Shadow_Kitty

The music was so bad that it caused my eyes to wander off from the trailer, so I had to watch it once more, muted, and with something more sensible.

When I look at my toons' names, I find that most of them are actually rather boring. A lot of them are descriptive, like Frostwing (a winged ice/archery defender), or Witch-Fire (emp/fire troller), or for that matter Shadow Kitty (stalker cat).

A lot of them is simply a combination of two descriptive terms, with additional hyphens or spaces or lack of spaces to distinguish them from other characters made before I made mine. Even the one out of mythology or reality, for instance Fimbulwinter and Sturmvogel respectively, are such names although in foreign languages.

And when I discard those boring names, great as they may sound, I end up with two toons.

First, there's Scary Li'l Devil Cat, who was the familiar to an Oranbegan mage with a short temper, so when he bound the spirit to the cat, he also made it impervious to most form of physical harm, so that it would survive the fireball he would sometimes throw at the familiar when upset.

Trouble was that he wasn't impervious to the physical harm inflicted on him by a passing group of heroes, so suddenly the familiar was out of job. Oh well, if you're an unemployed winged black cat, almost invulnerable, and lost in Rogue Islands, why not make a career out of it?

Second, there is Little White Lies, who is a demon that embodies... well, the little white lies we all tell from time to time. You know, "not tonight, honey, I have a headache", "sorry, honey, I have to work late" or "no, mom, we didn't do anything, we were just playing console games", even the more serious "I didn't do it".

Yeah, right.

Well, anyway, now you know who made you say it.

War is the most dire causes. There's some kind of deflation of the term "war" these days, like it's something that happens on CNN and always to other people. When the war comes, it is no longer about terrestrial politics. It's about you, your family, and your home, except possibly if you live in a country where there is practically no threat of invasion and occupation.

<ooc>
When I grew up, there was a section in the phone book named "When the war comes". Not "if", "when".

And the reason is that Sweden was slap bang in the middle between NATO and the Warzaw pact. If there were to be a war, the Soviet Baltic fleet would have to pass Öresund, the narrow straight between Denmark and Sweden, to get out into the Atlantic. In order for the Baltic fleet to actually be able to do anything to stop the US convoys to Europe, the Soviet army would have to invade Denmark and the south of Sweden to open the straight. And of course NATO knew that as well, so they had plans to occupy Sweden to prevent the Soviets from doing it.

Add to that the general sense of doom in the 80s, and you have a good explanation of "when" rather than "if". So here, when the war would come, it wasn't patriotic fervour that made you pick up arms. It was the most dire cause.

Which translates into a few of my characters.
</ooc>

I live in a sovereign state with foreign troops occupying parts of it. They claim it is a police action to protect the public, but let's face it: it is an invasion with at least the tacit approval of the US government. That is to me the most dire cause.

So when I defeat a Longbow soldier, I don't arrest someone. I kill an invader. I kill someone who is occupying my home, threatening my family, someone who is trying to take away my freedom and my liberty.

Two more words on the Overzealous List:

• Countess Crey
• Breach

I do not think that the amount of lore matters at all. Both the other superhero MMOs had tonnes of backstory, one in the shape of a long comics publication and a few movies and TV series, the other in the shape of a gazillion RPG books. One of them went F2P as well. That didn't help them.

There's no point of worrying about the in-game lore either, because, frankly, players don't read it (I speak from experience here). They just want to pummel stuff. Grab the missions, run to the circle on the map, kill the sparklebunnies, loot the twinklewood twigs, and run back to the guy with a "?" floating above his head. The only point they actually read the mission text is when they're stuck. Oh, it was to cure his sick mother? Good for him. He has a name? Who cares?

In the MMO world, there are two major things that help.

a) The amount of content. There have to be enough to keep the player entertained as well as to give the player options to alleviate the grindy feeling that happens at the end.

b) The amount of players. The chance to actually start playing is vastly greater if someone you know plays it as well, and the chance that someone you know play the game you're looking at greatly increases with the amount of players.

As for the success of the ten ton gorilla, you can never disregard the fact that quite a lot of people plays it mostly because everyone and their granny plays it. And it reached its critical mass because it had the players from a series of successful RTS games to lean on. And they didn't play those games for the lore, but because of they were good and well-balanced multiplayer RTS games.

Also, don't forget that the world of subscription model MMOs was dominated by the ten ton gorilla and NCSofts two jiggle-physics fantasy MMOs that together ate about 80% of the market. EVERYONE ELSE had to nibble on the remaining 20%. To even have a share above 1% is an accomplishment.

CoH had that for years, despite the competition from a lot heavier IPs.

For those reasons, I think that the currently published backstory is adequate.

Here's something I'd like to have: a ghostly, vaporous, slightly luminous, and transparent aura. Something that emulates the Stealth power plus the Glow aura, but without needing an active power (and hence, also without the gameplay effects of that active power).

Bah. You're lost in the analogy swamp. Don't try to find the perfect analogy. You will never agree on the perfect analogy anyway. Try instead to see the meaning and the emotional message of the analogy.

If one person thinks that farming BAF for three-four hours is analogous to playing poker with the buddies at night, it says that he doesn't see a problem with the grind. It's fun being with his buddies, drinking whisky, chatting, smoking, throwing bills and chips in the pot and from time to time throw the cards down. There may even be skill involved, if the whisky didn't kill it. He doesn't see that much difference there. It's a fun night, as simple as that.

If another person wants to modify the analogy and says that trials are like playing poker, but instead of shuffling the deck bringing out a new deck and play with that unshuffled for each game, it is pretty clear that he does not like farming because of its predictability and repetitiveness. For him, it's not a fun night. It's a chore.

When you understand the emotional message of the analogy, you understand how he feels about it. And you will NOT change how he feels by modifying the analogy. At best, you can show how YOU feel about it. At worst, you completely miss his message.

This just screams cover-up!

Iirc, one of the problems they had with weapon customization was that they couldn't change the effect, just the thing you held in your hand and the emanation point of the flame. So it would always be a muzzle flash and always be ratatatatat.

Now they have effect customization as well, so in theory it should be possible to add another animation set where the effects go pyewpyewpyew instead, which would allow your Resistance rifles to go pyewpyewpyew. On the other hand, that would on the other hand mean that you could have the assault rifle go pyewpyewpyew as well instead of ratatatatat, that would be on the order of giant robot gloves clipping with the trenchcoat sleeves wrong, and hence impossible.

Yes, I've not had my coffee yet.