Samuel_Tow

I actually like the idea of Incarnate Shards dropping with the commonality of Vanguard merits, with Incarnate boosts having costs comparable to those of Vanguard costumes or temp powers.

I disagree. "Constantly, enormously useful" when solo is a massive overstatement. Yes, it does a lot of damage but A) this is a clear misuse of what a power is designed to do and B) it's still far more effective to just pop Aim, Build Up and open with AoEs if that were your fancy. And Time Bomb is still far better for toe bombing, to boot.

Trip Mine has a rather small blast radius and damage not enough to one-shot even minions, so its use as an opener is questionable. Its use as personal protection, that I can't deny, but even then it's not all that impressive as it rarely catches more than a couple of people.

The most impressive I'v ever seen Trip Mine has been when I've corner-pulled entire spawns into it around a corner. THEN it does pretty serious damage, but that takes more time and opportunity cost to set up than I'm willing to commit spawn after spawn after spawn.

You know... Making the Crazed Citizens fight like Ghouls would be a MASSIVE improvement, come to think of it. They don't have to have the cannibalistic auras, just the basic run and punch animations, and that writing on the ground when they die, say with the Invoke Panic yell.

The "timeline" is tied to levels, so no. However, in the case of Vanessa's introduction, the 40-45 Tina arc where she shows up as a known villain takes place "before" the 45-50 Maylor arc where she is officially introduce with the assumption that she is not a known villain before.

I know this will probably turn me into a pariah around here, but I'm really not interested in TFs of any kind, so no. I'm seriously hoping about some Incarnate STORY ARCS that go with the new TFs.

Hmm... I guess I could see that. I mean, Praetorian Vanessa DaVore has the same kind of "I got dressed by falling over backwards into a closet" outfit that Primal Earth Vanessa does, and the latter was designed to fit the overall design of the Primal Earth Carnival of Shadows, so one could kind of assume they could end up looking similar.

However, Primal Earth's Carnival of Shadows minions look like carnival performance because that's what they are. Jugglers, harlequins, strong men, fire breathers, gymnasts, sword swallowers, illusionists, ringmasters, etc. They are, essentially, a 1950s travelling circus which fits right in with the unusual and sometimes rustic charm of Paragon City, where old meets new. They are entertainers and performers.

Where in Praetoria would a Carnival of Light dressed as carnival performers be even relevant? Yes, we've heard of other cities having survived the Hamidon Wars, but I ask you this: what reason would Resistance operatives - which is what Calvin Scott describes the Carnival of Light as - have to dress up like this? Even the "clowns" of the resistance like Hatchet and Jack Hammer and so forth still wear Resistance uniforms. Hell, even Beladonna Vetrano, aka Not Ghost Widow, wears a Resistance uniform with a trenchcoat over it. In fact, no reason is ever given as to why Vaneassa instead chooses to dress like the WalMart bargain bin. It just seems out of place in the world of Praetoria.

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But here's the thing - maybe it isn't. But if it isn't, then TELL ME ABOUT IT! Tina's entire explanation of why the Carnival of Shadows were being attacked by Anti-Matter's clockwork consists of two sentences, and Vanessa' unnecessary cameo says precisely ZILCH more. She doesn't know, nor should she. But the way this is worded, Calvin simply tells us that the Carnival of Light exists on Praetorian Earth and they work for the Resistance. He doesn't tell us what they look like or how they may be similar to our Carnival of Shadows. Hell, if I didn't have "meta-game knowledge," I wouldn't even know they were supposed to be the same thing.

Back when Praetorian Earth was the goatee evil counterpart to Primal Earth, I could assume that everyone in that world looked a lot like everyone in our world, but backwards or exaggerated. So I could assume that the Carnival of Light were exactly like the Carnival of Shadows, only good. Having seen how drastically different Praetoria is now, I have no reason to assume that the Carnival of Light are at all anything like what we have on Primal Earth. Their Clockwork are completely different, they don't have any nazi, they don't have Nemesis, their Yins are different, they have Rogue Isles or Recluse, their PPD is completely different, their signature characters are nothing like ours... Why would I assume the Carnival of Light is anything at all like ours if the game cannot be arsed to TELL ME?

I'm not asking for Shakespearian poetry here. Just fill in your plot holes, please, even if it's as simple as a single-sentence dismissal. "Calvin Scott says that the Clockwork probably mistook the Carnival of Shadows for the Praetorian Carnival of Light, a Resistance branch with style and drab much similar to our world's Carnies. The way he described them, I can see why the robots would be confused." It's not complicated.

Dr. Calvin talks about using some kind of Chronometer to isolate himself from the sped-up time. I assume our characters undergo the same shielding the prevent from going mad like the locals. I don't have a good answer for why they AREN'T going really fast, however.

Vanessa DeVore, as she appears in Mother's arc, does not appear to be leading a Carnival of Light. If I recall correctly, freed Seers come to her aid. The only thing linking the Seers to Primal Earth's Carnival of Shadows is psychic powers, but even that is tangential. Primal Earth's Carnival of Shadows don't have innate psychic powers, at least not necessarily. The powers they wield come from Vanessa, herself, through the porcelan masks that she places shards of her soul in.

This is what makes me wonder. If Anti-Matter's Clockworked picked on the Carnival of Shadows over this similarity, then they may as well have picked on Arachnos' Fortunatas, or Penelope Yin or the Clockwork King or Sister Psyche, or any of the other numerous psychics on Earth. The original connection was a visual one, assuming that the Carnival of Light LOOKED like the Carnival of Shadows in the same way as Nemesis Rex's soldiers look exactly like Nemesis' soldiers to the point where Maxwell Christopher can't tell them apart, or how the good Oranbegans from Oranbegan Earth looked exactly the same as the evil Oranbegans of Primal Earth, right down to the Death Mages.

When you remove the striking similarity, the entire plotline becomes pointless as the reason it was added no longer exists. The only reason to keep it in the arc, therefore, is to save yourself the work of rewriting the arc more than necessary, and there were simply better ways to go about justifying that than turning it into meaningless filler.

Vanessa, as far as I'm aware, is famous as a person, but not as a criminal and villain. She is, I believe, just a rich member of high society with a penchant for throwing elaborate parties, or so she is perceived. If I remember To Save a Soul correctly (and God help you with how padded THAT story arc is), we don't learn about her psychic powers until Giovana Scaldi becomes known, as Vanessa's previous exploits are revealed through spectral journal entries found in her mind spread across the psychic plane.

It's quite possible that Vanessa is famous, but nothing I've seen suggests she's famous for being the Mistress of the Carnival of Shadows. Even if we parallel the Malta Group, there is still an entire mandatory point that Indigo makes about them being a secret organisation that no-one knows about, and in everything Crimson sends you to do, he still maintains that air of mystery and secrecy. He is, in fact, outright surprised when the Knights of Malta shoot down a passenger jet, an act that the Sky Raiders, say, would have no problem committing, but which for Malta is a very bold and obvious move. They become public knowledge to heroes, but still not public enough to be persecuted and prosecuted until right at the end of World Wide Red with the arrest of that one Director and the exposing of the organisation to the world.

Vanessa does undergo this kind of transformation from nameless menace to known villain, but she does so in Harvey Maylor's "To Save a Soul." Up until that time, the Carnival is just that - a Carnival with no stated leader.

I agree that this needs to be handled better. I disagree that the introduction needs to be pushed earlier. Harvey Maylor's very first mission is an introduction to Vanessa. He introduces her as the hostess of a party taken over by the Carnival never really suspecting she is behind the whole thing. And he would normally remain clueless, were it not for the letter Vanessa leaves to the hero. This mission is unskippable, as you can access nothing else from the contact until this is done, and this is the first introduction to Vanessa, as well as the entire summary of this contact's point in existence. To push that up earlier simply removes the need to have Harvey Maylor as a contact.

Furthermore, it discredits the entire gravity of his entire story arc. The old story was very well crafted, if padded to hell. Vanessa is played to be a sympathetic character the entire way through, seeing her as a young girl full of hope and dreams, and even seeing her do some good. Moreover, Vanessa never, EVER shows up until right at the very end, when both her presence and her outfit can serve the greatest impact, and right at that one moment when her morality is finally resolved into that of a rotten-to-the-core villain. This entire plotline loses all meaning when we see Vanessa for what she truly is before this arc ever has a chance to take part.

In actual practice, this ruins TWO good stories at the same time - it makes Tina's story make less sense and have more padding, and it makes Maylor's old story completely and entirely pointless, right next to Division: Line.

Nothing in Praetoria is exactly the same as it is in Primal Earth. To suggest that the Carnival of Light, if indeed it exists, would end up exactly the same by sheer coincidence is akin to suggesting that robots programmed to attack Metronome would accidentally pick on the Clockwork King. It's not IMPOSSIBLE to assume, but it's a FAR stretch of the imagination that didn't really need to be kept in the new arc. It accomplishes nothing with the mystery of the Praetorians removed.

I'm not "the police." A story arc needs to follow a logical progression of events with as little dead weight and pointless padding as possible. Sending me to investigate the Carnival of Shadows in the old arc made sense, because we didn't know what was going on and it was a potential lead. Sending me to "investigate" the Carnival of Shadows in the new arc serves no purpose other than to append another mission of dead air to the story.

Tina KNOWS there's nothing to be learned from them. It is not imperative that the Carnival be questioned. What IS imperative is that the Praetorian incursions be dealt with, and I am not accomplishing this by hassling random Carnival of Shadows minions when I know full well that they know nothing. Even Tina doesn't know what she hoped to achieve by this.

This kind of padding is the boat anchor around all of the I1 40-50 content, as personified by Unai "Your princess is in another castle!" Kemen. Being sent to missions that accomplish nothing and bring no new information is padding, and it does nothing but deter from what could otherwise be an interesting story. And a cameo from Vanessa isn't worth the logical problems it creates, just to make a pointless mission seem less pointless.

It is also possible that if I walk around Peregrine Island long enough, I will run into a portal to Praetoria and glean more information that way. It is possible, in the purely technical sense of the word, but it is a very poor use of my time and abilities when there are space stations to raid for information. Story arcs have never had a problem with compressing time by telling me "Come back later." and then immediately turning around and telling me "OK, time passed and I'm done." There is no need for filler. There was need for filler in the old arc, but the old arc is no more.

The new Tina McIntyre arc takes place after the old Tine McIntyre arc, but still takes place BEFORE the Harvey Maylor arc which reveals the identity of the Carnival of Shadows' leader. Tina is 40-44, Harvey is 45-50, ergo his arc takes place "after" Tina's in the same way as Maria Jenkins' 45-50 arc takes place after Tina's, and even assumes you've done Tina's arc before. I undertook Tina McIntyre's arc at a time before Harvey Maylor would give me missions at all.

To the best of my knowledge, the Harvey Maylor story arc has not been updated to account for Vanessa DeVore's secret identity as the Mistress of the Carnival of Shadows, and he still treats that as a mystery until Vanessa herself admits to that. This cannot exist both ways.

You don't add new stories that contradict old stories which happen at a later time chronologically if you do not have the time to fix and update the old stories. Suggesting you can is akin to suggesting that the Council War Wolves could have been updated to be of a Nictus origin, but the Path of the Dark arc still left talking about magic. You cannot and should not intentionally introduce errors and inconsistencies into your own narrative, especially since - and mark my word on this - you never intend to fix them. The Harvey Maylor mission will never, ever be changed. Not in I20, not ever.

"You" cannot pick up the FrostFire mission once you have completed it. You can join another person doing it, but you're bringing a completely different kind of discontinuity. Each character in City of Heroes is an island unto himself, subject only to his own timeline and his own exploits, but within that own island, the timeline and sequence of events still makes sense. Effects do not precede causes and causes do not follow effects. A great truth cannot be considered common knowledge before it is revealed, and a good developer would ensure these things cannot be done out of order.

Missing links in the chain is one thing, such as missing the Library of Souls before you do the Envoy of Shadows, not really knowing who Akharist is. It's easy to assume another hero recruited him. But you do not do the Envoy of Shadows, cooperate with Akharist, read his writing and histories, and then proceed to run the Library of Souls, wondering who this man is and if he will defect from the circle. Not in the game's "real" timeline outside of Ouroboros.

The developers very much do not get a clean pass to make conflicting, contradicting stories, because this makes for a poor experience if you like to keep track of what's going on around you. They are better than this. Praetoria is a shining example of what can happen when you plan ahead and keep track of your own lore, because they built it all from scratch with no pre-existing backstory. There is no reason that this cannot be done to the main game. Wasn't there a story bible of sorts that was touted to be used to do just this? Why do details keep slipping past that?

This is an empty argument. "It's just a video game" is an excuse so blanket that it can excuse absolutely everything from denial of service to swapping out City of Heroes for Commander Keen. After all, who cares? It's just a game. No big deal, right? I mean, I could be broke and living under a bridge on Christmas Eve, so who cares if a story in some game makes no sense whatsoever?

Any argument loose enough to excuse absolutely everything becomes meaningless, because it has no application.

Nonsense. The original game never had any problem with this. It kept a consistent timeline and ensured that if one event needed to occur after another, then the latter event was placed in the level range following the former. City of Villains never had any problems keeping its even more restrictive storyline consistent, and it did that by simply stringing story arcs to be consecutive within the same contact, or be offered by contacts strung along in a chain of events. Praetorian Earth has no problem keeping its labyrinthine storyline and variable event outcomes straight.

I see no reason why I should judge the Tina McIntyre arc to any lesser standard than I would judge the Doctor Steffard arc, or the Anti-Matter arc, or the Mr. G arc. This is not complicated, because the faults become obvious upon cursory review or, failing that, on basic playthrough. If I'm playing through the game and asking myself questions such as "Why is this happening?" then this story does not hold up to scrutiny. I understand the concept of suspension of disbelief, but even a fictional story that I am completely prepared to believe has to be consistent within its own rules.

This does not require meta-game knowledge. My character came from Praetoria and saw what Vanessa DeVore was doing there. She worked for the Resistance and held no post within a Carnival of Light. I can conceive of such a thing having been created after my character left, and I can even accept that this Carnival may match Primal Earth's exactly. I would have appreciated this being acknowledged in the narrative, rather than left for me to assume, but I can accept it. What I cannot accept is spacious logic which wastes my time on a mission that even the contact herself cannot really justify. I CAN justify it using meta-game knowledge, in that this was a legacy mission that existed in the old arc and they decided against cutting from the new arc when they really should have, but for lack of this meta-game knowledge, this has all the logical flow of the "I need scissors! 61!" approach to plot twists.

I do not, furthermore, need meta-game knowledge to know that something is wrong once Harvey Maylor tells me that I have been invited to a party by Vanessa DeVore and how I should be honoured, or however that went. When I know that Vanessa is the leader of the Carnival from beforehand, this plotline and my given responses to it - namely excluding filling him in - make no sense. At least when it comes to the true nature of the Rikti, I can earn that from the Dark Watcher in the same level range as I can earn it from Dr. Steven Sheridan, so we can say those happened nearly simultaneously. But this is not simultaneous.

First of all, all this does is ignore new players as a demographic. I know about these things because I was here when they were in the game. Contradicting them and, worse still, removing them from the game, does a disservice to anyone who was not here at the time. And making the story hostile to new players is not a good strategy.

Furthermore, all this does is make people ask a very prudent question: Did the person who wrote the Khan TF ever actually play the game? Or, in this case, was the person who remade this arc aware that Vanessa's identity was supposed to be a secret? Judging from the final result, no, not at all. These are things done because they seem cool at the time, but in the process they only serve to invalidate what can sometimes be actually superior stories.

This is the video game equivalent of making a sequel to a movie without having watched the movie. The developers need to be aware of the impact their changes have on the game's lore BEFORE they make them. Jack Emmert beat us over the head with his story bible, insisting that it was all written down and planned ahead of time. These latest developments do little to convince me this was ever in the slightest even remotely close to true.

This is false on its face, and provably so. The game's actual functional storyline is tied to its level progression. Time does not pass for real-world years, and time does not pass for characters making alts. Time passes for each character as that character progresses through the levels.

While the timeline each character can playthrough can and does change, these changes cannot and should not be haphazard. They need to be measured and predictable, accounting for all the things that they can impact, so we don't end up with Angus McQueen trying to prevent a second Rikti invasion which happened long ago and so, indeed, Maria Jenkins does not spend years claiming that the Statesman is missing when he spends all of his time on a Longbow ship. If you let your story devolve into such a hodgepodge of nonsense, it becomes increasingly difficult to care about the story at all, reducing the game to a basic brainless "beat 'em up meets shoot 'em up," to quote an old review of Oni. A game where you press buttons and see coloured lights can be entertaining, but such a game with a competent, non-self-contradicting story is vastly superior.

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I refuse to accept empty "just get over it" excuses, because they are not just unproductive, but actually DAMAGING to the game in the long run. We cannot allow ourselves to simply wallow in mediocrity and accept an unsatisfying product with blind loyalty. This hurts us, it hurts the game, it hurts the developers and it hurts the franchise. We need to have higher standards than "as long as it runs" if this game is to grow and prosper. We need to shoot for more than just shoddy writing and kludge fixes.

I'm not talking about rioting in the streets and mass protests, far from it. But I do expect that when problems are found, that they are brought up and the people who do so are not told to just shut up and deal with it because who really gives a crap any more? It's just a game. We should not expect any sort of quality out of just a game.

If you have an argument as to the justification of those seeming plot holes, then I would love to hear it, even if it's just conjecture and assertion. But I will not be drawn into another "the story is crap but we do not care" debate like this one. I expect more from this game, and I will not look past its failings for as long as I'm subscribed to it.

I keep thinking there ought to be a better way to "skip" these missions that didn't involve meta-game mechanics. Remember the end of the Vahzilok Plague where you could skip the fight with the Good Doctor if you burned all the bodies? How about the end of Fallout where if you had enough engineering skills, you could cause the Children of the Cathedral's, uh... Cathedral to self-destruct? Could we maybe think of something along those lines?

So then why does the entry pop-up tell me that the sun bounds across the sky in minutes to be replaced with an equally fleet-footed moon? Why does it describe me seeing incredibly fast days and nights if I'm not actually seeing incredibly fast days and nights?

Yeah, what immediately caught my eye was real-time shadows, but they could have increased the day-night cycle even without those. Is there some technical difficulty making this impossible?

I've seen all possible competition. None of it has held my interest for more than a day. When I bought City of Heroes, I actually almost flunked out of college for the first week thereafter. I was convinced that I'd only play the game for a week and drop it, and here I am almost seven years later. Ain't no other MMO that I've seen or heard of that could do that.

I have a GeForce 285 and even that chugs in Praetorian Lab rooms with green and yellow monitors. There's some kind of redundancy there that eats up a lot of performance without actually looking very interesting.

At least the mask doesn't last all that long. You can still muscle through it, kill the Ring Mistress at the cost of a few blues and run away from the rest of her spawn. You can't run away from the Curse of Weariness, because it lasts for five minutes and persists even if you die.

And 30 minutes? The hell? How about the Curse of Computing that causes my client to crash and then say my character is still logging out for the next 30 minutes? That sound like a fun power to give to an NPC? Anti-Matter, maybe? What were they thinking?