Samuel_Tow

Welcome to my world. When I see intentional silliness and overt comedy, my reaction isn't to laugh, it's to roll my eyes.

That's more or less what I meant when I talked about Rick. I'm not sure of his skills as a game designer, but all the things he made had heart in them. I know that's a corny, vague thing to say, but when I look at most of the old City of Heroes factions, I see good ideas that have had quite a lot of thought and creativity put into them and that have been well realised. Even something as genericly simple as the Hellions still have interesting sides and their own moments of glory, but we also have truly interesting ideas like the Vahzilok.

And, I know I'll get reamed for this, but I still find Lord Nemesis to be my favourite villain not just in this game, but pretty much my favourite villain in general. It's not so much about what he does or what weapons he as as it is about how he is written. Always planning, always plotting, always with bigger ideas, and he manages to use steam power to produce superior technology than everyone else. AND he is reserved for the upper-level game, because his forces are both too secretive and too deadly to be unleashed on a level 1 enemy. I am not, nor have I ever been, in favour of dumbing down big bads and their minions so that new players can fight them right out the gate. It takes away from their mystique and the sense of power. Rikti Invasions are TERRIBLE for that, because people start fighting "the greatest threat the world has ever seen" as soon as they step into Atlas Park.

Even to this day, I still like the old factions the best.

Well, I don't want to get into an "Our vampires are different!" debate, but from what I've seen of the actual Champions mythos... It's pretty damn cheesy and cheap. The few villains I saw were aliens and zombies and soldiers and soldiers and soldiers and soldiers. It felt like every damn person in Canada was a soldier. And I was never a fan of their names or concepts. It's like what players here would make if names weren't reserved to only one character. I mean, come on! Mr. Zombie? What is this? The cut-price bulk deal of generic super villain names? Even Dr. Destroyer has more class than that, and that IS saying something with a name like "Dr. Destroyer."

Though I must admit it's refreshing to see a Dr. Doom in charge, rather than the uninspired despot that is Lord Recluse. Seriously, no offence to the writers, but Lord Recluse is the biggest mistake in this game's canon. Even his lieutenants are more interesting.

Eh, I didn't know Rick well enough, so I'll take you on your word here. But from what I've heard from him, his heart was at least in the right place, something I can't say for Jack Emmert. Not even when I was a fan of his could I claim he had the right idea at to where to take the game or how to deal with people playing in unexpected ways. And, frankly, given what Cryptic produced since going solo, I'm less and less inclined to put ANY of the good things in City of Heroes in Jack's court. Thinking back on it, a lot of the good things I remember are all either remnants of Launch or have been added since I8.

I have a bit of a problem with the scale of the entire game. The Nerva Archipelago looks like it's supposed to be a chain of small islands, with a couple of big islands off to the North. But space and zone sizes in CoV being what they are, the small islands are tiny and jammed together, and the big islands are barely a mile out to sea. That's not actually "out to sea" at all. Primeva and Thorn Island should be well, WELL within clear view of everywhere in the city part, but due to view distance they simply are not.

This isn't restricted to Nerva. All of CoH and CoV are like that. Sharkhead Island's Hell Forge is ludicrously tall, but in terms of land area, it is pretty small. We have these "gigantic" 40+ storey skyscrapers all over Steel Canyon, yet their footprint is not a lot bigger than that of an average house, something which is decidedly not true for real skyscrapers. Many apartment buildings have a wall that's lined by five-six windows jammed next to each other like no-one would build them, yet the full width of the building isn't much more than the room I'm sitting in as I type this. And I don't live in a big house. Ghost Widow's "tower" is an outright joke. It's supposed to be an entire section of the fortress with multiple storeys, vaults for magical artefacts, machines and facilities and... It's not even 10'x10' at the base, growing thinner as it ascends. This kind of structure shouldn't have big levels with lifts. It could barely house your typical medieval castle tower's single winding staircase.

This is somewhat less noticeable in CoH, because the zones there are all city and are implied to be only a small subsection of a much bigger, sprawling cityscape. We can even see that extend outside the war walls. So even if they're small, the city itself doesn't feel as small, and the fact that the buildings are undersized doesn't register. Clever tricks, such as incredibly low-ceiling storeys small, single-room windows being smushed together like there were many rooms sort of covers it up. But the illusion outright FAILS in City of Villains, because what's in each CoV zone is ALL there is to the islands in question. So, we have these incredibly tiny cities with all of five meaningful buildings in them, yet they're sold to us as metropolitan areas. We have these tiny little islands that'd barely house a single building presented as burroughs of an island chain city. We have these miniature giant buildings and segregated areas that have a little bit of everything jammed together.

To me, CoV is claustrophobic. Everything is tiny, everything is small, you can always see pretty much clear across an island from one side to the other and most islands aren't more than a couple of super jumps across. Grandville sort of works, because it IS one of the largest islands in the game, and the imposing walls, towers and buildings mask the fact that it's small in terms of land area, but it's still small. About the only islands I actually feel good about are Port Oaks and Cap Au Diable, because they're both part of the same island, with unknown amounts of mountainous wilderness between them. I can climb up on top of the Cau Au Diable tunnel for Port Oaks and look across Mount Diable and I will see mountains, rocks and plains. I don't know how big the island actually is, but I can't see Port Oaks in the distance, so I have to assume there is at least a fair bit of distance overland between them. I like this. It makes Cap/Oaks feel like the biggest island in the game.

I know you'll roll your eyes at this, but I have to say that Terra Volta is one of my favourite zones in the entire game. The biggest "industrial complex" in all of CoV is the undersized Hell Forge. CoH has AN ENTIRE ZONE devoted to nothing but a huge, huge, HUGE industrial complex with dozens of different buildings, factories, installations, trenches, walls and silos all around. This is HEAVY INDUSTRY personified, just as it should be, and in a zone with such a... Basic premise - big industry - it manages to be very diverse. And I just love, love, LOVE the Terra Volta reactor complex, itself. No mere factory plopped on the edge of an island, this is a humongous installations replete with the single largest structures in the ENTIRE GAME - the power plant coolant stacks - and situated in its own separate complex of elevated ground, protected by not insignificantly tall walls. I love the zone. Occasionally I go there just for the sake of seeing one of the few truly BIG areas places in the entire city.

To me, it's not really so important that I travel a lot or that I see a lot or that there be lots of land area and structures. What matters to me is that the city FEEL big. Bigger than we see, bigger than we know, bigger than we can imagine. It doesn't matter if it IS, as long as it feels that way. CoH manages to pull that off. CoV does not. And I'm starting to think that if all CoV zones were different sections of the same large island, or at least different sections of the same two-three islands, the game would feel a LOT bigger than it is and a lot bigger than it feels now, for literally no increase in ACTUAL size.

In this case, I suppose, I should blame art design and direction.

As someone who actually had a great deal of respect for Jack back in the day, I can tell you I'm starting to attribute less and less of the game's overall success and merit on him and more and more on Rick Dakan's original vision and the blood, sweat and tears of the rest of the team. Jack had very specific, unyielding ideas about what the game should be and, looking back on it, kept acting like the game was always broken and he always had to fix it. I think the fact that his recent sour grapes attitude and the result of that labour do nothing but confirm that belief.

I love this game, and I cannot deny Jack had a hand in it, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Rick Dakan had remained in charge.

The professor has a point. This is a good idea, but it is very much the same sort of power customization as we're getting for, say, Spines. It's just a matter of making those specific powers customizable.

Having seen that work in practice, yes, I would very much like to see that here. Our default heroic pose is really cool, but a few more variants for the less heroic or more eccentric would be really cool.

Also, yes, I'd like to see some more control over our bodies' proportions, but I would caution against making it TOO much control. Having seen it in action, dozens of redundant sliders do not make for better control. Adding a chest slider equivalent for all body parts would probably be enough for me, along with adding an actual CHEST slider, vs. our current boobs slider.

The thing is, comedy doesn't make me laugh. It makes me cringe or roll my eyes. Generally, I'm a pretty humourless person who's more likely to laugh at accidental humour in real life than at staged, directed comedy. I have a simple rule of thumb - if it's trying TOO hard to make me laugh, it simply won't. And most comedy arcs really DO try too hard. When I run into a piece of content that I read and think "Oh, I see. I'm supposed to laugh at that." it really turns me off. Really, the only things I find truly funny are the things that don't feel like they were SUPPOSED to be.

While I know humour is obviously subjective, but what does it for me are the unintentional slips, like what you'd find at Probably Bad News or the many blooper videos. Things like Friends, Allo Allo, Family Guy and so forth just irritate me.

Honestly, I think Nerva may be my favourite zone, too. Unlike most of the rest of the Rogue Isles, it's not just one ginormous ghetto. It actually has variety, with a lot of different places to visit and interesting locations with their own unique themes. Yeah, it's big. But, really, it's more like two or three regular CoV zones all rolled into one. I like exploring Primeva for all of its scenic rope bridges, hidden ruins and caves and just the change of pace of being in a Perez-Park-Like deep forest. I'm slightly less impressed by Thorn Island because it's a little small and a little too open, but the giant thorn tree IS very impressive.

Nerva is kind of like the outskrts of the Rogue Isles. Yes, it starts with the same redundant city design, but it soon gives way to wilderness, and I like that.

I also feel Grandville is a really cool zone. I think that's the only place where that Arachnos architecture does NOT look out of place in the Isles, and about the only place where so much ghetto looks spot on. The zone has impressive visuals, and they work well. But more than that, Grandville is FULL of impressive areas to explore and visit. Little tunnels and canals here and there, a Highlander-inspired elevator above the giant web, that tunnel to the Fab, the Fab itself, with that humongous cavernous underground base. The whole zone is one giant sight to see.

I had something like that, myself. A character who was supposed to inherit an immeasurable power of creation and destruction, but because this power was scattered all over the cosmos, she started out not having pretty much any, and has been steadily growing in power since then as the energies condense back into her.

Yeah, yeah. I know she's weakened. It's still cool because we get to fight a god Really, we need more excuses to fight a few actual gods. The circumstances don't matter, the mere concept of it is cool enough to merit more of a presence. Oh, sure, Lughebu would probably be on the order of magnitude of the Hamidon (e.i. a raid), but I'm sure could invent a few more deities for the upper 40s just to spruce things up a bit.

Well, that particular line came in relation to the notion about mundane vs. fantastic and the existence and merit of natural human super heroes, more so than about elsewhere origins. It's true that you can have a fantastically powerful character in this particular setting. We have them already, albeit not as player characters. I could list all the Incarnates and descendants of gods and avatars of gods and envoys of gods, but I only really need to mention one - Hequat, as faced in Scirocco's third arc.

There is literally NOTHING more that needs to be said. She is a goddes, and the mission's objective is to defeat her. I believe we need to do that more often

Here's the thing, though - even if a character could take down a Kronos (to perpetuate the example) by out-of-game means, you still have to play that character in the actual game, and in the actual game stand-and-fight combat is the only option. You have two choices - make-pretend you won some other way, or stick to characters you don't have to make-pretend for. I have plenty of other venues for the less fantastic characters I make, so I reserve the ones I make in City of Heroes for the more fantastic end of the spectrum.

And besides, I like a character who can look after himself

Let me rephrase that: feel free to state what you wish however you wish to state it. I will simply ignore comments quoting popularity of positions, opinions, practices and so forth. Arguing over them with no actual evidence but anecdotes is both unproductive and uninteresting, because it opens the door to assumed fact, which ruins an argument. Trying to debate what is more popular than what is the equivalent of debating "my dad can beat up your dad." It's pointless.

Fair enough.

Interestingly, with Champions' beta becoming truly open, I have to agree with your above comment and retract my statement that I don't play for story or gameplay. I was wrong, and it took my playing a game with no interesting story or gameplay to remind me that, even if I've gotten so used to these elements and take them for granted, they ARE important. I don't know why that is, but the longer I play City of Heroes exclusively, the more I start to take the good things about this game for granted. It takes my trying another game for me to appreciate just how good we have it.

I don't want to get into a Champions discussion because that'll get me banned. Let me just tell you one thing - I have a newfound like for the simple act of just running around a city which suddenly looks more interesting than before and running even the dullest, most old-fashioned missions in the game. In fact, I think more people should venture out into other MMOs from time to time and stick with them for a while. I have a strong suspicion we'd get a lot less complaints about how dull, boring or repetitive the content is and how horribly travel can be.

Turns out I really DO like the content, the stories, the travelling and the settings here. Really really.

Oh, come on, Ian, that's semantics. Exactly how strong any particular faction is isn't the point. They're strong enough to where writing a completely powerless character fighting them openly simply isn't interesting to me. And since the game has nothing BUT fighting openly, trying to write away open fights isn't interesting because it misses the point.

You keep telling me how these things can be explained. YES THEY CAN! But just because they can be doesn't mean doing so is good. HAVING to explain them away ruins what's cool about the characters. Having to explain them away creates characters that, to me, do not fit into this world in a way I like. It's not good enough.

And again, this is MY take on what's good, what's bad and what's worth it.

I WOULD play for the lore, but unfortunately I've seen all of the one I have access to, and while I've nothing against fan fiction, I don't count that as lore or canon. Hmm... Come to think of it, perhaps I should look for the canon-related tags in the Architect...

Your call. I'd still take the latter.

Personal preference, obviously, but this I never understood. Sure, the male running animation may not be spectacular, but I CANNOT STAND the female juggle-butt, faux-high-heels running animation, at least from the back. From the side it's not too bad, but from the back... Dear Lord. I've gone as far as to keep the weapons on my weapon-using females out as much as I can (going as far as to suggest an option to keep them out permanently) just so that I can force my giant Troll woman to stop jiggling her butt. Ugh!

I tried to pick a choice quote, but I couldn't decide, so here's the whole post.

It's not just the Kronos Titan, though. Greater Devoured are approximately 15 feet tall, invulnerable and super strong. The Rikti are covered from head to toe in unbreakable armour, shoot plasma weapons and wield swords that can cut metal like butter. The Nemesis Army employ automatons purportedly almost as hardy as the armour of Nemesis, himself, which in turn is said to be an amazing machine of destruction. The Council have 10 feet tall, invulnerable werewolves and giant robots. The Carnival of Shadows have so much psychic energy they can fry an egg on your head. The Soldiers of Rularuu... Do I even need to comment on them?

Post 40, and especially post 45, EVERYTHING is a large-scale threat, even down to minion level. And, as you said, the game is so simple that working AROUND those obstacles simply isn't an option. Granted, if I really wanted to, I could pretend-write away why I don't have to fight them this or that time, but they are so common in the material that I end up pretend-writing the entire game away. At this point, I may as well write the character from scratch and simply not attempt to put him into the game. I don't shoehorn every idea I have into City of Heroes. Some characters either aren't important enough to kludge, or simply don't fit the settings well enough. Them I just keep away from the game.

And, really, it isn't about game mechanics, either. I couldn't and wouldn't play a character if I couldn't paint a mental picture of this character fighting in my head. As I've said before, I don't exactly play City of Heroes for the gameplay, rather sticking to it for the characters. I see combat in City of Heroes more the game's closest approximation to real combat. But what, exactly, is it an approximation of? If I were making a movie of a character fighting, what would the choreography be like? If I can't picture that, the character doesn't get made. Why would I bother?

*edit*
And again, that's just how I view things. I'm not against people using whatever works for them, even if I couldn't use it personally.