Am I the only one? (incarnate/lore rant)

There's an important distinction between hundreds of players and hundreds of protagonists. As far as the game is concerned, no one has beaten up Frostfire before you, and once you do so he's in the Zig and stays there. There is very little content that is truly "repeatable" in a story sense, and it doesn't have much story behind it. Paper missions, Mayhems and Safeguards, Mothership raids, Hami raids, zone invasions. For everything else, no matter how many times you repeat it the lore treats it as your first and last time.

One solution to that could be parallel content for heroes and villains, but we have very little of that right now and what we do have is mostly confined to Mayhems and the Reichsman TFs which have exactly two things they do right and that's one of them.

That was Steven Sheridan, actually.

That's what I was going to say, as well. The game has no one single main plot (then again, what RPG does these days?), but it has a large selection of primary plots that not only spawn multiple level ranges and multiple storylines, but draw on established history and backstory.

We know who and what the Circle of Thorns are not because Roy Cooling says "Oh, I know all about them. Let me tell you!" but because we learn about them all throughout the game. By contrast, the Legacy Chain are... Um, they are... Erm... Good guys? And even then I'm still reaching here, what with them trying to KILL all villains in the Rogue Isles. To quote the Spoony One: "We've not established Serge!" Who are the Legacy Chain? Who are the Goldbrickers? Why are the Luddites always protesting? What exactly is the divide between the Marcone and Verandi families? Why are Skulls and Hellions in the Rogue Isles?

Establishing characters, factions and concepts BEFORE using them is a fairly basic storytelling device that I see no reason to avoid on such a large scale. USING established characters, factions and concepts instead of needlessly inventing new ones (Blood Coral? Really? Why?) should be treated the same way.

When City of Heroes launched, almost all the stories tied together and to existing history. Everything was referenced somewhere else in the "plot," and everything referenced something else, as well. Each story was like a good comic book movie - acknowledging that continuity exists outside what little could be fit into 90 minutes, but not tying the plot around continuity the movie couldn't feature. So why have we completely abandoned City of Heroes' continuity and are now either disregarding it out of hand or outright contradicting it? Why can we not write stories within the established universe, instead of shoehorning inapplicable stories into it?

OK, I'd expect this from a player who is either not happy with the existing storyline or otherwise doesn't want to tie his characters to someone else's IP (read: me), but such a player would be working for himself at the expense of the game's writing. A writer hired to write for the game has the responsibility to write for THIS game, and so few have done so recently.

City of Heroes no long has any plots. It has separate unconnected monster of the week episodes. Each episode establishes a brand new, never before seen threat, then remedies it by the end of the episode, never affecting the status quo and never drawing on the status quo. This is a significant step DOWN from what we used to have.

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.

Even my memory isn't perfect.

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 agree, much of what has come with the Going Rogue expansion has been quite cohesive, and indeed seems to be leading to some place.

However, that seems to have taken focus away from the existing CoH and CoV story creation. I do not think that there are too many unfinished story lines in existence, they are just bloody hard to find while sifting through multiple contacts. But all progression or furthering of existing story lines in Paragon and the Rogue Isles do not seem to be going anywhere. We've gotten some new stuff, but it has been (as Samuel_Tow said) more or less episodic. Isolated incidents/story lines that don't change the world of the game at all.

Signed.

Pretty much this. I still want to know why making up SAM was necessary when there are so many existing organizations floating around.

That's great except it's not true. The game has always reverted back to the status quo.

As they get more desperate, their claims get wilder

Okay, but Lambda is not a small meaningless facility. it's the backbone of the Praetorian Military Machine.

With the way the story has been being presented, it seems that a few people seem to think otherwise. Besides, I wasn't neccecarily refering to Lambda, I was speaking in general terms.

I hope you realize you have opened up a huge can of worms?

This.

The trials seem to be being themed around various aspects of the dictatorship that we have to destroy to smash the whole system - for example, the BAF is centered around brainwashing/mindcontrol, Lambda is the IDF/invasion army, Anti-matetr's reactors might have a clockwork theme to them, as both he and Neuron have their own Clockwork, and the Praetorian Hamidon is one of the big things that got Tyrant to where he is today - and Mother Mayhem's asylum would be focused on the Seers and their enslavement.

So if you look at the pillars of the dictatorship - Enriche/brainwashing, the IDF/military power, the Clockwork, the Seer network and the threat of the Hamidon/Tyrant's claim to be the only one able to stop it, then it does look like the Trials are being designed around them.
The BAF Trial is a blow against Tyrant's brainwashing/propaganda, Lambda Sector is a blow against Tyrant's military might, the Anti-Matter reactor is a potential blow against the Clockwork/mechanized forces of Tyrant, and potential Mother Mayhem Trial is a blow against Tyrant's thought police and system of slavery, and the Hamidon Trial is a blow against Tyrant's claims to be the one and only way of stopping the Devouring Earth.

All the various forces of oppression that were introduced in GR become the focus of the Incarnate Trials for us to liberate Praetoria - it has a nice flow to it - discover the evil of the dictatorship 1-20, escape the evil of the dictatroship 20-50, return to destroy the evil of the dictatorship 50+.

Also, as the PPD/secet police are also one of the instriuments of oppression used by Tyrant, and as we haven't fought Chimera yet, there could be a Trial themed around crippling them too.
Infernal, Diabolique, and possibly Black Swan could be invovled in a Trial about the mystery of where all the magic went in Praetoria, especially if it's reveled that Tyrant has suppressed it in some way.

Any links to support your point?

I am not saying that the story is bad, nor am I saying it is good.
All I am saying is that it is not 'epic'.

Geez, i19 had more epic story lines as a 'part' of the issue, not even the entire focus.

This is from the Lambda Sector overview:

I read that; but it really seemed more like 2002-2003 Iraq War propaganda than any actual logic that the facility is really as important as they make it sound.

Yeah, so it's the bed for creating genetically enhanced soldiers - but if a tyrant is stupid enough to put ALL his eggs in one facility, that makes the ENTIRE arc seem even less important. Since then we aren't fighting against a super-powerful super-intelligent opponent, but just a stupid but yeah, super-powerful opponent.

I can't get myself to buy in to the explanation that the facility is REALLY important; all the text says to me is, this is the best they came up with, and are trying to make the incarnate's going in feel that they are contributing more than they really are.

If you see evidence to support the point and then say "But that's just propoganda," what evidence, pray tell, would sway you more than the devs telling you "This is the backbone of the Praetorian War Machine. There's little point in debate if you refuse to admit to evidence.

You do realize that this has been planned since before GR came out, right?
It's not some last minute thing they've decide to add - the Lambda Sector fortress, just like the BAF annd Anti-Matter's reactors were built into the actual zones at the same time as Praetoria City was being designed - they haven't just suddenly added them, or removed older blocks and replaced them, like with Wentworths or the AE buildings - they were made into part of the fabric of the city before GR even went into closed beta, because GR and the Incarnate sytem have always been linked together and planned together.

That's not true. Within the timeline of any one character, the game changes, and changes significantly. At first we start out believing the Circle of Thorns are just a cult that Baron Zoria started in... What was it, the 1950s? Then we learn that they are, in fact, 14 000 year old ghosts who possessed the Baron and used his body. In so doing, we gain Akharist on our side. The subsequent Envoy of Shadows storyline then takes this knowledge for granted and in fact spends a lot of time exploring Akharist's writings. The status quo has changed. Beyond that, when we first start meeting Malta, no-one knows who they are, and Indigo makes it a point to be vague and cryptic. By the time we work with Crimson, we're familiar with Malta and we discuss them more openly. At the end, the Malta conspiracy becomes known to law enforcements.

No-one's asking for the game to change for everybody based on the actions of one player. However, one could and should ask that past events be referenced in future events, both to acknowledge that they did happen, as well as to at least pretend that future events are based on past events.

As Yahtzee said about Dragon Age: I played an elf, and occasionally people would stop and say "Hello! You are an elf!" These things do matter.

It's not a question of liking or disliking the plot, but more a question of there not being much uninterrupted plot to go through. Rick Dakan's old lore tied together like a cohesive whole and made for a believable world. The current plot threads exist in almost complete isolation, ships in an ocean of unmentioned background story. "Why did we need SAM when we already had the FBSA?" is, as a point of fact, a legitimate question.

As I said before, the Praetorian content isn't bad at all, and even the Incarnate content isn't terrible. But it ties into NOTHING else in the entire game, before or since. The Well of the Furies would have been a great opportunity to cross Cole's bid for power with some of the big players from our universe, like Rularuu the Watcher, Lughebu, our Hamidon and so forth, but no. Instead, we get a plotline that may as well have been from a completely different game.

It's like if Chief John Anderton take time out from finding out why he was predicted to commit murder so he could stop a Skrull invasion on Mars before going back in time to exactly the moment he left to begin with. Yes, you can potentially have a stortyline that goes like this and it won't have deviated from Minority Report's plot by too much, but then you're simply splicing two unrelated movies together like so much of Pierre Kirby's career.

When City of Heroes first launched, it launched with enough background lore to build a hundred different stories, with the story arcs that came with the game being just one fraction of that. Rick Dakan's original word was just that - a world. Not one story with just enough background to move it. In fact, his original world didn't really have stories per se, just plot devices to reveal lore elements. And a lot of his old story seeds remain unexplored for reasons I will never understand. Instead, we get stories that tack on extra lore to the sides of this world, just barely enough to make the stories coherent, and in the end, these stories barely draw on the lore of the game, and almost never add anything to it.

This is kind of like if I sat down to write an episode of Star Trek after having seen a total of about three Next Generation episodes, one Next Generation movie and the 2009 reboot. I mean, I could, sure, but would you WANT me to?

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 knew from the second I got to Neutropolis that Lambda would be a raid/Trial location. The fact that it has unique geometry, is set up perfectly for a raid kind of event with the enclosed court yard and gun emplacements and is a logical target.

I predicted the Keyes reactors would be next for the same reasons and time showed I guessed right. Hamidon surprised me because I didn't think they'd had anything planned for the Underground.

Extrapolating from this:

I suspect the TPN news building will be a future site of a Trial (likely shutting down it down because it became a propaganda machine or defending it so an Anti-Cole broadcast can get out). That seems to me like something Chimera could be involved with.

The Magisterium, is another obvious location. Cole's tower and the Clockwork facility are nearby, as are the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Technology, the Civic Center, and Praetoria Police Headquarters. If toppling Cole's and the Praetors' statues isn't an objective, it should be. Dominatrix would be a logical boss.



.

But... SAM is a branch of the FBSA, like GIFT or MAGI. What's wrong with it?