Okay, let's sort this out once and for all. Lore: What do we do about it?
By
Arctic_Princess,
Posted on: 2011-08-11 09:38 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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By itself? No. For me that would mean I subscribe simply to find out what happens next. And I don't. I like the story, but if I couldn't stand the game itself I'd be gone.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
1: Is the lore of this game significant enough to be a reason to subscribe?
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| 2: Is the lore of this game fundamentally broken? That is to say, contradictary, messy, and poorly written? |
Off the top of my head there's only two contacts I have to pretend don't exist for my sanity: Daedalus and Sister Airlia. They're just terrible and pointless.
And one scene that's terrible: Tyrant telling my character off for leaving Praetoria even after I've proven more loyal to him than his own Praetor. It's rather jarring. I understand why from a game-play perspective you need to leave Praetoria, but it seems strange to continue allowing me to be so loyal up until he apparently decides to tell me off for no reason.
The Sutter TF is a mess of timeline snarls. The new starting zone seems to be an attempt to make it so we've always been at war with Eastasia, which will at least help clean up the Sutter timeline.
I don't know what the Crucible/Fort Trident are in game lore. But honestly whoever designed those zones needs to never be allowed to create anything to be added to the game ever again. They can program, they can work on other people's ideas, they can fetch coffee. But when ideas are called for in a design meeting they should not be allowed to talk.
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| 3: Do you like the current direction the lore is taking? |
Marcus Cole is:
The best modern hero ever as Statesman.
The best ancient hero ever as Imperious. (Technically not named Marcus Cole, but c'mon.)
The best (worst?) Nazi ever as Reichsman.
The best (worst?) autocratic warlord ever as Tyrant.
I half-expect to someday meet the leader of the Rikti: M'Rcus Kol
If we are moving away from this with First Ward and the Coming Storm, then I suppose I'm thrilled with current direction of the game. And maybe someday we can visit a dimension or world where Marcus Cole isn't already the best.
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| 4: Would you like the development team to spend a significant amount of time fixing all the old lore, even if that meant spending an issue not moving the game's story forward and just patching things up? |
I understand that rewriting older stories does not pay the bills like new content does and I can't fault Paragon Studios with keeping the lights on at the office. No matter how much I want them to fix my pet peeves.
"Mastermind Pets operate...differently, and aren't as easily fixed. Especially the Bruiser. I want to take him out behind the woodshed and pull an "old yeller" on him at times." - Castle
The lore in game, for me, is as interesting as comic-book lore. I.e. depending on who does the writing will change which stories we get.
Whilst the Well of the Furies is not, according to a certain global channel I frequent, considered a popular direction it is nevertheless more of a unifying theme from which other stories can be told.
Playing through the new starter arcs for Heroes and Villains, I would say that now playing and lore have caught up a little bit. For instance, we now know what Manticore's mansion looks like (similar to Dollface's admittedly, but at least that aspect of his billionaire character has some foundation within the game).
Although it's somewhat limited, I am enjoying travelling around the zone and experiencing a story. In Atlas I'm driving out Arachnos whilst keeping a lid on the gangs that tend to frequent the place (and previously Galaxy City), AND I'm dealing with the displaced people of Galaxy City. There are good elements from Going Rogue (disappearing contacts, musical cues, quasi-moral choices) and I've been trying my best to see it from a new player's perspective.
Kheldians need the love of the story revamp, of course. And soon. Along with power customisation! And no, not a dramatic change, just something a bit more relevant to how the game is now and not how it was back then.
Similarly, I like running around Mercy driving back Longbow, and then seeing that change.
But most importantly, the new early content in terms of writing for both sides is about level. I love playing villains more for the quality of writing. In previous issues I have felt that the writing for Heroes was poorer, even after the writing teams 'merged'.
I play the game because it's fun. Story is important to me, and if we ever see level 100 robots (points for the reference) I will be putting the game to one side and doing something else.
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Sam already filled you in on the story details. I'll just add that it's a mission from Maxwell Christopher in the 40-44 range, and that the implication is that there are more than just the one that you fight.
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Originally Posted by Chaos_String
If that's the case, then I'll grudgingly concede Nemesis automaton tech as a panacaea for copying any and all powersets at any time. But I still don't buy it half as willingly as I did when I'd only ever encountered the Positron and Manticore copies.
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"I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes."
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And don't forget, that automaton that fooled the Rikti was steam-powered! |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Nemesis' technology has always had that uncanny ability to do the impossible, which it is actually directly described as doing multiple times in even the oldest plotlines. And that's kind of why I love the guy. Most people would look at making a psychic alien robot and think it's ludicrous. A few would try to make one anyway, spend ten years and eleventy billion dollars and come up with crude, unconvincing prototypes. Nemesis, on the other hand, sits down and works on the thing for 50 years and before anyone even knew he was interested, he has an automaton that does the impossible.
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"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
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I trust you're being ironic (pun completely unintentional) when you say this, as I'm sure you know better than this. The "psychopathic criminal" you're referring to is Dr. Egon, whose execution was televised for all the Isles to see. While the man behind the name did not actually die and simply kept working for Arachnos under the assumed name of Dr. Aeon, that's not the person he is "known" as. Dr. Aeon is legal official of the state of the Etoile Isles, the governor of Cap Au Diable, the chief science officer of Arachnos (who are an internationally-recognised state) and the CO of Aeon Corp. That's what the world knows about him, and considering Amanda Vines has been unsuccessful in showing otherwise, that's all the world will know about him. WE know, but the world at large doesn't.|
Originally Posted by Ironik
Yeah, why is all this dumb stuff associated with Dr. Aeon, a known psychopathic criminal? Is it because Dr. Aeon the Dev came up with it? If so that's weaksauce, as the kids say.
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Oh, and that stuff about Aeon the developer? That's what I was hoping you were being ironic about, not the other stuff. That's just... Not a cool thing to say.
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Originally Posted by Chaos_String
If that's the case, then I'll grudgingly concede Nemesis automaton tech as a panacaea for copying any and all powersets at any time. But I still don't buy it half as willingly as I did when I'd only ever encountered the Positron and Manticore copies.
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He eventually fails, as per the norm, and you never actually get to fight a dopelganger of yourself (for lack of such tech at the time), but there's every reason to believe Nemesis really DID have an exact, working copy of you done out of steam technology. Now I kind of want to see Tech Naylor's arc redone to end in a fight against a dopelganger, rather than with finding the dopelganger disassembled in a crate...
Anyway, yeah, his steam tech can be kind of magical and normally I would call out such obviously "fixed" writing, but so long as it's only ever done for the Nemesis, this can serve as his defining trait. Every fictional universe can benefit from exactly ONE character pulling plot points out of his ***, and in ours this is Nemesis, so he gets a free pass on most things. So long as there aren't others, I'm fine with it.
*edit*
Oh, hey, the star censor is back! Sweet, I can curse now!
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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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Well, sure, but on the other hand, Mussolini really was legally appointed prime minister of Italy, too, and that didn't fool anyone. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Dr. Aeon is legal official of the state of the Etoile Isles, the governor of Cap Au Diable, the chief science officer of Arachnos (who are an internationally-recognised state) and the CO of Aeon Corp.
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My take on this:
Don't change a thing.
The backstory inconsistencies and loopholes make this feel EXACTLY like a superhero comic book continuity.
Besides, just as good roleplayers can iron out the inconsistencies in the backstories of the players they interact with, a good player can do the same with the lore. The loose structure we have today only makes it easier to spin your own stories into the (chaotic) web the devs have woven.
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I've started to hear this argument a lot and I've normally assumed it to be semi-sarcastic in nature. But the more I hear of it the more I begin to wonder if people who make it are actually being serious. Do you for instance actually enjoy this sort of inconsistency? I mean I doubt this sort of this is intentional, but as long as there's a large enough population of players out there who actively enjoy the crazy, CRAZY world of comic book style continuity then the less reason I see to go back and iron everything out. |
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
My take on this:
Don't change a thing. The backstory inconsistencies and loopholes make this feel EXACTLY like a superhero comic book continuity. Besides, just as good roleplayers can iron out the inconsistencies in the backstories of the players they interact with, a good player can do the same with the lore. The loose structure we have today only makes it easier to spin your own stories into the (chaotic) web the devs have woven. |
Huh, I really guess it depends on which people play more, the comic book geeks or the RPG nerds...
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By "loose structure," do you mean the game as it was when I began, where you picked Magic, Science, etc. and made up your own origin story, or do you mean the game lore as it now is, in which all powers ultimately derive from the Well and the even more powerful heroes are "Incarnates" and thus servants of the Well (see interaction with Statesman sock puppet)?|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
The loose structure we have today only makes it easier to spin your own stories into the (chaotic) web the devs have woven.
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The former was great and the latter is increasingly irksome.
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
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It is, and... |
Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
I've started to hear this argument a lot and I've normally assumed it to be semi-sarcastic in nature.
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| But the more I hear of it the more I begin to wonder if people who make it are actually being serious. |
It is quite possible to be both at the same time, and I can't speak for anyone else who's brought it up, but I'm being both when I say it. Broken lore is utterly consistent with the superhero genre, and it is something a bit special that the City of Heroes universe has arrived at a properly wonky continuity structure in a mere seven years when the Big Two have had, between them, more than 125 (quite a few more if you trace Marvel's evolution back to the Atlas/Timely days).
And yes, it is also a bit ridiculous. But being able to acknowledge that and still appreciate it is all part of the Zen of being a comics fan. :)
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To be honest, I so loathe the "cosmic-level-of-power" superhero tales that I ignore the Incarnate system as a story. I'll occasionally do a trial, but even haven't tried that since the last one came out.|
Originally Posted by Melancton
By "loose structure," do you mean the game as it was when I began, where you picked Magic, Science, etc. and made up your own origin story, or do you mean the game lore as it now is, in which all powers ultimately derive from the Well and the even more powerful heroes are "Incarnates" and thus servants of the Well (see interaction with Statesman sock puppet)?
The former was great and the latter is increasingly irksome. |
I play it like this: I know how my characters got their powers, regardless of what the devs say. Very few of them will ever have time travel as part of their canon but that hasn't prevented me from using Ouroboros. Many of them have spent a great deal of time in Mission Architect, but they don't play VR games while the city's under siege (heck, I consider more of the MA arcs closer to character-canon than official arcs). Similarly, I'll sample the occasional Incarnate trial and equip incarnate powers that have no real bearing to my characters stories.
I mean, realistically, how many of the other-superhero-MMO players actually pretend their characters were mundanes that recently gained their powers through nanite-infected dna transplants from a time-traveling ex-villain? Or buy their powers from a "store" that uses a giant rotating gear as its teleportation entrance.... The Well practically SHINES in comparison.
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Honestly, its growing on me.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
I've started to hear this argument a lot and I've normally assumed it to be semi-sarcastic in nature. But the more I hear of it the more I begin to wonder if people who make it are actually being serious. Do you for instance actually enjoy this sort of inconsistency? I mean I doubt this sort of this is intentional, but as long as there's a large enough population of players out there who actively enjoy the crazy, CRAZY world of comic book style continuity then the less reason I see to go back and iron everything out.
Huh, I really guess it depends on which people play more, the comic book geeks or the RPG nerds... |
The more strict they make the backstory, the more limiting you make the player's options. If Dark Astoria fell recently, I may be able to make a character that "grew up" in the area. If it fell in the 50's... notsomuch. If the game world is this semifragmented amalgamation of alternate realities that have crashed into one another over decades of cosmic reality-shifting battles so that, depending on who you ask, the history changes.... well, then you can do virtually anything.
Remember, in those stories, most of the "world around you" is blind to the changes caused by reality-tampering. Only a select few (usually the heroes that had a part IN it) know of how things once were... or could have been.... or... will wasn't happenest... (for non-time-travelers, thats the "future perfect sidreal-shift doubleloop-with-a-twist" tense, for when you're talking about an event that you will undo in the past sometime in your future after a mirror-universe version of yourself initially caused said event during a previous journey). What we have here, with those contradictory momuments and lore elements, are the artifacts left by those that knew the otherways.
And no, that does contradict my last post that says I loathe such cosmic level stuff. It can exist all it wants. I and my characters will remain blind to it, satisfied with knowing the world as we see and encounter it.
Better that than rewriting a past in a way that makes someone feel obligated to retcon to fit.
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True enough, Chase, and that is what it comes down to. It is putting fingers in ears and saying, "LALALALA I can't hear you." It just stinks that the official lore now requires that.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
I play it like this: I know how my characters got their powers, regardless of what the devs say.
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The loosey-goosey way it was before the Devs imposed the meta-concept was far better.
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
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A lot of us do exactly this. I don't even read the text at the start of missions any more, because half the time it doesn't apply to my character. My lizard man has no hair to stand on end, my robot's knuckles don't crack, my ghost doesn't take deep breaths before battle....|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
To be honest, I so loathe the "cosmic-level-of-power" superhero tales that I ignore the Incarnate system as a story. I play it like this: I know how my characters got their powers, regardless of what the devs say.
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The other thing is that I've gotten so good at parsing mission text that don't apply to my character that I'm honestly not even aware I do it any more. This only came up during a similar discussion when Eva_Destruction mentioned her dislike of the new missions which clone your character. It's true that none of my many androids can be cloned, but I mentally glossed right over that aspect of it.
That's kinda broken, you ask me.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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I would've thought an android would be rather easier to clone than an ordinary biological life form, technically (in the comic book sense of "make a convincing copy of"). I mean, it's certainly easier to duplicate a '54 Pontiac than it is a dog.
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Originally Posted by Ironik
It's true that none of my many androids can be cloned, but I mentally glossed right over that aspect of it.
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The backstory's strictness or looseness has nothing to do with player characters -- IF WRITTEN PROPERLY. And that's where the lore is falling down.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
The more strict they make the backstory, the more limiting you make the player's options.
Better that than rewriting a past in a way that makes someone feel obligated to retcon to fit. |
CoV railroads you storywise. You're aimed at becoming an Arachnos stooge no matter what. You have zero freedom to do anything else other than minor side things. Everyone arrives at the same destination.
Origin of Power is the same dumb thing; no mutants "as we understand them" before the first atom was split. Poppycock. My born-in-1878 mutant disagrees with that. *And* he existed before OOP was added. That's the sort of thing that restrains player creativity. It's better to be vague about it: mutants have mutated genes at conception. How you get there is immaterial. Technology uses tech. You decide how the tech works; nevermind the story of Dr. Brainstorm unlocking a "web of power" that battlesuits and toasters can access.
The same mistake is being made now in trying to retcon everything in the game into the Well-as-power-source, a tiny little shoebox that simply doesn't fit everyone. Some of my characters are fine with it, but many of them are not. They aren't getting Magic powers just because the Devs say so. My robots are still Tech, my mutants are still that and my street-fightin' Scrapper is still a Natural guy.
Just make the endgame stuff endgame stuff and let us decide how we got these new abilities. Lore pets? Maybe we tamed/convinced/enslaved someone to help us/do our bidding. Everything else is us just getting better with our abilities. Let us decide if it's through practice, armor upgrades, or building a house of tarot cards on an Indian burial ground during a full moon. That's how you do MMO backstory that's consistent yet allows for individual taste.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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No the way they're doing it. I really like the Agent Nance story because the doppelganger is from an alternate universe. That's awesome because it can explain ANYTHING. And it doesn't violate your character's backstory (or basic essence) at all. They need a lot more of that rather than all this other business.|
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
I would've thought an android would be rather easier to clone than an ordinary biological life form, technically (in the comic book sense of "make a convincing copy of"). I mean, it's certainly easier to duplicate a '54 Pontiac than it is a dog.
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Just say, "Bad guy invented a duplicator! Get him!" and be done with it.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
The reality of writing for a large, shared-world, setting, is that you will inevitably have people who believe that you are "doing it wrong," that the storyline is not what they thought they signed up for, that the decisions you have made without consulting them conflict with the decisions they made about their characters (without consulting you), and that if they were writing things, Everything Would Be Better.
There are always going to be continuity problems with a property this expansive, and there will be unevenness in the story-telling if it's allowed to be done by more than one person. These things are true in every fictional universe that people emotionally invest in, whether it's the SW universe of LucasFilms or the CoH universe.
To the "What do we do about it?" question, the answer is simple: Take every opportunity to give feedback, be respectful and precise when you give it, and direct it to the right people.
My postings to this forum are not to be used as data in any research study without my express written consent.
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Though maybe that's because City of Heroes gives you essentially an unlimited amount of freedom with your backstory, which I would consider to be a good thing since it allows players to play the sort of character's they've always wanted to. The game actively encourages you to create these bizarre backstories in fact, just take say, Demon Summoning for instance. Demon Summoning is clearly themed around summoning magical creatures though magical means, but the game lets you give a Demon Summoner any origin you want. |
Originally Posted by Ironik
A lot of us do exactly this. I don't even read the text at the start of missions any more, because half the time it doesn't apply to my character. My lizard man has no hair to stand on end, my robot's knuckles don't crack, my ghost doesn't take deep breaths before battle....
The other thing is that I've gotten so good at parsing mission text that don't apply to my character that I'm honestly not even aware I do it any more. This only came up during a similar discussion when Eva_Destruction mentioned her dislike of the new missions which clone your character. It's true that none of my many androids can be cloned, but I mentally glossed right over that aspect of it. That's kinda broken, you ask me. |
Though that does lead to some problems in that people who are very protective of their backstories tend to get a little miffed whenever the game directly contradicts them. I don't think there's anything that can be done about this though, as the game as a necessity has to operate without any sort of knowledge of your backstory. I guess the game COULD be written so that it remains completely neutral in terms of all your character's traits, but that would probably end up making the writing rather bland in the end.
Personally I would say write the backstory you want, regardless of the canon, and just mentally disregard anything that clashes. I mean both of my favorite characters are essentially creator gods, one who made the entire universe and one who tried to destroy it. That screws canon eight ways from Sunday, but I do it anyway since I like their story concepts.
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Sure, since they're robots designed to emulate demons to scare people.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
Demon Summoning is clearly themed around summoning magical creatures though magical means, but the game lets you give a Demon Summoner any origin you want.
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| I guess the game COULD be written so that it remains completely neutral in terms of all your character's traits, but that would probably end up making the writing rather bland in the end. |
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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I'm sure I don't know what you're getting at.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
The game actively encourages you to create these bizarre backstories in fact, just take say, Demon Summoning for instance. Demon Summoning is clearly themed around summoning magical creatures though magical means, but the game lets you give a Demon Summoner any origin you want.
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Speaking of Atomic Robo, did you see my new guy down in the Alt Alphabet?
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Interestingly, I think a prototype version of Robo was a City of Heroes character once (as in, played by Clevinger).
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Originally Posted by Ironik
Speaking of Atomic Robo, did you see my new guy down in the Alt Alphabet?
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Really? That's cool. I sent them an email and asked about a jumbo hardback collection and they told me one was coming out for the holidays. So that's going to #1 on my Christmas list.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
Interestingly, I think a prototype version of Robo was a City of Heroes character once (as in, played by Clevinger).
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The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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