Samuel_Tow

I think my biggest problem is with seeing things in terms of "penalty for death." UbiSoft did something I REALLY love with their next-gen Prince of Persia game ("that cell-shaded thing," as Yahtzee calls it), in that you never die. If you fall to your doom or get crushed in combat, your constant NPC companion saves you and either brings you back to the last stable platform you were on, or otherwise wakes you up with the enemy you were fighting having regenerated most of his health. They explained this as trying to look past the old days of "Game Over" screens from the coin-op era, and that they wanted their game to flow seamlessly from action to action even when you fail. Which it does, and I live the game for it.

I don't believe in "penalty for death" in any sense of the word, because I don't believe a player should be allowed to fail and yet still succeed. The worst "penalty" I want to see is having to try again AT NO LOSS OF ANYTHING. Simply make people try and try and try again until they get it right, or otherwise until they memorise the encounter and game the system. That's how I beat the Arishook in single combat.

If you want people to learn from their mistakes, then the easiest way to do that is to let them retry the same encounter they lost again immediately. You can only die so many times to a single tough fight before you pinpoint what's killing you, at the very least. And if you end up eventually STILL not able to beat that fight... Well, this IS an MMO, and there ought to be other people who can help.

City of Heroes isn't even as lenient as I describe. You can stock up on, say, large inspirations over a long period of time, but if you blow all of those on a single fight AND STILL LOSE, you're ******. No more large inspirations, no really good, dependable way to obtain more, no good way to retry at your original level of power. You can maybe scrounge up enough for a second attempt off the Market and off your own stores, but suppose you lose again? Then what? SOL. You lose performance, because you can consume your consumables, die and have to retry the same encounter again, only without your consumables. That's pretty punishing, though I'm thankful for Hospital Nurses. At least you're not COMPLETELY naked if you fail hard.

Generally, I don't want people to be "punished" for failing, because being punished causes people to get angry and shut down the game. And I've lost count of the number of games I've "forgotten" to get back to once I quit in a huff.

To you it was trivial, because you apparently did well than I did. I wasn't very good at the game, so I kept dying and dying and dying again, losing experience and being stuck at the same level with things only getting worse and worse. This did not motivate me to get better. It motivated me to hate the game with such passion that I've not had a single good thing to say about Diablo 2 for as far back as I can remember. There are very few games I HATE more than that one, and if I never see this atrocity ever again, it will be too soon.

Any game system which cane - through my lack of skill and knowledge - completely screw me over can keel over and die in a fire. Furthermore, any system of direct LOSS of anything can go to hell, too. I don't appreciate my games taking my stuff. I am not a petulant child to be punished. I pay good money for my entertainment and the least I expect from it is that it doesn't actively seek to piss me off.

That's a selfish stance to take, and one easily countered: Other people ruin my fun by sticking their noses into my business and telling me how to play so that they can have more fun at the expense of me not having any. This has happened to me in a lot of multiplayer games - one person will go ahead and do his thing at his leisure, expecting the rest of the players to sort of converge around him and craft a great gaming experience for him. We're all here to have fun, so one person's entertainment shouldn't take precedence over another person's.

The bottom line is that you are free to simply not play with people who don't appear to be as good as you require them to be, just as I'm free to rush headlong into trouble with wanton disregard for safety. This is an MMO, yes, but nothing says we, specifically, have to play together. I firmly believe in a "live and let live" policy. Let other people play as they will and be as good or as bad at the game as they will. I'm sure you'll still find people who want to do well on principle.

I take it you never watch sumo wrestling, then?

Yeah, that's kind of what I mean. In fact, if you watch any of the older Italian Mafia documentaries, a lot of people talk about how they were lured in by the promise of a good life, a nice house, shiny cars, pretty women, good living and all that. I mean, I'm sure there are people who get into crime for the killing and the maiming and the puppy-kicking, but there ought to be at least some instance of the opposite side of this. That sometimes, crime does pay for some people and they do get to live the good life in luxury and style, even for a little while.

And, of course, there's also the "villain with style" archetype. You know the kind - would strangle his own grandmother (to quote Marauder) for a profit and wouldn't think twice to torch a few Asian villages or commit genocide on a few African countries, but if you meet him face-to-face, he's the cleanest, most polite, most presentable guy in the world.

Sure, the Verandi Mooks are kind of slobs, always running around in their tank tops and bowler hats, so I can't expect them to run a clean neighbourhood, but the Marcone guys are always strutting around in fancy suits and stylin' hats and livin' the high life. I could certainly see their "turf" being cleaner and more festive-looking.

Whereas the actual reality is that not everyone responds to penalty by trying to do better. A great many people respond by finding something else to do that doesn't penalise them. I came to this game specifically to avoid the horrible XP loss mechanic in Diablo 2 which kept me from levelling for an entire campaign because I died more than I gained experience. The farther along I got without levelling, the harder it got.

"If at first you don't succeed, quit!" may not be a good mentality to have in real life, but luckily, this ain't real life.

*edit*
Incidentally, what's stopping YOU from learning from your mistakes? And if you have no problem with it, then what business is it of yours how other people handle defeat?

Ayup!

Really, though, I want to say this again - I am in no way criticising the more "realistic" approach to villainy, in that even when villains win, they still lose because they're evil. That's valid and legitimate. I'm just saying that I want to see a variety of approaches so that we can pick and choose our evil. If people want to play the dark and gritty black soul self-loathing murderer, then I will kindly stand aside and let them. But if I want to play the successful, cool, scot-free megalomaniac, then I'd like to have that option, too.

In fact, the depressing side of villainy would be a bit less depressing if it were put within the context of a wider scale of choices. Westin Phipps, for instance, is completely repugnant, but I don't disagree with adding him. I will simply opt to work with Terrance Dobbs or Dr. Forrester if given the choice, and that's OK in my book.

On this note, I feel like the Dean -> Leonard storyline is done pretty well. Sure, it tosses me the idiot ball for a while there, but by the end of the day, even if I haven't really gained much, I ended up screwing Protean harder than he screwed me, and that alone is satisfying. "When all is said and done, I win and you lose. Sucker!" You know what I mean

There's room for all kinds of villainy. I just wish there were LITERALLY room for more, as in more land area that is of a different theme. City of Villains can really do with at least one new zone, and preferably one that isn't under Arachnos' thumb. I mean, Nerva largely isn't, and you can see how nicely that contrasts. Sure, it's not a heaven by any stretch, but it's more... Ordinary than the beat-you-over-the-head moral lessons that the other zones are. It doesn't really have to be a Nemesis zone or a Crey zone. It could be just an independent island out in the bay that isn't important enough for Arachnos to settle.

See, Paragon City already has a lot of variety to it. You have the gleaming and pure blue-sky zones in Atlas Park and Steel Canyon, the dark and gritty ghettos in King's Row and Independence Port, the devastated areas in Boomtown, the pirate island in Striga, the rebuilt disaster area in Faultline, there are options. They aren't quite as many, but it's a collection of thematic choices. I just wish City of Villains offered more choice.

---

By the way, Praetoria DOES offer choice in this regard, especially in Neutropolis, I agree to that extent.

Actually, I read it more as saying: "I want to make sure your death hurts you so much that you won't dare play badly on MY team, or you'll have quit the game before you joined MY team."

Ah, yes, and then there's that. I, personally, will not consider backpacks complete unless and until they include jet packs. I'm much more lenient on whether the jet packs have to light up when you fly (or turn off when you land, whichever), but I want to see jet packs in the game. That's jet packS - plural. Even if they're just redumps of the various ones we have now - Raptor Pack, Goldbricker Pack, Longbow Eagle Pack, Wyvern Pack, GvE Jump Pack. And remember, we're talking costume pieces here, not powers, so I want to see just the packs, not the abilities that come with their corresponding powers.

Here's the thing - if you want me to want to BE the villain, you have to offer me something better than "your life sucks" at the end of the tunnel. And it's not really true that that's how it goes, not as an absolute statement. In realistic fiction, yes, but this isn't exactly realism what we have here. Let me explain:

There seems to be this idea that "villainy" can only ever be expressed by showing the human suffering and misery it causes. I disagree. I'd much rather focus on the COOL side of villain - building giant tractor beams that pull the moon closer to the earth, devising a spell to reverse time and unleash dinosaurs onto unsuspecting civilians, or even just simply being rich enough to BUY your own country. Yes, all of those still come with human misery and suffering attached, but I don't need to see that. I'm not interested in playing a mass-murdering torturing monster. That's not fun. I'm interested in playing the cool kind of villain who doesn't take backtalk from anyone and who routinely does the impossible because villains just do that as a rule of thumb.

I don't need a life lesson from a game when that life lesson is "don't play this game." If the entirety of the villain-side is built to depress and disgust me and make me not wish to do the things I'm being asked to do... Why the xXx would I want to play it? And, yes, I do mean Vin Deasel's xXx.

I can play a hero and the game can make me good about playing it. Why can't I play a villain and feel good about playing the game, too?

That's really the problem, though. Even the rich villas are dirty, grey and foreboding. The entire game goes for this aesthetic life-lesson that evil, even at its best, is still a thin veneer of surface beauty stretched over the skeleton of corruption and decay, to wax melodramatic for a moment. And the thing is... OK, I get it! One zone would have been enough, several if need be, but the whole damn place is a thinly-disguised hell. The good parts, rather than contrasting the depressing depravity of the rest of the Isles, only serve to depress me MORE.

Every island and every location in the Rogue Isles is purpose-designed to depress you, either by visceral misery and brutality, or by superimposing the clean world of the rich within line of sight of the rotten slums of the poor, and all drawn in that depressing black and grey and brown monotone. It's about as film noir as it gets without actually involving film noir.

And I don't have a problem with that as a theme, as long as there were CONTRAST. And there really isn't. EVERYTHING to do with villains is nasty, dark and depressing. What's wrong with seeing a successful villain living a good life once in a while without constantly reminding me that he's dead inside? Why is it such a problem to have an entire island where everything is just fine WITHOUT beating me over the head with the fact that it's all an illusion?

I'd have much preferred to see the Rogue Isles consist of a mish-mash of different war lords, each ruling his own island. So Arachnos would rule one, or maybe a few, then there'd be one ruled by a Council conspiracy, then one ruled by a Nemesis puppet state, one representing a Crey-funded settlement, one Cage-run horrible mine pit, you get the idea. That way, we could have had a whole host of themes, each consistent within its island, but none so overbearing that it overtakes the entire side of the game.

If that were the case, then I'd have no problems with Arachnos being the dead-inside slobs who have no problem eating dinner at a nice table next to a mass grave (the de-facto aesthetic of all of the Isles now). This is because this would be superimposed against Crey's gleaming, clean, orderly island that is nevertheless crawling with Crey Security and populated by brainwashed drones who live and breath Crey propaganda. Then you'd have the Cage island that's an overt living hell of poor miners living in shanty towns replete with crime and poverty while the soulless mine company works them to the bone and buries them where they fall. This, against the backdrop of a Council stronghold comprised of barracks, training facilities, weapon factories, laboratories and generally consisting of a Spartan state where everyone lives reasonably well, but is always at war with something. All of this opposed to a Nemesis puppet state where everything is nice and orderly, everyone is genuinely happy and crime doesn't exist, only because half the people are Automatons, criminals aren't arrested but simply replaced in the night and the people get "edited" news.

There's potential for great variety both in visuals and in themes, but instead we get seven islands that may as well be seven times the same island, all telling the same story - crime doesn't pay, and even if you do make money from crime, you're still garbage, just better-dressed.

I haven't missed what CoV represents. I just feel it should have been far more diverse than it really is.

Can be, but isn't always. That's the divergence point that opinions seem to clash around - not everyone wants an adrenaline rush, or indeed a game that forces you to be cautious. I'm not saying that those who do are wrong in their preferences. To each their own. But I AM saying that those who DON'T want an adrenaline rush or tactical combat aren't somehow wrong, or worse gamers for it. I'm not saying you said that, but this is a prevalent point of view I'm seeing here. "If there's no penalty for dying, then why play?" Really, because I like winning.

Personally, I like games that allow me to be stupid. That's what makes them fun. The more careful I have to be, the more I have to weigh my options and plan ahead, the less... Enthusiastic the game becomes. I WANT to leap from the tops of tall buildings and plummet half a mile down. I WANT to leap into a giant melee without doing inventory. I WANT to throw my guns in the air and catch them before firing a shot. I want to do all the crazy, wild and absurd things super heroes do, because that's what makes the game fun. If I'm forced to watch my every step, then I'm disinclined to have fun, and instead encouraged - well, forced really - to work.

For those who like the thrill of the chase, and for those who like calculated strategies, more danger and more penalty would be great, I'm sure. I have no beef with preference. But for me, the less the consequences, the more I'm going to chance things even if there's no reason to do so. I don't want to be afraid in my games. That's one reason I don't do well at survival horror.

I agree in part. Actual contact introduction missions are unnecessary and pointless, when these contacts can be introduced either via pop-up window or from other contacts as is the norm. None of these contacts are even remotely new at this point, so it makes no sense for them to be given special attention, especially when their content is considerably worse than newer stuff, for the most part.

Actual tutorial missions, on the other hand, should have some place in the game. Learning how to set your difficulty and what each option means, learning about PvP and so forth do need to exist somewhere. Whether as missions or in pop help format, I cannot say, but if they must exist as missions, then I'd put excise them from regular contacts and put them all on a new contact, some kind of City Advisor (or even the City Representative) hero-side and a "Looks like he knows something" dude villain-side. Either will work, and neither will force people to put their dealings on hold to trudge through yet another tutorial mission for what in my case is the 100th time, if not more.

I'd reserve judgement until I actually see the thing. A backpack - singular - is not an accomplishment, especially since that one pack comes with a paid booster. This will be accomplished only when we get at least a small selection of backpacks in the game for free.

I don't WANT motivation to choose my battles carefully. I want motivation to be brave and dive into trouble head-first, confident that I will win, or at the very worst I will get to try again. I don't want to be cautious and afraid of mistakes or failure. There's nothing duller in this game than having to play chess with the mission and power designers.

The most fun City of Heroes ever gets is when things go horribly wrong.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

This is a vicious circle, or as I like to call it, the "What came first? The chicken or the egg?" problems. More people play heroes, so more hero content is created so more people play villains. It should stand to reason that if disproportionately more villain content is created, then more people would play villains.

I mean, few people played their 50s before Incarnates and that didn't stop Positron from blowing his life's savings on the thing, and the whole studio has been on a sugar rush about it ever since. Why can't the same work with villain content?

Well, according to your to-hit channel: Yes. Yes, you are missing something

I never found an NPC that could do that wile I was there, which was admittedly a long time ago. Either way, I don't want penalties to my performance. If I failed once, I failed for a reason. Making me WEAKER just makes me more likely to fail again, making me weaker still.

I see it in the same light as Cole trying to corner the market on Psychic powers. Sure, he's stolen all the psychics from the common people, but common people still know psychics exist and discuss them. He's also failed to steal the psychics from either the Resistance or the Syndicate, and Syndicate Suits are far from hard to find.

It just takes quite a leap of faith for me to see mages as that much more different from psychics.

This reminds me of my experience in 9Dragons. I heard some people on their forums talking about how, at the higher levels, one wrong death could cause you to lose four or five hours of "hard grinding." That one post alone was enough to scare me off the game for life.

And if that's not bad enough, that game offered what's known as "blood points." A counter counted up one for each enemy kill and went from 0 to 999. Every time it reached 999, you got a "Blood Point," which was very important for weapon upgrades. Each time you died or logged off, the counter would reset to 0.

Champions also had a similar screwed-up system. You get a 5-star buff when you first make your character, and then proceed to lose one star for each time you die, eventually losing the whole buff, and re-earning that was hard. I don't remember it regenerating over time, but if it did, it would have taken days. Essentially, if you die, you become weaker and have to try the same content again with less power.

---

Games should not "punish" their players.