Storylines - sidelined?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-02-24 06:29 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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People argue about lots of things...Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonalds vs. Wendy's, whether Stephanie Meyer or Justin Bieber is the true Antichrist, etc. That doesn't mean anything will ever be settled, or that the arguments have any validity in the first place.| People argue about aesthetics all the time. |
There are plenty of qualities in art that can be evaluated and debated, ranging from (in our case) minor points like grammar and spelling to major points like effective use of themes or morals, plot consistency, etc. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't have written so many AE reviews. But there are at least as many that can't. The developers like cheap, shlocky stories about time travel and parallel worlds and seventeen copies of a character no one cared about in the first place. They don't particularly care about how stories treat the player-character. Stories that throw Idiot Balls by the crateload are fine; in fact they think this is a cool way to show just what a "master strategist" a villain is. Etc., ad nauseum. If this is what they like to see in stories then there is no chance of talking them out of it, any more than you could (e.g.) convince a muddleheaded deviant who prefers pie of the obvious superiority and wholesomeness of cake.
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In another thread, I made a suggestion that the Terra Conspiracy arc be revamped with new tech and some polish on the story telling. It's our first REAL introduction to the Hamidon. It should be a clearer story IMO considering how that creature stars in one of the games oldest and already revamped raids.|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
First off,
This is a great conversation. The Lore/Stories are an important and vital part of CoH and a huge reason that many are so invested. So in reading this I'm seeing requests for continuation of the story of Malta and the Shadow Shard story lines. What other stories do you feel need to be further explored? |
In general, honestly, I'd like to see many of the old arcs--especially from level 30 going forward, get a revamp both for story and tech sake. We have so many wonderful storytelling tools now in the mission tech from custom maps, to custom mobs, to dopplegangers, to radio monologue that comes at you mid mission, to cutscenes, to multicolored and clearly labeled chapterized mission text. These old arcs contain--as Westley points out in the OP--some of the core and most interesting lore of the CoX universe. This lore has evolved some, but these touchstones could (and should IMO) be given much more new life via new tech and strategies for mission arcs.
Oh... and lots of the tedious old-school i0 and i1 filler can and should be trimmed from these stories. Keep them well paced and engaging.
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Originally Posted by Venture
Actually I don't, because this isn't something you can argue about. It's a question of aesthetics. |
I like arguing about aesthetics.
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Please do. I haven't done a DE story arc in years due to the "defeat alls" and general crappiness of the presentation.|
Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan
In another thread, I made a suggestion that the Terra Conspiracy arc be revamped with new tech and some polish on the story telling. It's our first REAL introduction to the Hamidon. It should be a clearer story IMO considering how that creature stars in one of the games oldest and already revamped raids.
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| In general, honestly, I'd like to see many of the old arcs--especially from level 30 going forward, get a revamp both for story and tech sake. We have so many wonderful storytelling tools now in the mission tech from custom maps, |
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| to custom mobs, |
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| to dopplegangers, |
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| to radio monologue that comes at you mid mission, |
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| to cutscenes, |
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| to multicolored and clearly labeled chapterized mission text. |
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| These old arcs contain--as Westley points out in the OP--some of the core and most interesting lore of the CoX universe. This lore has evolved some, but these touchstones could (and should IMO) be given much more new life via new tech and strategies for mission arcs. |
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Gotta disagree with you six ways to sunday on this one. And you contradict yourself. If it only takes 5 minutes to make the boss of not just a mission--but an ENTIRE ARC--look and even feel unique and germane to the story, why not go that extra mile. How does this in anyway = less actual content if as you say it only takes 5 minutes?|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Again, more work required to make the content = less actual content. We can slap together a custom mob in AE in five minutes. As anyone who has played a lot of AE will tell you, we shouldn't.
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Can you make craptacular easy to defeat or far too tough bosses via the current AE tools and custom power selections? Absolutely. But if your day job was to sit down and comb through and revamp content in terms of text and mechanics, don't you think you should know the tools and powers enough to know if a combination will be too powerful or too weak for the main antagonist(s) of a story?
But I do get your points regarding the custom maps. Yes it is a lot of work. I have played a lot of AE and continue to (for the stories--not the farms). And yes... super rare only see them once maps become less special the more you see them. But I personally still enjoy seeing a wider range of map types and feels.
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Yeah, you would think so, but as we've seen there have been a lot of "too strong" enemies being thrown around lately. The philosophy seems to be "make them too strong then balance downwards based on player feedback" rather than "make them weak then strengthen them or reduce their rewards after players farm the crap out of them." Which is fine, because testers are more likely to complain about enemies being too strong. It is less fine if you're say, revamping an old mission with a new boss in an issue that is mostly focused on end-game shinies and players aren't as inclined to thoroughly test your new enemy and provide feedback. It is even less fine if the too-strong enemy is left as is (level 30 Zeus Titan EB anyone? New Siege?)
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Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan
Can you make craptacular easy to defeat or far too tough bosses via the current AE tools and custom power selections? Absolutely. But if your day job was to sit down and comb through and revamp content in terms of text and mechanics, don't you think you should know the tools and powers enough to know if a combination will be too powerful or too weak for the main antagonist(s) of a story?
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One thing you're forgetting here (and with the "more work") - |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Creating actual custom maps is probably a lot of work. I'd rather have more actual content, even if it means generic maps have to be used much of the time, than less content on fancy maps.
Again, more work required to make the content = less actual content. We can slap together a custom mob in AE in five minutes. As anyone who has played a lot of AE will tell you, we shouldn't. |
There's not just one guy doing all this, unlike us making AE missions.
Need a new map? That goes to one group, with specifications on looks (which also involves art) and spawn points, any special items, etc. While they work on that, the writer(s) start in with their bit, and so forth.
Comparing "what we can do" to what the devs can do (and have proven, if it weren't common sense already, that they can do things we can't) is a bit misguided.
Besides, there are people working for NC who have that *as their job.* Let them do it.
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So you're saying if the writers have two four-mission arcs ready to go, but the map guys only have time to create four maps, it's better to release only one arc with all-new maps than to re-use some of the generic maps and release two arcs?
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Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Need a new map? That goes to one group, with specifications on looks (which also involves art) and spawn points, any special items, etc. While they work on that, the writer(s) start in with their bit, and so forth.
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Paragon Studios is a business. Businesses, when they have projects, use project management. If they have a planned arc or set of arcs that requires a new map, but the map-creation folks are busy elsewhere, that does not mean art can't create textures or a new mob design, or that the story people can't get the preliminary arc tested with a stand-in map. |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
So you're saying if the writers have two four-mission arcs ready to go, but the map guys only have time to create four maps, it's better to release only one arc with all-new maps than to re-use some of the generic maps and release two arcs?
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If generic maps work, use them. If they need a custom map, that doesn't mean that other things can't be done (and when the arc-writing team, art team, etc. is done, they can be doing still *other* things while the map people do their part. Including finishing other arcs that DON'T require new maps.)
Personally, I'm of the opinion that we need to shepherd custom maps and unique game mechanics, saving them for special occasions, like the end of an arc or a particularly major mission. There aren't the resources to make everything custom and non-standard, and even if there were, that takes away from the impact factor of that custom content when it does show up.
Take Roy Cooling's arc, for instance. The whole arc is complex mechanics, ambushes, dialogue trees and so on, so when you get to the end, the final encounter feels meh. That's the one thing everyone seems to hate. You get a repeating elite boss, then another elite boss, and you can't even converse with "Peter."
I yearn for the old days when we had simpler, less encumbering missions for most of the way through an arc, which then ended in a custom map and strange stipulations. That, to me, is a good way to both save resources AND make the impact of said resources count for more.
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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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You don't have to convince everyone that your aesthetics are better. You just have to convince the developers. Of course, you'd have to make that argument with the restriction that those aesthetics are better for the business franchise and not just the story, and it's hard to argue with success.|
Originally Posted by Venture
That doesn't mean anything will ever be settled, or that the arguments have any validity in the first place.
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Of course, as DCUO continues ramping up, this argument may become more important.
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| There are plenty of qualities in art that can be evaluated and debated, ranging from (in our case) minor points like grammar and spelling to major points like effective use of themes or morals, plot consistency, etc. |
That said, I haven't tried that hard to identify such features in City of Heroes, so my commentary above is really just an excuse for me to post that link.
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| The developers like cheap, shlocky stories about time travel and parallel worlds and seventeen copies of a character |
I will concede that stuff like Ouroboros, the situation regarding Cimerora, and even the appearance of the Shadow Shard happened without much setup or foreshadowing. I suppose you could consider Ubelmann the Unknown a setup for the 5th Column's presence in ancient Rome, but there was no suggestion that something was going wrong with time right up to the point where Castanella told us 'IT'S GOIN' DOWN RIGHT NOW, MANG, GET MOVIN', SHOOT 'EM IN THE HEAD!'
Of course, there's other major events in the game that I do think have had decent setups. People were expecting the Second Rikti War to happen for years, if not even as a result of Hro'Dtohz's ambitions, then as a result of Nemesis' mechanations or even just the Rikti trying to rescue their people stranded on Primal Earth. People didn't really make a fuss over the resurgence of the 5th Column (post-Cimerora) because not only had people expected that some loyalist cells escaped from the Council, but because Reichsman had been left in the fridge somewhere instead of actually being taken out once and forever. Nobody really questioned the overlay of Croatoa onto Salamanca, because we'd known about the Malleus Mundi for at least a year beforehand as a result of the Halloween Event and most folks seem to accept that magical items that have been lost to the ages, especially those capable of blasting holes in reality, are wont to appear again somehow. It just happened to be coincidence that it blasted a hole around Croatoa and I think everyone acknowledges it as such, so now we have goblins and witches and walking pumpkins next door to the largest metropolitan area in Rhode Island and I think most people are okay with that.
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| ...to [sic] one cared about in the first place. |
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| They don't particularly care about how stories treat the player-character. |
Or, perhaps I misinterpreted your concern. Always possible.
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| Stories that throw Idiot Balls by the crateload are fine; in fact they think this is a cool way to show just what a "master strategist" a villain is. |
I only mention the groups above just as an example. My opinion holds for the general case of mustache-twirling.
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It also forces a greater focus on the story, since people won't bother with an unappealing story if there's no shiny. We've already seen that people will happily ignore a sub-par story and praise its shinies.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I yearn for the old days when we had simpler, less encumbering missions for most of the way through an arc, which then ended in a custom map and strange stipulations. That, to me, is a good way to both save resources AND make the impact of said resources count for more.
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Don't believe me? How many people praised Mercedes Sheldon's arcs when they were released? Now how many people praised the doppelganger arcs?
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While I agree with most players here - and players I've chatted with who don't post on the forums - that it would be great to see a revamp of the content that explores all the dangling plot threads and forgotten details ... and I can list a lot of these ... I'd have to say that with the present orientation of the development crew, I'm inclined to agree with Venture when he says the storylines he's like to see explored are:
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I think that sketchy as the old mission writing was, it was better and more broadly conceived than a lot of the stuff we've received in recent years. The problem with the old content is that the background was lore rich, but the actual gameplay was simplistic and repetitive. The new stuff we get is much flashier and with more complexly chained objectives - which is nice (to a degree) - but I don't play much of it (just tips right now) because I find the plots are riddled and were probably dashed off in the minimum possible time. (Manager: "I want a new arc/tf completed by noon!" </e whiplash>) Also, there seems to be more of a superhero Saturday morning or Adult Swim cartoon style right now, not the graphic novel or socially-conscious 1970s style that I'd prefer to see.|
Originally Posted by Venture
None.
The recent storyline work has been wretched enough that I'd just as soon not see anything but more static set-pieces like the new raid-level events. Besides, most of it has been left languishing for so long that nothing the developers do to progress or end it is going to satisfy anyone. It is pretty clear that they had (e.g.) no idea what "The Coming Storm" is or who Mysterious Letter Writer Guy really is and have just been playing for time all along. Almost anything could be written to fit what little information has already been put out there, so really, who cares? |
Furthermore, we've had abundant evidence in recent years that the writers don't research the lore very deeply before creating new arcs and task forces. If the dialog is snarky and snappy, the work is deemed satisfactory and the job is done. Which is a shame.
So if there's no desire to create quality stories, please don't bother following up on dangling plot threads. It will just create more continuity problems, because it will be poorly done.
Instead, just give Statesman some pets that accidentally drank from the Well of the Furries, like a dog and a cat, and write a bunch of arcs and task forces about the amazing adventures of Statesdog and Lord Reclusive Cat, and their friends. I think that would work about as well.
(khonshu <---- grumpy old man with degree in English)
Please no more Malta. They're fine from a mechanics standpoint, but it just grates on me that a guys-with-guns group is a late-game enemy, rather than the mid-game enemy they should have been. Plus, they're just about the least visually interesting enemy group in the game (when you make the Skulls look colorful by comparison, something is wrong).
And I hope the AE never gets custom maps and spawn placement. Endurance drained by electric attacks and lost on a map so crazy it makes Orenbega look like a straight line all while trying to find the glowie which custom spawns in the least-likely, least-accessible part of the map because that's supposed to be oh-so-entertaining? No thanks. No thanks.
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I like Malta, and what they represent, and what they are. The fact that they're a guys-with-guns group and they're a late game threat is part of what makes them impressive. Plus the whole world conspiracy thing still makes them a heckuva lot more interesting than, say, a gang of homicidal clowns.|
Originally Posted by Daemodand
Please no more Malta. They're fine from a mechanics standpoint, but it just grates on me that a guys-with-guns group is a late-game enemy, rather than the mid-game enemy they should have been.
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I will say one thing I'd really, really like to see from Malta, though, are more supers. This is a whole organization devoted to turning super-powered folks into their own personal army, and there are, at last count, a whopping two people with super powers (Moment heroside and Ether villainside) that actually show up in their missions. I'm not saying the need their own version of Longbow Wardens or anything, but I'd like to see a few more people with powers turn up in their stories every once in a while.
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[Insert standard Twilight rant here]|
Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
You don't have to convince everyone that your aesthetics are better. You just have to convince the developers. Of course, you'd have to make that argument with the restriction that those aesthetics are better for the business franchise and not just the story, and it's hard to argue with success.
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On a more positive note, you can also point to the Shadow Shard threads that pop up regularly, player excitement regarding the Rikti War and the return of the 5th Column, and in fact this very thread as evidence that at some point they got it right. They created storylines that were engaging on a level beyond "oooh, I get to fight evil me" that players have remained interested in long after the initial shiny has faded.
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| I'm always for consistent plot/subplot enhanced by themes or morals, but there's always this part of me that starts feeling fussy when the importance of those themes/morals become overemphasized and just turns the plot into a vehicle for them. Then again, perhaps that's as much of a sign of a bad story as a complete lack of those enhancements is. |
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| I will agree with this. I've got nothing against cool extra cast members, but when there's been too little character development on them, it's hard to care about who they are or what they do. There's some good stuff with the Rogues Gallery in the Tips content, but most of the encounters with the Gallery that don't contain branching dialogue are too brief and insignificant to hold much development. |
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| That article contains the quote "If someone did not care about one aspect of the production, the reasons may be that they were more worried about something more important." I'll posit that the reason for your concern above is that there's just a humongous variety of character personalities that players may create, so the writers can't be too specific in the character's response to a given situation. |
And didn't the heroic doppelganger arc initially involve your Praetorian double before players complained and it was changed to "you from a generic alternate dimension?" I would think that, given the opportunity to create characters in Praetoria the logical and immediate assumption would be that many players would choose to create Praetorian versions of their characters. You shouldn't need the players to tell you this.
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| I'll agree that this sort of 'clever plot' requires an equally clever writer. |
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Actually, there is some evidence that they do. The guy who wrote the Reichsman TFs obviously didn't and he's gone now. The problem is they have no trouble picking and choosing, incorporating what they like, ignoring what they don't, and shoehorning aspects where they really don't belong.|
Originally Posted by konshu
Furthermore, we've had abundant evidence in recent years that the writers don't research the lore very deeply before creating new arcs and task forces. If the dialog is snarky and snappy, the work is deemed satisfactory and the job is done. Which is a shame.
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| Instead, just give Statesman some pets that accidentally drank from the Well of the Furries, like a dog and a cat, and write a bunch of arcs and task forces about the amazing adventures of Statesdog and Lord Reclusive Cat, and their friends. I think that would work about as well. |
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Originally Posted by Daemodand
And I hope the AE never gets custom maps and spawn placement. Endurance drained by electric attacks and lost on a map so crazy it makes Orenbega look like a straight line all while trying to find the glowie which custom spawns in the least-likely, least-accessible part of the map because that's supposed to be oh-so-entertaining? No thanks. No thanks.
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Originally Posted by Lazarillo
I will say one thing I'd really, really like to see from Malta, though, are more supers. This is a whole organization devoted to turning super-powered folks into their own personal army, and there are, at last count, a whopping two people with super powers (Moment heroside and Ether villainside) that actually show up in their missions. I'm not saying the need their own version of Longbow Wardens or anything, but I'd like to see a few more people with powers turn up in their stories every once in a while.
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I sense ... sarcasm ...|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
That would require non-human skeletons. It's easier to crank Bobcat's damage up to 11 and re-appropriate Malta from a super-sekrit anti-super global conspiracy to mercenaries with sapper guns.
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You could probably get by with using the Rikti monkey skeletons for movement and basic attacks, if you want to do custom art and plan on having them basically as contacts. Or if you want to have access to the full player power / animation base, making it easier to have the pets as rescues and helpers in missions, you could run the height slider to rock bottom and make use of the new animal pack costuming.
Or, to create a solution in lore, you could give the pets human-sized animal forms as a consequence of getting Well water in their dish. Just because.
I suppose their main foe could have lapped water up from Hamidon's toilet. No doubt there's some serious mutagens in there.
Anyway ... I can't believe I answered you ... lol
Have a good one!
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I want to chime in on saying that it does feel like the writers no longer take themselves seriously. I know the obvious argument - how can you take comic book storylines seriously? But that's not true. You CAN write fantastical stories and still write them as legitimate fiction, as some of the greater comic book writers in the past have done. This is, in fact, how the original writers of the game treated it once upon a time - as serious fiction.
These days... I don't know. It feels like slapstick and laugh tracks. Corny, zany, campy stories without much of a semblance at a serious plot, cheap laughs instead of good writing, jokes instead of plot points... This does not make for a universe I can care about, because very little seems to matter.
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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 Venture
If this is what they like to see in stories then there is no chance of talking them out of it, any more than you could (e.g.) convince a muddleheaded deviant who prefers pie of the obvious superiority and wholesomeness of cake.
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>>
The cake is a lie.
There I was between a rock and a hard place. Then I thought, "What am I doing on this side of the rock?"
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Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
I'll agree that this sort of 'clever plot' requires an equally clever writer. I don't think that it's impossible for Recluse, Nemesis, the Directors of Malta or the Center to have a lot of schemes going on at once, but by the time our characters face off against these schemes, the developers should acknowledge that our characters and their contacts may have learned a thing or two about investigation and discretion. If our characters/contacts get duped somehow, then the dupe had better be good and not exist just to fill out the story or add fake suspense.
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| This kind of "clever plot" requires an extremely clever writer. Unfortunately no matter how clever you are there is always someone else clever enough to figure it out before the end, but the nature of the game forces you to keep going through the motions even if you've figured out how to skip to the end. Don't try to fool the players. Just don't. And don't try to fool the characters with obvious things like Mender Silos. It isn't clever and it isn't cute. |
I guess my point is that if one person realizes what's coming up in a plot, it doesn't mean that everyone else will too. Or, perhaps I just have less plothole-detection than a six year old.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I want to chime in on saying that it does feel like the writers no longer take themselves seriously. I know the obvious argument - how can you take comic book storylines seriously? But that's not true. You CAN write fantastical stories and still write them as legitimate fiction, as some of the greater comic book writers in the past have done. This is, in fact, how the original writers of the game treated it once upon a time - as serious fiction.
These days... I don't know. It feels like slapstick and laugh tracks. Corny, zany, campy stories without much of a semblance at a serious plot, cheap laughs instead of good writing, jokes instead of plot points... This does not make for a universe I can care about, because very little seems to matter. |
I think you're pretty off-base, Sam; in fact, I think you're amazingly off-base. If anything, the plot has gotten less zany and campy recently, though perhaps just recently. Since the Second Rikti War ended, we've traveled back and forth in time under the guide of a Reformed Villain From the Future, fought an Alien-Powered Roman Emperor and monsters from Greek myth, took a break to mess around with holodeck technology, returned to fight Resurrected Evil Nazi Buffalo Marcus Cole and last but not least, My Own Clone!(TM). Pretty much Adam West Batman stuff. I wouldn't say bad, necessarily.
Could it have been done better? Maybe? As previously mentioned in this thread, the players have (and still do) let the developers know when the new content doesn't jive with the older canon content, and in the response the developers have made (and still make) some efforts to patch up the plot holes as best they can while not tearing apart what's already been made too much. I mean, jeez, they even kicked Incarnate stuff back an entire friggin' issue because the players said that becoming an Incarnate wasn't nearly as epic as they'd thought it'd be.
I'm not sure if the aforementioned "campy" stuff was made just to be there, though; I mean, if you're planning something big for the future, why not make the effort to create stuff that might actually be capable of supporting it? Take a look here:
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Originally Posted by Niviene
By: Matt Positron Miller
... Sharp-eyed fans will note that weve been working on these two characters for a while, as they had their birthdays listed in the online calendar we released for the fourth anniversary of City of Heroes, over a year ago. Although Desdemona was listed as Pandora on that calendar, it just shows how fluid, and long, some of these ideas take to come to fruition. |
If I understand correctly, there was a time before Marvel or DC had their cross-title events just about every other week or so. Maybe the plot didn't seem related to anything in particular in between those events, but in that period individual things happened which were related to the greater whole. If City of Heroes' 'cross-title event' is related to the Well of the Furies, the Incarnates, and the Coming Storm, then some perspective needs to be gained on the subject before the event so we don't have a shallowly-developed 'SUDDENLY INCARNATES AND THE WELL AND THE STORM ZOMG' situation. This is something the developers have been trying to avoid since the 'SUDDENLY THE COUNCIL ZOMG' situation. Of course, if the subject matter is Incarnates, then before Issue 19: Alpha Strike, our only understanding of them was that they were present in:
1) Modern-day Incarnates like the Statesman and Lord Recluse (we didn't know about any others on Primal Earth at the time)
2) Incarnates in antiquity (well, guess we gotta get there somehow...)
3) Incarnates not from Primal Earth, like the Reichsman from Axis Earth... (guess he's gotta show up again somehow)
4) ...and Emperor Cole, a.k.a. Tyrant, from Praetorian Earth.
Even though the scenarios in which the different Incarnates appear are unrelated to one another, this is just the nature of what the developers could offer the players regarding Incarnates given what was available in the canon before allowing the players to become Incarnates themselves in response to Tyrant's invasion. As a practical matter apart from the plot, these scenarios also give support to the Incarnate System.
Okay, so many of us agree that the Tip 'plot' is pretty scatterbrained. It's not the only thing going on here, and I am pretty sure the "zany" stopped when players started being given the option to blow up senators, nuke a civilian population, deny clean water for innocent citizens for an extended period, murder potential allies in exchange for brownie points, break up and ruin families, and condemn children to slavery and brainwashing...or not, all in an attempt to topple a fascist, false-utopian state or support it.
The ramp-up to the 'cross-title' event has just started, and in light of everything I've said here, I think it's completely unfair to say that the developers aren't taking their work or themselves seriously, because they've been setting it up for just as long as Marvel or DC used to, if not longer.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
Skipping over the storyline discussions and arguments the one thing I'd love to see is more about Penelope Yin, both of them.
What is the deal with primal her and the clockwork king? And why not more arcs involving Prae one? That crazy purple talk may have annoyed some but I loved those stories, I hope we see more of it in the future.
I, personally, have to say unlike Venture, Eva and Sam....I'm actually the opposite.
I honestly don't expect the epic storylines which they seem to want AND they seem to really loathe anything and everything of recent times, I enjoyed the Mercedes Sheldon arcs, I enjoyed the clone/dimensional double arcs, especially the villainside one.
Basically I kind of find Venture and his views to be....very unlike my own and have a personal opinion on him that I won't be going into here because it isn't the time or place to really do that.
Perhaps I'm strange but I LIKE the Adam West Batman stuff, not all the time (the Rikti Warzone arcs are a good break from that) but I still enjoy it.
However constantly introducing variations of Statesman as the main antagonist or protagonist (or both at the same time) and the fact that the content seems to REALLY focus around Statesman, even when it is suppose to be 'our story' it's still all about Marcus Cole in the end.
While I can quite easily live with the various zany things and enjoy them for what they are primarily because, unlike Going Rogue or the Incarnates System, my character is still very much involved, with Going Rogue and the Incarnate System, my character is a bit part in a much larger story or atleast thats how it feels, it is nolonger that characters story but the story of the Well of the Furies.
The two Reichsman TFs were, frankly, a ruddy mess, I feel sorry for Bruce because it seemed like that was his baby, notice how after the really large critiscm he recieved for not only creating a fairly lackluster Taskforce but not knowing almost any of the backstory he just faded into the background and proceeded to do...well..nothing, he quietly left the company soon after.
It was a story he wanted to tell, it's just he didn't do the research plus he made Reichsman a REALLY boring fight which just showed up the 'tank and spank big bag of HP' to its horrible extreme.
Forgive me if I'm all over the place but it is probably time I actually went to sleep so you're seeing my train of thought as scattered and illogical as it is.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)