Samuel_Tow

Well, with those demon girlfriends with the tails and the horns and the wings and the...

Please excuse me.

True, true, but it's not never as complex as that. I originally started this thread because I teamed with the Freedom Phalanx, and they performed worse than a random, dead air pick-up group. They fumbled, they argued, they couldn't do what they should have been expected to do, and it just served to destroy these people as characters in a persistent world.

Needing more story was born out of the need to make peace with the story as it was told. Maybe if we'd gotten more context and more background, then maybe we'd understand WHY these people acted as they did and they won't seem as incompetent and malicious. And while that's possible... I honestly just don't feel that they should have been written as such bad heroes to begin with.

I do agree with most people that having more screen time for character development would make for better stories overall, as we could "get" where these people are coming from. But in a larger way, I just don't "feel" the darker and edgier storylines we've been getting recently. Even when they make sense and they're justified, I still just don't "feel" them.

I don't want to get anyone fired or make anyone feel like crap. Far from it, I feel it is our responsibility as players to guide the development team, to show them what we want to buy, so that they can make money and we can get cool stuff in return. And, really, if you look up and down the thread (and I've read every post), it's littered with suggestions on various ways stories can be improved. That has to be worth something.

Oh! I never saw that! Thank you, I will remember this. It'll make things a lot simpler. Thank you kindly

That's really what gets up my craw, to be honest. Actually, "that" is two separate things.

1. The deadlines. With Freedom, the development team chose to give themselves a ridiculous deadline for EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter how complex or simple a new piece of content it, its deadline is always short of what you'd need to deliver a well-rounded, complete product. Even if it's something that doesn't take a lot of time, it feels like they intentionally give it even less time than that so they can squeeze in more stuff. This ends up producing a LOT of mediocre results.

2. The complexity. Ever since the Architect came out, the development team have sworn to outdo player Architects with official content. Originally, I thought that just meant buckling down and committing to better writing and higher quality, but instead it seems to mean cramming their missions full of scripts players simply don't have access to. This leads to every mission being so complex and constituting such a high opportunity cost that we never get much screen time for anything. Not everything has to be so complex, guys!

The result of both of this is every bit of content that comes out feeling it was cut for time. Well, more slaughtered for time, really. And it doesn't have to be this. There's nothing wrong with the game that requires you to script over it so completely. City of Heroes is a good game. USE IT! Write your story as directions for the action, but rely on the solid game that you have to carry that action. Use combat system, use your spawning system, use your information delivery systems and don't be afraid to ask me to actually play the game for half an hour without you holding my hand the entire time.

Honestly, it feels like the mission designers are trying to look over our shoulder as we play the whole time. It's like trying to team with someone who's already done the content, so he's constantly going "Don't go there, it's a dead end. OK, watch out, boss coming! Here, stand in this spot so you can see the cutscene. Back up now, enemies spawning." and on and on and ******* on! Really, mission designers. Let me play the game. I like the game. I like playing the game. You don't need to replace the whole game with your own scripts. You're wasting your time, you're wasting my time and you're producing an inferior product!

I say budget your cutscenes and complex scripts like animated series budget their animation. Watch any series and you'll note that the most expensive episodes are right at the start, somewhere around the middle and right at the end. Why? Because "exciting" is costly, and you're better off saving it so you can make a small selection of moments REALLY special than wasting it to make ALL moments utterly mediocre.

The reason I like survival duration is because it's the easiest to put in concrete terms. I've always had a rough relationship with mathematics in the sense that even though I understand the math and know its implication on practical problems, I have a hard time "believing" it on an instinctive level unless I can actually see the results. Mitigation is a very useful tool, but it's still just a number. You can't eat it, so to speak. Turning that into seconds and going "Wow, that's a lot of extra seconds of survival!" is just a more visceral way portraying it.

Of course, it still always comes down to your formula for mitigation, I've just added more stuff to it for appearance and terminology, really.

See, THIS I really like. I love that approach. "Defence for defence, offence for offence." If I can work with that, I'd be set.

Wow... Today is a good day for Inventions, it seems

Yeah, that's one way I wanted to go about this. I actually wanted to work on completing a second build that I switch to only when I have stuff to add to it, then switch back to my working build, and do this until the in-progress build is complete. The 15-minute timer kind of puts a damper to that, but it's not something I can't work around.

I... Did not know this existed. Yes, that's an EXCELLENT idea, and I will definitely use it. Use Mids' to track salvage, use /auctionhouse to get salvage, use /vault to store and retrieve salvage and use the university workbench to make things. Genius! Thank you!

That's kind of like what I was suggesting before, but... How do I actually EMPTY a slot without removing it? I ask this, because I can't remove the base slot in any power. Is there some way to just pick "nothing?" Because I really would like that.

And you're absolutely right. That sort of "emptying out" of the working build is exactly the kind of visual progress I adore. That's a great idea! This is also probably the point where I go from begrudgingly using Inventions to actually being excited about them. See, I knew there was a way to do them in a way that inspires me!

You know, this kind of irked me, as well. I mean, I like the scene for what it is - the graceful death of a character who'd had so much mud slung at him. For how he got killed, the Statesman died like a good man, and I can respect this.

But then I think back to the fight I had with Marshal Blitz... And it was AWESOME! Seriously, the way that fight is written - and it's not that complex - it's probably the most exciting boss fight in the whole game, and I did it by myself. It has so many of the things I've suggested over the years. When you first come in, Blitz is invincible until you break his generators, and you can see the beams of energy shooting from them to his armour. You break those, you fight Blitz to 0 HP, then he disappears. He comes back with a Black Helicoper and you can either fight him or use the turrets. That blows up, he comes back down at half health and this time he fights to the finish. THAT was a cool, exciting, interesting fight.

So what was the Statesman's death encounter like? Statesman dies, you fight Darrin until he drops down to 90% health, then he summons ONE BOSS and when you beat that, it's all over. Bo-ring!

Why couldn't we have had a bigger fight WITH the Statesman? Say I arrive at the spot and warn him. Now the Statesman knows he could be killed, but he still won't back down and let Wade escape, because he's a hero. We know to avoid the circle, but we still fight him. So Wade disappears and summons Ruladak, we fight that. In the meantime, he's set up four Rularuu obelisks that constantly assault us with illusions, and we need to destroy them. Then Wade appears and starts fighting with super powers and we beat him down. Wait, what? Cutscene time.

To me, it looks like the super-powered Wade is an illusion, but wait! What is Ms. Liberty doing here! When did she get here? Oh, no! With Alexis' blood, Wade could kill her, instead! What, Statesman, what are you... No! So he rushes in, shoves his granddaughter out of the circle and gets tagged by the kill spell. The energy release is so great it pins both me and Liberty in place so we can't interfere. Now a fully-powered Wade tries his power in both me and Liberty, but he's not strong enough yet, so he summons Rularuu minions to help him. That doesn't work, so opens a dimension rift right there and turns tail to run. We can't chase him because if the rift stays open, the Rularuu will try to push through into our world, so we have to stay behind, fight the monsters and close the rift.

More work? Absolutely. I'd have waited another month for that, though, personally. It would have made the Statesman come off not just like a good man, but as a great hero, it would have done a lot to redeem Liberty's screw-up at the start of the arc, and it would have been a lot more exciting than one fight with one dude.

And I don't. City of Heroes is a game, and a rather un-interactive one at that. As such, it needs to have the stories written for it be written as for fairly un-interactive game. It's pointless to ask what my character would do in any given situation if my character is not allowed to actually DO that in the given situation, and this has been the source of my ire about storytelling for many years now, not just with the SSAs. If you thread your plot through a plot point which makes me want to make a decision that I can't make, I become irritated.

What would my character have done when witnessing Manticore be a jerk to miss liberty? Slap him on the back of the head, most likely. And if draws his bow, slap him on the mouth, too. Because the man deserves that kind of wake-up call to realise what he's doing. But I can't, because the plot says so.

Lately, City of Heroes storylines have been written like this is a movie, with movie plots, movie cutscenes and movie pacing. But a movie is an inherently un-interactive medium, much more so than any game is. Yes, City of Heroes interactivity is fairly low, but it's still a world apart from that of a movie. The more games try to be like movies, the less interesting they became, as games like Fahrenheit and that Jurasic Park... Thing well prove. They look like movies, they play like movies, they feel like movies and it's very likely that you've never even heard of them. Why? Because they're one step removed from Dragon's Lair. If you've ever played Dragon's Lair, you'll note that if you took out the QTEs, you'd have a perfectly serviceable movie.

To me, games are fundamentally different, and the stories they tell should be fundamentally different, as well. This has never been more obvious to me than playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations the last few days. I have thus far sunk something like 20-30 hours into that game, and most of that has been spent shunning the main storyline in favour of taking over bases, training assassins, taking over Mediterranean cities, collecting treasures and finding books. Why? Because that is what a snadbox game is. Not a single, linear story that simply happens to take place on a large map, but a large, open world with many concurrent sources of progress scattered about it.

It's almost absurd to me to say this, but it seems that many people today forget that City of Heroes is a sandbox before it is anything else. It's a sandbox before it's an RPG, before it's an MMO, before it's a super hero game. If you look at the original stories the game shipped with, they are told like the stories in a sandbox game - separate bits of plot that can be done out of order which combine together to build towards the progression of the entire fictional world. Little bits of progress scattered about the persistent world, painting the larger picture of the world as a whole. Their specific writing and mission design might not have been very good, but their approach to storytelling was vastly superior, if for no reason other than because it was the right fit for the game type.

City of Heroes, simply put, is not the right medium to copy-paste blockbuster movie plots. Clearly, you CAN, but the story comes off stilted, awkward and pandering. Yes, that's the game's limitations castrating what might have been a good story in another medium, but that's exactly my point - you SHOULDN'T try to force in a story that goes against the limitations of the game. Don't fight them, work with them.

A simple and rather amusing Example: Doc Delilah's final mission. When this was made, there was apparently no way to set a companion NPC to stand alone with no guards, so there was no way for the Doc to spawn with the player as if they both came on the same boat. The solution? The entry pop-up describes the Doc as impatient, leaping off the boat and getting into trouble before you even have a chance to act. She then spawns in a fight with Sky Raiders 20 feet from where you start, and upon being rescued, she admits to being embarrassed about goofing up. Not only does this instantly solve the problem, it actually makes for a very cool character moment which fits Delilah to a T.

A more prominent example is the thick Silent Hill fog. The reason this exist is not for atmosphere, but rather because the PSX was too underpowered to render the kind of large open city the creators of Silent Hill were shooting for, so they had to crank the view distance way, WAY down. Instead of trying to hide this and pretend it doesn't exist, they incorporated it into the game as either fog or extreme darkness, using it to aid in the foreboding atmosphere. Lo and behold, this has become one of the most iconic concepts in recent gaming history.

I ask the City of Heroes writers to simply take more care to coordinate their stories with the limitations this game poses, and rather than trying to break the rules and then ask us to ignore the ugly jagged edges, to simply work with them and figure out how to make a story play out in a more natural way. And there are ways to do that.

The City of Heroes signature characters have no secret identities. They really never have. We know them by their real names, and those are in their character profiles, as well. Everybody knows who these people are. What's weirder to me is why we keep referring to them by those goofy names they picked for themselves instead of referring to them by their real names, like in Praetoria? I mean, I keep using them because I - the player - just can't seem to remember most of their. I know the Statesman is Marcus Cole, I know Manticore is Justin Sinclair, but I don't remember what Liberty is (Something Duncan, I think), I don't remember what Psyche's name is (Something Tillman?) and so on.

Personally, I get around the problem of secret identities by not having secret identities. Never was a fan of the basic concept. I grew up more on animé and video games, very often taking part in a world where this kind of fighting is commonplace, so that's what I modelled my characters after. They're not "common people" who developed super powers, they're super-powered beings without common lives. I have a few that do have more common lives, of course, but they're the exception, rather than the rule.

Thank you, Arcana. I really appreciate the explanation, and I like your iterative process of building. I'll have to try that some time. However, I'm still determined to start with "frankenslotting," and the reason I say it's simpler isn't because of the complexity of the build so much as because I'm only looking at part of the data. It might seem like using less of the available information would make decisions harder, but you yourself have said that sometimes, a little information is worse than no information at all.

It's just easier on my head to look at power, go "I want improve this power thusly:" and not really worry my pretty little head about how that affects anything else in the build. I'm sure it's a worse proposition, but it's actually easier to comprehend, and it's comprehension that's tripping me up. I will follow your advice, just... In time

Incidentally, would you like to pitch in on the subject of how defence affects mitigation as the numbers increase that I brought up earlier in the thread, or do you feel bad about making me look stupid by correcting my explanation?

---

Here's some very good news. Someone mentioned that Mids' Hero and Villain Designer can give me a list of all ingredients that I need for an entire build. That's great, because I can keep that on one hand, keep the Vault Reserve inventory on the other hand have a quick, direct way to tell which pieces of salvage I need to keep. Isn't it great?!? I will definitely do that. I'm interested to know if it's possible to include or exclude recipes I've already made from that list, but even if it's not, I can just mess with the slots to make that happen. You know, swap an enhancement with a SO in MIDs after I've made it?

Here's the thing, though - since I'm only ever going to start even thinking about this AFTER I hit 50, then collecting salvage for a Set Inventions build BEFORE I hit 50 isn't going to happen. Yes, it's inefficient, but I need those sold rares to fund the Commons which will eventually GET me there.

I should be done with AssCreed within the day or some time tomorrow, and I'll get right on that. Who knows? Maybe I22 will roll out today?

Honestly, I feel most of that is moot, and that's not an attempt to dismiss your point. The only place in the game where "forced teaming" was ever really an issue in recent times is the Incarnate system. We could argue about it one way or the other... Or we could have, had the developers not offered Dark Astoria.

Now, obviously, whether Dark Astoria actually brings meaningful progression or not is up for debate. I know Bill Z Bubba is very unhappy with the rate of progress there. But whether it does or it doesn't is not as important as what it represents - a clear admission by the development team that a solo-capable path to progression is something that they understand people want.

That's really the tall and short of it, and I believe that's pretty much all the OP was saying, as well. The Incarnate system used to be exclusionary, and it looks like it won't be any more. And that's good.

That's possible too, but it has problems of its own. Assuming I don't accidentally sell the recipes on careless missclick, I'm still almost assuredly going to sell the salvage I need to make them before I get the full set ready to craft. I'll sell it because I can't... Don't want to have to keep track of what I need across a long period of time. One of the revelations which helped me get a handle on the Market was the notion that I don't have to keep things, I can just sell them and later re-buy them when I discover I needed them all along. This is done at a steep loss, obviously, but I like to think I'm paying for the convenience of not having to remember what I need until I can actually use it.

You're right, though - there are options. With the /auctionhouse portable command, I can conceivably do my trading from within Vault Reserve and so keep track of what I need by saving it in the vault. That's not a bad idea. It's a lot better than keeping notes. I'll have to mess with it to see.

That was never on the agenda, really. There's always going to be content that you need a team to experience if just because that's what it's mechanically balanced for. It's only natural that you can provide a better teaming experience if you assume a team will actually be present. I don't think anyone would argue that no content should ever be un-solo-able. Even if it seems like that's what people are saying at times, I still believe their words are more extreme than their intentions.

What I'm saying - and this is something I've said very often before - is that I feel there should be a multiple paths to any destination. Now, obviously, what constitutes a "destination" is a somewhat nebulous concept, but within the context of City of Heroes, I'd say that stands for "every reward." And I do strongly believe this - that a path should exist to obtaining every reward in the game that consists entirely of activities that don't require other people.

Again, asking for a path that's like this isn't the same as asking to walk that path. It's natural that a player will team sometimes and solo at other times. But by ensuring that a whole path exists, you ensure that no matter when that player finds himself without a team or not in the mood to team, then that player will have something to do to make progress.

That's the nature of options. I get the point behind encouraging people to team, but I'm also always in favour of giving players a non-team option to fall back on or indulge in however much they feel they want or need to.

Trust me, a name that draws attention draws ire more often than it draws support once the battle lines have been drawn

I generally find this kind of extreme pedantry (and this is coming from a sworn pedant, mind you) to really be missing the point. Paragon Studios do have a history of pigheaded insistence on whatever idea they're pushing through, yes, but more than that, they have a much larger history of communication with the player base and, as Matt Miller once said, of giving the players what they want. City of Heroes is very much unlike any other MMO because it is, in large part, designed by the players for the players. Yes, that does mean we get a lot of bad with the good just because people's desires don't always make for a good game, but at the end of the day, much of what goes into the game is the stuff we ask for.

We insisted that the raids as the only form of progress into the Incarnate system was limiting. We asked for options. We're getting options. Yes, there's an argument to be made as to just how viable those options are, but they exist now. They can be tweaked, they can be pushed and pulled, they can be extended. So long as they exist.

Personally, I just feel that player choice trumps Skinner box design. Giving players enough options that at least one will feel like "their own" is, to my eyes at least, the smart way to design.

I'm not defending the others, make no mistake, but this is not the first time Tony has danced that dance, and it's not the first time it has turned out like this. It's never the same people doing this, but that's what always ends up happening.

To my eyes, this is simply evidence that the assertion stating that every MMO has to force people to interact or quit is just not an opinion everyone shares. The real irony here is that no-one is asking to be the kind of anything. All people want is an option. That's what people have been asking for since I18. Lo and behold, Dark Astoria is... Or is supposed to be, anyway... An option.

Generally, it's pointless to argue in absolutes on a subject that contains no absolute truths.

I still might come over and ask, but I know what you mean. And, yes, I realise that if I come up short, it'll be my own fault. It is my profound hope that any solo content should be at least somewhat balanced with at least somewhat mediocre builds in mind, so I hope to never be in that situation, but if I do end up in it... Well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

From my point of view, it's the exact kind of game I'd want to pay to play.

Tony, from the tone of your posts and the downward spiral of your attitude, I'd say you're losing your objectivity. Insulting people's intelligence will not get your point across, and is in fact much more likely to make people reject your arguments out of hand.

Really, precisely that kind of situation is why people keep requesting an MMO with a non-required social aspect - because the "social game" is not always fun, and it's nice to have something to do with the game when socialising isn't working.

You're making a needlessly absolute statement. The only thing that's required for the "idiotic belief" to be true is a game in which players are never FORCED to interact with each other unless they choose to do so. There is no requirement that players are PREVENTED from interacting with each other. No game designer with more than half a brain will work to prevent people from interacting in a game which supports it, that much is obvious and thus an empty statement. The question is whether a game designer should force his players to either interact with each other or quit the game, or whether that game designer should provide options both for those who do and those who don't want to interact with others.

There's another absolute in there, as well - it asserts that people can be split in two groups - those who want to interact and those who don't. The truth of the matter is that this division is meaningless. All people want to interact sometimes and don't want to interact at other times. The it's not a binary difference, but rather a difference of degrees. What this also means is that by providing an option for playing the game without interacting with other people gives even those who want to interact often an optional path of progression for those times when even they don't want to interact at that precise point in time.

It's easy to assert than an MMORPG will invariably have activities in it which require interaction with other people, and which cannot be done alone. Obviously. It should be just as easy an assertion that an MMORPG will invariably have activities that DON'T require interaction and can be done alone of that's how the player is inclined to approach them. That, essentially, is what Dark Astoria should represent. I'm still not convinced it actually will in real practice, but that doesn't change what it SHOULD represent, nevertheless.

For an introverted person, it's an on/off switch. Most of the time, these people WILL NOT speak up just because they don't feel comfortable doing it, they don't want the hassles, they're not used to it and a whole bag of reasons. So when they DO, it's a big deal, it's usually over-thought, it's usually very serious and it's usually very involved.

I know this for a fact because, believe it or not, I started off as a shy, awkward, uncommunicative person way back before I even discovered the Internet, but have since learned finer control over that on/off switch. But I can say one thing for certain - an introvert forced to commit to a confrontation is going to be a much fiercer opponent than most extroverts, just because it FEELS like a battle of life and death, even though it's not.

That it's "funny" how introverts are the loudest is little more than unfair cynicism. You only notice them when they're loud because when they're loud, they're VERY loud. But what you don't notice is the introverts the majority of the rest of the time.

It's just easier for me to put it all off to level 50. As was mentioned before, a lot of that stuff isn't actually better than SO or Common slotting until you get most of a set into the power, so trying to slot a power incrementally can make it worse by comparison. Obviously, that's not always the case, but it's simpler to just not think about it than it is to try to figure out which is which on a case by case basis.

Effectively, leaving Set Inventions for level 50 means two things:

1. I can get to 50 without ever concerning myself with Sets, which is a load off my mind.
2. Once I hit 50, my build is set. It's not going to change, I'm not going to get more power picks or more slots, so it's a static situation, which I like.

Overall, I'm trying to find a way to deal with this that doesn't load my mind much. That probably makes me come off lazy, but that's just what it takes to get me motivated.

---

Also, if it seems like I'm not making much sense, it's half past 3 AM and I'm only half awake

City of Heroes writing since City of Villains, more or less, has done a lot to make us cynical as players. No, it's never overtly stated, but from the way all the stories are structured, it's fairly evident that that's what the writers were and are thinking. Arachnos = villain, Longbow = hero. Heroes want to beat villains, villains want to beat heroes (because the plot says so), so obviously Longbow want rid the world of Arachnos and Arachnos want to destroy Longbow. That's not a matter of faction politics, it's the law of the universe. Good opposes evil, and since Longbow and Arachnos are synonymous with those in-story, their sole reason to exist is to oppose each other.

And I HATE it. I get that it's an easy way to put a "face" to heroes and villains so that it's easier to depict good vs. evil conflicts with two consistent factions that are both easily identifiable AND don't take that much to reuse. It's just easier to boil the conflict down to a binary choice between two elementally opposed factions whose only reason to hate each other is because the plot says so, than it is to present heroes and villains as a decentralised mass of non-uniform characters. "An enemy has to have a face."