Am I the only one who doesn't care about the story?

You think?

Go read the storyline explanation for powerset proliferation, then come back, suitably chastised.

But if Charlie Sheen is winning why can't the FloatingFatMan win as well?

Anyone who gets in a forum argument with Golden Girl pretty much wins by default.

make it two

I am happy if there is a nice story, but I am not flipping out and checking if it really makes sense and if the timeline is right. After all, it's just a game. So I agree with you.

Eh? Customizable Powers!
Or maybe I got it all wrong. But I think saying the devs don't care, is just silly.

And that is the excact reason, why it is so hard to write a story that actual makes sense for an MMO. People demanded powerset proliferation, we got that and now we complain about the story behind it? Great

I tend to solo a good bit, and that's when I really get into the story. When I'm teaming it's like: hurry up and get to mish! lol
I really enjoy the stories though. Good stuff...

I think the point behind it was it didn't NEED a story, it's pretty much a purely game mechanic thing, yet you go this really oddball storry about Doctor Brainstorm (who is only used to explain these kind of things, never anything else) being the one responsible.

Thankfully it only turns up as a lesser known piece of Lore in the games backstory and gets a mention during the very last VEAT story mission.

Metagame concepts like Powerset Prolifieration, Power customisation, the introduction of Invention Sets never needed a backstory, Power customisation didn't get one for example. There wasn't Doctor Brainstorm inventing a new power colour spectrumisation device which allowed everyone to colour their powers, it just happened.

It has nothing to do with powerset proliferation. That could have been done without a story and I doubt anyone would have had a problem. However, if the devs were determined to create lore to "explain" it, then we have every right to expect a good story behind it.

Exactly, and if there was one thing that the "story" behind powerset proliferation proved, it was that the devs couldn't care less about this games' storyline making ANY sense at all, or even being any good.

I find that quite sad, tbh.

Ok, if that is the case, then I am with you. Now the big question: Is the story behind proliferation ingame or where did you read about it? Because I missed it.

It's part of the Issue 12 "story".

http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Issue_12

Yep, silly and utterly implausible...kinda like comic book superheroes.

... also reminded me of two things. First, and for the umpteenth time, the devs are not story artists. This is not a book or a movie. The writing is there to support the gameplay, not the other way around. The devs got into this business (and, I'd wager, a lot of players got into the game) because they enjoyed using a joystick and a couple buttons to cause a plumber to run along straight lines and hop on enemies' heads to make rewards fly out of them, not because they wanted to tell a story, or even (primarily) to enable others to do so. Now, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this, but it's something that doesn't get acknowledged enough.

That brings me to my second point. Normally, when I raise the argument that we're getting about as good a story as can be expected, someone counters that "[single player game X] had a brilliant story." That may be so, but I don't consider it realistic to expect the same of an MMO. In an MMO, unlike a single player game, a novel, or a film, the writer knows next to nothing about the protagonist.

It's much easier (I'd argue, essential, even) to tailor a story and a character to one another than to throw one creator's character into a prefabricated story. As E.M. Forester noted in Aspects of the Novel, character is the product of incident, and incident is the result of character. Put another way, it's easier to have a compelling story when you can do things like reveal halfway through that the dark knight the hero has been hunting down to avenge his father is actually the father himself. (Don't like my example? Think of any novel or movie you find very compelling, and imagine swapping out the protagonists for completely different characters. If the story is well-written, it probably doesn't make much sense unless you change the plot, too.)

Imagine trying to make this work in an MMO context, and you end up with something like the much-decried "your character has a connection with the thinly-veiled polemic of a transdimensional dictator he's never heard of because he has the power of the nebulous, cosmic thing the character wants" that's going on right now. Of course, this gets criticized as "hijacking the character," because it's a technique from media where the plot and the protagonist are controlled by the same creator ... the very same kinds of techniques that have been urged on the devs in the past to "make our characters feel like they matter." The writer can't win in such a situation.

As for arguments that the stories have gotten worse since the i0/i1 content, all I can do is scratch my head in puzzlement. With a couple of exceptions, as the recent War Witch interview noted, those were filler text, not things definite beginnings, middles, and ends. I think the real reasons we hear about how great content used to be are (1) nostalgia and (2) a preference on certain players' parts for certain kinds of enemies. For example, Crey and Malta seem to play to a lot of players' archetypal fears, so we see a lot of praise for stories about those factions, even ones that aren't really all that great in the abstract.

That's all, for now.

Oh well this sounds horrible indeed. I always asumed it did not have a backstory.

Well according to the Wiki.

This is about my level. I like a story to go with my smashing, but I don't obsess over the details too much. I don't have any real issues with Barracuda or Roy Cooling's arc, for example. (Enjoy facing PPD in the 20s, heroes!)

Well, the Praetorian threat has certainly been kept consistent - Tyrant was set up as planning to conquer Primal Earth way back in I1, and the Praetors have remained the same people from I1 through I20 - although GR made them slightly more evil, because it gave us more detail on them - people like Mother Mayhem and Chimera, for example, had a few lines of evil text in the Maria and Tina arcs expanded into entire evil story arcs in GR, while the crimes of Tyrant's dictatorship were fleshed out, rather than just being hinted at in the original arcs.