Samuel_Tow
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Quote:You seem to have misunderstood what I was going for. As I said in my original plot, you CAN have a story with too little plot in it, and something like the Hollows or Striga that just gives you random, unconnected events and pretends it's a story is a good example of this. A logical progression of events is still necessary.Originally Posted by Zemblanity
You say we need more storytelling and less plot, I'd argue the opposite. Most of the new missions seem like a sequence of unrelated cutscenes glued together in haste, and the plot is just an afterthought to make them seem connected. That might be how scripting is done in a video clip, but an actual movie or novel isn't just a random collection of cool scenes - those are born out of necessity as the script demands it, not the other way around. Could these scenes have more feeling, more emotion, more involvement? Certainly, but let's make sure the mission objective actually makes sense before giving our pixeled actors a tryout for the academy awards.
However, what you describe as good I cannot agree with. Crafting scenes as the plot "demands" it is known as writing yourself into a corner, in the sense that you tie your own hands and are forced to invent events for the sole purpose of making your own plot make sense. This is almost universally bad for a story because it robs the writer of options and forces a plot development that's probably not going to be idea, all because that's the only thing that could happen with the given situation, logically speaking.
As far as I'm concerned, allowing fictional events to dictate your plot is a mistake. Certainly it should look to the audience like events mandate actions and actions produce further events, but the actual writer should not be bound to this. A good story is a subject of creativity and inventiveness, and the writer really needs to have the freedom to chart his own plot. I'm obviously not talking about creating stories that make no sense, but more so that plots should really not be written such that only a scant few possibilities are even logical at any one point.
Moreover, a story that's ostensibly "about" making sense of a sequence of events and keeping them straight doesn't really have much of anything to keep the audience invested. Even a plot-driven story like a murder mystery still needs hooks for the audience, things to get invested about and care for. Even something as largely un-theatric as a documentary walks that same line, where you can retell a real event in both a very boring and a very exciting way. Let's say you're watching a documentary about a major disaster. A bad one will simply list events as they happened in a neat timeline in a way that's almost apathetic of the tragedy that occurred. A good one will set a mood and exploit it by bringing in actual survivors of the event to tell their own stories. Survivors and eyewitnesses in documentaries are never really there to provide exposition - a narrator can usually do it better. What they're there for is to provide emotion and to give the audience someone to care about and root for as the story progresses.
You can have a good story that doesn't have that much plot and doesn't do that much with it. Look at the original Matrix movie. You'd think that's plot-heavy, but it really isn't. At almost no point does the need arise to get a specific character to a specific place so something can happen to that character. Moreover, much of the universe canon doesn't create plot points so much as it's used to present the setting and set the tone. Certainly, events follow a logical progression and character actions are based on what the plot provides, but the actual plot of the story that move has to offer is not that complex: Get Neo to the real world -> Get Neo to the Oracle -> Get Neo to Morpheus -> Get Neo to the final boss fight.
The plot to the Matrix is essentially a video game that revolves around dragging the protagonist through several set pieces. What has made the movie as popular as it is, though, is the way in which this story is told and the way in which the canon around it is used. Character development for both the good guys and the bad guys (there's a reason Agent Smith is so popular), establishing the theme of the world, even dealing with what until the sequels might have been a supernatural element. It's not about a labyrinthine complex impenetrable plot, it's about the way in which a rather very simplistic plot is told.
I don't consider involving a signature character to be a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. A tool to use in the creation of a story. You can use it well, as Ghost Widow is in Pia's story. There, the signature character is one that's been built up as big and important, and as such brings an air of awe and trepidation to the story. You can, however, use signature characters terribly poorly, when you bring them into a story to use as incidental cannon fodder, serving as icons of what they represent, rather than as examples of the people they actually are.Quote:Originally Posted by BrandX
What made the story awesome was it involved a signature character, the story actually seemed to mean something, and for redside, I didn't feel like a lackey.
What I'm saying is that using a signature character is a good thing when used as a character, but not so much when said character is used as a thing or a plot device. This is kind of why I dislike stories with "too much plot" - a lot of characters don't get the chance to act like actual people and have story arcs and such. They're needed for the plot, and as such become little more than plot devices - little more than objects. Few better examples of this exist than "that woman" in Men in Black 2. She's not a character, she has no character arc, she barely has a personality and she just exists to be a "thing" the plot revolves around and that other characters can have a response to. -
Quote:You'll have to provide some source for that claim because this matches nothing at all I've ever heard from the development team on the subject of customization. This is actually the exact opposite of developer comments made at the time, where BABs and team had not made a decision as to whether Patron pools and Epic ATs even SHOULD get customization options, considering these had powers representing specific in-story concepts which had specific in-story visuals attached to them. Ghost Widow's Soul Storm is, they said, not JUST a dark hold, it's Ghost Widow's signature attack and thus should look the part.Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
They had no intention of doing it without Patron Power pools
No decision was announced as to whether or not Patron powers would receive custom options if/when Epics were customized, but to claim that customization would not move forward without Epics is not justified. As a point of fact, not every powerset in the game received customization options in Issue 16. No weapon set in the game received an option, and the explanation we were given was that weapon sets already had customization options in the form of weapon customization, so to save workload, they were focusing on sets which had no customization options available at the time. The idea, then, was to add customization options to those after the fact.
This shows clear precedent of the team delivering, or at least planning to deliver, power customization in pieces. To claim that they would deliver nothing if they couldn't get customization options for everything, especially when you include powers for which customization might be withheld intentionally, is simply not justified.
But the groundwork WASN'T done with the swapover to the new interface, at least according to official comments. Immediately following Freedom, a number of us repeated requests for power customization and "UI work" was brought up as the problem. Considering they have most of the custom effects required, it makes no sense to swap to a new interface and not account for this.Quote:Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
No one said future development wasn't accounted for. But as I said, it doesn't matter if most of the groundwork is done and it's only a matter of a few minutes work. UI work is UI work and can't be done unless the PM says so.
It's simple common sense to ensure that a new system built from scratch solves all of the problems the old system could not because they interfered with its core structure. When you're building it from scratch anyway, it simply makes sense to enable to functionality, even if you have to leave the actual options empty showing placeholders. There's no indication that this happened, and if it did happen, then whoever was using UI issues as an excuse wasn't giving us a real answer. -
Quote:The reason I spent so long explaining what I'm talking about is precisely because I know my terminology isn't very solid. I apologise if the terms I'm using aren't exact, but if you could, please try to go with what I'm trying to express with them, even if I'm using the wrong name to call the concept by.Originally Posted by Arilou
Please, don't use those terms
All I'm really saying is that WHAT happens in a story is not the most important aspect of making a story, and can sometimes be detrimental when that's all the story has to offer. HOW that story is being told is often just as important. -
Something else just occurred to me:
Butt capes.
Can we pretty please have a few of those? I just ran into the Gunslinger cape belt for women and I was reminded of how cool those pieces look, so can we please have a few more of these? Specifically, can we have a few that look more like basic capes?
I'd suggest adding this as a separate back(side) option in a fashion similar to basic shoulder capes, with just a cloth-type fabric strip to explain how it's being held on. Make sure it's close to the body so we can cover it with a belt if we want. Or, hell, just cut out the middle man and have the cape come out of our waists with no support and let us pick a belt if we want, or pretend it's part of our tights if we don't.
Failing a backside option, could we at least have a selection of a few belt options that come with a butt cape attached? Belts already come with two category options, so for the "cape belt," the second option could just be a pattern mask with everything that's currently under the classic mantles available. It honestly looks really good, and it's a shame only one belt like it exists in the game, not counting the default slot of Widow characters. -
Quote:Yes it was. Nearly every epic power is a direct draw from an existing power from an existing powerset. Most of those powers already have not just custom effects, but also custom animations. Patron pools don't have custom options, sometimes, but even when we get customization options, we may not get customization for those for the same reason Kheldians didn't get any.Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
UI work was budgeted, but the art wasn't done then.
Additionally, doing a from-scratch redesign of a system and not accounting for future development is the height of poor planning. -
Quote:This might seem off-topic, but it actually is right on the money when it comes to character art. What I'm referring to is the question of whether characters costumes should look like they were designed by the character for appearance, as most tights costumes are, or whether they were dictated by necessity for utility.Originally Posted by _eeek_
I cannot imagine any super heroine saying to herself "I am a SUPER! I will do great and amazing deeds! The eyes of the entire WORLD shall be upon me!
"...Now, what can I wear that will make my thighs look really, really fat...?"
The reason I don't mind the Armoured look being bulky and awkward is because armour, by its very nature, is a tradeoff of weight and mobility in return for greater protection. Eccentric examples aside, no-one wears armour unless this person strictly needs armour for protection, so it making the character look bulky is an in-character tradeoff in return for protection.
Moreover, this crosses over into an aspect of costume design I feel is important, and that's the aspect of making armour pieces looking like actual armour, rather than like armour-painted tights. When I think of armour, the first thing I imagine is thick steel plates positioned in key locations to stop blows and projectiles. I think of a an armoured shell surrounding the chest or the legs. I think of something which looks solid, stiff and bulky. Hence, "armoured."
I really, REALLY love the metal plates on the lower legs, because they actually do look like extraneous metal plates bent around the character's legs. I don't have to pretend the plate is there when I can see it, and that's something I can't really say about a whole lot of other costume items. To my eyes, to make the armoured costume items smaller is missing the point of having them in the first place, which is to have large, bulky costume pieces that look like the character is wearing plates of armour.
For years I've wanted to make a look reminiscent of StarCraft's Terran Marines, but we just never had armour that puts the head in a "hole" inside the suit in the right way. -
I'm not sure I understand you. Can you say the exact same thing a third time? Maybe then it'll sink in.
They reworked the entire costume creator UI for freedom. This should have been done then, when work on the UI WAS budgeted. -
Quote:That's kind of what I mean. City of Heroes accidentally tripped into a very unique, innovative system, I believe when the original team failed to balance their game properly and discovered that you could balance it another way entirely. Thing is, this game has never been famous for it. We need another game to come out with a feature we have before that feature is recognised by the broader world, and I honestly can't understand why that is.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
So far as I can tell, Guild Wars 2 is reinventing a concept City of Heroes stumbled backwards into eight years ago and has been fairly preeminent in this game's design since launch. Maybe its new for classic medieval MMOs, but I have yet to hear anything about this that is particularly innovative relative to CoH from a design perspective.
It galls me when I hear games being hailed as the first without a healer or the first without set teaming requirements or the first without loot or the first where everyone can solo. People extol the virtues of the system in question and I have the overpowering urge to go "That makes for a better game? I never saw that coming!"
For as much as we can argue over what our Marketing team does, I still feel they just don't do enough to capitalise on what sets City of Heroes apart from the sea of WoW reskins out there, and it's a cryin' shame. -
Quote:I don't want to mess with AT mods because those are the base upon which everything else is calculated, and Brute base stats really aren't that offensive. What makes Brutes into Tankers and concerns actual Tankers is their full potential to reach Tanker level survivability by virtue of having Tanker caps for a lot of stuff. Messing with caps alters maximal performance and crimps what an AT has the potential to do without really impacting mid-range builds that aren't pushing against those caps.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Now I wouldn't mind a switch to AT mods and caps. But that a general adjustment to mods...
I'm sure this sounds like a nerf, but I'm also sure Brutes weren't intended to play like Tankers with a lot more damage, so it sounds reasonable. -
While Tony makes some valid points, I do believe City of Heroes could stand to be paraded as being "different" a little more. If you remember a few years back, the occasional "Why are you here?" thread would eventually settle into a string of people saying "I'm here because City of Heroes isn't like X" where X could be any number of other MMOs. City of Heroes doesn't conform to the MMO holy trinity, and that might be a good sales pitch to someone who's recognised how stagnant the MMO market has been for pretty much the last decade. Instead, we have other, much newer MMOs launching and parading ideas like sidekicking, instanced missions and more like they invented them.
Maybe that's just a question of what the development team feel is this game's real strength. That it's different? I'd say so, but I don't get that feeling from how it's being developed and crammed full of things that are less "different" and more "standard MMO features," so maybe marketing City of Heroes as different just isn't on the agenda.
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Somewhat sideways of the subject, I await the day when an MMO launches that completely breaks away from the concept of gimped support characters as a necessity of team balance, but I don't foresee one of those launching soon, unless Guild Wars 2 is one like those. Yes, they don't have a healer, but that doesn't mean they don't have support. I'd REALLY celebrate the day when an MMO like this launched that WASN'T Fantasy, but that might not happen within my lifetime. -
Quote:Well, then the argument really doesn't have much place when discussing Tanker balance, I should say. Mind you, I don't disagree with the argument, but if we both agree that it's not aimed at "fixing" tankers - and I agree with this - then we might as well just focus on Brutes and stop bringing Tankers into the mix.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
This assumes that Tankers are in need of fixing, which I still disagree with.
Yes, I agree with a Brute resistance cap drop to 85%. To 80%, as a point of fact, but that's just me. And I do agree with a drop in the total damage buff cap for Brutes, but this has to be done carefully. The Brute damage cap was intentionally left higher to account for Fury, as I remember. -
Quote:Only that's not the tl;dr version, but have at it. It seems like a strange approach to take when discussing the fine details of storytelling, but that's your call.Originally Posted by NekoNeko
Thanks for the tl;dr version. Thank goodness someone stepped up.
Well, "like so well" might be an overstatement. SSA1.7 is the least terrible story arc from the SSA1, mostly because its story aims the lowest and its execution gives it the most time - 7 missions as opposed to the 3 all the others have been given, with one full mission devoted to just having a press conference. To me, it shows that when you let a story stretch its legs and give it elbow room to devote to storytelling, instead of squeezing all the plot in as tight a package as possible, you end up with a better story. It's not great, but that's down to its predecessor arcs and the plot it's saddled with resolving, as well as with the utterly unforgivable technical quality which sees the writing chock-full of hideous grammar, obvious typos and text that has clearly not gone through an editor or even a cursory proof-read. It's not terrible, however, because it allows breathing room for storytelling, and even the basic one we get there is considerably better than anything you might have seen in the claustrophobic SSA1.1-SSA1.6.Quote:Originally Posted by Melancton
CoH has had work that approaches both of these extremes. I have never played SSA1.7 which you like so well because the greatly fanfared and spoiled Death Of Statesman failed on so many levels, which I shall not belabor here. I did the next one, where Malaise attacks Sister Psyche, and have been totally put off them since. The Doppleganger arcs and what I had done in DA so far, however, are quite good.
I see SSA1.7 not so much as a great story arc that all future ones should aspire to be like... It really isn't. It's mediocre at best, but on the positive, sympathetic side of mediocre. It comes off as the writers trying to make up for the horror of the previous SSA1s and just being pressed for time. What it's an example of is that if you don't try to make the Gordian knot of plotlines and leave room for storytelling, you can make decent, acceptable work even out of the worst of source materials.
If SSA1.7 can be playable and enjoyable given the arcs that came before it, that has to mean something. -
Quote:The problem is this really isn't going to make people who want to play Tankers enjoy them any more. I do agree with a Brute resistance cap decrease, as well as a damage cap decrease, but again - whatever problem this solves, fixing Tankers won't be among them.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
As much as I know it's going to piss people off, the answer to balance between the 4 melee ATs is to bring the outlying one back into line with the 3 that are already reasonably balanced.
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Quote:That's easy to say, but it's a bit like saying "More movies like Star Wars!" and we all know how that turned out. We know Pia's arc is good, but I want to try to pin down at least some of the reasons as to WHY it's good, so that we can apply those same techniques to fundamentally different stories and get them to be just as good, but in their own unique way.Originally Posted by BrandX
More story arcs like Seer Marino's, is basically what you saying?
I AGREE!
I firmly believe that the balance between plot and storytelling is important for every story ever told. There isn't a specific balance "point" to speak of, obviously, but there are limits to it. If you have too much plot and not enough effort put into storytelling, you end up with a manual on how to put your book case together. If you put too much effort on pretentious storytelling but forget to give your story any point, you end up with grandpa telling us about how he managed to walk a road up hill in both directions, somehow. To me, storytelling is what makes us care, and plot gives us something to care about. Too little of either is bad for the story.
And when I say "too much plot," I don't mean to imply there's some limit on how much plot a story can have. You can have it as dense and expansive as you want, you just need to pace it well and provide enough storytelling to keep interest. To me, the Soul Reaver series, especially 2 and Defiance, are a good example of games with FAR more plot than is reasonable for a good story, yet games that nevertheless manage to be compelling because they pace their plot well and supplement it with constant storytelling through the eyes of the protagonists. Sure, internal monologue is not the best way to tell a story, but when your story has this much plot, then filling the dead air of gameplay with it is not a bad idea.
Actually, I'd go as far as to say that, in a game, actual gameplay is a "pause" in the plot, at least when it comes to conventional narrative through cutscenes and conversations. You get a section of plot, then you get a section of gameplay that has minimal plot in it. THESE are the times when characterisation can happen and storytelling can come into its own. Rather than having this be dead air, add little mood pieces that don't mean much, but add up to the experience. When I wrote my ill-fated Architect arcs, I tried to have an NPC drop a single line of dialogue at least once every five minutes of gameplay or so. This was never anything major and plot relevant, just some soldier going "I don't like this plan. We're too exposed." and another replying "Are you questioning Lord Nemesis' foresight?" It's not a plot point, just a little window into a couple of low-level grunts for atmosphere.
This is actually why SSA1.7 is my favourite of the lot - it has a LOT of gameplay sections with no plot in them, and it does make decent use of the time. For instance, at one point I'm told to climb a pile of floating ships to reach a device on the top one, with the ships arranged in a sort of ascending path with Rularuu on the way. I didn't fly, so I went along the path, fought some Rularuu and had time to take in the scenery. This is in stark contrast with the previous SSA1s where I felt like I had a nagging wife behind me at all times. Go there! Now go there! Do this! Not like that, like this! Now go there! And hurry up! I could never enjoy the experience because I was being bludgeoned over the head with plot as dense as a brick that would need twice the number of missions to tell well and might still feel rushed even then. Not SSA1.7. This one was over twice as long as the other, yet tried to give out about half the plot, and it struck pretty much the perfect balance, in my opinion. I should hope the new ones are like this. -
Quote:Quite possibly. I'm very sensitive to colour and contrast, and I'm much more likely to remember a character based on what colour his outfit is and how that colour is arranged in patterns than I am based on body shape. To my eyes, a big brown man is the same as a small brown woman is the same as a toothy brown monsters - so long as they're all brown, they look the same to me. It's why I was left so disappointed with Diablo III's aesthetic - everything in that game looks the same to me, aside from the pac man monster.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
You and I must have different sorts of visual memory. Monstrous details stick with me quite vividly. I can produce pictures from memory and imagination of beholders of various style, bulettes, werewolves, kobolds, etc., but as many times as I've seen pics of Elminster and Blackstaff I couldn't make a pic readily identifiable as either without a reference at hand.
I could give any given male drow two swords and pass it off as Drizz't though, because his monstrous traits are strong identifiers.
And I have actually stopped to read the descriptions of characters whose costumes have caught my eye. Those are typically characters with odd skin colours or those have an "iconic" look. Sadly, most of the time there IS no description, which is greatly disappointing. Still, I keep trying. I don't actually even look at the names of people's characters. I have Individual Name Colours turned on for chat, so I rely on name colour and name length to tell people apart. Most of the time when I team, I leave without having really read anyone's name. Hell, it took me eight years to figure out Numina's name is not "Numia," just for reference.
Similarly (and again, not a cheapshot), I might be put in the mind of your character by any largish green woman with a sword. I don't recall any specifics of her outfit(s), it's the monstrous traits that linger in my mind's eye.[/quote]
With Xanta, looking like a She-Hulk ripoff was a primary concern of mine, so I went through quite a few colour schemes before I settled on the one I went with. I looked through many pics of the She-Hulk and quickly discovered that her look was largely monotone - green skin, green hair, green eyes and so on. So I went with a sort of "fiery red" hair which is actually pure red and pure yellow mixed together, very white metal armour and blue fabric tights. I figured scattering her colour scheme across the spectrum but keeping it piece-specific would give her more of her identity than just the green skin does. If I could, I'd actually like to take the green skin quite a few tones down so it doesn't compete for attention with the rest of the outfit as much, but the costume editor won't let me.
I don't see anything wrong with a realistic shark head, I just wouldn't have any use for it since I don't like fish-themed characters. The reason I'm campaigning for hair and glasses and nose rings and such is that it gives me more options to play with. The more options there are, the better my chance of finding something I like is. With just a stock shark head, you either like shark heads or you don't. With a customizable shark head, people like me who don't specifically like it can still alter it into something we do like. And that goes for all animal parts, not just shark heads. If I could use the Cheetah head with hair, I'd definitely stop using the Feline face so much, just as an example.Quote:Originally Posted by Tenzhi
All of that aside, this is, to me, a sort of visual semantics. I would see little real difference between the more realistically shark-like man with hair, clothes, and glasses added and one with less realistically shark-like features and the same window dressing. To me, it'd be just like seeing multiple artists draw the same character in their individual style. -
Quote:It is a solution, yes, but even a branching plot can devolve into a mechanical progression from plot point to plot point. In fact, because of the interconnectivity of a graph of possibilities, branching plots are more prone to do this just because the logistics can become nightmarishly complex very quickly. For as good as the plot in something like Mass Effect is, you can often see it struggling against its complex structure, with certain characters not being able to play a major part in a plot because they may have died in the previous game, or having to serve a more generic role not entirely dependent on their personality because another character might have survived, instead.Originally Posted by Shadowe
As a roleplayer, I see this problem crop up a fair bit when people run their own plots - everything becomes about moving the events forward, and there's not enough time to digest the background, to discuss, to plan, to think of ways forward before the next step in the plot pushes upon the players.
In a way, I don't think the work involved in making more content is the biggest stopping block, so much as the work required to keep it all straight.
That said, City if Heroes is already flirting with some of that. Speaking with a character before starting a mission can trigger a bonus objective, not killing a character in one arc can have him show up in another arc and so forth. And they can do even the very simpler "branching paths" thing by having an optional mission give information about how to solve a subsequent mission, a happens in Dark Astoria. If you know the trick, you can solve a maze directly. If you don't, you get to wander and be ambushed every intersection.
Yeah, this is sort of the central theme of my thread and something I want to see a lot more often. This doesn't have to happen by literally stopping the game, though, so much as it can be done by simply crafting a plot that doesn't have so much exposition to get out, as well as writing a plot that refers back to its core ideas with every step, as opposed to one that's just about doing stuff in order to gain the ability to do other stuff. In fact, sort of stopping the action in a game that's ostensibly about action should be done VERY carefully. For instance, as much as I dislike the SSA1, I really can appreciate the press conference at the end because it provides a specific stop to give events time to sink in.Quote:Originally Posted by Shadowe
Back to a point you made, though - "taking the time to stop and smell the roses". These are the beats of the plot. It can be achieved in CoH with "talk to" missions - as long as the subject being talked about is interesting. Another option is the "fake door mission" where you enter a map full of friendlies and have to talk to one of them. It breaks things up from the monotony of battering the ever-living heck out of bad guys.
Again, though, this CAN be achieve by ostensibly active events, and I think the key here is pacing. In City of Heroes, our "chapters" are defined by how a story is split between missions, and I fear a lot of the newer story arcs just seem to try to tell too much plot per "chapter." In what looks like an attempt to interconnect every story into the broader world, there are many different plotlines competing per mission, many characters that need to be put in a specific positions, many mcguffins that need to be in a specific state, many events that need to happen and so forth. There's so much busywork that there's just no time to tell a story.
I firmly believe that a good story is more than just the combination of events that take place in it and the justification why they happened as they did. In other words, you need more than just plot to tell a good story. You need substance to this plot, you need to take time to characterise people and give us reason to care about them, you need to set up events and give us reasons to want to see them resolved. And a lot of this game really fumbles on this note. We're out-and-out told why we care about events and why we want to see them resolved and we're told we care about people.
Look at Dark Astoria again - Scirocco's story arc there is AMAZING, and it doesn't even have all that much to do with the central plot. Like the player, Scirocco is just an actor in the broader play without being "crucial" in any specific way. But because his personal story plays out over time and we can see his progression, as well as that of Ice Mistral, we're given reason to care. Oh, sure, a cynic might still not give a toss, and that's perfectly understandable, but the story gives us a reason to care if we choose to, and it's not just because we're told we care.
The problem with writing the story all around plot is that it just devolves into problem resolution, usually within the same story that introduces the problem. But the problems doesn't give us a reason to want to solve it while the resolution doesn't give us reason to celebrate. When not enough time is given for the audience to settle into the story before more plot intrudes on a character moment, the audience really has very little to connect.
Stalin's famous words of "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." hold true in storytelling. A single death because we can identify with the dead person and we can sympathise. We have reason to care. But as altruistic as we may be, we can never "get" a million deaths because we can never know a million people. Hell, most people can't really picture what that even represents. That's what "too much plot" does - it throws so many technical events at us that we have no time to connect with them on an emotional level, and if we can't do that, we can't care.
All I'm really saying is you CAN have downtime in battle, provided that battle isn't charged with too much plot. Instead of piling too many plot points in a single mission, put just one in, but have it carry some meaning beyond the practical need to do this. Have it offer some form of insight or reflection. Have it be important in some way OTHER than because it must be done. Doc Delilah muses on the life of Akashi Knight, Pia Marino muses on her love for her brother while Angus McQueen muses on the nature of Rikti Society. The point is that all of these people have stories which talk about more than just the logistics of getting from the beginning to the end, and manage to achieve resolutions that transcend mission objectives.
At the end of the day, the plot is not the point, it's the vessel for that point to reach people, and it can harm as much as it helps if it takes over as the only meaningful part of the story. -
Quote:You couldn't have X as a name anyway because the game doesn't permit names shorter than three symbols. It's why I couldn't have 13.Originally Posted by Zemblanity
Well, I'm tired of having to play Mr. X or Captain X instead of just X because of a silly system limitation. If there's a way around it that doesn't require extensive work, I'd love to see it implemented.
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Quote:So? This is not a F2P game, it's a hybrid subscription model. It's still preferable to subscribe. That was the game's official policy last the development team talked about it.Originally Posted by The Turnbow
And how many of the items listed are VIP access only?
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Quote:Typical. You don't get it, so it must be ridiculous, even though you don't know what's being referred to. Here, have some more fuel for your argument: Whip Sword.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
No, I haven't. It sounds quite ridiculous. And a whip-sword? What the heck is that? Is it a whip or is it a sword? If it's both, again, ridiculous.
Games have used this as a believable weapon for quite some time, typically as a VERY long-range melee weapon with extensive multi-target capabilities as most attacks consist of long, sweeping swipes with the blade extended. This exact weapon is the signature of a character from Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, for reference. It's not just an anime trope. -
Quote:Cheapshot aside, I don't disagree with you. Story and personality matter, but I'm talking about strictly visual appearance here. I firmly believe that you can do a lot to a character to make that character visually memorable and distinct in addition to having an interesting and engaging personality.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
A human with shark features is a man that's also a shark. A humanoid shark is a shark that's also a man. Both can be artistic. Either can be seen as rather generic. Personality and story can go a long way to set either apart. It's what keeps a bland troll girl from just being a generic She-Hulk knockoff with a sword, after all.
I see this as a sales pitch. Over the years, people have been queuing up to tell me my character descriptions are tl;dr and why should I read yours and what makes yours special and so on. And I agree - what DOES make mine special that a stranger would bother to read my long bio and not someone else's? Well, if I make a costume that's distinct enough to make another wonder what the deal with this character is, then I can count on the bio to be convincing enough to seal the deal.
The trouble with concept characters, especially in this game, is that without a look which stands out, people will never actually know your story because they have to go out of their way to learn it. Other than trying to RP in-character (and that has its whole host of problems) the only face of yours the public at large will see is your appearance.
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I want to give you an example. When the Animal pack first came out, I tried making a full-body tiger because I wondered how it would look. I logged into the Praetorian tutorial and appeared next to two other full-body tigers in my exact colour scheme and pretty much my exact costume setup. Right then, I abandoned that costume idea and haven't gone back to it again. To me, if a number of people are likely to make a costume almost exactly like mine by just browsing through general concepts, then I haven't done enough to differentiate the costume.
I have to confess - I still have a few of those, myself. Take Zik, for instance. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I designed him, but that guy's essentially "yet another darkity" and I've been planning to update his costume for quite some time. To me, there's nothing about my character that looks distinctive, so no-one's really very likely to look into his story to see what he's all about. He may be a cool idea (he's my signature villain) but he LOOKS like a slapped-together look with no imagination. Fail on my part, and not one of my better works. -
The bottom line is that altering Brutes will not fix Tankers because people who aren't satisfied with Tankers won't magically become more satisfied by them if people who play Brutes are less satisfied with their characters. AT balance is a guiding directive, but it is not a solution to AT-specific problems.
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This is an idea that's been forming in my head for some time, and seeing a few stories that really disappointed me finally gave me the words to describe this. I apologise if it seems like idle musings, I'm just trying to get the basic concept out.
A story can be broken down in many different ways, but one important way it can be broken down is in the two basic components of plot and storyline. I believe these need to be in a pretty narrow balance in order for a story to be good, and I've seen far too many tip too far in one direction or another. I'd like to explain what I'm referring to here, however.
Plot: When I say this, I'm referring strictly to the sequence of events that take place in order to provide structure to a story, as well as all of the events that had to happen beforehand in order to set the stage for that story, and indeed all of the events the story ends up hinting will happen past its end point. While plot can indeed be artistic, it is also the more technical side of a story, as it comprises logistics more than anything else. What do the characters need to do? Where do they need to be to do it? How do they get there? Why do they need to do this? Why can't they do something else? All of these are technical questions which serve to craft an unambiguous itinerary for the plot to move through its fictional world in order to get from the beginning to the end.
Storytelling: When I say this, I'm referring to the act of telling the story absent of what's actually being told. This encompasses the more abstract side of a story, dealing with art style and aesthetics, psychology, drama, ideology and basic skill of the storyteller. This can be the more artistic of the two aspects, but it still hinges on the highly technical aspect of moderation, as devolving into rambling is just as bad as an Ikea narrative of "this happened, then this happened then this happened." Storytelling is less about what you tell and more about how you tell it.
Now, the reason I brought this up is because the games which disappointed me that I mentioned have one thing in common when it comes to their stories - they have too much plot and too little storytelling. What I'm referring to is a writer's tendency to believe that plot twists, if they are shocking enough, are an apt replacement for actual shocking or dramatic story moments, and they really aren't. In order for a moment in a story to really affect us, it needs to have been built up and established before it can be capitalised on. A lot of the time even an obvious plot twist can end up being very emotional if it's simply told right. Inversely, a very good plot can still be ruined by stilted exposition.
This problem of "too much plot" can often lead to what most people would consider padding. The most common of these is the "war plot," where much of the story is taken up by accomplishing a variety of military objectives that move the technical side of the plot forward, but really contribute nothing to the actual story the work is trying to tell, and thus come off feeling like they're wasting our time. A lot of City of Heroes actually falls under this, especially older content, where you'll often run through missions that even your contacts will admit accomplished nothing. From a technical standpoint, events happened - you went to a location, beat up some dudes and progressed to the next point in the plot. From a storytelling perspective, however, nothing at all was accomplished because the story did not progress.
To illustrate, I want to give a couple of examples, both of them from this game and from fairly old content, as well. I'm trying to be objective here
Let's start with the Dr. Quaterfield TF. Now, it's widely accepted that this may well be one of the worst pieces of content in City of Heroes, but I want to take a minute and examine why this is. Some would quote the TF's length, some would quote the Shadow Shard as being inconvenient or the Soldiers of Rularuu being a pain to fight, some would even cite the hunts. However, one look at the TF's souvenir reveals what I consider to be a much more fundamental flaw with this TF's design - it's all plot and no storytelling. There is literally nothing there to inspire or engage, it's just a sequence of events linked together by a logical timeline that has no storytelling of any sort to offer. Just take a look at an excerpt of that souvenir:
[quote]You next attacked a Crey forward base. and found information that could lead to more of their bases.
You struck the first of 4 Crey bases you found. taking it out.
You struck the next Crey base. shutting it down as well.
You took the third Crey base down. leaving one left.
You finally hit the last of the Crey bases you knew of.[/qiote]
This is the very definition of an Ikea plot - first this happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened. There's plot enough for a huge story, the problem is that nothing at all is made of this plot. It's just padding with no artistry to make it interesting. The whole th
Contrast this against something like Oh Wretched Man, Seer Pia Marino's story arc. This, inversely, is widely believed to be one of the game's better stories, and there's a very solid reason for this. Seer Marino's story arc is relatively light on plot, by which I mean it's relatively light on plot twists and those are less emphasised in the story. Really, what it comes down to is a story about a misplaced vendetta, with a climax that turns the emotional content on its head, with every other plot development being more or less just a mood piece designed to aid in the overall atmosphere and emotion of the narrative. Every mission has a purpose, and that purpose is to progress the narrative in a moving way. From finding out the true identity of the Wretch to uncovering Ghost Widow's nature to the conspiracy and its eventual resolution, this is a story that's less about things happening in places all over the world and more about how those events impact the people involved in them.
At its heart, Oh Wretched Man is a story based primarily on storytelling. It's a story steeped in the personality of those involved in it and driven by the artistry in the way it is told. Everyone involved in it has a personal stake in the story, thus everyone's actions are meaningful and impacting. Pia is driven by grief, Mu'Rakir by hatred, Ohanko by greed and Belladonna by compulsion. Almost like a Silent Hill story, these people are drawn into the narrative and strike out paths of their own based on where their personalities will take them, and at the end their story arcs loop right back into the characterisation of the people themselves. At its core, Oh Wretched Man is not a story about events, it's a story about the people who take part in these events.
Is it possible to tip a story too far into storytelling and have too little plot? Of course it is. The various "walking games" that just shoot for a striking setting with no actual gameplay and plot to them are many and famous, but I can't really think of a story arc that's like this in City of Heroes. Our game is simply designed to be driven by plot because a story arc advances as we clear missions. It's still possible to create an abstract story where missions and enemies and encounters are only reference representations of broader concepts and the reality of their appearance doesn't matter, but I simply haven't run into any of these. Nor would I want to, for that matter, but that's besides the point.
The whole reason I say this is that for some time, it has felt like our own City of Heroes has been sliding into too much plot and not enough storytelling. As our plots become more complex, more tangled and more convoluted to the point where a simple story of a hero being a hero is looked upon as boring, I fear we begin to lose some of the artistry that made I6-I7 CoV so memorable. Sure, I don't really agree with the plots of those old stories most of the time, but I agree that many of them were told with a lot of artistry devoted to them. And like AAA games and their snowballing production costs, I fear our ever-sprawling plots leave little time and room stop and smell the flowers, as it were.
See, the thing with a good balance between plot and storytelling is that a lot of the time this requires "pauses" where the plot stops and we're left with just the storytelling to set up a scene. This really can't happen when there's too much plot to tell in the space given, reducing much of what should have been storytelling in the abstract sense into "story telling" in the very literal sense, by which I mean exposition dumping. The Last Airbender movie tried to tell 26 20-minute episodes of one season into a 90-minute movie, and the story that came of this was stilted, rushed and filled with exposition because there was far too much plot to deliver and no room for the "luxury" of setting tone, mood and emotion.
At the end of the day, plot is not the most important aspect of a story. It needs to be compelling, that much I don't disagree, but plot alone cannot make a good story, because a good story must also be told well. -
While I have no problem with the suggestion per se, I really feel that more canon-specific power pools are the wrong way to go, since they restrict people into having to fit with a specific faction's narrative if they want a specific look or mechanic. Personally, I feel Epic Pools were the way to go, since those present generic powers that the player can subsequently explain away with his or her own fiction.
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Quote:You've either never seen a game which had a segmented whip-sword or you've clearly forgotten, because an extending blade can easily extend over the required 80 feet to cover Blaster range.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Blasters and Corruptors are ranged primary AT's, not melee.
No amount of extending of a blade could be considered range.
Basically, a set they Devs likely wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. -
Quote:Such as? "How about more stuff" is not a suggestion.Originally Posted by jaad
How about some more levels and content for 50, 50+ toons?