Evolving gangs, 2005 to 2010

Okay. I must start with a story. Those groaning in the back, bare with me here.

So. About two weeks ago I thought I was done with CoH. I mean... I wasn't playing it anymore... I17 had come around, new tails, new missions, Ultramode (That I cant use, but beside the point) It was all feeling kinda the same. Click, boosh, done.

I had one villain open up the newspaper and saw Razorbeam's obituary... Dated 2005. I thought 'Jeez... Is CoV really set in a universe where it's still 2005?'

...Then I realized what had me down. Literally. It was all the same, for five years, several months... I'd been playing the same game, While new zones had been added, new storylines had come across, new powers had manifested... It's all the same.

Needless to say, I had a mild panic attack before realizing what was wrong.

In six years... The Hellions have all grumped about trying to steal purses. Arachnos has, while being touted as the forefront of mechanical prowess... Developed nothing. The gangs, besides Rikti... Had never been touched, never been updated.

Dr. Aeon (sorry bud, i love you... But...) has been sitting around with Rikti Interfaces up the yin-yang, doing nothing about integrating Rikti Tech into Arachnos armor. Skyraiders still zip about with outdated, clunky teleporting backpacks. The PPD has, admittedly, incorporated Kheldians into their workforce, but haven't reverse engineered any villain tech into armor... Nor do they have any mystic allies.

What I'm trying to say is... I see that CO has (And I understand the hate towards the 'main competitor, no matter how far behind they are) set up plans to update their premier Arachnos styled group with new powers and costumes just a few months after launch... Arachnos still sits back without Warp Spiders, Stealthy Web Assassins or Huntsmen snipers, stuff they have had ample access to over the past five or so years... Yet seemingly have been too lazy to integrate into their forces.

The Fifth recently re-emerged as an individual group after fighting within the Council... The Council have Ascendant power armors with impressive shields and strength. In five years, the Fifth didn't think to steal some upgrades? Just yank some old robots and costumes out of storage? Isn't their lack of technology what defeated them in the first place? The Fifth have had (Ironically) five years to build new robotic units, integrate galaxy soldiers into their group, steal power armor plans, build new weapons, upgrade their troops and they've just sat back and done nothing but bide their time and say 'She'll be right when we break free'? Are the Council only reeling in shock before another war starts where their technological power crushes the Fifth yet again?

It just doesn't seem right that over six years with geniuses of magical and technological might that no one has thought to try and stop the super heroes or super villain upstarts that keep beating them with something else than what failed before. Are the leaders all... Dense? Or is the CoX universe really locked in 2005?

Just my thoughts on the subject. (I know. I think to much. :P)

I'm sorry, but I disagree with you. In City of Heroes, time passes not with real-world time passage, but with level progression. When you're level 15, Jim Temblor is still just barely coming to grips with his father's fate. When you're level 35, time has past, he's confident in his powers and he's acting as a legitimate hero. That's how time passes. If you zoom back to level 1 on a new character, you zoom back in time back to 2004, back when Vahzilok was still alive, when the Clockwork King hadn't been beaten, when Countess Crey was still a free woman, when the second Rikti invasion hadn't happened yet.

I don't like CHANGE to the game, I like ADDITIONS. Instead of messing with what has been working just fine over the years, I say we add to it. New groups, new missions, new stories, but there's no reason to mess with the old ones. The change of name of the 5th Column to the Council (and that's all it was) was easily the WORST thing to happen to the game's content and lore, bar none. There was NO REASON to outright remove an acting, existing, cool enemy group. You complain about them being the same as the Council now, and with good reason - they're the same god damn group with a different insignia. The change accomplished nothing but pissing a bunch of people off.

I like a time-static world. There's nothing I hate more than old content I enjoyed removed. I could stand to see it tweaked, but only to fix bad writing, NOT to ret-con old stories as suddenly having happened differently. I like a time-static world exactly because nothing in it is ever lost, and so I can relive every moment of it. I like that. Our world is still not COMPLETELY static, as it's level-dynamic, and I feel that's the best stat to hook time to. Level progression is practically the only type of progression that we can control the pace of.

Personally, I'd be greatly disappointed if old stories were swapped out for new ones all of a sudden. Fix crappy arcs, by no means, but don't mess with the actual stories, please.

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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.

I kind of agree with you, it would be nice to update some of the factions with new units and powers, like Hellions and Skulls Lieutenants with dual pistols, and it's always bugged me how despite being an arsonist group, only Hellion bosses have fire powers unless it's a Steel Canyon Fire Alarm event...
Also, Skulls do need some new development too, namely WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY? Are they using literal Dark Magic? Do they all have latent dark abilities and have shot themselves up on just enough superdyne to get by as a science? Are they all mutants? Maybe their dark powers are naturally fueled by their teenage emo angst? Seriously, what the hell?
Also, longbow could stand to follow examples from the PPD, Vanguard, Legacy Chain, hell, even various villain groups, they already (poorly) copied the sky skiffs with their chasers. (damned if the Chasers don't look sweet though, they need alternate paint job models for them though, and sexy men or woman painted on the side and names like "Lady Luck")
And all in all I can think of many others, like the Sky raiders needing a human boss, I actually started a thread a long time ago about updating enemy factions with new powers, never really took off.

But on the note of the Column vs. the Council's Mechmen, the the 5th's Mek Men technically outperform with more powers and about the same resistances. (Mech Men have the melee claw strike, a laser blast, and that's it. Mek Man possess Barrage, Whirling hand, and energy blast they might also have stun)
Also, the Column's significantly more powerful at lower levels where they possess more powerful units and bosses like the Krieger early on, and you rarely do encounter ascendants, and at higher levels, the two groups still seem matched, I'd give the overall victory until the leaders themselves step onto the battlefield field to the Column. (Besides, the robots, the super soldiers, it all makes more sense coming from a group of Nazi soldiers because that's what people would expect from them. But for a somewhat random paramilitary group like the Council? It gets a little narmish.)

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Granted, the level progression does add a semblance of timeline, it doesn't fully explain some of the other actions that happen within the game. For the most stark instance, The Council X Fifth war or the Rikti Warzone revamp. Did these suddenly pop into existance to be crammed into a timeline somewhere?

A level 1 character created after the Fifth have resurfaced suddenly has to shove the Council X Fifth war into an aberrant date in some quantum state, in the past... Yet the present? Future? And the Fifth themselves have not formed themselves a new group until some time in the future, yet they can walk into Steel Canyon and see the Fifth around?

The Rikti revamp was interesting. Old enemies became new with a change of costume and the new (At the time) heavies allowed some new storylines to be implemented with the four riders. A fresh face for an old group is all i'm pointing out. Arachnos surely have to have SOME kind of new armor that makes them slightly better than stormtroopers somewhere?

Granted. I guess the real reason why appearances haven't been revamped would be a split community response between 'This is how it goes' against 'No, this is how it goes.'

Personally I'd just like the timeline question cleared up. If GR comes with new missions that have dates in them (New paper missions dated 2010 for example) do they suddenly step back in time to 2005 after level 20?

I've always found it a bit ironic that people clamor to have the Calvin Scott TF put back in via Ouroboros. While I'd never say no to adding more content to the game, the Scott TF is in fact an example of those older, unpolished, and largely dull arcs. Literally the only thing special about it was that it was temporary, and it's likely it was designed to be unremarkable due to that.

In general though, I pretty much agree with Sam. The timeline aint perfect, and there are lots of glaring errors that we were told would be fixed but never were ("2nd Rikti Invasion" arc), but hey - it's a comic book MMO. Timeline confusion is par for the course, I'd say.

Another possibilility is that after playing the same game for 5 years you are just bored. It could be that it doesn't matter what changes are made to the game content, you'd still be bored.

I would like to take a deeper look into Paragon City's Gang Lore.

Currently, the lore is set up so that there's this kind of... gang progression, I guess.

The Hellions got stuff from the Warriors, who are connected to the Circle of Thorns somehow.

The Skulls have a connection with the Family and Trolls, who has a connection with... I dunno. Who ever the Family is connected to.

But other than that, we never see the Petrovic Brothers (Who founded the Skulls). They don't even tell us who leads the Hellions, but at least they've got two unique bosses. The Skulls don't have a single one.

Basically, yeah, evolving gangs. You're going up the food chain from dumb street punks to the organized criminal syndicates they're working for.

The Skulls are a lowbie dumb nihilist gang that sells Dyne to the Trolls for the Family. Pretty straightforward.

The Hellions steal magic items because the Tsoo gave them magic idols that makes them dumb and sell the magic weapons to the Warriors (who are a dumb street gang themselves, but higher level because...they are). The Tsoo are getting their Rage drug out on the streets, too...but I don't think that's ever much addressed besides for being a lethal combo when the Trolls mix it with their addiction to Dyne. Or the Freakshow might use it in addition to their drug of choice (Excelsior?), I forget. It's been years since I've run a lot of the archaic CoH story arcs.

I don't remember either side dealing much with the Circle. Because the CoT would just stick them with one of their crystal thorns and swap the original soul out with a trapped CoT mage (as is done in a CoV arc).

I'd be against Rewriting lower level content.

I'd be fine with updating the character models to accommodate the new Ultra Mode capabilities of the engine.

-Rachel-

I'm torn between Gigas and Samuel Tow. I agree that the game has become too stagnant and therefore, boring. But I also don't want to see things changed too radically because there is a certain comfort in the old canon.

What I think we need more of is new enemies and most of all NEW MAPS and NEW SKINS. It would be great to add an NPC to each group every so often. Encountering Succubi in COT mobs and Meat Doctors with Freakshow added spice to fighting against those groups.

But even with all new bad guys with all new powers, it will always seem like the same old grind if I do it in tech_lab_01, abandoned_warehouse_02 or blue_cave_03. I'm sure that Praetoria will give us new maps, but we need upgrades in the existing content as well. A supermarket, a mall, a hotel, a high school or college campus or anything else would all be very welcome additions.