Less saving the world please!
By
AkuTenshiiZero,
Posted on: 2009-10-17 24:39 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Shameless Plug:
Neither of mine involve saving the world. One is a one-mission bank heist, the other is a full five-mission plot to take down Statesman and Recluse. Don't remember the arc numbers, but look me up under @Rose Prince if you feel like leaving the world-saving to someone else.
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
Upper level stories should be of some significance, but the earth shouldn't be in peril every single day. There should be a middle ground, of course.
You can't just send L45+ Heroes to go pick up your dry cleaning.
Saving the World is a Trope of RPG's: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...SavingTheWorld
... and it's one that yeah... sometimes needs to be toned down. City of Heroes isn't really that bad at the trope. Using the Freedom Phalanx Task Forces as examples, you are just saving the City Dam Substation in Positron's TF. You defeat the Clockwork King, whose not really menacing more than downtown Skyway in Synapses TF. You take down Clamor whose trying to bottom out Brickstown's Zig in Sis Psyche's TF. You defeat Vandal whose trying to create an army of Citadel Clones in Citadel's TF. Manticore sends you up against Crey, and while you find evidence of crimes, it's not really world shattering. Then at long last you free the Woodsman from the DE. Yeah, it could be bad if the DE got his power, but not really saving the world bad.
When it comes to Heroes you only really get into the realm of Oh Kitty Litter, everything's going to DIE when you hit the Shadow Shard Task Forces... and the Lady Gray TF... and the ITF...
While Rularuu is perhaps justified as a The Worlds in Trouble! experience... It's that every other plan to take over the world originates somewhere inside the physical boundaries of Paragon Cities War Walls. Seriously, as smart as Nemesis is, you'd think he'd figure out that if he just went to say, Nebraska, he could build up an army of War Hulks and take the rest of America during a Rikti Invasion.
There's hints every now and then about the world outside Paragon... with one of the starting contacts in Galaxy City Hall, Lady Jane from the Dawn Patrol, Hero 1, and so on... and sometimes i hope that the players will get a chance to go to these other locations in the world rather than staying put inside Paragon City.
I'd really like to see more content that lowers the threat scale... like the Freedom Phalanx task forces... where the entire world's fate isn't hanging on the line.
At the same time, I'd also like to see Guassian have a heart attack as the Rularuu invade.
Personally, I view "less epic" stories as a major waste of time, consigned to such filler episodes or levels designed to just pad out a series or a game. "Oh, no! The caravan tipped into the river and giant frogs ate my iron ore! Go to the lake and kill giant frogs to get me my ore back!" I'm dead serious here, this is a real mission from a real MMO. And it's also a real waste of my time. While I'm glad that Some Guy in Some Village got his shipment on schedule this time, I can't help but think "So what? Is that it?"
Less epic stories are akin to pressing ten buttons to open ten doors along the same hallway, getting you to play ten times as long, when pressing one button to open them all at once would have been better. It's the same as finding a battery, a cable, a gas tank, a wrench and a spark plug to be able to use a car when simply finding the keys would have been just as dramatic, but much faster. It's as wasteful as fighting as fighting the same boss four times before you're allowed to fight him a fifth and final time. It's as uninteresting as being part of a major war, yet spending the majority of it taking points, organising supplies, training troops and dealing with raiders, when you could be fighting epic battles that could decide the outcome of the entire war.
Frankly, it's like War of the Worlds - an entire movie about stuff no-one cares about while all the interesting sci-fi takes place off-camera
I play games to get away from the mundane boredom and hardship of everyday like. I log on to be the hero, to do something epic and memorable and to be great for a change. I'd like all the boring, mundane stuff to happen off-camera when I'm not here, so that I can get right to the adventure. Less epic is just less interesting.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Contrariwise, the majority of my favorite arcs have had pretty 'ground level' storylines. My absolute favorite villain arc hangs on getting revenge against a contact who tries to blackmail you into working for him- hardly the stuff of worldwide catastrophe.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, I view "less epic" stories as a major waste of time....
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But if a story is well written, I don't care much what it's about. I do feel that 'omg save the world!' is a crutch for lazy storytelling, the way that every TV cop show anymore hinges on a murder (you'd think nobody commits any lesser crimes, or that telling interesting stories about them is impossible or something.)
The game has already handed AE authors a whole toolbox full of storytelling shortcuts in the form of a fairly rich, deep game mythology to draw from- IMHO there's no need to crank the dial up to 11 on every arc you write.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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That is what im getting at, in that it does feel like there is constantly some form of "end of the world" disaster on the hour, every hour.| The game has already handed AE authors a whole toolbox full of storytelling shortcuts in the form of a fairly rich, deep game mythology to draw from- IMHO there's no need to crank the dial up to 11 on every arc you write. |
While i do agree with you samuel that doing a mission such as saving a persons caravan wouldnt be that exciting, i personally would find training troops for a battle in the war to be very exciting / a good filler. Obviously we do need quite a few of the epic arcs to make us feel like the main guy once in a while, but bringing down a hero a peg or two surely wouldnt hurt would it?
I could be on my own in this but i do really like the arcs/filler episodes that give more depth to the world or try and show that you are indeed human also.
A PERFECT example would be a MA arc i remember playing where you are a contestant on a TV show looking to win. Cant remember the name of it, but that was perfectly implemented to the way i'ld like more arcs added.
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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Actually, one of the reasons I enjoy heroes as a concept and their execution in this game is that they AREN'T mundane in the slightest. Then again, I don't think I have a single hero with a secret identity, and I don't have more than a few with a life other than being heroes, exactly because I see the "being a hero" as being their life. It's not a part-time job led in addition to a civilian life, hidden or otherwise, it's part of who they are.|
Originally Posted by EU_Damz
While i do agree with you samuel that doing a mission such as saving a persons caravan wouldnt be that exciting, i personally would find training troops for a battle in the war to be very exciting / a good filler. Obviously we do need quite a few of the epic arcs to make us feel like the main guy once in a while, but bringing down a hero a peg or two surely wouldnt hurt would it?
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I like the fact that a hero could be eating his lunch when aliens bust down the wall and start shooting the place up. Or that a hero could arrive at a front like where everyone's ducking behind sandbags and in trenches, hiding from enemy fire while the hero will vault out of the foxhole and run headlong into enemy fire. I like the fact that epic, incredible stories ARE their lives, rather than an exception in them. It's not realistic and, frankly, not even all that glamorous when it's happening to you, but to me, that's what makes them interesting.
There's nothing I hate more in a series about super-powered people than "a day at the beach" episode where nothing happens. Unless physical danger and tension are replaced with an equally intense emotional or psychological counterpart, it's just not interesting to me. I don't care about Peter Parker, the photographer and his crappy life. I'm sorry, I know that sounds pretty shallow, but I don't. It serves its purpose as part of his experience as a super hero, but absent that super hero experience, it's just not interesting.
This extends to super activities which are just not epic enough. Yes, technically fixing the alien super-computer which turned out to have a bug in it is rather very super, as is training the special forces, it's just not something that can hold my interest for very long, because that's maintenance. It's about as interesting as watching a hero eat his lunch when aliens DON'T bust down the wall and start shooting up the place. It has its place, just not as the focus of a story.
I, personally, find interest in meaning. If an event isn't very meaningful, it's not very interesting. Make an uninteresting event too long or involving or put too many of these in and I start wondering "Why am I watching this? It's not interesting."
*edit*
Obviously, to each their own. This is what's interesting to me.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Completely understand where your coming from. I too do like the feeling of being the last hope and charging head first into battle without a moments hesitation for my own safety, however i do also like the feeling of helping others to make a difference and the training aspect [come to think about it, training to become super i enjoy more perhaps].
Lets take your hacking into the riktis computer example. Would you as a player object to defending the area from abushes while an ally/another player "hacks into the system"? Or would you feel that it would need a little more flavour to it to help justify a world saviour there? [sorry about my spelling by the way, very tired here]
Think we can agree though that we both have very different definitions on what we constitute as being fun/interesting though. Since i love the filler episodes, seeing what they do after they've saved the world, training for that epic battle etc while you prefer the exact opposite to me. Though we are both right obviously, having a bit of diversity in the missions couldnt hurt 
Edit: Actually your right, villains do tend to have a LOT more of the filler arcs/episodes in than heroes do. Never noticed that before until you said it and one would presume that it'ld be the other way. Hmmm interesting . . . .
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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Well, to put it simply, all actors are equal before the action itself |
Originally Posted by EU_Damz
Lets take your hacking into the riktis computer example. Would you as a player object to defending the area from abushes while an ally/another player "hacks into the system"? Or would you feel that it would need a little more flavour to it to help justify a world saviour there? [sorry about my spelling by the way, very tired here]
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If hacking/repairing that computer is meaningful, then I can justify an entire half-hour fight around it (though that might be pushing it). If it's just helpful (just a little more comfort) then I'd leave that with either a short scene and a quick fix.That's just it - I don't mind the "less epic" encounters, but I like to keep them as minimal as possible. For instance, out of three seasons, 20 episodes each of Avatar: The Last Airbender, I can deal with the few needless filler episodes there are. That's as opposed to something like Dragonball Z, where over HALF the series is pointless, meaningless filler and the real action ends up dragging on and on and on because of it.
Once in a while yes, but they just grate too fast for my tastes.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork
You can't just send L45+ Heroes to go pick up your dry cleaning.
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I must make that now.
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The Devouring Earth have taken over all of Paragon's Dry Cleaning stores! Somebody call Captain ThunderPants!
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Originally Posted by Vyver
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....... ... I must make that now. |
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Too late. It's in the Dev's Choice arc "Saul Rubenstein's Task Force" by Ascendant. It's a good look at exactly how bad A's life can be.
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Originally Posted by Vyver
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....... ... I must make that now. |
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Q: How do you wreck an Abrams?
A: You crash into another one.
Where are the world saving story arcs? >.> Most of the arcs I see are kidnap victim for ransom/be used by group, robberies. Not many SAVE THE WORLD at all.
Or is this in AE?
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
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That's exactly the one I was thinking of.|
Originally Posted by M_I_Abrahms
Too late. It's in the Dev's Choice arc "Saul Rubenstein's Task Force" by Ascendant. It's a good look at exactly how bad A's life can be.
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And it's not even the one of the canon superhero characters that you're doing it for, but just a regular contact.
Remember the complaints of people's contacts talking down to them, even though they (the player's characters) are relatively high threat-level villians in thier own right?
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Originally Posted by BrandX
Where are the world saving story arcs? >.> Most of the arcs I see are kidnap victim for ransom/be used by group, robberies. Not many SAVE THE WORLD at all.
Or is this in AE? |
Any high level PI arc.
Faultline arcs [if you dont get the machine back, then its pratically goodbye earth]
The war of the red caps - who knows what state the world would become if our worlds/dimensions became one
Striga Island - stop the council from attacking and destroying our city!
Rikti war zone - speaks for itself.
Cimerora - to save the future, one must save the past [how we dont know, but its what we are told]
Circle of thorns - constantly trying to summon a powerfull demon into our world that'll conquer us all.
Nemesis - trying to claim the planet as his own
Nictus - Wants to destroy/enslave life
Devouring earth - see above
Thats just off the top of my head
Basically we are constantly saving a device of some kind that if left in the hands of the villains, could cause major damage to earth
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
*Just finished watching an episode of Batman: The Animated Series*
Sometimes Batman has a rather simple night and all he has to do is stop a bank robbery. Other nights involve 600 year old sociopaths bent on eradicating 80 percent of the world's population.
I guess I like a mixture of street-level and global-level adventures. Not cosmic, however.....I leave that to others.
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Hmm... See, that's an interesting angle, especially for this game. Power progression being as fairly linear as it is in City of Heroes, you move out of beat-level street crime fairly early on, move up through organised crime, paramilitary criminals and end up at just below cosmic level power, with aliens, other-dimensional gods, giant robots, arcane magic and so on and so forth. I have never, ever been able to justify why a character who is able to go toe-to-toe with a frikkin' Kronos Titan and win hands-down is ever going to so much as blink in an encounter with a street crook. Even super-powered crooks don't cut it against a level-capped character, because a crook would have to be SO powerful in order to challenge a powerful player character, that he'd simply either elevate himself out of that league, or otherwise draw a lot of heat and get beaten down.|
Originally Posted by Nightphall
I guess I like a mixture of street-level and global-level adventures. Not cosmic, however.....I leave that to others.
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In fact, for my flagship characters, I tend to give them street-level crime as a vacation. You know, to take a break from fighting gods and super robots, they get to walk around and pick on helpless weaklings while simultaneously doing a bit of good. It's win/win. I especially have a lot of fun with a particular female character, whom I've made intentionally pretty attractive, and will paint her getting cornered in dark alleys by bad men. The twist? She's a super-strong, invulnerable cyborg who could snap these people in half like toothpicks, so this is completely meaningless to her. Like, below the level of a minor distraction. That's the sort of response I envision street level crime eliciting in someone who just beat up the strongest villain in an entire alternate dimension and saved the strongest hero of ours: meh.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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No global threat you say?
My one and only Arc might be just what you're looking for.
#64142 "Leave it, Badger"
Solo friendly, suitable for teams, lowbie friendly, LV 1-54, Kid friendly.
Writer of In-Game fiction: Just Completed: My Summer Vacation. My older things are now being archived at Fanfiction.net http://www.fanfiction.net/~jwbullfrog until I come up with a better solution.
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Originally Posted by EU_Damz
You know, i actually had some time to play earlier and instantly went to play some arcs. However one thing hit me, nearly every single one of them involves us saving the world in some form or another. Even the random generated radio rescue missions is to stop XX enemy group getting the person to take over the world. Yes saving the world is good and all, but would it be possible to perhaps have some less epic arcs please?
Too much saving the world can make a hero think twice and possibly go rogue . . . . . . . |
What, don't you feel "super" enough yet?
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Amen. I think my favorite arc in the game is Automatic Villainy from Technician Naylor. It's basically all about Nemesis convincing you that you're one of his automatons, and I just think it's a really fun story |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
if a story is well written, I don't care much what it's about.
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I just wanted to say whoever invented Scones should get the Nobel peace prize next time it can be given out.
Moar catz in treez, purse thievez, ladies in distress and the still absent pickle jar. WHY does no one call a hero in Paragon to open a pickle jar ?
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Saul Rubenstein's Bargain Task Force is based on a macro that Ascendant used to run while standing around, of his character talking to his agent, Saul Rubenstein, who kept screwing things up. For people who remember that, SRBTF is amusing because it continues the joke, and is actually kinda fun. If you don't know the joke, I can see how it might seem like it's just condescending.
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Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork
That's exactly the one I was thinking of.
And it's not even the one of the canon superhero characters that you're doing it for, but just a regular contact. Remember the complaints of people's contacts talking down to them, even though they (the player's characters) are relatively high threat-level villians in thier own right? |
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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Perhaps this is a difference in terminology, but there is a wide variety of accomplishments a comic book character can achieve that are neither save-the-world-epic nor as mundane as delivering a pizza. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Personally, I view "less epic" stories as a major waste of time, consigned to such filler episodes or levels designed to just pad out a series or a game. "Oh, no! The caravan tipped into the river and giant frogs ate my iron ore! Go to the lake and kill giant frogs to get me my ore back!" I'm dead serious here, this is a real mission from a real MMO. And it's also a real waste of my time. While I'm glad that Some Guy in Some Village got his shipment on schedule this time, I can't help but think "So what? Is that it?"
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A lot of the arcs I see start off with relatively mundane things... looking for someone that's missing, looking for several someones that are missing, looking for a particular villain, or knocking skulls to find out some information. Often these types of missions turn into more damatic stories where, supposedly, the fate of the city or even the world is at risk, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Sometimes, saving a life should be enough.
That gets watered down with the repetitive mission objectives and limited (one) ways of accomplishing those objectives. I get the impression that the progression of various ways that mankind could be completely destroyed is overcompensation for the lack of any real interaction with the content beyond its extremely straightforward method of defeating the "bad guy".
We can't even rescue someone from a burning building
Now as i look over the fallen soldiers that have sacrificed their lives so the people of planet earth could live another day, i cant help but wonder . . . . . . is being the beacon of hope worth all of this? Seeing the life of their souls leave their body is an image that will haunt me forever, no other hero has the pressure of so many lives on their shoulders so why do i? Is this gift of mine really a gift? Or is it a curse designed to forever torture me . . . . .
You know, i actually had some time to play earlier and instantly went to play some arcs. However one thing hit me, nearly every single one of them involves us saving the world in some form or another. Even the random generated radio rescue missions is to stop XX enemy group getting the person to take over the world. Yes saving the world is good and all, but would it be possible to perhaps have some less epic arcs please?
Something as simple as a training programme gone wrong, securing an area for future use or even just defending your base from wild attacks. I personally feel we need more of the lesser jobs of heroes to make the epic arcs feel more epic!
Too much saving the world can make a hero think twice and possibly go rogue . . . . . . .
So what do you people think? More epic saving the world arcs? Or more of the middle stuff?
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!