Samuel_Tow

It's not so much a question having a HAPPY ending as a SATISFYING ending, really. Something that makes you think "OK, all of that stuff was horrible, but I guess it was all worth it in the end." It's the kind of story that, even if you had a time machine and you could go back to remove all the pain and suffering, you probably wouldn't want to, because it ultimately led to a satisfying conclusion.

That said, I have no respect for stories that slide into gratuitous darkness for the sake of satisfying the author's own desire for that stuff. The sort of stories I'm referencing really aren't something I want to discuss over an open forum, so if you're really curious, hit me up with a PM and I'll explain. Suffice it to say that if the story is going to make me feel bed, it had damn well better make up for it in some way.

Again, a story's ending can be satisfying without necessarily being puppy-petting evil. In fact, I have an Architect arc - The PDA That Knew - which basically does just that. It lets you be a villain, and a self-driven one, at that, who manages to do a bunch of bad things and still come out of it with a sense of closure and satisfaction in the end. At least that's what the, like, five people who've played it have told me. I should probably check that arc out to make sure it hasn't bugged somewhere at some point.

Basically, all I'm saying is that a story about an evil villain can be both dramatically dark AND satisfying to play through without either playing the villain like a good guy or being totally depressing. In fact, the I17 arcs do just that.

I agree up to a point. I believe low-level content needs a "re-write" in the sense of technical upgrades. Mission structure, mission objectives, mission locations, briefing quality (both in terms of narrative and proofreading) are all badly lacking and in need of some TLC. I don't believe low-level content needs a "re-write" in the sense of changing or updating the storyline. The actual stories are great as they are, and I'd be really sad to see them go. The stories are good. They're just delivered poorly.

From personal experience and from looking at other people, I've found that people can generally tolerate a LOT more darkness and a lot more depression as long as the story keeps them convinced that there is a point to it all, a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. You can have a villain do horrible things as long as it's crucial to the plot and that plot is eventually resolved with sufficient closure. You can have a setting that's basically a crapsack word if you still manage to offset that with your narrative. As far "dark" themes go, the point at which most people will balk is the point when the darkness starts feeling self-serving, in the sense that the story is depressing not to create dramatic tension and evil to be defeated, but because the author truly enjoyed the dark setting for its own merits

Having read a wide variety of manga comics that I really wish I hadn't, that line has proven to be very thick and obvious to my eye.

Speaking of favourite villains, I honestly don't have many. Dr. Doom and his ilk are a given, and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!'s Skeleton king is an even more overdone version of the same basic concept. I'd probably point to Iron Man's Mandarin (when are the movies going to feature him?), but his main appeal is strong voice acting, for the most part. I guess about as far down the line of vile and repulsive as I'm going to go is Ben 10's Vilgax. Excellent voice actor for the part, excellent presentation in terms of the kind of prestige he has ("Vilgax rules even here!"), AMAZING presentation in terms of personal power and the fear and respect everyone treats him with... He's a badass bad guy. Doesn't get better than that. Too bad Alien Force takes a giant dump on the concept. Talk about villain decay.

To be honest, at this point it might as well. Posts I read constantly get re-flagged as unread, to the point where I'll read a thread, check out another forum, be back in five minutes and it will light up as unread with no new posts in it. I've basically stopped looking at what's being marked as read and what isn't. I'm just looking at post times and dates, and I work off the latest post I can remember off the thread.

Eh, but I try not to complain about it TOO much

I'm not sure I'm reading this right. If the notion is that most people play both factions (and I'm inclined to agree), then wouldn't it logically follow that adding content to one faction but not the other would add more content to those players anyway? I mean, speaking as a two-factions player myself, more villain content makes me happy because that's more content for my villains, more hero content makes me happy because it means more content for my heroes, but more co-op content makes me only half as happy because I know it'll be half-hearted and that I'll end up doing it on ALL of my characters, growing bored with it that much faster.

"Efficiency" aside, one-faction-only content is much easier to write for, because you can at least assume a morality and write for that. As an amateur writer, myself, I know that even if theme doesn't set the actual plot, it can often set the tone, and the appropriate tone of a story does a LOT to make it better. Co-op content comes off as just... Bland. It's not heroic enough to make me smile and it's not self-gratifying enough to make me smirk. It's just... There.

The Rikti War Zone arcs are a good example. Yeah, we're fighting to save the world, yes, they're well written... But I still care not in the slightest. There's nothing to care about. There aren't any puppies to pet to warm my heart, there aren't any puppies to kick to make me cackle like an idiot. It's just plot exposition with no emotion in it. About the most emotional moment in all four (rather, five) arcs is that one particular death at Nemesis' hands, and that's mostly a HERO moment, to boot. The only reason that'd make you made is out of empathy for the dead guy, and that's just not a villainous motivation.

I say stick to one-faction-only content. It still reaches a lot of people and it has the benefit of being written for a more focused group of participants, leading to better overall quality.

Look at how arcs are handled. Every character is a world unto itslef, with the only storyline that matters concerning this one specific character. Other characters exist, but they are doing "something else." No matter what you do, you are still playing one character's story with the others tagging along, and the one whose story it is just happens to be the mission owner.

If you want to challenge this, then you're going to have to explain how every character I've made has been the one to take out Dr. Vahzilok. And, yeah, I make a point of fighting him. It's a cool mission. And there really is no way to avoid this, because there is not enough content to give everyone an experience that isn't duplicated. So each character, when viewed through his eyes, is what matters. The other characters' actions don't affect him. And all the better for it.

So when your wife makes a new character in Atlas Park, she very much is back in 2004, trying to sort out who the Hellions are and what makes the Clockwork tick. Even if you bring your level 50 hero to meet her, his story does not affect hers. You are present in her timeline, but you do not define it. Inversely, she is present in your timeline, but she does not define what is "common knowledge" at that point. Each character is separate in fiction. Far as I'm concerned, that's the best way to handle it. That way, all of us (or at least those who are not pedantic about it) can pretend that their specific current hero is THE hero of the story, and the others are supporting cast. It's an illusion, obviously, but then so is 3D space on a 2D screen and yet we don't seem to have a problem with it.

Heh I have the habit of stealing from the Mythbusters and describing Stone Armour as moving at all the speed of continental drift. Which, when you come down to it, isn't too far off the mark.

Actually, you're the one who proves Vanguard's guilt by raiding a Longbow base. What more proof do Longbow need than Vanguard operatives being sanctioned to attack a Longbow base in full force. Yeah, Gaussian's half-hearted advise to take it easy rings kind of hollow, considering half the time he's sending convicted murderes, complete monsters and sadistic bastards in to attack them, and me being me, I follow meta-game mission structure and "defeat" all Longbow on the way.

Seriously, it'd take less than that that courtmarshal people, but because Vanguard are a UN-sanctioned organisation, neither the US government nor Longow (nor indeed anyone at all whatsoever) has the power to hold them responsible, but you can hardly blame Miss Liberty for flying off the handle when one of her completely legal installations in Paragon City was illegally raided by a paramilitary private organisation with questionable employment policies.

*edit*
Ugh... Stupid forum software! Why does it keep taking me pages and pages back, insisting that a post I read two days ago is the newest unread post in the thread? It marks posts THAT I MADE as unread, and I'm pretty sure I read what I write! Argh!

Trying to argue realism on a gun that can fire low-calibre rounds, high-calibre rounds, shotgun shells, flamethrower fire, grenades, beanbags and eventually cryogenic bullets and rockets is a losing prospect just on its face, especially in a world where guns can curve bullets and people can walk off HE rockets to the face.

Furthermore, if we really wanted to be realistic, we'd have made the Gatling guns as used by the various enemy factions fire with the speed and SOUND of actual rotary guns (which actually sound more like really loud table saws) and ported THAT over to Assault Rifle. It'd have been much more impressive than the slow rat-tat-tat more reminiscent of a Browning .50 cal.

*edit*
For reference:
Browning .50 Cal vs. The Dylan Minigun. Seriously, can we get Full Auto to either fire a LOT faster or at least sound like a cannon or at least heavy machinegun? The sound engineer did a marvellous job of ambient sounds, so can we get him to look at this mockery of automatic fire?

This I agree with. Stone Armour has about as many toggles as Dark Armour, and about as ludicrous and endurance cost if all things are running. This stems from the armour's original design which had the different shields be mutually exclusive, a practice which left you without physical protection if you wanted to have practically ANYTHING ELSE. This meant each individual toggle could be expensive, as you COULDN'T run them al at the same time. This was change, because it was the logical thing to do, but it created another problem - absurd endurance cost.

Now, the classic response is "Just don't run all armours, idiot!" Good advise... If only it were actually applicable in actual practice. EVERY enemy you fight will have physical damage, so you can't afford to turn off Rock Armour. Practically every enemy in the higher levels will have status effects, so you need Rooted, too. Almost every enemy will have at least fir or energy, often both, meaning those two toggles are very often needed together. Furthermore, many enemies in the higher levels employ psi power, requiring Minerals, too. And your Mud Pots need to be on all the time to be useful.

Still sounds rare? Consider the following:

*Malta: Smashing from guns, Lethal from explosions, Fire from Gunslinger Fire rounds and Titan rockets, Energy from Titans, status effects from everybody. That's Rock Armour, Brimstone Armour, Crystal Armour, Rooted and Mud Pots.

*Soldiers of Rularuu: Smashing damage from Brutes and I believe Natterlings, Lethal from Watchers, Energy from Watchers and Natterings and Brutes, Psi from Wisps, status effects from Wisps and Watchers. That's Rock Armour, Crystal Armour, Minerals, Rooted and Mud Pots.

Let's go one up!

*Arachnos: Lethal from practically everybody, Energy from Arachnobots and Mu Mystics, Fire from Fire Tarantula, Psi from Fortunatas and Widows, status effects from just about everybody, but Tarantula Queens and Fortunatas mostly. That's... Everything. Rock Armour, Brimstone Armour, Crystal Armour, Minerals, Rooted, Mud Pots.

Still more?

Carnival of Shadows: Lethal damage from Attendants and Harlequins, Smashing damage from Strong Men, Fire damage from Seneschal, Energy damage from Attendant swords and Seneschal chakrim, as well as Illusionist decoys, Dark damage from Illusionist decoys and some strong men and Dark Ring Mistresses, psi damage from Ring Mistresses and Dark Ring Mistresses, status effects from Illusionists and Master Illusionists. Once again, that's everything. Rock Armour, Brimstone Armour, Crystal Armour, Minerals, Rooted, Mud Pots.

As the set is right now, it just costs too much unless you skip most of your powers and go just Granite Armour. It NEEDS a cost reduction big-time.

A but more history on Rooted. What you skipped (intentionally or otherwise) was that, once upon a time, Rooted was exactly what it said on the tin. It was, in fact, identical to casting Stone Cages on yourself, and it even had the same graphics, just like Unyielding Stance. When the changes to both powers came through, Unyielding Stance became Unyielding, gained resistance, but took a defence bebuff of 5%. This was then lowered to 3.75% for Scrappers and Brutes, the same as Tough Hide for them, before being eventually discarded completely. Rooted kept its name, but didn't improve much. It allowed you to move... Just barely. Instead of immobilization, it put you as the speed floor, kept you from jumping and prevented you from using travel powers. It's been how many years now? And it's still as bad as that.

I don't actually specifically need to see the restrictions lifted COMPLETELY. I'm happy enough for the power to bar me from using travel powers as its sole restriction. So I could run, jump and move about, I just couldn't fly with Rooted on and I couldn't Super-Jump. To be honest, I'd like to not be able to teleport with Rooted and Granite, either. Let people who insist they want to trade offence for defence regardless of penalties put their money where their mouth is. More on that in a bit.

Basically, when it comes to Rooted, I'd look to Jim Temblor in his Granite Armour. He runs pretty fast, he can jump about regular height and he doesn't seem to be slowed down too much, which is what I'd like to see with Rooted. Sure, don't let me super-speed or fly around while being supposedly Rooted, but don't take it literally and rooting me to the ground all but completely. Honestly, just kill the use of Jumping, Flight, Speed and Teleportation powers with Rooted and/or Granite on and just dump the speed debuffs. Add in -fly if you have to, to prevent Group Fly from uprooting you. And while we're at it, can we please be allowed to activate Rooted in the air? Have it drop us out of the sky, I don't care. Be a good way to ground myself in order for my other ground-only powers to work, which I can't do if I've already been floated by Group Fly.

I like those changes. As a Brute player, and a solo player, to boot, Granite Armour is a giant turn-off. I mean, I use it when I'm just about to die because the REST of my set can't seem to keep me alive, but at the damage and recharge penalties it brings, it's basically shooting myself in the foot. Yeah, I can kind of defeat its recharge penalty with Hasten, which I have, but that only last, what? A minute? Two minutes? I'd have to check. Once that goes down, I'm useless, so I might as well drop Granite Armour and take my chances otherwise, in essence forcing me to use it like a normal T9. Yeah, from time to time teams will force me to use it all the time, promising to handle doing the damage (both missing the point of why I chose to make a Brute AND failing to deliver most of the time), but I find the very concept of turning your character into an impotent taunt bot to be bad game design at its height.

I've had a lot to say about why "aggro" mechanics in MMOs are a terrible, unintuitive idea, and Granite Armour is the epitome of this. Why would I, as an enemy, ever want to fight a large, slow-moving slab of granite? What danger does it pose to me? If my enemy flexed his muscles and turned himself to stone, I'd laugh softly, walk round him and slaughter his friends while he's still trying to turn around. There's no reason for thinking creatures to aggro on things that are not a threat to them. Otherwise, "tanking" would be as simple as trucking a large boulder with a "Yo momma!" written on it, dropping it in the middle of the field and then just going about your business, safe from attack. That's what Granite Armour does. It destroys any means you have to be a threat to your enemies, so the only means of tanking left are basically meta-game. Now, if a DEFENDER could turtle up like this and lose his offence, that would make sense. But for a fighter, that's just silly.

As such, I will support any drive to make Granite Armour usable in combat, even if that means putting it on a timer, forcing it to auto-****-down or even making it just another shield you can run full-time for less benefit. I got one Stone Armour Brute to 50, which is more than enough for me to know that the set is rotten and that I'm not touching it again until something happens to it.

Go to hell. Just because other players exist doesn't mean I should be FORCED to play with them or suck bad, ESPECIALLY on an AT that is otherwise completely self-reliant in all other powersets. Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention? Tankers aren't the only ones who get and use Stone Armour in the game. Brutes, an AT designed around the notion of building up and maintaining a damage buff via attacking and moving, as saddled with a power which kills your attack and movement. That's bad design just on its face before we even get into the technicalities of it.

Not to mention the inherent nonsense of the "THIS IS AN MMO!!!" tripe within the context of this particular game.

Yeah, I was gonna' say the same thing - if you'll be fiddling with Phantom Army, just make the decoys look like copies of you, but with the default Phantom Army powers.

Not in the slightest, I agree, but it's unrealistic for all the wrong reasons. Instead of breaking from reality to make the setting cooler, they broke from reality to make the setting SUCK MORE. Seriously, half the narrative in the Rogue Isles is purpose-designed to make us - the players - feel lousy. Not a good choice, guys.

I suspect you can skip the "two entities" approach and just have the civilian lie down and run a power which animates him lying down with a boulder over him similar to how Rock Armour puts rocks on us. We already have objects that change shape when attacked, such as the various Mayhem vehicles and those rock spire things Vernon has you fight. Oh, and the special portal in one of Malice's missions.

I agree that it's likely a case of them just not having gotten around to needing that sort of thing. Be nice to have in one of the Hellion Fires events, especially if we start being able to go inside.

I completely agree with this, if for no reason other than because that's how the Rikti were originally designed. There was an old City of Heroes mission where the Freakshow fight the Rikti, and the entry text says something to the effect of "The Freakshow shout and taunt while the Rikti fight in eerie silence."

THIS is how an invading force of scary homicidal aliens is supposed to act like. They have these helmets that hide their faces, those huge oddly-shaped heads and they don't speak. This is the very basis of establishing them as scary aliens. They need to feel like they wouldn't or couldn't speak to you, like they have no emotions, like they couldn't be reasoned with. That's why they should have been left in complete silence. In fact, they used to be in the old content. In the old arcs, the Rikti never speak. Ever. They have no dialogue, their ambushes do not announce themselves, they never leave "he said" clues. In fact, the first time I found someone who speaks (that is, C'Khelka), I was shocked. They had been so mysterious up to that point that I wasn't even sure they could speak at all, let alone trying to guess HOW they would speak. It was something of a first contact.

Now the Rikti are throwing around unfunny jokes and quips, talking among each other, talking to THEMSELVES, speaking with players for no real reason... Their mystery is gone. And it sucks. As far as I'm concerned, the Rikti should be treated like the Borg - scary aliens that wouldn't even acknowledge you exist unless you get in their way, at which point they'd sooner shoot you than speak with you. They should never, ever speak unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary in order for them to accomplish something critical to THEIR agenda. Seriously, to have Budekka... Sorry, Bu'Deka do a valley girl stand-up about how boring Herodotus or whatever his Rikti name is is just... Lame.

And again, can we please cut it out with the lame pun Rikti names? I fail to take them seriously when most of what they do is sketches and stand-up.

People will always complain about everything. That's such a cornerstone fact of life it may as well be ignored. It's not a question of the existence of such complaining, but more the fact that it has persisted strongly very much since I7. The argument that the new contacts do not fit people's concepts is especially empty because the same argument has been made about co-op contacts ever since they were introduced.

The point in adding villain-only content is actually two-fold. On the one hand, villains need more content for the sake of parity. Content right now is very lopsided and slated towards heroes. On the other hand, villain-side-only content tends to be written with more focus and more creative freedom. It's not a question of fitting villains better, it's a question of not having to make excuses and be playable by so many different levels of morality. You can't do the classic comic book villainy tasks like overthrowing your own nation, building clone factories or robbing banks in co-op content, because heroes have to do it, too, ending up creating content that has no soul.

As far as villain-side content being better than hero-side content, this is not going to become true just because people keep insisting on it. SOME villain-side arcs are better than SOME hero-side arcs, but this is by no means a global phenomenon. Villain-side arcs like Angelo Vendetti's, Darla Mavis', Operative Kirkland's and so forth are just... Ugh! If City of Heroes arcs have padding, those arcs ARE padding. Hell, take the Shadowy Figure - all of his arcs are meaningless and accomplish nothing other than meta-game wealth. I'll take City of Heroes' content every time, because even though a lot of its arcs aren't that good, there are so many that I never get bogged down replaying the same content.

I firmly believe that one full Issue with primarily villain content, say a new non-Arachnos island, several story arcs and adding a REAL storyline to the Soldiers of Arachnos like what Kheldians got with I4 (seriously, that was, what, 10-15 arcs?), would be very good for the game. People would complain, obviously, but I still fell it would make City of Villains feel ever so slightly less like City of Heroes Lite.

On that note, Longbow's introduction to the early hero zones was used as evidence for why they're arrogant before, but the same Issue that introduced Longbow also introduced PPD officers into those areas. Before, "even the weakest villains were super-powered and too strong for normal police to handle," so police only acted as hostages, running civilians or the kind of clothes racks that hang around outside Hazard Zones. The introduction of Longbow in Atlas Park also saw the introduction of actual, working, effective PPD officers into the streets of Atlas Park, Galaxy City and Kings Row.

No longer the scrawny, useless cops that just hand out missions and run around waving their hands, these dudes kick some serious *** and take on the Skulls, the Hellions, the Lost and even the Clockwork and hold their ground well. Sure, you'll see a few instances of two cops shining a flashlight into an upstairs apartment, playing voyeur while Skulls are banging the seven bells out of a car lock trying to carjack (or trying to break into the PD), but that's just wonky spawning.

Not just a known villain, a convicted criminal who starts off the game breaking out of jail. It's unfortunate the story is so railroading, but really - no villain has the right to complain about being persecuted when he BROKE OUT OF JAIL to begin with.

A couple of points on that:

Firstly, many players, myself among them, have been asking for villain-exclusive content for several years now. We've gotten some here and there, and while it's been good for the most part, I dare say villain-side is due for a villain-only large-scale addition. Possibly a new zone (a non-Arachnos island) possibly just new contacts with more missions, arcs and SFs, something of that nature. Yes, I realise hero players will complain (don't they always?) but I honestly believe that City of Villains NEEDS a massive content infusion, because there's just so little to do in it as compared to hero-side. Removing the concept of unlockable contacts might not be a bad idea, too.

Secondly, this kind of ambiguity produces provably mediocre content as it has to cater to just too many different concepts, ending up not really catering to any one very well. We need separate heroic and villainous content because those just end up being more fun, more engaging and written with more freedom.

Vernon is just classic. I mean, I HATE simplistic comedy, and I still love Vernon simply because he's written so well. Yeah, he's goofy, yeah, he's silly, but at the heart of the story is a decent message, the writing is good and, most importantly, he makes a point of showing respect for me.

To be honest, I don't read comic books, but if Linkara is anything to go by, a whole lot of them take themselves far, FAR too seriously.

The only difference between Michael Bay and James Cameron is in the quality of their productions, not the vision thereof. Of course, if you're one of the high-brow blowhards hat dissect Avatar, trying to pinpoint exactly what other story each element is like, you'll just scoff at me, but most of Cameron's movies are built on camp value and simple ideas. Avatar is built on the simplistic coolness of giant blue aliens and "humans are bad," Aliens is so firmly rooted in the simple coolness of marines vs. xenomorphs that it's spawned its own genre and Terminator 2 is basically a souped-up version of the original Terminator sold as an action movie where the original was more a slasher flick.

We're not asking for bad writing, and to suggest we are is completely missing the point of the entire discussion, which is surprising, coming from you. We're not asking for bad writing. We're merely asking for writing which is less deeply rooted in depressing drama and more set to revolve around the inherent coolness that is the very thing which brought many of us to comic books.

Show of hands: How many people got into comic books because they thought comic book stories were deep, involving masterworks of high literature? And how many got into them because people who can fly and use super strength is just cool? Call me a simpleton if you will, but I don't want to lose the inherent coolness of "just super powers" in the eternal quest to make myself look smarter by pretending my tastes are "deep." I'm perfectly happy to subsist on "shallow" entertainment as long as it's done well.

This may shock you, but just because people's tastes differ from your own does not make them bad. Of course, you're the last person I'd turn to for tolerance of opinion, but sooner or later you'll have to realise that you can't browbeat everybody. Some of us will simply concede to your subjective evaluation of our tastes and respectfully ignore your criticisms.

I just meant to say to look at how the narrative treats them. Outside of the select few incredibly obvious spies like Lt. Demitrovich, Longbow are actually treated like straight-up good guys. Even WMD is treated as the grump with a heart of hold, which is something the story reveals when looked at as a whole. Miss Liberty may or may not be represented as a pain in the ***, but I attribute that more to the flanderisation that the Top Cow comics gave all of the Freedom Phalanx and the Vindicators than to actual moral alignment. If you go by the comic books, every hero is unlikable, and I don't really know why that turned out like this. Then again, after the Pocket D issue, I don't think many people could keep taking them seriously.

I still feel that the tone in Troy Hickman's Smoke and Mirrors is where the comic books should have been at, but they kept sliding into this bizarre Twilight Zone of over-exaggerated personalities, like I'm watching The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. Or possibly The Simpsons.

That's actually a legitimate question. To go to underwater Longbow bases, we usually board the various submarines anchored around the Isles, but we're never told where they go. I've always wondered where these bases are supposed to be. I don't think the location of the submarine has any bearing on the location of the base it leads to simply because we take boats, subs, helicopters an even trucks from all around the Rogue Isles to get to Paragon City, so clearly the source of transport isn't necessarily tied to the destination.

I assume their bases are around Agincourt because that's where their submarine pens are, but I don't really know. For all know, they could be off into the Atlantic or inside Paragon City Harbur. Not that there's any real way for the game to show us, but I AM curious.