. Much as I want pistols on my Scrappers, a whole set isn't the way.

Why would I, when I can post a TVtropes article, instead, and ruin lives by doing so?

*edit*
I also wonder if it's not possible to make the set's gimmick the ability to switch between forward and reverse grip and in so doing alter the entire set, like having one be faster but weaker while the other is stronger but slower or some such? Then again, having seen what Swap Ammo did to Dual Pistols, I'm not sure I want that.

That's my meme, actually. And you have to admit that Recluse's obsession with the Statesman went beyond Dr. Doom and entered into creepy and weird a long time ago. The man isn't trying to rule the world or increase his power, he's content to just show up on the Statesman's doorstep and throw smarmy remarks at him like a spurned lover. And for his part, the Statesman abandons his calm and flies into an emotional rage every time he sees Recluse (check out the tutorial loading screen comic on Beta) like they had a bitter break-up. I honestly feel that the narrative would do Recluse a HUUUGE favour if it stopped identifying him through his relationship with the Statesman.

What really sinks Recluse's sense of power and villainy is that he runs a shithole that he doesn't really run. Aside from that one signed order to Arbiter Sands, it doesn't feel like Recluse does anything at all but exist as a figurehead, because his entire organisation is corrupt, mismanaged and highly unsuccessful at actually running a nation that runs itself behind their backs, for the most part. The reason people praise Tyrant and poopoo Recluse is that Tyrant is the villain with dignity. He rules his nation with an iron fist and everything that happens is said to have been thanks to him. Recluse, by contrast, simply exists in the Rogue Isles and lives among garbage and ruins. If anything, City of Villains looks more like a post-apocalyptic Earth than anything else.

Fixing villain-side would require giving Recluse a little more dignity as the de facto lord of the realm, possibly by giving him a zone that's less of a shithole, and at the same time giving players more opportunities to oppose him successfully, giving them the sense of having overcome a credible threat. Right now, the game's biggest fail is Arbiter Daos threatening to bring the full might of Arachnos on my head and the game playing my character like he's actually intimidated. Yeah, Arachnos, the dudes I've been slapping around like errant stepchildren since I was level 1, and I'm supposed to be afraid of them? Give me a break!

What this means, however, is the development team is not obligated to follow the traditional "free" to play model. What the industry has branded the game is immaterial. They could have branded it a cucumber and it won't have made the Free player options and greener. None of the game's official correspondence or promotional materials have claimed it is a F2P title, and all of the options that Free accounts have access to are clearly laid out on the site. What the industry does is not a mandate on what any developer in the industry is obligated to do.

Now that would explain a lot. Doing this kind of storyline archaeology always uncovers very real reasons for seemingly random, unreasonable problems. And somehow, it always seems to come down to business messing with storytelling.

Actually, I can somewhat attest to that kind of feeling, owing to the way I play. See, when I play a character, I play that charter exclusively, sometimes for weeks and even months at a time. When I'm done, I swap to another and do the same. What this means is that, among 50 or so characters, some get left behind so hard that I don't touch them for two, three, four years sometimes. Logging into these characters with builds from 2006, costumes as old as the world and bios from when I didn't speak English very well... Is a lot of work.

Usually, when I return to a character, the first thing I do is a respect and reshuffing of slots and enhancements, especially to take advantage of Stamina. The second thing I do is hit Icon/Facemaker/ThatWomanOnTheStreetInImperial and update costumes made when I sucked at making them. The next thing after that is to reset my binds, rearrange my tabs and reshuffle my powers. The next thing after that is to fix my ageing bio. Only after all of this is done - and it can take up to a day - can I actually play the character.

That's what I foresee returning players having to do.

Allow me to elaborate. Years ago, I postulated that there were three ways to stretch out finite content into infinite end game:

1. Make the content take VERY long to accomplish so you just spend a very long time making progress.

2. Make the content incredibly difficult to beat, so that you spend a lot of time trying and failing.

3. Make the player have to repeat the content many, many times over, spending a lot of time doing the same thing.

"End game" is a doomed prospect from the word go. It assumes infinite progress in theory, out of a system that is finite, and indeed very limited, just by definition. We can only play what the development team can make, and there's no way for them to make more than they can make, oxymorons notwithstanding. So the only way to stretch out what they can make is to make it slow us down, make it kill us, or make us have to repeat it.

Back when we were still talking about a level cap raise, I postulated those three options, but with the implication that end game would have to only make use of one option. It would either be very slow OR very difficult OR very repetitive. Ours... Managed to be all three, at least for one such as myself. The raid system itself is incredibly repetitive, the bosses in it are designed to be incredibly tough and the actual Incarnate progress system is incredibly slow. To my eyes, that's the WORST of all possible options, but it is, at least, theoretically infinite, simply because it takes phenomenal levels of stubborn perseverance to reach the finish line before they add in four more powers on the cheap.

Just for the sake of perspective, I'm the sort of person who actually needs closure and appreciates finality. All good things must come to an end, because it is this end that makes it feel like they ever amounted to something. I beat the game, I reached the end, my character is complete, and I am now free to pursue another character, instead. I can still play this one to marvel in his full power, but I have achieved all there is to achieve, and I am happy that I have. This is the sort of satisfaction and closure that level 50 used to represent to me, and in a way, still does. As I don't care even the tiniest bit about the whole iCrap, I still consider 50 to be the end.