Is the currently published back story adequate?

With Freedom presumably landing sometime within the next 3-4 months, I've been thinking about a facet of the game that I often find to be somewhat lacking.

Namely, the backstory.

I get that there's a paucity of lore outside of the game because the devs want the players to discover much of that lore inside of the game via badges, missions, and what-not. I also get that they want the game world's history to be loosely defined such that anyone can fit their characters into it in any way they choose.

Even so, it seems to me that when basic questions cannot be answered without out and out guessing, that there's something wrong with this picture.

It's my feeling that this is a concern at this time because the game is being set to hopefully draw in thousands, maybe millions of new players. (No joke - However many free members play long term or become paying members, a decent free to play game can easily pull in a couple of million short term players in a very short period of time.)

One of the things that will ground those players in the game world is a well written, well indexed,and well-documented history of the game world. The 800 pound gorilla is not the 800 pound gorilla because of its cutting-edge game design. Other companies are not being hailed as the new 800 pound gorilla because of their fantastic reputation as a MMO publishers. In both cases, their games are/were built up on an intellectual property that has a massive amount of backstory that was well known and well documented. The early adopters either were intimately acquainted with it already, or they were able to find it inside of the game world itself.

Paragon City has the disadvantage that the newbies won't be intimately acquainted with its history. In fact, they have the disadvantage that even many veterans aren't acquainted with its history and they seldom entirely agree about the "facts" behind the parts they DO know about.

My feeling is that the time for a drip here and a drip there is past. It's not simply a case of disgruntled veterans wanting more story at this point. It is, or it ought to be, a financial decision based on the ability of a rich history to pull in the new players and convert them to fans of the game and its setting.

I don't pretend to have any special knowledge in this area other than my own years of experience playing many, many different games and talking to other such players like myself.

Backstory and history are investments in the game but more importantly, they are investments in the players of the game. Those thousands of new players need to feel like they are entering a place that is more than a Hollywood back lot if you want them to become attached to the game. Yes, this is my opinion, but I feel it is an educated one.

If players are having to guess the answers to their questions or worse, make them up for themselves, then I believe that Paragon Studios is going to miss a chance to hook them into feeling like they are part of something bigger than themselves.

That's an opportunity that shouldn't be missed. Lore and story are food for the soul and imagination. Deliberately keeping them scarce just isn't a wise plan if you want to turn those free-to-play members into VIP's.

I'm sure that the new signature arcs will provide a bit of backstory info

Is the currently published back story adequate? I think so.

While there's a lot of vagueness surrounding certain elements of the lore, such as the Shadow Shard, it's clear that it's meant to be vague and remain unexplained until they get around to it.

When it comes to the core basics of the lore, such as the Freedom Phalanx, Arachnos, Nemesis, and the Rikti, the game establishes more or less everything you'd need to know about them (and in some cases too much...Timothy Raymond). Hell, the original 2004 City of Heroes timeline is still a great resource, too.

Now, exactly how accessible some of that lore is nowadays thanks to the XP curve and contact overload and alternate zones...I'm not sure.

Otherwise I like the occasional wiggle room in the lore. It allows the players to fill in some of the gaps in their own way, through RP, the Architect, or through written stories.

It's a living environment story. It's not a desired factor to have all the questions answered. By leaving some questions open it allows for further exposition to occur, and also gives areas for the players to insert themselves into the story.

I agree there can be more done to immerse new players in the lore.

I also think that due to the nature of the game, it does better than some games in giving players a grounding: You look at Statesman and all it takes is for you to know his power set, the fact he's the leader of the premier super team and you get a pretty good handle on who he's supposed to be to this world.

Most of the NPC characters and enemy groups are archetypal, yet without being too stereo typical. Part of the joy in the lore is finding out how they differ from your expectations because of who they resemble.

Once you know the major players, the organizations tend to fall into place and generally, that's enough to get people started.

That said, there could be some optional lore dispensing NPCs created ala Prometheus that players can go to and learn about stuff. Maybe revamping the forgotten City Info terminals is in order.

Until then, pointing players to Paragonwiki.com is the best bet. It some be cool if someone created a new player lore primer that links players to important wiki pages.



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That other game had nearly 10 years and 3 RTS games plus expansions to build up a world back story before the MMO was released. Now tack on an additional 6 plus years with multiple paid expansions and updated content and you can see how they happen to have "massive amount of backstory that was well known and well documented".

While we have a working back story that can be learned if players actually did mission arcs and are bothered to read the supporting text, they can learn the back story as well.

For the longest time we couldn't even say definitively just what Ms. Liberty's name was. In the end, Manticore chose the same solution that I had chosen myself, that both names were correct; that she was Jessica Megan Duncan.

If you couldn't find that forum posting where Manticore stated such, then you still could not definitively state it as a fact. I'd like to see a new player actually find that posting and cite it.

We still can't say for certain who her father is. It's assumed by many that Patrick Duncan is her father but that's based purely on the coincidence of the name.

A significant amount of the known lore is apocryphal. It's based on forum postings that are lost in the mists of time and the changes in the forum software. It's inferred from tidbits without ever being confirmed or stated outright - Miss Liberty's association with Freedom Corps being a case in point.

Who founded Freedom Corps? What is its purpose? Who runs it now? What position does Ms. Liberty hold in its beauracracy? How does Longbow fit into the management structure of it in comparison to the more normal skill training function of its known offices around the city? What position does Miss Liberty actually hold?

Who were the members of the Freedom Phalanx when the Rikti invaded? What did Statesman and Maiden Justice do during WW2? Were they involved in Korea? Was Miss Liberty involved? Which of the Stateskins were members of Alpha Team? All of them? How did they all survive?

When did Synapse discover Mynx? For that matter, what is the time period for any of the backstory behind the individual members of The Regulators?

Who is the President of the United States? What is the capital of New York? Is it New York City or Empire City? Where is the airport? Is there more than one?

I won't even get into the whole Dark Astoria mess. If you think Ms. Liberty's name was a problem then don't even try to figure out the history of Astoria. Heck, take a stab at trying to figure out just when "Spanky" Rabinowitz was the mayor of Paragon City.

For that matter, what actually happened to Baumton? Can you say what sort of "accident" occurred there? Whatever you think it is that happened to Boomtown, how can you prove it to someone who asks where to find its backstory? Think it's a matter of directing them to the website? Go find the Geography section of the website and then read the Boomtown section and come back and tell me what you learned.

The wiki is useful in many cases, but in many other cases it simply propagates "facts" that can't be shown to be anything but the opinions and deductions of whoever wrote the wiki entry. The real "problem" with the wiki is that it's NOT official, no matter how accurate it is. I shouldn't have to depend on player compendiums in order to learn official lore and history of the setting. I should be able to find that kind of information inside of the game itself, or at least its website.

When NaNoWriMo's goal for a month of writing by an amateur or even first-time author is 50k words, and that is considered a novelette, you'll have to excuse me for being less than impressed by a total of 13k of extant writing by professional writers who are intimately familiar with the backstory.

Most of these questions are not obscure or nitpicky trivia. Some of them strike right at the heart of the city's lore and history and NOBODY can answer them with any degree of certainty.

This is a state of affairs that will make a bunch of newbies feel like the devs don't care enough about their own game to even get the basics right.

It's one thing to excuse it in the beginning as "we have to worry about the game working right" and then excuse it later as "we have to worry about the next expansion; our current subs aren't put off by that".

It's another thing entirely when you're looking at exposing your product to an audience that is easily going to be ten or twenty times larger than your current audience and exposing it to the scrutiny of players and media reviews that have never before been exposed to it. You only get one chance at a first impression. If a new player asks "what's the deal with Freedom Corps?" and all you can say is "well, um, it's just this place with a bunch of contacts in it" then you've lost a chance to make a terrific first impression. Never mind later impressions when those new players begin to take an interest in the lore behind the NPC's and the setting as a matter of simple casual interest.

The really sad thing is that a couple of years worth of the Paragon Times was vaporized along with all of the lore that was published in it. Where is that information now? Is any of it considered "official" any more? Who can say? How many players are there who don't even know there ever was a Paragon Times?

If the lack of lore (or lore organization) isn't convincing, then consider examples such as this: http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_inf..._outcasts.html

What does that say about how management feels about the lore of the game?

I'm really not trying to be some kind of anal retentive stickler for detail. These things need to be addressed and improved before Freedom launches if the game is to make the best possible first impression on its new audience.

I do not think that the amount of lore matters at all. Both the other superhero MMOs had tonnes of backstory, one in the shape of a long comics publication and a few movies and TV series, the other in the shape of a gazillion RPG books. One of them went F2P as well. That didn't help them.

There's no point of worrying about the in-game lore either, because, frankly, players don't read it (I speak from experience here). They just want to pummel stuff. Grab the missions, run to the circle on the map, kill the sparklebunnies, loot the twinklewood twigs, and run back to the guy with a "?" floating above his head. The only point they actually read the mission text is when they're stuck. Oh, it was to cure his sick mother? Good for him. He has a name? Who cares?

In the MMO world, there are two major things that help.

a) The amount of content. There have to be enough to keep the player entertained as well as to give the player options to alleviate the grindy feeling that happens at the end.

b) The amount of players. The chance to actually start playing is vastly greater if someone you know plays it as well, and the chance that someone you know play the game you're looking at greatly increases with the amount of players.

As for the success of the ten ton gorilla, you can never disregard the fact that quite a lot of people plays it mostly because everyone and their granny plays it. And it reached its critical mass because it had the players from a series of successful RTS games to lean on. And they didn't play those games for the lore, but because of they were good and well-balanced multiplayer RTS games.

Also, don't forget that the world of subscription model MMOs was dominated by the ten ton gorilla and NCSofts two jiggle-physics fantasy MMOs that together ate about 80% of the market. EVERYONE ELSE had to nibble on the remaining 20%. To even have a share above 1% is an accomplishment.

CoH had that for years, despite the competition from a lot heavier IPs.

For those reasons, I think that the currently published backstory is adequate.

I know where you're coming from, Slickriptide, but I have to disagree. I find the dearth of clear backstory to be a benefit, not a detriment.

In CoH, the devs have done a good job of having a rich history that can be explored and discovered, but also have an open enough background that any player can bring virtually any heroic concept they want into the game without wondering "how it fits." They can log in and play... uncovering the lore (or not) as they go with the hero born of their own imagination, not the one the game forces upon them.

Any effort to tighten up the lore has to be done carefully so you don't close these openings for the players' own ideas... and given the effort, I really don't see the need. I'd rather players feel free to bring their own creations in, discover the game at their leisure, and then, as they're playing, as they learn the world, maybe it'll inspire an alt.

My main concern is that the timeline of the game is progressing, and not always at the rate your character is. Going Rogue does this well, where your actions feel like they shape your world and you push a larger story forward. But in Paragon,even moreso than the Rogue Isles, a lot of stories develop without your specific interaction and it makes it very confusing. Much of the story of CoH requires a few runs through 1-50, doing a bunch of story arcs and learning the story that way. I think I've got a reasonable handle on most of it now, and I've been here 7 years. I can't expect a new player to know as much of it as me, and I think their ability to go and learn the backstory is being overshadowed by the actual story moving forward so fast with these Signature Arcs. I know I'll enjoy the Arcs moving us forward, and I'm sure new players will like them too - I just don't know that they'll know exactly why things are how they are.

Well, the whole tutorial and beginning zone arcs are being re-written, so, we'll see how the Devs do telling the story that newbies need to know.

At a bare minimum, they need to cleanup the website and fix glaring problems like that Frostfire "dossier" that I linked upstream. They need to supply the missing zone backgrounders and any missing "Know your opponents" backgrounders.

Even if the Paragon Times will never be published again, the old pages need to be re-inserted into the current website.

The "nobody reads the mission text anyway" excuse is a dog that won't hunt. If you're going to buy that as a design philosophy then you might as well not even bother with developing a game setting. Just put up a bunch of generic field trainers with ! over their head - One for "kill things missions", one for "deliver things missions" and one for "escort things missions" and call it good.

There is a measurable percentage of players who DO want deep backstory and those people are going to be some of the most passionate about the game - the ambassadors. I don't remember who mentioned "osmosis" earlier but that's WHY osmosis happens. Things spread from the knowledgable passionate people to those connected to them and even the "just give me a bag of hit points to beat up" people eventually end up learning something about the world.

It's extremely frustrating to be told that there is this supposed "story bible" with this wealth of lore in it while outside the castle the peasants scramble for a few crusts that the lords of the manor choose to toss out.

I disagree that there is a conflict between freedom to develop your character's backstory and depth in the established backstory.

Yes, I understand that the your char is the hero of the story. This is why, for instance, Azuria is not really the laughing stock that we make her because of the screen door on the MAGI vault. The vault only gets robbed once, not really a million different times. It just happens that the same events are played out multiple times with a different hero in the starring role. I get that.

I just don't see how knowing the relationships between Ms. Liberty, Miss Liberty, Freedom Corps and Longbow is going to somehow compromise my character concept. In fact, if I'm truly a "bag of hit points basher" then I likely don't even have a character concept to compromise. I took whatever costume looked cool and whatever powers gave me the best bashing for the buck, assuming I didn't just hit the random button on the costume.

If I DO have an extensive concept, then having an extensive BACKGROUND will only enhance it, not limit it, unless my concept is that my character is Statesman's love child or some other Mary Sue.

Did anybody read _The Web of Arachnos_ or _The Freedom Phalanx_ novels and say "Dangit, this totally invalidates my character"? I submit that if any such readers existed that they were a very tiny minority compared to the number of people who were grateful to learn something new about the setting and the signature characters.