Samuel_Tow

Yes, the "natural human" concept. I'm familiar with this, and I know a lot of debate has been had about them. I don't really want to recap and I don't want to pass absolute judgement, because I know there's no one true way, so let me instead address this with my own position on the matter:

I tried to make natural human characters way back in 2004. Getting my first 50, however, convinced me that they simply do not fit the actual game to a point that I am comfortable with. One overriding question I ask myself about every new character is: "How would this character fight the Kronos Titan alone and win?" I don't know why I picked the Kronos Titan, maybe because I once wrote a crossover story with a friend of mine's character where one of mine and one of his took down a Kronos, but that's my yard stick. You can do that in the game right now - the Kronos in the final mission of World Wide Red is an elite boss and very beatable.

The question, however, isn't one about game mechanics. It's one of conceptual choreography. If I were making a movie, drawing a comic book or writing a story about the fight between my character and the Kronos Titan and I assume my character wins, HOW would he win? This is the question which caused me to delete no less than three characters, because while they were good enough against street thugs, the scale of events they would eventually reach simply didn't fit them. To this day, I can't think of a good way for a natural human to fight that thing with just the powers available to him, because I tend to be quite unforgiving in terms of luck. I can't really stand for an unprotected human running through a hail of gunfire and miraculously not getting hit, for instance.

It's a bit like the old DND thought experiment - monsters guard a locked gate with a locked treasure chest behind it. How would a warrior, a wizard and a thief get to the treasure? Well, in this case it's giant superweapon robot in need of destruction. How would a powerhouse space alien, an incredibly fast swordsman and an undestructible, super strong cyborg woman destroy it? It's not anything like a rite of passage, but the Kronos Titan is a good representation of the scale of enemy power in the late game, and any character that I hope to take through this late game (read: every single one) has got to be able to handle it.

Keep in mind I'm biased - I design characters based on personal performance and require them to be able to either deal with or avoid all situations they are likely to encounter. I also DO want my characters to be on top of things to a certain extent, obviously facing mortal danger from the really scary stuff, but not being completely and totally exposed to even lesser threats. In a sense, the characters have to have powers they can rely on with confidence.

This is, of course, only my view on the subject and not in any way a mandate on how things should be or what counts as acceptable.

You know what? Screw it. You want to paint me as a fool, and I see no point in arguing that point any more. If it makes you feel any better, I will admit to being an unreasonable fool with absurd standards who only likes tedious stuff. An argument assassinating my character isn't interesting to me, as I've no interest in keeping up any sort of prestige on the forums. If you feel like calling me things, then call me anything you choose. If you want, I'll even drop by and confirm your assessment.

Let me just tell you this - you are a person intolerant of other people's opinions and all too willing to deride them for having them. That is simply not interesting to argue with.

Well, that's semantics, but it's still interesting. Personally, I would very much consider another plane of existence to be an "elsewhere" origin. Creatures that originate from heaven, hell, the spirit realm, the netherworld, the Twilight zone and basically any other realm of existence that is still part of our world, but not really. I would most definitely count demons, ghosts and fey creatures as elsewhere characters, though ghosts can be debatable, being that they leave THIS world first.

For all intents and purposes, the fey world isn't comprised of democratic nations which have spread their territories over all of its land area... Unless you want it to be

As with a lot of these things, it's a question of personal taste, so I don't want to lay any hard and fast rules. For me, anyone who goes through incredible, intense adventures isn't really mundane. That comment itself came as a dissatisfaction with how becoming TOO much a part of the world makes you... Well, mundane. The allure of super heroes is that they are different and powerful, but in a world jam-packed with heroes, it's pretty easy to be just another hero with a job fighting crime in the same way as a Dwarf Crafter is just another crafter in a city of dwarves.

In fact, you can be someone as overdone as the Statesman and still have stories about you that are completely mundane. Pretty much all the stories I've read in the Top Cow comic book (all of two) are very much so, especially that confounded "girl party" in pocket D. Ugh... Talk about dull and boring. I'd take Troy Hickman's Smoke and Mirrors (I think also Top Cow) over most of the others any day, because it is a strong adventure, not "who do we beat up today?"

Frankly, I don't think that question was ever relevant in a discussion about preference and taste.

Well, I actually did answer my own questions, one by one. I don't think I could have answered them by myself, though. Even if I didn't credit anyone with the answer, that sort of discussion is really what I enjoy the most. I don't always get to find the right answer, but there's almost always someone who manages to ask the right questions.

And, yes, it does take some lateral thinking to keep going off-universe, but then for the themes I like, it takes some lateral thinking even if I want to work in-universe. As long as it'll be a lot of work, it may as well be in the direction I like

I've never been a believer in this "Lara Croft effect." Certainly, as a guy, I can't deny that having a cute woman on my screen is pleasant, but I CAN deny that it's anywhere near top priority, at least from where I'm looking. In fact, the oversimplication of the Lara Croft effect is what has kept at least one person I know from making female characters, because he believed that'd make him a perv.

And believe me, it's not like my motives are always entirely pure. You don't a pink bunny girl in a skimpy suit because it just makes sense. It doesn't. But even then, the primary objective was novelty and a large-scale break with normality.

One thing I'm going to state as fact is that no matter what you make your character, you will NOT spend your entire time looking at him or her. Yes, the character's in the centre of the screen, but looking at a butt grows old fast, and when you're fighting, there are a zillion other things to watch that don't include your character. Map, chat tabs, power bars, health and endurance, enemy stats, positioning, AoE coverage, terrain layout, escape routes, spacing... There are far too many things to look at for a player to be fighting and still find time to sit and look at a female butt. It's pretty, I won't deny it, but not THAT pretty.

I really think we should stop resorting to the Lara Croft effect to explain these things. It's a cop out both for and against playing female characters.

I've said it before that I don't hang around here for the gameplay. Haven't, in fact, been here for the gameplay for the past four years. I'm here for the character customization and the interactive action figures. Regular content isn't very good, and the few bits that are truly good I know by heart. But regular content is easier to play than the Architect, does not lock me into the same building for mission after missions, takes me all over the city and gives me drops without me having to bother to think about what I need. As long as I'm going to play content which doesn't excite me, it may as well be the one that's closer to what I do anyway.

[/quote]MA fails your 'purity test' so you tar all its content with the same brush.
You're a content ideologue, insisting it meet some arbitrary personal criteria rather than judging on its merits.[/QUOTE]

"Purity test?" The stories I see in there aren't interesting for me to play through. They are certainly not more interesting than the standard content, a lot of which isn't interesting at all. You come from the belief that people will play the Architect unless they have a reason NOT to. I won't play the architect unless I have a reason TO play it, and the only reason that'll work is interesting stories. Obviously, there are interesting stories there, there are bound to be. I don't feel like fishing them out and playing through a sea of stories that, while well-written, aren't very interesting in the process.

The Architect doesn't fail. It's just more work for not a whole lot more return.

P.S. - despite the power failing, Firefox had retained my entire post as written. +1 for the forum software.

A little caveat: there has never been a time when body sliders did not exist, but there was a time when there was only one slider for muscle. Well, one for muscle and one for height scale, but that one's besides the point. Lowering muscle all the way down on a character back then produced a very skinny man, the same as you would get today if you lowered the Muscle slider all the way down and left all others at mid value. Male textures, on the other hand, have always been very ripped and muscular, and it took them some time to institute smooth tights and smooth bare chests.

Good point Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man is indeed an interesting character. I guess you could drive an argument that he really is just mundane AND with super powers, but it's the whole world he exists in that sort of goes against that. Granted, all I've seen from him is the Fox cartoons and the various movies, but in just about every story I know about him, he's a super genius kid who almost never gets a break from crime fighting and has only a forced, through-the-motions civilian life. That, and the authors keep putting him against the weirdest of stuff, like space aliens, gods, beings from other dimensions, nazi and so forth.

He is mundane in theory, but not so much in execution.

There is, however, one problem - while Spider-Man is interesting, I get kind of bored with him after a while unless the story ramps up and dumps the Beyonder, Dormamu, an Elder of the Universe, Galactus or some such on his doorstep. I was never a fan of long, drawn out, episodic stories of super heroes living out their lives over 50 years of comic book issues. I'm a fan of short, powerful stories. It's true, those can be made with even the most mundane of people, and despite all the crap it incurred, I was very pleased with Transformers 2 and Sam Withwicky's role in it. So I can appreciate the heroes who come out of humble beginning. But keep in mind, by the end of the story, these humble heroes are STILL engaged in rumbles of galactic proportions, and then following that event, these galactic events become part of their backstory.

To some extent, that's what I like putting in my own backstories. Not necessarily characters who SAPWN uber-powerful amidst exploding worlds, but rather such who, by the end of their biographies, HAVE gone through such uber-powerful, world-exploding events. I can make such characters here on Primal Earth, yes. However, what's the biggest event I can write into my characters' backstories? Probably the Rikti War, but this is both boring in a world where EVERYTHING is the result of that same Rikti War, and at the same time not on as high a level of magnitude as it could be. After all, everybody's constantly whining about "Boo hoo! The Rikti destroyed our cities! We are rebuilding!" but the city still stands in large part and even just a couple of years after the event, people were walking about their business.

Mundane beginnings are commonplace, and I cannot deny them. But these mundane beginnings still need to add up to something, and sometimes it's just nice to have something bigger than just this world of Paragon City and the Etoile Islands.

Never was a fan, and I don't care how much wrath this incurs me.

If it hasn't been found, it is "hidden" by definition. Something big enough to be seen from space, which as not been seen from space despite the entire world having been photographed may times over is hidden. There is no other way to describe it. It is possible to explain all sorts of things away. That doesn't mean I have to like working with them.

I was giving you an extreme example you couldn't twist into being somehow explainable by a conspiracy, hidden nations, alien cloaking devices or wiped memories. It's not the ONLY thing that works for me, but it is one of the things I like the best. While I COULD shoe-horn the others into this world, I'd have to make far too many compromises for it to still be interesting to me when I'm done. At this point, why SHOULD I?

Why is it such a problem if I don't enjoy building characters and stories originating from this world? I COULD, but I DON'T WANT TO. That's right there in the original post.

I DESPISE spy conspiracy stories like you couldn't believe. HATE HATE HATE them. I like the Malta Group as commandos and giant robots, but I care absolutely nothing for their 007 mystique and all the covert operations. This isn't interesting to me. It doesn't make it BAD, but it's not something I would ever consider getting into.

Considering this whole thing keeps coming down to taste, I prefer overt warfare over cover cold wars without question. I don't want a world of hidden intrigue, I want a world of open action. And since this game allows me to tailor my experience to my preference, that's what I go for. I don't want to have to explain why an alien city hasn't been found despite it being in plain sight where many people have looked. I want it to be in a place where people HAVEN'T looked. On another planet, in another dimension, in the future, in the past, in the Twilight Zone or even inside the Hollow Earth, anywhere but where people would have looked before.

Let me put it this way - why would I want to bother explaining away the things I don't like when I can switch worlds and not have to?

The arc was also intentionally comedic, something I HATE, did not give me a SINGLE clue, or indeed a souvenir, had a story that was essentially thee times "go there and do that" and was about as mundane as they come. Granted, it's not worse by some of the old developer content and is probably on the same level as most of the CoV content, but then, as I've said before, that content is NOT GOOD.

I dislike the architect for how it is set up, so it would take an arc that is actually interesting to me for me to want to deal with it. So far, I have not seen an arc that was actually interesting. Some are well done, some are even great, but few are actually interesting.

Your snark is appreciated, Goat, but the thread never had anything to do with "this game's engine" or a physical impossibility, and all to do with style, taste, preference and tendency. Do try to read the thread, please.

Yeah, there is a lot of that. I want to say the "macho vs. non-macho" thing is largely a perception of men viewing other men (or themselves) and that I doubt women care quite as much, but my mother (of all people) keeps making these disturbingly homophobic appraisals of people she's only ever seen in passing, like "Well, that man, he's a little... You know." Ugh...

But, yeah, there is this stigma that men have to act like MEN! And, to some extent at least, I've no doubt this is part of what leads to some people preferring to play largely male characters. Yes, I'm aware of the animation and aesthetic arguments and, no, I'm not saying "everyone" or accusing people of it, but on at least some level, it really does feel odd to... Well, to BE a woman. Some people identify with their characters more than others, and it's simply harder to identify with someone you're not and society tells you you shouldn't be.

For myself, though, this has come easier over the years. I think the biggest hurdle was having to write for a female character in first person, and I'm not sure how accurate that writing was, but as I've said before - these things get easier the more you do them. It's not that I want to make more males play female characters (though I WOULD want to make more females play male characters ), but to my eyes, playing something you most certainly are NOT is an interesting experience in itself, if just for the novelty of it.

On the contrary, I feel they are the WORST rewards of them all. I'd rather have as many of them available at creation and reserve rewards for other, functional things.

Here's the big irony, though - I don't see Fantasy as a genre FOR the mundane. It's a fantasy, that's its thing. And that's where a lot of conventional MMOs go down a path I cannot stand, turning into not so much games about exciting adventure and high fantasy, but rather more some kind of domestic fantasy/medieval simulator. Granted, that's likely personal preference, and I've gone a few rounds with... Ugh, I don't remember who it was. One of the posters who have a tendency to put me in my place. I've already run a few rounds over whether a game that's more about adventuring, slaying monsters and fighting evil are more important than an expansive, mundane world that one can log into simply to exit. And, yes, I know there are people who like just that - another world to be part of.

But I guess, for me, this is where the major disconnect happens. I don't LIKE the mundane. I have mundane out the wazoo just waking up every morning. I have mundane going to work, I have mundane going out with friends, I have mundane watching TV. I really don't find mundane, ordinary people interesting, and giving them super powers doesn't make it much better. I like the exciting, the extraordinary, the unusual. Blue alien people from across the stars? Sign me up! Red demons from the bows of the Earth? Pick me! Pick me! A self-sentient machine race which feels organic life is obsolete? Start with me, please! Dude who works 9 to 5 and has an average home in suburbia but fell over backwards into super powers? Ye... Wait, what? Err... OK, I guess.

But then, that's probably part of the answer in itself.

Well, no harm done, and I apologise for being grumpy. Should have probably asked for clarification first.

And yes, that really was a question for understanding. I'm a conservative type person, so I just don't "get" a lot of the new technological and social advancements that are constantly being made, and what I don't get I can't use. It always helps when someone who uses them can give me a good explanation of why they are good. The one I got was enlightening, and while I still don't see myself using them, at least I can understand why people like these services so much. To each their own, in the end.

I believe that, in the search for truth, what matters the most is not finding the right answers, but rather asking the right questions. This is a very good question.

Let's look at precedent - TF merits. Granted, those are largely time-based rewards, but at the end of the day, long, boring TFs are also an annoyance. This became very evident with Positron and Shard TFs never being done. Simply remaking the TFs was obviously not in the cards (pity), so the developers turned it around and gave the most annoying, unpleasant TFs the biggest reward. In this way, they gave players compensation for doing them, and one that seems to have panned out.

Generally speaking, should more annoying content be given higher rewards? In the absence of fixing it, yes. Leaving two events with the same reward, only one really, really sucks is worse design than giving the one that sucks more reward. On the one hand, goading people into playing bad content with shiny rewards is bad. But on the other hand, people WILL do every bit of content because the world is full of oddballs. It then makes sense to give these people rewards, if for no reason other than to make them fell less stupid for engaging in these events.

Take firefighting for instance. The Steel Canyon Fires give no rewards. Yes, they give badges, but compared to missions which give badges AND experience AND drops, they give pretty much nothing. OK, I guess if I like fighting fires, I should do it with no reward. But the problem comes when fires can KILL you, thereby REDUCING the other rewards you will get later. So it's annoying, yet it rewards nothing. That's not right. I'm not saying it should have higher reward. I'd settle for removing the death penalty. That would still make for better worth. It doesn't reward much, but it doesn't cost much, anyway, so who cares?

Also to note: I finally see what you mean by challenge. However, as you noted, this system-level challenge doesn't always translate into real final difficulty. As such, basing rewards on JUST that has problems, specifically when certain people can sidestep that challenge entirely. However, balancing by REAL challenge can make strong people feel like they are being penalised for being strong, because they have to work harder for a higher reward.

In the end, I don't believe challenge or difficulty alone should be the final tally. Power in this game comes with investment. An investment in research, an investment in planning, an investment in building and so on. While, yes, stronger characters are sidestepping the challenge and reaping higher rewards for not a lot more difficulty, but they ARE paying for that in other ways.

Here's the thing - I happen to prefer strong female protagonists. I do, however, prefer them to be strong not because... Well, we need a strong female protagonist, but because that's what characters they are given. It's not just one guy saying this, it's an entire subculture that's doing this. If inequality against women is bad, shouldn't inequality FOR women be bad, too? I mean, so, so many stories imply that female characters are somehow better and use THAT to forward their lead. So, a guy can be a loudmouth incompetent bum and be a leader, but unless a woman is BETTER than all men in her command, she cannot be? Isn't that what we're trying to teach society NOT do?

For one reason or another, strong women in stories tend to skirt the line of Mary Sue, and so are balanced with stupid flaws to offset that. In this whole process of trying to make them better and yet still trying to balance them out, the actual CHARACTER of the female protagonist is lost. And, to me, that is a shame. Male protagonists are easy. They're just men. Female protagonists so often get lost in a sea of overcompliations, oversimplications, preconceptions and a writer plain trying too hard to make a female ICON, that their personalities and character traits take on a secondary importance.

In a sense, what I want to speak against is this simple convention. A man could be a soldier, an astronaut or a robot. A woman, however, is always a FEMALE soldier, FEMALE astronaut and FEMALE robot. Personally, I want them to be treated equally both by writers and by readers, such that their gender does NOT become their primary defining characteristic. And when I see statements like "women are more complicated," it bugs me. It bugs me because then a character's being a woman supersedes WHO the character actually is.

I'm sorry if I disappoint you, but please understand - I'm not defending men here. Men in stories have it made, they don't need defending. I'm defending women from being objectified AS women, be it for good or bad reasons.

Since I don't want to make comments on the works of people not currently here, I'm going to say that playing that arc made me feel like a grumpy old man. And that's not a good thing.

I really don't like the Architect.

Hmm... You know, I think that's the best answer I've gotten so far. That makes sense, explains the popularity, and explains the point above and beyond the technology and infrastructure that already exists for information exchange.

I certainly wouldn't be asking "why use forums" because I know forums are a tool, not a purpose. Presenting social networks as person-centric tools of information exchange, in contrast to forums being topic-centric tools is a good way of putting it. It makes sense, and that's all I was asking for.

*edit*
Also, I really appreciate informative posts. They do a lot more good than the various "You're stupid for asking that!" that resolve nothing but to try to make some people shut up.

Thank you for quoting me and then completely misrepresenting me as a bigot. It is appreciated.

Why is it so wrong if I want to understand why other people do the things they do, hm? What is wrong with asking someone doing something I don't understand "Why are you doing this?" If I understand why people do the things they do, maybe I would find ways to like them, myself. But then there are people who claim I am stupid for asking and I shouldn't want an answer and never care about understanding other people. That's not how that works.

I don't hold people to task for not being able to explain to me why they like the things they do, but I will not be held to task for asking the question.