Samuel_Tow

A point?

Good point! I can't believe that went so far over my head. Having a Nemesis on Praetorian Earth does not require the Praetorian Earth Nemesis in particular.

In fact, I believe Nemesis Rex is still unaccounted for. Would love to see something done with him, since he seems to be even more awesome than our own Primal Nemesis, what with having already conquered his entire world, as well as those of multiple dimensions.

I believe this single sentence needs to be printed on t-shirts and handed out to game developers the world over to wear, because it points out a fundamental step that far too many game developers tend to forget about: People come to your game to have fun. You can't tell them that the fun only starts 25 hours in.

Fight Rularuu the Ravager. Fight the Rikti Homeworld armada. Fight the Batallion. Fight the Coming Storm. Fight Lughebu. Fight the Demon Prince. Fight the Shiva overmind.

There are options.

And this reaction is precisely why that design is wrong. In order for morality to be grey, you need to present the player with a non-trivial choice. Not "if I want to be good, I go where the good guys are." That's a problem, not a choice.

Again - even for lack of the appropriate tech, City of Villains still got moral choices right in spirit way back when. You are told to either kidnap an innocent school teacher and have her tortured and "broken," or you can sit on your hands and let her escape. Period. Why? I don't know. Why DID you choose whatever it was you chose? The game doesn't know, and the game doesn't care, because the game isn't going to hold your hand and tell you which choice means what. You decide whether what you did was good or bad, and you decide why you did it.

Dividing Praetoria's morality into clearly-defined factions was a mistake at inception. Nothing good ever comes out of binary conflict. And while the developers may or may not have tried to present each faction as more good or less evil, you still end up with clear labels of who is good and who is bad. "The Resistance" may not be good or bad, but the Wardens are good and the Crusaders are bad, which is still not grey.

Much as I hate myself for saying it, I'm getting there, as well. I WANT and LOVE big, showy powers, but when they come with horrible performance (Bitter Freeze Ray is probably the best example), I start to feel cheated. Like I bought this really cool, shiny new car, only to realise it has a bike engine under the hood and no seats in the cabin, plus there's a hole where the bottom of the trunk used to be.

Beautiful powers with horrible performance take up my pity spot of things I'll use against my better judgement, and while I will enjoy the spectacle every time, I'll always feel cheated at the end.

That said, a power that has great stats but horrible effects (like Bitter Ice Blast) is just as bad as a power that has horrible stats but great effects (like Bitter Freeze Ray). Neither is good on its own. We need both at the same time.

This is pretty much what ruins the morality system for me - that they've tied so many consequences to it to the point where our choice of morality is driven more by the consequences than by our (chatacters') moral standing.

It's interesting if you want to challenge the player to make tough decisions, but that's exactly the WRONG approach to make. In a game so heavily based on "alts" and with such great customization, the challenge should be aimed at the characters, with the player free to make a no-consequence choice.

Thank you for the link, it was very enlightening. It takes just about everything I've ever said about Praetoria's morality and the implication of our Tip missions and puts a concrete term to it - choice vs. problem. All of our morality "choices" are actually problems, because they're gameplay rewards with storyline written around them. This is why I've always been in favour of morality without consequence, such that we can depict our characters as having the morality they're supposed to have, rather than pick the alignment that has the badge missions we're after.

This neatly encapsulates everything I've ever wanted to say about end game: "More stuff to do, not more stuff to get." This has been my central complaint about the current end game - it consists of very little, very repetitive content that, by its sheer smallness, is bound to leave some people in the cold. There just isn't enough of a body of content for everyone to like something out of it. We do, however, have a huge array of even more rewards tied to it, transforming said content from a game into a gate blocking said rewards. Never a good thing in my eyes.

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To go back to the above link, I like to see the game past the end be mostly choices and not many problems. I want to feel that the game has indeed ended, but that there are still things I can do post-credits. A game which never ends is like a cartoon or anime series it never ends - sooner or later you'll stop watching it, and it won't be on a triumphant climax, but rather on a slow downward spiral. Again - never a good thing.

I am a firm believer in the adage that all good things must come to an end, and not because that's reality. No, on the contrary, all good things in entertainment must come to an end, because they decline the longer they persist after a certain point. I have much fonder, more precious memories of games that started, took me for a ride and ended on a high note, never to see sequels at all, than I do of games which dragged on for 10 years through ever more embarrassing sequels and ever dumber stories *coughtombraidercough*. Excuse me, must have caught a cold from someone.

To me, a self-contained, finite experience that ends before it wears out its welcome is far superior to one which splays out over an infinite plain, with eventual suck in the distance in all directions.

Every time I remember this, I thank my lucky star that they chose to unsuck Martial Arts. I appreciate it.

I'd actually like to extend this to costume sets that are locked by the game through late-game activities, like the Rularuu weapons, the Roman gear or the Vanguard set. Speaking of which, what's today, like 22nd? Cannot wait!

Wait, how does that work? "Longbow" didn't exist prior to City of Villains. The red-and-white tights trainers and vendors were and are Freedom Corps members. Longbow only came into being with Issue 6 City of Villains, which is when Newspaper missions came into the game, as well. True, Mayhem missions took an extra Issue, but even before that, Bank Missions took their place. Borea was four Issues after that in I10 and the Rikti War Zone.

Also, didn't the Shadow Shard have repeating-mission contacts since I2? I thought that's all the single-player contacts in the Shard ever did. General Hammond is constantly losing Patrols, Dr. Boyd is obsessed with Obelisks and Dr. iForgotHerName is obsessed with Kora Fruit. There was that Russian Lt. Something guy who gave out three missions on a loop, all Nemesis, I think.

I apologise if that makes me sound like a jerk. This just made me curious to ask about.

Here's a practical experiment for you: Take Fiery Melee's Fire Breath power, pick Dark Fire, then colour it blue/blue (and I mean 0,0,255 blue). Have a good look at what comes out of your characters' mouth and tell me it doesn't look like blue ink. Even if it doesn't look like that to you, I dare you to claim it looks anything like fire. Because it doesn't.

I'm generally an opponent to using one powerset to represent another powerset, or to represent something it's clearly not (like Dark = Sand), but even I have to admit that precedent exists. If you can explain why your sand deals Negative Energy damage, then more power to you. If someone's powers revolve around cold, but around a chemical which freezes emerald green or ruby red, then I see no reason not to let them.

After all, if the argument is that green ice doesn't look like ice, then I dare say black fire doesn't look like fire, and red radiation doesn't look like radiation. Wait... Wait, no, that doesn't work.

I don't think Mender Silos is the Praetorian Nemesis. That would be... Amazingly lame. Last we heard of Praetoria's Nemsis, he died a simple toy maker back in the 1800s somewhere. No reason that can't be expanded upon, however.

He doesn't have to be steampunk, really. Nemesis was originally skilled as a toy maker, as I understand it, and extrapolated his technology from there. But what Nemesis is the most skilled at appears to be long-term planning and short-term micromanagement, or in other words: The creation of evil schemes. I have no reason to believe he couldn't pull these off with the Devouring Earth at his beck and call, as opposed to an army of people and robots.

I have to second this, just because I share the sentiment.

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I want my "end game" to take place after the game has actually ended, that's pretty much the entirety of my preference. I want to have the closure of having completed all of the game's progress, so that I can now use all of my earnings in an entirely new and fun experience liberated from the rat race of progression and unburdened by consequences of failure. And, yes, I realise this sounds like a sandbox.

I've often said that if I can choose between a character who can progress and one who can't, I'll pick the one who can progress, but that's only because the ones who can't have already done it all. If my level 50 characters moved onto an entirely new set of content that was more concerned with getting through interesting stories and not with experience, drops or efficiency, I'd play them. I'd play them a lot. But the eponymous Samuel Tow has done every mission he has access at at level 50. Why WOULD I play him again? To replay them ad nauseum? No, thanks. As long as I'll be replaying missions, I may as well replay them with different characters.

Probably my favourite end game in any game has been the one in Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now. When you finish, the game dumps a crapton of cash on you and unlocks all vehicles on all tracks for all game modes, and allows you to play any that you like, or run around and perform stunts at your leisure. I must have something like 10 hours of video of amazing crashes and thousands of screenshots of weird stunts.

I don't need levels or "dings" to enjoy a game so long as there's something interesting to do. As such, I prefer my end game to take place at the literal end of the game.

And then there's this. You point to one of the DUMBEST storyline decisions in this game's entire history (and I'm counting the Origin of Powers, so that's saying something) and base a pretty significant conclusion on it. If you walk around and read people's bios in the Rogue Isles, you'll note that most of them don't paint themselves as Arachnos lackeys. In fact, a great many of us have typed our fingers to the bone complaining that City of Villains treats us like hired thugs. And the fact that newer story arcs seem to avoid that tells me the developers finally get it.

Neither heroes nor villains are easily classifiable in two monolithic factions that should be opposed to each other for no reason other than because heroes and villains fight. The fact that almost the entirety of the pre-existing CoH game got put under the banner of Longbow and "Longbow" became synonymous with "hero," as well as the fact that all villains were written to be Arachnos followers and "the Arachnos" became synonymous with "villain" is probably the biggest narrative fail of all. Not only does it completely ignore specific characters' backstories, likes and beliefs, it also imposes the next best thing to the typical WoW race warfare without any express need for it.

Villains and heroes are their won separate entities, and they do not need to be shoehorned into their roles, as both are self-defined. Not all heroes hate all villains, and not all villains attack all heroes on sight. Nor should they. "Us vs. them" is Cold War propaganda.

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I'm reminded to praise City of Villains, actually, on how beautiful the latest few story arcs added to it have been. Sure, not all of them have great writing, and some of them make us look a bit sheepish, but by and large they treat us as legitimate, self-made villains, not as cronies who should be paid and berated for the lowlives they are. As villains, we work for ourselves, to forward our own goals, often over the dead bodies of people who get in the way. And I love it. That's what a villain should be.

This is actually where Tip missions fail, and for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the Villain missions are just absurd. Not only do villains seem to have an obsession for screwing over Longbow (Why? Because they're the only "heroes" in this game?), but their motivation, more often than not, my villain's Tip motivation seems to be as giant a dick as possible, for no reason other than because he prefers to be a giant phallus. "I do it all because I'm evil. And I do it all for free. Your tears are all the pay I'll ever need." Not cutting it.

Villains, as I see them, don't NEED to have crawled out a Saturday morning cartoon and then passed through the Jason Voorhees school of villainy on the way here. As was mentioned before - discounting the mentally ill, most actual villains don't wear clip-on cards declaring their evilness and don't set out to be the most evil jerk in the world for the bragging rights. "For the evilnessnessness!" is not a good motivation. Quite on the contrary, most villains are after something that they either shouldn't have, or that they are willing to hurt people to get.

To me, the difference between rogues and villains isn't the presence or lack of maniacal glee at the prospect of pain and suffering, but rather discretion vs. ambition. A rogue picks his battles and finds the most profitable one. A villain follows his agenda and stomps on anyone and anything that gets in the way.

Secondly, Tips fail, ironically enough, because they try too hard and attempt to give too many reasons why we're doing something, as though the writer was afraid we would be reluctant to take certain options unless we were reassured that there was ample reason to take them. It's like:

-Mr. Rogue, you will now go save a hero's life.
-But I don't wanna!
-It's the right thing to do.
-And I care about this why?
-It's, err... Bad for business if the hero dies and the PPD tighten things up.
-They have nothing on me. I'm good.
-But if you do, you'll get good press and probably a reward.
-Meh, I can get more from my old contracts.
-Well, um... Oh, the hero is rich! He'll PAY you when you save him?
-Hmm... I'm interested. Do go on.
-Well, he's also connected, so he can get you a pardon on some of your older crimes, too!
-OK, now we're talking! Gimme' the address!

I don't need to be told why I chose to do something. Give me the choice and let me fill in the details as to why this particular character took that particular course of action. City of Villains was unironically a lot better about it. Almost every choice was so crafted to give you no benefit and give you no omniscient narrator reason why you would pick either side. Do you shut down Amanda Vines or let her broadcast? Yes or no is irrelevant. The bigger question is WHY, and this question the game never answers for you. You write the answer for your own particular character.

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To me, the cartoony faction warfare of generic heroes vs. generic villains is a drawback to the game's narrative more than it is a help. I don't want to see any more co-op missions, far from it. But at the same time, I don't want to see needless animosity that doesn't have a more specific reason. "Tunnel Snakes rule!" does not count.

Underhanded criticism aside, there's a serious flaw in this logic, or at least as I understand it.

One cannot work towards a "never-ending" goal, because that's working for a goal which can never be achieved. When a goal cannot be achieved, it makes no difference how great it is. If you know it's impossible to achieve, then there is no point in working for it.

The only way a never-ending goal can be worth pursing is if it's not the goal that matters, but the journey spent in pursuing. Hence, the journey. However, such a journey cannot and should not be referred to as "work," because work it ain't. It's fun, else we wouldn't be on it, what with there being no end goal to it.

"Working for an endless goal" is an empty premise, because it implies you don't like the work, but know you will never get to the goal. This is not a valid motivation for players at large, and I'm confident enough to state that as a fact. You need to reward your players, either with a great journey, or with a reward at the end. Having neither makes for a horrible game.

This I actually find interesting, because it would give quite a bit more depth to what is currently a pretty shallow narrative. Yes, we have a world of about five character personalities and a plot that's about as deep as the actual gameplay gets, but at its heart it's a fairly standard "good guy turned extremist turned bad guy" turned cosmic abomination for some reason. Having an actual plot TWIST to the story might make it feel more like a legitimate story.

Bringing the Nemesis into the picture adds a lot of such potential plot unexpected twists. However, adding Nemesis into the pictures also adds the EXPECTATION for unexpected plot twists, which often defeats the purpose. So, adding a Nemesis who is not the Nemesis, and was perhaps forcibly converted into a Devoured is an interesting concept. One has to wonder how the Hamidon is able to retain his memories and control the Devouring Earth, and if it's not possible for another to do the same if one showed enough will and initiative.

In fact, just reading the suggestion gave me all sorts of interesting ideas, not least of which being an Infested Kerrigan style takeover, where a recently-devoured but very strong-willed person is able to wrest control of the group overmind. This has potential!

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At its heart, Praetoria is a political story, and I feel a lot of us who've grown bored with it so quickly feel that way for precisely this reason. It's plot, yes, but it reads like presidential debates, or Marxist-Leninist theory, or Fox News. But - at least to me - it no longer reads like a story, so much as like description of a setting. Throwing in a few left field plot twists may actually make it a bit more exciting than the omnipresent "Resistance vs. Loyalists" duality that I had enough of back when it was the "Longbow vs. Arachnos," instead.

In fact, it's more than a little amusing how much more depth both Longbow and Arachnos have been given when they were thrown into a conflict that has more than two sides.

The way I look at it is this - with a 95% to-hit, the minimum overall hit rate you can expect is 1 out of 2, or 50%, if the game hates you, which I've seen extend over three streakbreaker hits, at times. The minimum a Tanker without a Streakbreaker can expect to see is 0% over several attacks.

Moreover, this eliminates a tactical advantage that the Streakbreaker provides, that being guaranteed hits. If, for instance, the Energy Punch on my Energy Melee Brute misses, then I will immediately follow that with either Total Focus or Energy Transfer, swapping targets if necessary, to ensure that this one particular very important attack will land a guaranteed streakbreaker hit. A Tanker with a malfunctioning streakbreaker lacks this option.