Samuel_Tow

You lost me right out the gate.

Well, there's that, too I actually laughed my *** off when my Power Loyalist called Marchand and he started talking about an interdimensional war and the faith of Praetoria and Primal Earth and ethics and such and all I could think about was "Um... Dude, none of that stuff ever came up in anything I did so far."

To be honest, it seems like the whole of Praetoria only had storyline written up until level 20, because when we leave, we've literally closed every single open storyline and explored every single avenue. It doesn't feel like this is a larger world that we've seen only a small part of. It literally feels like they ran out of things for us to do, so they shunted us off to the old game to serve as filler, in an act not too dissimilar from how Dragon Ball Z managed to dragon for 276 episodes.

That's not true. You can only get tip missions if you have alignment slots open. Once you fill up all five slots for the day, no more tips will drop for you. I've tried it.

I should probably also warn that anybody who dislikes tl;dr narrative should probably avoid any Architect arc I've ever made. For both our sakes

Yeah, those could have been given a bit of background. Note, I say "background," not "backstory." There's a difference. Take Hero Corps, for example - they have a good bit of background, but no real backstory. Hero Corps is a for-profit business who take on jobs that require meta-humans and then employ meta-humans to do them, taking a percentage from what they're paid for the job to what they pay their metas. There's much discussion about how controversial it is to essentially turn heroes into mercenaries, but that's the extent of their "backstory." Hero Corps Field Analysts exist to "appraise" heroes and so ensure that they are being issued tasks appropriate to their comfort zone. It's an in-game service explained with some background, and it steps on no-one's toes.

Merit Vendors could easily be given a similar background without turning their existence into a plot point. Suppose some visionary tycoon saw that heroes were busting their butts doing some very difficult tasks and not being compensated for their blood sweat and tears and decided to form a business that would compensate heroes for these particular difficult tasks specifically by essentially acting like a non-profit middle man with Wentworth's Fine Consignments. Said tycoon spends a lot of his own money, but in return gets massive tax deduction and amazing positive press. Everybody wins. Of course, the ones in the Rogue Isles would have to be explained separately, but it's not exactly hard to do. I came up with the above background in the time it took me to write it.

I'm with Ironic on this one. The reveal that the Rikti are human, that they are broken up into factions and that they can speak was probably the most excited I've ever been about City of Heroes. Going through the motions in The Eternal Nemesis and watching the guy play everyone for a fool put a smile the size of Texas on my face. Learning the truth behind the Circle of Thorns send chills down my back. Sure, the stories weren't exactly well told in writing, but the stories themselves were very solid and very interesting. They followed a timeline, they perused mystery and revelation, they made an effort to present an interesting experience. Contemporary stories are just not interesting, because they seem like they're rushed and ill-thought-out.

And, in a lot of cases, contemporary stories are horribly invasive of character concept. I still can't forgive the Origin of Powers ********! To see people tell me that the Well of the Furies was the only source of magic in the world simply infuriates me, because that is such an *** backwards way to write an interactive world which is supposed to promote creativity! I've started skipping over storylines, myself, largely because they're not worth reading. In fact, I made the mistake of reading through Montague Castanella's arc the other day. Ugh! The person who wrote this should never be allowed to put words to text ever again! This is a horrible, terrible mess that fails at pretty much every aspect of story writing.

I don't think anyone in Praetoria has a shot at being a good person, which is kind of why the whole thing is so disappointing. As you say, anyone who works for Cole's regime is supporting Cole regardless of his idealistic ideas. But that's kind of why idealist Loyalists leave for Primal Earth, I believe - they realise they're supporting Cole when they shouldn't, so they stop supporting him.

Personally, I'd have preferred a much more solid morality, less grey and grey morality, and more choosing between good and evil. After all, when people asked for moral choices before, they were within the context of good guy heroes and bad guy villains. I'd have been perfectly fine if I were allowed to make moral choices between those obvious moralities. I never saw a reason for a the world half empty that is Praetoria. Hell, if I had my way, Praetoria is how I would write an EVIL world, and they're trying to pass that off as a morally ambiguous one. It's not. We're just all bad guys in there.

I went and checked that. I still see the origin of the Will of the Earth as the same thing as what I saw it in the Terra Conspiracy - a sentient bacteria. The only thing in there which hints at magic is that the Devouring Earth kidnapped a bunch of Mystics, but I couldn't find any evidence of what they actually wanted out of the mystics. If you're referring to the fact that the Will of the Earth is psychic, then yes, it is. But as we said before - that's not necessarily magical.

And again - the one time the Hamidon was described as magical was when someone goofed, and that was later changed. Is it possible that magic is somehow involved? Possibly. However, that does not make the Hamidon a source or repository of magic, nor does it make anything related to him a large part of magical history.

That only works if we assume that Cole has managed to control EVERYBODY, and he clearly hasn't. The Resistance have cells throughout the world and the Syndicate very much isn't falling for his propaganda or for his scare tactics. We have plenty of people on Praetorian Earth who know about the broader world around them, who should conceivably know about magic, yet it's never so much as mentioned. Not even in the context of "It existed, but not any more!" Magic hasn't been removed from Praetorian Earth. It simply doesn't come up in any of the narrative anywhere. It's like they forgot about it.

Yes, magic does show up in the 40-50 hero arcs related to Praetorian Earth, but for the most part that's just because it was in the arcs even before, and it's more a holdover than an actual part of Praetorian canon.

Or it will make them quit, like I have from more games than I care to count.

Debt works fine as it is now. Failing that, NONE would be my pick. Let people have fun and take risks without stressing out over their game.

Pretty much this. When I stop criticising things, it'll be because I've left. And if I leave, it won't be in a big huff or with long goodbyes. It will be because I took a break to play something else and never found a reason to come back.

You can't have an MMO that people never criticise, because that just means people simply don't care. And the last thing you want to happen to your MMO is for your players to not care about it enough to elicit an emotional response.

I'm not sure you can argue that. Realism and real-world history really shouldn't be used as precedent for a fictional world, especially one as... Weird as Paragon City. However, if we go from a fictional background, D&D always seems to treat magic as much like a science as it does like "primal forces." The best sorcerers are those who are the most intelligent and magical knowledge is the key to great magical power. The strongest are those who are the most literate and in the possession of the most knowledge that they have the mental faculties to actually comprehend.

In fact, in many Fantasy settings, Magic tends to be the height of intellectual prosperity, the result of an intelligent, learned person bending the world to his will while the stupid riff-raff have to make due with ox carts and log cabins and fighting wolves for their basic survival. Common men build villages and caravans. Wizards build cathedrals, towers and castles in the sky.

That's really all I'm saying - Magic in general isn't a sign of social and intellectual decay, at least not how I've seen it in fiction. On the contrary, it's a sign of great prosperity and learning. To have that absent from Praetoria completely is just... Odd. This isn't something that you can just suppress any more so than you can suppress the laws of thermodynamics. Even when there aren't any people left who know how to cast spells and those born with the ability are slain at birth, you should still have all manner of magical critters trying to break into the world.

"Psychics" in general aren't magical. That's not to say you can't achieve mind control, clairvoyance or telekinesis through magical means, but the Syndicate is clearly described as being locked in a struggle for Praetoria's psychics with Cole's regime. Any psychic that Tillman doesn't snag, the Syndicate instead recruits. And every Seer keeps being said to have "just been born different," a line which is repeated rather very often.

Of course, you could have mind-altering powers accessible via magic, but you don't stuff these people in a tank like Cole does. So if he has captured former Tsoo casters, what does he do with them? We see neither sight nor mention of such. And while it's true that the Tsoo would normally have magical mind control powers, they also have dark powers, storm powers, teleportation, spines, energy powers and I even forget what else. That, and their Ancestor Spirits. Neither hide nor hair of those exists in Praetoria.

That's my line of thinking, as well. The game's writers have often misstepped, but never more so than when they try to add lore justifications for purely meta-game systems. Adding a cape mission around "Capes at 20" was cute, but all it served to do was make people ask "Why the devil do I need the city's permission to hang a towel from my back? And it's just gotten worse and worse. Dr. Brainstorm messing with the origins of power to allow Brutes to use maces and axes was probably the worst example, though what we're seeing now may be even worse.

Meta-game concepts should have some in-character explanation, yes, but they don't need entire novels written about them. I don't want to read the 12-chapter series about why my accuracy can't go over 95%, after all.

People asked for more story to run while achieving Incarnate status, but I'm not sure too many asked for story that EXPLAINED Incarnate stuatus. As Incarnates were originally conceived, you'd unlock them with Merits and then grind ITFs, Lady Greys and the Statesman and Recluse tasks till you turned blue in the face. I was one of the people who argued that this is a bad idea, that if you're going to be adding what constitutes a new level range, you need NEW content to go with it. I don't think adding new content that EXPLAINS it was necessary, however.

And, mind you, I actually liked Ramiel's story, but I don't like where it's gone since then.

Yet that somehow didn't stop me from beating up Lord Recluse in the future or Hequat in a different dimension. The game has proven that it is capable of supporting storylines where a single character takes on a god alone. I want more of this. Explaining around it does nothing to change that fact.

I'm not sure top-request items from players carry much weight unless they come with the promise mass appeal and a large return on investment.

I will agree with you to the extent that I can see why you'd want this, but we're actually running into the opposite problem of what we had with CoV before.

When City of Villains first came out, the writers seem to have expected us to want to serve Lord Recluse and be his eternal lackey with no ambition beyond that. Once some of us realised this, we were quite upset at this indignity. Now Praetorian Earth is doing the opposite - it's painting us as independent characters wanting out from under Cole, rather than wanting to serve him.

I'm not sure if there's a good middle ground to this, and I'm not sure how viable "options" would be here, considering he IS the de-facto bad guy. I'm just glad I'm not forced to serve him. I'd have been even happier if I weren't forced to serve either the Resistance or the Loyalists for the first 20 levels, but oh well.

Tokyo made it a point to troll every post on the subject, yes.

The world still had the USA, France and all the other countries we have that almost weren't at quite a few points in history, so that's kind of just conjecture. That's what I mean when I say we need to be given an explanation, not left to guess.

So one would think, but if they were, then the Syndicate would show SOME magical ability, and they really don't. After all, even if Cole were trying to hoard all the magic in the world, the Syndicate are the people who'd be able to keep some to themselves, anyway. After all, Cole is trying to hoard all the city's psychics and they have hordes of them, anyway.

The Hamidon isn't magical and has no connection to magic. The giant single-cell organism we know on Primal Earth is the result of the scientific research of a scientist by the name of Hamidon Pasalima, who created the Will of the Earth - a kind of sentient bacteria which could animate organic and inorganic like and shape it into semi-sentient creatures.

There was exactly one instance of magic being attributed to the Hamidon - in a promotional press release that talked about how the Hamidon was the god of something or other or had great magic, I don't remember the exact wording. This was said by someone with a very loose memory of what the Hamidon actually was, and I do remember the exact wording of the writer on staff when he read that news report: "The Hamidon is a what what of what?" This said press release was soon fixed to be factually accurate.

The Hamidon and the Devouring Earth are pure science from everything we know both on Primal Earth and on Praetorian Earth.

"Soaking up magic" is a very poor plot device, however, as it lumps all magic regardless of its nature, source or incarnation into the same pot that can be "soaked up." It ignores the existence of magical artefacts, the existence of magical creatures, the existence of magical alternate planes of existence that exist and can break into our worth whether or not we have magic, the existence of inherited magical blood which causes people to develop magical powers even without formal training (and which bloodline is only traceable via the blood tome - a magic book) and so on.

Yes, you can just write an in-story explanation that "Cole sucked up all magic" (even if such isn't actually in the game) but that would just be very unimaginative writing, and needless, to boot. But even if magic were somehow removed from Praetorian Earth, you'd think there would be mentions of it left in the world still. Just as an example, the world of Dragon Age II is a world where people are doing their best to contain magic and remove it from the world at large, and yet there's constant mention of it, constant run-ins with rogue mages running from the law, constant reminders of what the world was before, people bitter about it, people fearful of it and so forth.

Look at how the hoarding of psychic power is handled. Every time a psychic is born, that child is taken from its parents and stuck in a vat. This leaves parents who are always sad, often bitter and sometimes dead or imprisoned. It leaves psychics who are damage and often miss large chunks of their lives. People comment on the Seers, how immoral it is, how necessary it is, how creepy it is. You have Loyalists fighting to protect the Seer network and Resistance fighting to bring it down, or to break Seers off it and use them for their own ends.

Yes, there is no psychic power on the loose in the city as it is on Primal Earth, but psychic power exists nonetheless. The very fact that it is contained is its own plot point, and many plots revolve around it. Whether magic is hidden or loose in the world of Praetorian Earth, it still needs its own story. You can't just drop a bridge on magic off-panel just because it makes the narrative simpler to write.

Personally, while I agree that "he has been empowered so he will kick your ***" is better than "you are a gnat so he will kick your ***," I'm getting a little tired of everyone and their grandma being empowered. We've fought gods before, and we've done it alone. Some more of that can't go amiss.

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I'm also of the opinion that I'd rather see City of Heroes zones revamped than see new zones added to that side of the game. On the flip side, I fully believe that City of Villains should get at least one new zone at some point. I'd slate it for 15-25, myself, as that's the primary level range where you only have single options: 15-20 in Cap, 20-25 in Sharkhead.

In general, I DO NOT WANT any more co-op zones. Co-op teaming was fun when it was a novelty, when I thought "Man, I bet it would be cool to team a Scrapper with a Brute!" That's old news now, and even besides, we can do the same via side switching. I'd much prefer faction-specific zones. Why? Well...

The biggest thing is that the story in co-op zones is always fat. Either you end up with nonsense like everyone constantly reminding you "and if you are a villain..." or even worse, you end up with villains doing hero content with flimsy justifications. "Well, they'll kill everyone, including you!" Wanna' bet? Maybe I want to join them and see the world burn. Or maybe I want to sink YOU and fight them my own way. "You can't." No, I clearly can't. I'm forced to be a hero, to the point where I have to wonder why we still pretend to have a villain game.

In large part, City of Villains was better off when the developers were at least pretending that it was an "expansionalone." At least then we occasionally saw VILLAIN content. These days, all we ever get is hero content that villains get to participate in. Oh, sure, there's the occasional story arc and SF here and there, and I do appreciate that, but any time it comes to larger game systems like Incarnates or new zones, it's always co-op and always hero content that villains are participating it "to fight a common enemy."

I'm sick and tired of common enemies. Heroes and villains have had so many common enemies of late that they may as well get married and get it out of their systems. You know they're gonna' do it, so let's just go out and do it. Enough of this "will they or won't they" nonsense.

Sometimes I wonder if we aren't misapplying the term "villain" when it comes to player "villains." If most of what they do in new content is fighting a common enemy with the heroes, maybe they're not the real villains after all. Why is it so hard to understand that a good villain is THE antagonist, not a casual observer that's just kind of mean?