We've been there several time, and there are good arguments against origin meaning something. I'll try to sum them up as short and non-rantingly as possible:
a) It is not even clear what Origin means or should refer to. Is it how you got your powers? Is it what powers you now? Is it how you advance your powers? What if all three of those are different for a character?
b) All characters are different. You cannot assume anything about a character by knowing their "origin". Does "natural" e.g. mean you were trained by an acient kung fu master or that you are just a different species to which the powers are natural? Does "magic" mean you are a golem, a magician, or that you use a magical artefact?
c) It doesnt make sense (thus) to tie any game advantages or disadvantages to origin. Nor can you, following b), assume anything about the character to open up or close story options.
d) Origin should be a free background story choice.Noone should feel forced to choose an origin to have other options in the game.
(and... perhaps as a side note... on "that other game" they tried that in beta too, your origin determining your stats. It didnt work and got removed, as it made no sense for one origin to be in any way better or worse than another in any aspect, and forced players to take an origin to get the stats they want for their character idea. Those stat bundles got renamed to something like "The hard target" and such, descriptive but not touching your background story.)
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Rather perforce - military spec goodies would not make sense for many of my Nats, just as (presumably) martial arts okuden type Dragon goodies don't for others. Nor does my nanotech powered Tech origin electric blaster load up on cyberware to improve his powers.|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
So I guess when you go to the Natural Store, your alien uses their imagination and are not really using Military-named enhancements? Im just saying.
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etc.etc.etc.
But the designers went with the kicky names for enhancements rather than just SO Tech Damage, or whatnot. Everyone invests their imagination the way they like.
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
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An alien's abilities are natural to him, so there really is no way other than to train those abilities up. Since Natural enhancements, specifically SOs, are all techniques and training, I don't see why not.|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
So I guess when you go to the Natural Store, your alien uses their imagination and are not really using Military-named enhancements? Im just saying.
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That, and enhancements are far more specific than they ought to be. A character with pith power gloves and a utility belt is forced to implant two dozen eyes in his skull, which is completely out of character.
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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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Well, the etymology of the term Magi actually only touches on the supernatural in a pejorative way from the original.|
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
So how do you explain the Rikti Maguses?
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The original Magi (from which we get the word Magus) were an hereditary class of Medean advisors who became incorrectly known for using astronomy (or astrology) to predict events when in actuality they were most known for their ability to interpret dreams. The astrologic addition is attributed to a Rav-Mag of the Medo-Persian Empire who prophesied a future astronomic event to mark the birth of a king. During the Parthian (easy etymology here) Empire, no king was seated without the backing of the Magi, and their respect in the East as advisors and political powers may have given us our term magistrate. In the West (Greco-Roman Empires), the term denigrated to mean a charlatan who used trickery to gain power over others, and thus the terms magic and Magus were added to the lexicon.
The terms Magus or Shaman are not so much persons with supernatural powers as much as 'Wise Men' (heh), and as such a Magus or Shaman is a Leader by means of wisdom or his mental abilities. Which in turn can be applied to the Rikti Magus and (slightly) to BP Shaman ingame.
Yeah, linguistics interests me... we all have our cross to bear. But a Rikti Magus doesnt have to be powered by the supernatural as much as by his own mind or will. Make sense?
As far as Origins; I have stated in other threads pertaining to this that I dont see a real need to make Origins mean more than they do now as that would (as others have stated) probably only end up making players choose one Origin over all others for some perceived or actually ingame gain. They are nice flavor now, and that is as it should be IMHO.
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Related: It's five years plus into the game. There are literally millions of characters created. If they suddenly had (say) Tech get a weakness to electrical and some rad powers, you would in essence be punishing people who created these with no indication this was ever going to happen - for choices they made years ago when they meant nothing. |
Originally Posted by BlueRaptor
c) It doesnt make sense (thus) to tie any game advantages or disadvantages to origin. Nor can you, following b), assume anything about the character to open up or close story options.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That, and enhancements are far more specific than they ought to be. A character with pith power gloves and a utility belt is forced to implant two dozen eyes in his skull, which is completely out of character.
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Years ago I rolled up a Kin/Elec defender named Kinetic Flux.
He was a sentient robot.
I wasn't paying attention and picked Natural as his origin. Within minutes of zoning into Atlas I had someone point out that I should've gone with Technology origin.
Thanks to my mistake, his bio was reworked to have him be an alien from a planet of machines. So, while appearing to be a techy robot, he's still the same as all others of his race, therefor the Natural origin made sense.
While 'in reality' he would need to shop at the Tech store for 'parts' instead of the natural store for incense and dragon coins I just RP'd it as he's desperate to fit in with Humans. Even going so far as to create a holographic interface so he could later on appear to be human.
When I made my 1st toon I thought origin would be an important part of it. To the point of including it when asking for help on my Natural Eng/Eng blaster and yes, his story makes sense with his origin. I was later on very happy to have it only be a RP deal. Leaves lots more room for variations.
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Well, how do you explain all the gauntlets, then? I ought to be able to wear only two gauntlets, one on each hand. Not, you know, 15. Even if I shoved them on my hands, gauntlet over gauntlet, there's a practical limit to how many that could be while still giving me use of my hands. Hell, I can barely function with two sets of cotton gloves on, let alone with 15 gauntlets on each hand. Rings I can sort of see, even though there ought to be some upper limit to how many you can wear and still be able to bend your fingers. And I'm sure I couldn't fit too many helmets over my big head.
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Eh... If you consider them actual eyes, sure. If you consider "Eyes" to be a marketing name for X device, and the enhancements to be linking other devices to it (a central targeting system, in other words,) it's not so bad. *shrug*
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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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Well, all I wanted with my fisrt post was to see something happening in the game around story... And it turned out a discussion about the names of the enhancements (to wich I agree are quite difficult to accept in RP at some points).
No, to make any difference in what powers your Origins gets you is not what I want. Neither is having any advantage or hindrance for being of a specific Origin is not what I intended. Sorry if it seemed that way in my first post.
All I wanted was some more flavor on the game story, like in missions working around Origins. From what I´ve seen we don´t get much of that. There´s the early missions, the EATs missions and the Origins Badge arc... And that´s pretty much it. I wanted more of that so you don´t forget what you Origins means.
The Villain Groups have their own links with the Origins, but to the world itself it doesn´t make any difference. As an example my Rad/Rad Science is a proud Midnighter even tough he have absolutely NO connections to Magic at all, no questions asked...
I mean, of course I´m a Midnighter because I choose so, so I can give any reason I want for it, but there should be some concepts to work around you know? Even if only so you can choose to ignore them completely because your story needs you too. :-)
I agree that if you want to RP you can use your own origins to do that story flavor, but in what concerns the immersion on the game the lack of meaningfull things in the story of the world concerning Origins bothers me some. But never mind, with that explained I´ll just shut up and stop bothering you guys with my "cries and whinings" and work my own darn stories... :-) See you in the game.
"Looks can be deceiving" - Statesman (in Memoriam)
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The Rikti eliminated magic in their home dimension. There is at least one story arc where it's revealed the Rikti are enacting a plan to do likewise in our dimension to help remove the advantage magic gives us over them. The implication is that the Rikti invasion only failed because of our dimension possessing magic where theirs no longer did. I doubt its that simple, but at least some Rikti believe it is anyways.|
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
So how do you explain the Rikti Maguses?
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However, as magic exists here, the Rikti Magi are part of the Rikti Restructurist forces trapped here on earth who have decided to try a bold new tactic of mastering magic to level the playing field in the opposite direction:
"These radical members of the Rikti's Restructurist faction have mastered magical arts stolen from the Circle of Thorns." Source: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Rikti_Magus
That answer your question?
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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I remember when I was reading the descriptions for the origins for the first time, and it would say something about secondary mutations, alterations and such right below the list of them. This lead me to believe that something would happen to your character's appearence or powers midway through the levels or something. You can imagine the disappointment when I found that origin doesn't make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things.
To me, it's pretty much whether you want the throwing knife, mutagen, or whatever for your little power that will be ditched once somewhat of an attack chain is established. As well as which enhancements you can use, which can be a pain in the butt when you're a natural origin trying to get beefed up in SO drops but are doing an arc with mostly freaks.
It doesn't bother me at all these days though, I'm over it, and still love the game to death. Wouldn't that be cool though?
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Originally Posted by beyeajus74018
To me, it's pretty much whether you want the throwing knife, mutagen, or whatever for your little power that will be ditched once somewhat of an attack chain is established.
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This. Of all those powers I like throwing knives best so I take Natural most often.
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But WHAT meaningful thing should that be? Shall some players be locked out of the Midnighters content because they clearly are not magic enough? What origins would that be, and how would you know someone that is "mutation" origin for whatever it means to them is not totally into magic?|
Originally Posted by Trialtester
Well, all I wanted with my fisrt post was to see something happening in the game around story... And it turned out a discussion about the names of the enhancements (to wich I agree are quite difficult to accept in RP at some points).
No, to make any difference in what powers your Origins gets you is not what I want. Neither is having any advantage or hindrance for being of a specific Origin is not what I intended. Sorry if it seemed that way in my first post. All I wanted was some more flavor on the game story, like in missions working around Origins. From what I´ve seen we don´t get much of that. There´s the early missions, the EATs missions and the Origins Badge arc... And that´s pretty much it. I wanted more of that so you don´t forget what you Origins means. The Villain Groups have their own links with the Origins, but to the world itself it doesn´t make any difference. As an example my Rad/Rad Science is a proud Midnighter even tough he have absolutely NO connections to Magic at all, no questions asked... I mean, of course I´m a Midnighter because I choose so, so I can give any reason I want for it, but there should be some concepts to work around you know? Even if only so you can choose to ignore them completely because your story needs you too. :-) I agree that if you want to RP you can use your own origins to do that story flavor, but in what concerns the immersion on the game the lack of meaningfull things in the story of the world concerning Origins bothers me some. But never mind, with that explained I´ll just shut up and stop bothering you guys with my "cries and whinings" and work my own darn stories... :-) See you in the game. |
You say yourself you are a Midnighter because you chose so. How would you like it if you didnt have to option to do so because you "are not magic"? My main point is you cannot assume ANYTHING about a character because of their mere "origin". Not a thing to give a bonus or malus, not a thing to give or refuse access to skills or perks, not a thing to hook a story to, and not even a thing that allows a dialog option or referral in one that is any more precise than "I know you are <x> origin".
(the only way to somewhat do any of the above would be much more detailed origins that allow you to state that you are e.g. 60% natural alien 40% cyborg who uses 50% tech/weapons and 50% a magical artifact and increase your powers with 30% new understanding of the magic in your artifact, 40% cybernetical upgrading, 20% new tech for the weapon you carry and 20% training. That'd be a hell of a mess to code and balance then, for something that a lot of players happily accept as just a little backgroudn flavour and an incentive to trade enhancements with others because not everybody can use all of them, and there'd still be the problem of players being locked out of cool content just because they chose to go with their favorite background story (instead of calculating what they have to take to get which content))
This shows here too:
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Originally Posted by beyeajus74018
I remember when I was reading the descriptions for the origins for the first time, and it would say something about secondary mutations, alterations and such right below the list of them. This lead me to believe that something would happen to your character's appearence or powers midway through the levels or something. You can imagine the disappointment when I found that origin doesn't make a lick of difference in the grand scheme of things.
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Yes, that fluff text may be misleading and some enhancements names may not fit the own interpretation of an origin already, but those can still easily be ignored, so your character can be whatever you write into the bio.
and here:
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
This. Of all those powers I like throwing knives best so I take Natural most often.
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Here's my thing: origins are meaningless except as RP. They shouldn't exist as something you select during character creation. Sure, if you're a hero as opposed to a villain it makes a slight difference in your first contact. From there on you can modify your path by choosing different contacts from the available. So why the heck not just do for Heroes what they do for Villains and let you choose your first contact from the available? There's no reason whatsoever for you to have to select an origin.
If you want to get technical, all heroes have a Natural origin. Even my magical construct heroes/villains could be defined as having been created from natural substances (substances which are natural to their environments) and therefore are Natural in origin. If you're going to have to select something during character creation it should have an impact on your character creation/development, not just on their storyline. Anything that's only relevent to the storyline should be played out in the story. When going into AP or GC, you should be given a list of contact options with a description of who they are/what kind of things they'll ask you to do. That starts your path. From there you are given additional options for contacts with storyline descriptions. That continues your path. This further fits with the GR side-switching thing.
Origin should be completely removed from the character creation process. It could potentially be replaced by a selector for what starting weapon you want to have in order to replace the current origin power which is the only real effect origin has on game play. If I want my toon to use a low-powered taser, I shouldn't have to be a tech to do it. Maybe it's a freakin' magic energy field that stuns the target. Maybe those throwing knives are magical and I only have one which keeps teleporting back to me after each time I throw it.
Maybe it's Sleep Sand I'm throwing and not a sleeping dart. There's no reason at all for origin to be selected during character creation. It's useless at best and at worst a hamper to RPing.
That is all.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...
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Apropos of nothing, this reminded me of one of the best throwaway references in an alternate world setting. Poul Anderson's "Operation Chaos" (one of the first "our modern world but magic works like in the old grimoires" exercises) includes a reference by the hero (Steve Matuchek, a werewolf) when he is fighting a demon that has also assumed wolf form: "She didn't know the judo breaks for her animal form."|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
An alien's abilities are natural to him, so there really is no way other than to train those abilities up. Since Natural enhancements, specifically SOs, are all techniques and training, I don't see why not.
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Just contemplating the backstory behind a concept like judo tailored for wolf-form lycanthropes is dazzling. When did a werewolf sign up at Kodokan (or maybe a loup-garou in French Federation judo)? If there were formal judo forms for werewolves, were they developed while Kano O-sensei was still around (the Goetic Age was ushered in by Einstein's early work, that's the point-of-departure for the novel, and Dr. Kano lived until 1938)? Did the werewolf get a black belt in human form and then adapt judo to his wolf form? Or was this homecooked, military hand to hand developed in WW II (which is in progress as the book opens, only against a heretical Islamic empire, not the Axis we know).
It is doubtless a combination of SF and martial arts geekdom that would make questions like this arise, but Poul invokes it with a single sentence tossed off during the fight between Steve and Cybelita. That's good fantasy writing.
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
I'd much rather see resources go into creating new content. As I said, and my opinion only, the game doesn't need another "origin". Programming effort is better spent in other areas.
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