I Sing The Praises of First Ward
By
Afterimage,
Posted on: 2011-09-19 08:54 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Arcs are fantastic so far.
This is what the Dark Astoria arcs would have been like. 
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
Quote:
Just because everyone treats you like a moron doesn't mean the rest of us are used to it.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
None of the arcs treat players as either of those things
 |
I would go in to detail as to way but spoilers are mean.
Going to drop my thoughts here, because the thread topic is relevant.
I haven't much enjoyed the new content added to this game since I18. I don't like Praetoria at all and couldn't care less about the Praetorian War global storyline, and I find the whole Incarnate Trial system impossible to enjoy.
First Ward is the first major content addition to the game that I've enjoyed without reservation since Going Rogue came out. I really dig this zone. It doesn't seem that great for teams because you have to do a lot of talking to NPCs, but for me, it's just fine. I like the look and feel a lot and am liking the storyline, as well.
So... kudos.
The Ballad of Iron Percy
Quote:
You know what just occurred to me? A better analogy. I've compared Kathie to Black Scorpion, but it's not an exact match. Kathie is smart, whereas Black Scorpion is an idiot and a coward. I've compared her to Mender Tesseract, but Tesseract is just plain evil, whereas Kathie still has a heart, even if she only has heard for her cardboard cutout motivation of "Stop the seer network AGAIN!" No, no, you know who she REALLY is like?|
Originally Posted by Hqnk
The Awakened should have Rikti/Arachnos/Longbow XP.
Playing through Katie Douglas and I wanted to share my favorite bits of internal dialogue: "Whenever you want to make yourself feel better, Katie, come and get me...you will lose just like those several hundred Awakened lying on the ground behind me (Yay "Snooze Button" badge!). And my latest one, "You can call me 'Killer' if I can call you Crazy A*** See You Next Tuesday." EDIT: And for someone so lippy, she should at least not be made out of ghetto grade wet tissue paper. |
Jim Temblor, AKA Faultline. Actually, look at Kathie sometime and you'll notice she's essentially a bargain basement Faultline from when you first meet the guy. She has the pants, she has the jacket, and she has the "angry young man" description that Jim has when you meet him down pat. "What do you want? I don't like you! You think I need help? I don't need your help! I'm ACTING!" Of course, Jim actually has a believable character and faces the reality of needing help, and eventually becomes a the good guy he was meant to be, whereas Kathie is stuck in that comic parody jerk mode perpetually. I wonder how the other Seers put up with her.
Actually, no! She isn't like Jim Temblor. You know who she really IS like? JANE Temblor, the Praetorian Faultline. The same foul mouth, the same perpetual moody crap, the same unprovoked bickering, the same pants and the same jacket.
Kathie Douglas
IS
Faultline!
Quote:
|
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.
|
Quote:
I don't know. I think it depends on the character you bring. I fought them with an Axe/Shield Scrapper, and while they were definitely nasty, I didn't really have that big of a problem with them, at least no more so than against any psi-heavy enemies like the basic Seers. Hit Build Up, kill as many minions as fast as you can so they don't slow you down into the stone age and go from there.|
Originally Posted by Yosomono
Am I the only person who found The Awakened to be a) ridiculously over-numerous and b) ridiculously overpowered? I'm all for more challenge, but I'm sure I died more in those missions (with help no less) than I did in all the previous years I've played this game...
|
I have heard, however, that non-melee ATs have great problems with them. A friend of might spent quite a while dying to a squid-head lady with his Defender a few days ago and eventually gave up, declaring it impossible. Something about being constantly confused, I believe.
Quote:
|
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.
|
About half way through the zone at the moment and enjoying the storyline. Not found anything particularly difficult (elec/regen brute with difficulty upped) but can definitely see how it'll be hard for certain AT/set combo's.
As someone who hasn't played through the Praetorian storyline I find some of the assumptions a little confusing, would have been nice for alternate dialog for primal characters to set the backstory. However I can understand why they never did that.
A few too many 'fedex' style missions but on the whole an entertaining zone, looking forward to the second half
Didn't care much for Kathie Douglas, found her to be very annoying and generally not someone I'd want to work for as a hero.
I finished First Ward last night (did it in 4.4 levels, but I soloed it all so I'm glad they upped the range to 29). I gotta say, I'm really impressed. It's very very cool to, over 30 levels, meet characters and see how they grow and develop. I think they're gonna do the same thing with Twinshot and the Shining Stars, and this continuation of personal relationships is very fun to me... but it does make a lot of assumptions about what kind of person you are. Personally, I love Noble Savage. I think he's really cool and when I thought he was going to his death, it affected me- but it needn't have affected my character.
The other thing is that this is a *really* weird zone to drop Primals into. I don't really understand why random Primals, and not "graduated Preatorians" (those who had left after 20) were contacted and brought here. Sure you don't *need* to know the 1-20 stories of the characters, but it helps. They talk about the history of Praetoria like you'd know it. Most of all, it is REALLY dark. Here's an example: My character was a Primal, heroic, and went in there with the best intentions to help the Praetorians who needed him. Once there, he was forced to kill or manipulate his friends or watch them die and it was surprisingly dark! Once he got out of there, I got him into a much darker costume and turned him into a Vigilante because of all the horrible things he'd been forced to endure. He now had the mindset of "kill or be killed" and was willing to sacrifice the lives of some for the good of many. The initial idea of Going Rogue was choice and I didn't see much of it here. I'd have loved to see multiple paths to take (and I do appreciate the extra work this takes, but bear with me) that culminated in easier or harder fights based on your choices. For example, if I hadn't sent Noble Savage on his suicidal distraction, Marauder would have been right on top of me and I would have had a much tighter timer in that mission to get the loot and get out. The mission *felt* rushed, but I could actually take all the time I needed. No distraction, slap a timer on there and tell me to run like a scared rabbit. I would like to experience heroic content without turning into a bad person.
Where do you originally encounter Katie? I forget...
Quote:
That's something which struck me, as well, and... I honestly don't like this direction. The farther the game moves ahead, the darker it becomes, and I see no reason for it. Sure, City of Heroes never shied away from dark plotlines, like the Paragon Protectors and especially the Shining Light, like Dr. Vahzilok offering the rich and famous eternal life as horrible zombies and so forth. It had its dark moments, sure, but that was still counter-balanced by all the brighter moments in the game, like rescuing Lou and reuniting him with his wife and daughter or rescuing Melvin and seeing that the experience hasn't crushed him but rather just fuelled his determination or finally saving Ken Kellerman from Crey's mind controllers and reuniting him with his wife.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Samoa
Most of all, it is REALLY dark.
|
First Ward, by contrast, is at best bitter-sweet. In the end, sure, Circe the Sorceress and her scary scheme of scowling scorn has ceded, but the Seers are still trapped in the Network, Kathie - for all the bile I have for her - has been used, abused, defiled and had her mind enslaved AGAIN and doesn't look like she'll be waking up any time soon, and Diabolique is essentially victorious and stronger for the experience. There's no happy ending. There's never a happy ending to anything in Praetoria.
Sometimes, when I go through newer content for Praetoria and ESPECIALLY villain-side and, hell, hero-side too, I start having to wonder if the writers want me to start dressing in black and cutting myself. Because the way the story is written, it seems to WANT me to feel bad about myself, bad about the world and embrace the depths of depression. Nothing we do matters, and even in our finest hour, the most we can achieve is a Pyrrhic victory whose only upside is that it could have been much worse. And that's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is we make everything ten times worse and we have to read about innocent characters losing their innocence and turning into monsters.
Do you have any idea how long it's been since a piece of new content has made me smile after running through it? A long god damn time, I'll tell you that.
Quote:
|
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.
|
Now that a lot of players have seen First Ward, I think it might be a good time to repost this from the GR closed beta :
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
Her own arc in Imperial City, Warnden, 10-15, I think, final arc of the zone with a moral choice at the end - shut down the Seer Network or punch Kathie's face. First Ward assumes whoever worked with her chose to help her.
|
Originally Posted by Ashe T'Dust
Where do you originally encounter Katie? I forget...
|
Quote:
|
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.
|
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
First Ward, by contrast, is at best bitter-sweet. In the end, sure, Circe the Sorceress and her scary scheme of scowling scorn has ceded, but the Seers are still trapped in the Network, Kathie - for all the bile I have for her - has been used, abused, defiled and had her mind enslaved AGAIN and doesn't look like she'll be waking up any time soon, and Diabolique is essentially victorious and stronger for the experience. There's no happy ending. There's never a happy ending to anything in Praetoria.
|
I get that the central theme is "there's a gray area", meaning yes, I did good, I saved the world from the Furies. But to do so, I had to betray/use my ally (Katie), send a friend on a suicide mission (Savage), and outright kill people, making my victory tarnished- much like Cole's own victories are.
A note on the killing, too- it was once the policy in CoH that there was no specific references to killing. It was always "defeated" and if you chose to play a character who killed, so be it, but they didn't say it outright. The game had different directions back then, yes, but I really dislike how much killing I'm forced to do now. Never, in comic books, will you see Superman say "killing him is the only way." There is always another way when we're superheroes, and I don't like being told that I'm killing when I don't want to.
Quote:
|
Sometimes, when I go through newer content for Praetoria and ESPECIALLY villain-side and, hell, hero-side too, I start having to wonder if the writers want me to start dressing in black and cutting myself. Because the way the story is written, it seems to WANT me to feel bad about myself, bad about the world and embrace the depths of depression. Nothing we do matters, and even in our finest hour, the most we can achieve is a Pyrrhic victory whose only upside is that it could have been much worse. And that's the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is we make everything ten times worse and we have to read about innocent characters losing their innocence and turning into monsters. Do you have any idea how long it's been since a piece of new content has made me smile after running through it? A long god damn time, I'll tell you that. |
I want my happy endings back. (and get your mind out of the gutter! I mean it in the good way.)
Quote:
Thanks!
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Her own arc in Imperial City, Warnden, 10-15, I think, final arc of the zone with a moral choice at the end - shut down the Seer Network or punch Kathie's face. First Ward assumes whoever worked with her chose to help her.
|
Quote:
While I agree with you - and I honestly do - downer drama by itself doesn't make for a good story. It makes for a downer story. The heavier, darker motifs do a lot to add weight to a story, but without the lighter, happier motifs, this just turns into an anchor for the whole fictional world. As I said - the old City of Heroes stories weren't all raibows and unicorns. There was a lot of darkness in them, but that darkness was counter-balanced by the lighthearted side of things. That's how you write a good story.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Samoa
Sadly, I agree with you. These sad stories have much more potential for emotion and they really do tug on heartstrings, and they do it really well. The writers are doing a good job.
|
Here's the thing - dark motifs in a fictional world only work so long as you can keep the player engaged in the story DESPITE the darkness, always hoping for an eventual resolution, because when that resolution finally comes, victory is that much sweeter. However, unlike in real life, when the fictional reality gets TOO dark, the player always has the option to do reject that reality and either shut down the game or abandon the story. Unlike in real life, we can never be FORCED to sit through unpleasant storylines (which is why I never run with Peter Thermai, Westin Phipps, Darla Mavis, Angelo Vendetti, etc.) because the player is in control of the master switch. If it gets too dark, he can leave at any time.
I've written a few dark stories, myself, and I've tested a few audiences with them. Without fail, the people I've tested have refused to read to then when the story got too dark, and that's not just once or twice. What I took away from the experience is that writing a story to make your players retch is less important than writing a story to HOLD your players' attention until you can make the unpleasant parts feel justified. You don't do that with constant dark storytelling.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Mr_Samoa
I want my happy endings back. (and get your mind out of the gutter! I mean it in the good way.)
|
I'm sorry, but that kind of unpleasantness isn't why I play games, and I'm getting a little tired of ticking new stuff as it comes out as "missions to avoid" just because I lost my stomach for Happy Tree Friends.
Quote:
|
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.
|
Quote:
Maybe the Rogue Isles are a bad place, run by evil people?
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
take over Fort Darwin for Arachnos and you'll see pretty much exactly what I'm describing. There's a man beating a woman with a baseball bat square in the face, there's a man kicking a woman in the gut as she's fallen on the ground, there's a man digging a shallow mass grave next to a pile of corpses and there are a bunch of Arachnos soldiers standing around corpses piled next to stinking garbage cans with flies buzzing about, chuckling about "Time to take out the trash!"
|
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Quote:
Well, that's the other problem. We're given this image of the Rogue Isles as this horrible den of evil and vermin, and yet everyone in the Isles is apparently willing to drop everything and work with heroes for "the greater good" or "to have a world to rule" or whatever motive you can still manage to worm into the game. I've played characters that played Westin Phipps' arc and liked it. They're not going to sign up with Vanguard and fight with Statesman, not without an ulterior plan anyway.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Maybe the Rogue Isles are a bad place, run by evil people?
|
City of Villains doesn't work well, story-wise, in a game that is constantly pushing players more into a cooperative setting. It barely works with team of villains. What makes it worse is how very, VERY evil of a place it tries to be, while trying to make friends with everyone against the common foe of the week.
It's impossible to make a game please everyone. It's really, really, hard to get it to please "most people". I don't expect the Devs to build the game to fit every character concept I can come up with, that's unreasonable. But they're building to game to fit very specific characters- those heroes who are willing to compromise and those villains who are willing to work with heroes from time to time. To bring it full circle, those are the character types you'll see in First Ward (moreso the heroes, yes).
I'm not trying to derail the thread, just making the point that both heroes and villains are getting pulled into this neutral gray area, against a lot of our wills. If I want to play on a team past level 20-25, I have to be willing to work with "the other side" with no questions asked. Obviously, as a player, it's fine, whatever. It's my characters that concern me.
Oh, and I agree with what Sam said. We need good to counterbalance the bad. (Funnily, it's the opposite problem of CoV- it's increasingly difficult to make a happy, heroic ending to a story, as opposed to CoV's challenge of making a villainous story that multiple character concepts can play)
Tangent: I really don't care what kind of place City of Villains was intended to be. If it's not fun to play in, it fails as a game, and right now the story goes out of its way to ruin my fun by ruining my mood completely.
*edit*
I want to reiterate something: For all the criticisms I may level against First Ward, it's still one of the best zones in the game in a long time, and it held my interest long enough to get to the end without ever feeling like a drag. It just seems to me that it suffers from quite a few problems of priorities that didn't need to be there, because I like the story considerably LESS now that I know how it ends than I liked it right up until then. I guess if we accept that the story is incomplete and we'll get the other half of it and THAT will have a happy ending, then the whole thing seems more justified, but until such a time, it will still suffer for trying to be heavier than it deserves.
Quote:
|
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.
|
Quote:
Oh, yeah. That's all I'm really trying to say. First Ward rocks, just not in every facet. I'm happy with it!
|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I want to reiterate something: For all the criticisms I may level against First Ward, it's still one of the best zones in the game in a long time, and it held my interest long enough to get to the end without ever feeling like a drag. It just seems to me that it suffers from quite a few problems of priorities that didn't need to be there, because I like the story considerably LESS now that I know how it ends than I liked it right up until then. I guess if we accept that the story is incomplete and we'll get the other half of it and THAT will have a happy ending, then the whole thing seems more justified, but until such a time, it will still suffer for trying to be heavier than it deserves.
|
I finished the First Ward content this last week with one of my Praetorians. It was a great ride and/or story, but there's no way that this particular character could have done all of it IC.
Papa Lobo's whole concept, the reason he ended up joining the Resistance, is to rescue his daughter from the Seer Network. In-game, Katie Douglas makes an acceptable stand-in for most purposes. He did her arc (among others on the Warden side) back in the 1-20 game, freeing her and several other Seers; one of these was his own daughter, who he ended up taking to the relative safety of Primal Earth. So far so good.
Like most roleplayers, I fudge the missions I do in little ways as I go along, to fit my character better. But there's no room for that, for me and this character, with the tasks Vanessa gives. If I were to do those IC (rather than just to see the content; now I have, and I'm done), Papa Lobo would flat out refuse to proceed. He'd quit and storm out, try to find another option, suffer a Heroic BSOD and/or lose himself to Vengeance. Game over.
As things stand, the lack of a real resolution is annoying. If it were possible, and assuming that Vanessa got someone else to do the dirty deeds without consulting Lobo before hand, he would immediately charge down to the DUST HQ and unhook her again at the point where the content currently ends.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
Quote:
It occurs to me that a lot of the newer concept is written to be played BY THE PLAYER much more so than by the actual character. It's hard to explain exactly why, but this is the sort of thing you see in choose your own adventure games that you're only really supposed to play once, and even more so ones that have a specific good and evil karma system like Mass Effect. It's really not intended to be at all accommodating to any specific character who isn't being written to fit events on the fly. And as content written for games intended to only be played once, I'm only really going to play the First Ward once.|
Originally Posted by Megajoule
I finished the First Ward content this last week with one of my Praetorians. It was a great ride and/or story, but there's no way that this particular character could have done all of it IC.
|
Here's the thing: Even if I had a charter who fit events perfectly, the story is still so heavy and so dark and so devoid of a satisfying resolution that I don't WANT to play though that content again. Hell, if I knew what I were in for, I probably wouldn't have played through it even once.
What's there is great, I must admit. The writing is top notch, the mysteries are very interesting, the characters are well-written, ignoring the complete derailment of established ones and the mood and atmosphere are expertly delivered. The problem is that this all comes together to form a story which honestly upset me on an emotional level, and since I don't play games to push myself out of my own comfort zone, I have no interest in being upset like that again. Maybe if there were a reasonable resolution or if the arc weren't so heavy-handed with the depressing plot points things may be different, but as it is, it's just way too heavy to run twice.
And it's a shame, really - First Ward is a great arc, but it suffers for its own greatness by side-lining character concept and trading replayability for moody darkness.
Quote:
|
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.
|
Do not understand how playing this series of story arcs is dark for some folks heroes/villains? You are playing in the Dark Mirror of the Primal world and you have to make some hard choices to save everyone and sometimes you have to deal with it. I played them with my main and I did not like how things ended thou it was better than letting the big Bad win because that would have hell alot worse.
Quote:
That's one of the few things I can say I NEVER wanted to play and I NEVER want to play again. And, surprise surprise, I won't be playing it again. Which is a shame, because First Ward is awesome - the visuals, the enemies, the writing, the pacing - but it's all for naught if I don't end up enjoying the experience, and if I leave the game more depressed than happy, then I didn't enjoy the experience, all things considered.|
Originally Posted by fallenz
You are playing in the Dark Mirror of the Primal world and you have to make some hard choices to save everyone and sometimes you have to deal with it.
|
And before anyone asks, yes, I don't have much of a stomach for "a world half empty" scenarios.
Quote:
|
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 should probably post again. I didn't want to sound unappreciative or too down on this content earlier. Yeah, its kind of dark and unsatisfying, but if its going to lead into a storyline that leaves me feeling I accomplished something and made a difference in these peoples lives, I can live with that. On the whole, I really like the design and implementation of First Ward.
I'd like to second an earlier post saying the text bubbles scroll by too fast. One of the reasons I don't like to team is everyone is in a race to get to the end. I want to savor the content. I want to read and understand the storyline. Without a storyline you may as well reduce it to just the math, a random number generator and who can click fastest. The dialog comes far too fast in the entire zone as far as I'm concerned. Slow Down!
To be clear, I was playing a hero and I like to stay "in character" with his decisions. (This is another reason I don't like to team. It sometimes pisses people off that I don't always do the "smart" thing.) There is no way in hell my guy would have ever enslaved Katie for any reason. Even if it meant stopping the furies would be harder, even if she was treating him like crap. And I didn't like having no option. Not one little bit. First enslaving her and then not going back for her was deeply disturbing. I appreciate you were doubtless *trying* to provoke an emotional response. Well, you got one. And not one I enjoyed.
My only real though I have on it is it's interesting. I can't say I loved it or that I hated it, but it intrigued me. There is one nitpick that I feel needs to be addressed though:
Ambushes.
Now I'm not an overly big fan of them in the first place, but about 2/3rds in the storyline there, the amount of ambushes is catapulted into the extreme. In every mission in that point of time I enter a mission and suddenly I'm set upon by hordes of enemies. One mission I was ambushed by no less than 10 groups before even completing a single objective. It's too much and does need to be to toned down. (and yes, after the third mission loaded with ambushes I was wondering who thought it would be a good idea to have so many and introduce them to a clue by four.)
I came across at least two doors like this in southern First Ward. I hope future Praetorian mission require use to go to First Ward and use these doors for fun exciting missions.
The Crags are amazing, I'd love to see the rocks surrounding (and holding up) Talos get a graphics update to look more like the crags.