Am I the only one? (incarnate/lore rant)
By
Blue_Mourning,
Posted on: 2011-03-23 22:20 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Hey, robot janitors are scary.|
Originally Posted by Serva_Obscura
Hell I'd be happier if there was a "buffed by an incarnate" visual aura at least then there would be _some_ visual difference between lv 1-10 and the lv54 clockwork rather than some kind of "we paint them the same colour but the civilian clockwork are made out of Paper-Mache and fit them with flashlights rather than lasers".
Actually can we just keep the clockwork out of the incarnate content, why can't there be warworks-looking dedicated menders (A BCU without the gun) |
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Originally Posted by Highbinder
These trials are using better mechanics of gameplay, but as far as story goes they are uninteresting and don't seem to push the story along. Also just a suggestion, but I would like to see baddies that are only incarnate, instead of seeing bosses that I can pummel 1x1 in a story arc, cough marauder cough, and than see again as an incarnate. It really takes the uniquenesss away for me personally.
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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Yeah, the choices made for the rials are a little puzzelling. They aren't particularly epic (go beat up an AV or two in a big courtyard surrounded by guns) but also don't seem to have been designed storyline wise to be repeatable (Every night, they try the same plans. Every night we stop them), which is strange for trials that are designed to be done over and over.
Seems like they spent quite a long time on the Incarnate powers and kinda forgot til the last minute that we would need something to do with them. (like the Alpha slot preview where there was no Incarnate content to go along with it)
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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It should be pointed out that just because it's repeatable content doesn't mean it's repeatable by lore. Otherwise once we do Ramiel's arc we shouldn't be able to redo the LGTF.
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Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
Yeah, the choices made for the rials are a little puzzelling. They aren't particularly epic (go beat up an AV or two in a big courtyard surrounded by guns) but also don't seem to have been designed storyline wise to be repeatable (Every night, they try the same plans. Every night we stop them), which is strange for trials that are designed to be done over and over.
Seems like they spent quite a long time on the Incarnate powers and kinda forgot til the last minute that we would need something to do with them. (like the Alpha slot preview where there was no Incarnate content to go along with it) |
"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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It doesn't stop it being a qiuestionable design choice though. Particularly when you look at the reward structure for the trials that seems to indicate that repeated playthroughs of them are designed. And also that since the plots are hardly intricate or story driven, nor is there any particular epicness, making their storyline make sense (or at least, any attempt to do so) in terms of actions that would have to be done over and over (like defeating Hami or the mothership raid) would have been nothing but beneficial.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
It should be pointed out that just because it's repeatable content doesn't mean it's repeatable by lore. Otherwise once we do Ramiel's arc we shouldn't be able to redo the LGTF.
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Always remember, we were Heroes.
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A baby's arm holding an apple
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Originally Posted by DanZero
I recommend they should create the Solve Everything Task ForceTrial Strike Target.
Feature include: - A 100 hour Trails Task Force that is for Heroes, Villains, Other Unreleased Superawseome Cake AT, but primarily for villains wich allows them to respec immediatly out of Patron Powers into Total Rocking Powers AT. - Complete Worldwide PVP with character deletion upon loss or win. - Access to all powers. - Complete customization of characters, powers and pets including Lore Pets, which allows you or your pets to be frikkin buildings for godsakes if you want. - A brand new engine with graphics that surpass real life. - World travel that allows you to play all of your current characters simultaneously in any game every created, including future games not yet created. - A completely soloable path which allows solo players to earn SOLO MERITS which can only be spent on solo only powers and Enhancements, and a full 'solo only' instanced version of the game that is way more awesome than the real game and has stuff no one else can get. - Customizable settings that let you decide spawn size, location, difficulty of all mobs, and has a secret super setting which allows you to fight Devs in real life. - Hamburger coupons with substitute Ultra Vegan mode which shoots Tofu from your D drive. - A pony crossed with a pitbull that hands out Million Dollar Auto Win lottery tickets that are actually worth 5 million dollars. Did I miss anything? |
* Freedom -
PlanetStar - 26 Earth/Kin
Mary GoldThorne 18 Corr
* Infinity -
BoltStar - 28 Blaster
PlanetStar - 24 Earth/Kin
Tempest Howl - 30 Def Son/Son
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We don't look any different as Incarnates either |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Yeah, he doesn't look any different, but he is.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
RAAAAAGE
Seriously, though, I'm a bit bored of Praetoria, and they are stretching this war out too long. I mean, the second Rikti War, which was the sequel to the war that shaped everything in City of Heroes and was one of the largest events within the lore's history, only needed an issue and one new game mechanic.
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Originally Posted by slainsteel
Wow; dude, I gotta put you on my friends list.
You actually know the thoughts of the _entire CoX community. Sweet!  |
You're just ticked that I coughed out a suitably ambiguous answer to your query before anyone else.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Plus that :P
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
You're just ticked that I coughed out a suitably ambiguous answer to your query before anyone else.
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Virtue Speed Junkie
A Simplified Guide to Attack and Defense
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Eva is being realistic. You come up with an absurd post which reads like a backhand insult to people levelling complaints that isn't in the slightest funny (unless you count "random" to be funny, which it isn't) and then proceed to give it no context. It just comes off as a mean-spirited dismissal of people who are making legitimate and serious points.|
Originally Posted by DanZero
Oh, now you're just being mean.
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Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but to me, it reads like a cross between "So you want the developers to drop everything and work on what YOU want?" and "You just want everything for free without having to work for it." Neither of the two is good.
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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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Dan seems to be poking fun at the people who feel like their particular method of playing the game should be the primary focus of the devs, whether that be soloing everyhting, or having high end raids, TFs, PvP, whatever. The majority of posts from these interest groups are certainly legitimate and express concerns that should be addressed by the dev team. However, those few who insist that the game should be tailored to their preferences deserve to be made fun of relentlessly. Dan's post seemed directed at those folks, not people like you, Sam, who I can see after reading a bit of your post history, tend to bring up very legitimate questions and concerns about aspects of the game they find lacking. The post gave me at least a bit of a chuckle, because we all know people who feel like the devs owe them more than they owe anyone else.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Eva is being realistic. You come up with an absurd post which reads like a backhand insult to people levelling complaints that isn't in the slightest funny (unless you count "random" to be funny, which it isn't) and then proceed to give it no context. It just comes off as a mean-spirited dismissal of people who are making legitimate and serious points.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but to me, it reads like a cross between "So you want the developers to drop everything and work on what YOU want?" and "You just want everything for free without having to work for it." Neither of the two is good. |
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Then you should hate all TF's in this game, not just the BAF or Lambda. All of them are mechanically encouraged to run more often because they provide great rewards. |
Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
It doesn't stop it being a qiuestionable design choice though. Particularly when you look at the reward structure for the trials that seems to indicate that repeated playthroughs of them are designed. And also that since the plots are hardly intricate or story driven, nor is there any particular epicness, making their storyline make sense (or at least, any attempt to do so) in terms of actions that would have to be done over and over (like defeating Hami or the mothership raid) would have been nothing but beneficial.
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Originally Posted by slainsteel
And we care because?
I am pretty certain when the Omega team went to the Rikti home world, they didn't first try to make sure that the Rikti populace thought of us as 'liberators' or 'nice guys helping out', right? Praetorian earth is a threat, and I would assume we'd deal with it - rather than take pot shots at Cole and then jeer from a distance. I mean really, again, super powerful, super incarnate ruler - can't keep the news of two facilities blowing up from his population? And if public opinion mattered that much to him, we wouldn't really be calling him the 'tyrant' would we? |
"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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Aside from the Nictus weapons and the new WST badges, there is no reward that I'm aware of that requires you to run any pre-i20 TF more than once. All the other rewards are available through other means, repeating TFs is just a more efficient path.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
Then you should hate all TF's in this game, not just the BAF or Lambda. All of them are mechanically encouraged to run more often because they provide great rewards.
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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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Prior to merits it was the only way to get Pool C recipes. And the fact that it is still the most efficient way to get merit rewards IS an incentive to run TF's multiple times. It's just not as good a carrot as they have in the new I-Trials.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Aside from the Nictus weapons and the new WST badges, there is no reward that I'm aware of that requires you to run any pre-i20 TF more than once. All the other rewards are available through other means, repeating TFs is just a more efficient path.
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"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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"Strong with this one, The Force Is. "|
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
I'm gonna take this the other way and say:
Am I the only one that's just fine with the story as presented so far? I'm honestly not seeing these major plot holes and fudging. Are you guys really looking at Praetoria with objectivity, or through some sort of rose-colored glasses born from some sort of disappointment that you didn't get what you wanted? |
Arc #6015 - Coming Unglued
"A good n00b-sauce is based on a good n00b-roux." - The Masque
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I am fine with Apex and Tin, and I like the lore; they aren't that hard but the lore is great - Kings Row in ruins, stopping an invasion; then of course, doing the Omega team thing and stopping an invasion from starting. Though the tragic element on the Omega team did make it more dramatic.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
While I tentatively agree that the BAF isn't "epic" in scope, we had an Omega Team moment in Tin Mage. We went to their world and we stopped an invasion, or at least paused it. And we came back. That's more than the Omega team did.
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Virtue Speed Junkie
A Simplified Guide to Attack and Defense
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I agree, but has it EVER actually had a plot?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Can we at least HAVE a plot, please? Because the City of Heroes I remember was conceived and written up as an exciting fictional world with a game taking place in it, not a meta-game experience with fiction crowbarred in to excuse it. When did we stop caring about the game's writing?
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A few of the story arcs are well written plots, such as Faultline, but most are just excuses to do whatever it is you are doing.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
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A massive invasion by extradimensional aliens has devastated our hero population and destroyed huge swaths of our city. Years later, we're still recovering, and they're still there, still trying to figure out how to make a comeback and wipe us out. Issues later, they do make their comeback.|
Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
I agree, but has it EVER actually had a plot?
A few of the story arcs are well written plots, such as Faultline, but most are just excuses to do whatever it is you are doing. |
A mysterious group of mages run around kidnapping citizens to use in....some kind of ritual, we're not sure what they're doing exactly...they control demons and spectral soldiers....holy crap those spectral soldiers are really them, they're kidnapping citizens to use their bodies as puppets, and they made a deal with the devil millennia ago. A few issues later you go into the whys and wherefores of said deal.
A low-rent street gang is dealing a drug that gives superpowers to a slightly higher-rent street gang. Then you find out that the source is an established crime family. And then you find out that the drug also allows a small number of users to "pierce the dimensional barrier," whatever that means. Then you find out exactly what that means. Issues later you find out who was behind it all (although if you hadn't at least guessed or speculated who was behind it you weren't paying attention.)
Way back when, the government decided superheroes were a national resource, and should be put to use in defense of their country. In practice, black guys with superpowers were sent out on suicide missions in service of some white guy's agenda. They weren't too happy about that. The Might for Right act was repealed. Some people had a problem with that and passed their own unofficial Might for Right act. And if you weren't on board, they'd kill you.
No plots? No, it doesn't have one single plot, but well, the Incarnate system has a single plot and we get threads like this. Instead, the game established a number of running plotlines so there would be something for everyone. How many people have you run into who dislike fighting CoT because they don't like magic in their comic books, or don't like Malta because they have no powers? Now think of the people who love the idea of fighting evil wizards, or a secret worldwide conspiracy? And it's not like any world that allows anywhere near the diversity of this game's world has a single shared running plot anyway. That doesn't mean they don't have plots.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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What she said |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
A massive invasion by extradimensional aliens has devastated our hero population and destroyed huge swaths of our city. Years later, we're still recovering, and they're still there, still trying to figure out how to make a comeback and wipe us out. Issues later, they do make their comeback.
A mysterious group of mages run around kidnapping citizens to use in....some kind of ritual, we're not sure what they're doing exactly...they control demons and spectral soldiers....holy crap those spectral soldiers are really them, they're kidnapping citizens to use their bodies as puppets, and they made a deal with the devil millennia ago. A few issues later you go into the whys and wherefores of said deal. A low-rent street gang is dealing a drug that gives superpowers to a slightly higher-rent street gang. Then you find out that the source is an established crime family. And then you find out that the drug also allows a small number of users to "pierce the dimensional barrier," whatever that means. Then you find out exactly what that means. Issues later you find out who was behind it all (although if you hadn't at least guessed or speculated who was behind it you weren't paying attention.) Way back when, the government decided superheroes were a national resource, and should be put to use in defense of their country. In practice, black guys with superpowers were sent out on suicide missions in service of some white guy's agenda. They weren't too happy about that. The Might for Right act was repealed. Some people had a problem with that and passed their own unofficial Might for Right act. And if you weren't on board, they'd kill you. No plots? No, it doesn't have one single plot, but well, the Incarnate system has a single plot and we get threads like this. Instead, the game established a number of running plotlines so there would be something for everyone. How many people have you run into who dislike fighting CoT because they don't like magic in their comic books, or don't like Malta because they have no powers? Now think of the people who love the idea of fighting evil wizards, or a secret worldwide conspiracy? And it's not like any world that allows anywhere near the diversity of this game's world has a single shared running plot anyway. That doesn't mean they don't have plots. |
I've spent hours upon hours just reading up the various plot lines on CoH.
If you think there are no plots in the game, you are really missing out.
Virtue Speed Junkie
A Simplified Guide to Attack and Defense
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Just the way Nemesis likes it |
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
No, it doesn't have one single plot
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I am, actually, glad that the two new trials do not require incarnate-status. As has been said, they do not seem to be on the scale that would require incarnate-type power, and I am overjoyed to see that the devs are continuing to release content for characters who choose not to dabble in the Well.
How do you balance a comic book universe with an MMORPG comic-book-based universe? In comic books, the writers/artists create an event, regardless of magnitude. The protagonist of the story experiences this event one time. Then the story moves on, often the following week with the next issue. It's different in the MMORPG universe: the creation of an event takes considerably longer for the writers/artists. Once the event is created, it needs to be available for (I'm estimating) hundreds of thousands of "protagonists" to experience multiple times. Finally, odds are it will be a good few months before the story moves on further.
It comes down to stakes/consequences. In a comic-book, whether the protagonist succeeds or fails in his "event" will determine what happens in the next issue. That's virtually impossible to do in an MMORPG. No matter how many characters take on Lambda Sector / Marauder, whether they burn the place to the ground or come back bruised and beaten, Lambda Sector and Marauder will still be there. (And that goes for nearly the entire game, I'm just using this example since it is the subject of debate.)
Frankly, this is where I think the game could benefit from fewer new things and more changing-of-old-things. (i.e. Zone-changing events such as the hollowing of the Hollows, what happened in Faultline and 'Boomtown', etc.) But that's off-topic...
To conclude, no OP, you are not alone. These two events feel episodic in nature, and more-or-less inconsequential in the general scheme of things. But after all, what is a comic book universe if not a series of episodes in multiple characters' lives, some more epic than others, leading up to a major event that often requires the attention of most of those characters?
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
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No no no no. You're right. It's a masterpiece.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Eva is being realistic. You come up with an absurd post which reads like a backhand insult to people levelling complaints that isn't in the slightest funny (unless you count "random" to be funny, which it isn't) and then proceed to give it no context. It just comes off as a mean-spirited dismissal of people who are making legitimate and serious points.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but to me, it reads like a cross between "So you want the developers to drop everything and work on what YOU want?" and "You just want everything for free without having to work for it." Neither of the two is good. |
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..and you're not making much sense.
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Originally Posted by DanZero
No no no no. You're right. It's a masterpiece.
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Virtue Speed Junkie
A Simplified Guide to Attack and Defense
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Spaghetti.
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Originally Posted by slainsteel
..and you're not making much sense.
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I would have to agree that I think these new incarnate trials don't really seem to be pushing the boundries on what "epic" or even "incarnate means" at least in the terms that COX is looking for.
They do seem more like side objectives some normal level 50 hero or villain should be performing, and well since you do not need to have the incarnate slot unlocked, I guess what is the intent. The problem is that actually the Apex and Tin Mage tfs have incarnate requirements when these Trials, which should be harder and furthering the plot line aren't. The trials are actually on a scale lower than the Apex and Tin Mage tfs because those actually need Incarnates to use.
These trials are using better mechanics of gameplay, but as far as story goes they are uninteresting and don't seem to push the story along. Also just a suggestion, but I would like to see baddies that are only incarnate, instead of seeing bosses that I can pummel 1x1 in a story arc, cough marauder cough, and than see again as an incarnate. It really takes the uniquenesss away for me personally.
And by the way, can we be more mature than to insult people for offering up a different opinion. Its an opinion, and is as valid as any other, there is no reason to subtly or overtly insult someone for having a different opinion.