Posi Blogs about con to the ret
Awesome
Thanks for sharing
I'm glad to hear Posi believes in harnessing the creative talents of the people he has on hand and not being caught up in the past.
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I've never been to that site at all. I'm going to have to read it from the beginning.
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@Golden Girl
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The only thing I asked was that they avoid doing so when it directly contradicted something that was already in the game. |
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I'm glad to hear Posi believes in harnessing the creative talents of the people he has on hand and not being caught up in the pat.
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I'm going to preface this by saying I recognize that Positon is making a general case here, and that his specific stance is reasonable, as expressed here:
"I let them 'retcon' certain aspects if it made for a more dynamic and fun experience. The only thing I asked was that they avoid doing so when it directly contradicted something that was already in the game. If it was buried in a background doc it could totally be changed, though."
However, the general case he makes beyond that is something that I have a strong opinion about, and what follows keys off of that, not his specific position above, which is probably how the game at least tries to operate under and I think is reasonable, as I said. Nevertheless, be warned a strong opinion follows.
I'm going to have to disagree with Positron's general stance here. He's the lead designer, so its ultimately his decision how to treat continuity, but I have always believed that so long as you decide to operate *within* continuity you have an obligation to be a steward of continuity to the best extent possible. Positron seems to think that a good enough story should trump continuity in the general case. I think that while that might be true in theory, in practice the story would have to be not just good on a relative scale, but good beyond anything the game currently contains to be good enough to cavalierly discard continuity.
Positron says: "After youve played through the game on a character, you know most of the stories of the game. You can now make a new character that has a background that meshes perfectly with the game world but where is the creativity in that? CoH characters are specifically generic so that your imagination can run wild with them. You have the creative license to introduce your own background into the CoH world at this point. You would probably take care to make sure it didnt contradict any established lore, but if you did have a great idea that you absolutely wanted to run with you wouldnt let that lore get in your way."
True for some. But for many others, the fun *is* to write yourself into the story, to leverage what exists and make something interesting that integrates with that. My main character's origin has evolved in that way, from a relatively generic concept to one that is mostly unchanged from the original concept but is anchored within the game reality. Its tightly interwoven with known continuity in certain specific ways. To me, that's the fun of participating in a shared universe.
Overturn too much continuity, and you mess with that. There's a "cottage rule" for powers that recognizes that players have a right to see their expectations when it comes to gameplay tampered with as little as possible. Values and specifics may change but players can rely on the fact that Fly causes them to fly, and Build Up doesn't summon a cottage. We do this because it makes good common sense: if we have to change things because the game is broken if we don't, then we change them. But we don't just change things because we want to or because we think it will be cooler if we do. We assume many players have made an invested in how their character plays, and we try to preserve that when we can.
Why should it be any different with continuity? Why should we decide that the people who rely on Build Up doing the same thing tomorrow that it does today deserve to have that expectation protected, but the people who rely on NPCs being a certain way or the basic storyline of the game being a certain way do not deserve the same protection?
I can think of so many ways for Energy Blast to be better, for Fiery Aura to be better, for Force Fields to be better. I'm sure Black Scorpion, Synapse, and Arbiter Hawk do too. But they can't just remake Force Fields just because they have a cool idea. Why stifle their creativity? Why not let them express themselves in the powers system the way the writers do in the mission arcs?
Because there's a double standard, of course. The powers people aren't creative people with ideas and a vision. They are number crunchers. The writers, they are creative people and creative people need more than number crunchers do. We just tell the numbers people what to do, and they punch some buttons in a calculator and out comes a powerset. But a mission, with dialog, and clues, and souvenirs, that's different.
No its not. The powers people deserve the same latitude, and should obey the same rules, as all the other people on the dev team. If the writers can't figure out how to tell good stories without breaking continuity, so continuity has to be set aside, then we should give the same latitude to the powers people. If they can think of a cooler way to make Dark Armor, they should be allowed to do so. And keep in mind I'm not just talking about the Excel jockeys here. I'm also talking about the animators, the FX artists, the sound effects artists. There's a lot of creative work that goes into something like a powerset.
Conversely, if the players that expect powersets to work the same way every day are important enough to protect with the cottage rule, then the players that expect continuity to not shift under their feet every day are just as important.
Its almost inexcusable to radically alter continuity in City of Heroes anyway: we have time travel, dimensional travel, magic, and the Ouroboros. We can theoretically visit all possible dimensions, all possible timelines, all possible ways for every possible thing to occur, and for every possible combination of things to occur. What *possible* story could you tell that would *require* changing the reality of Primal Earth?
No rule is absolute, and I don't object unilaterally to retcons. But I expect that they are always done with steely eyed seriousness, the same steely eyed seriousness with which the cottage rule is adhered to. And if its not, then I ask you to look at the writing staff, and look at the powers staff, and explain how the decision is made that one of these groups of people deserves to have their creative vision freed from the shackles of past restraint, and the other one doesn't. And then look at we the players, and ask the same question.
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That. What she said. All of it.
I would also add that tampering with "behind the scenes" continuity, so to speak, is just asking for things like Dominatrix and Tyrant's little indiscretion to happen. You end up with a much more cohesive game world if you work within the continuity rather than getting "creative."
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A good story can trump a retcon. What is the point of having a super cohesive story if it is mediocre at best? The problem nowadays with comics is that there are bad stories due to retcons.
The writers do a pretty good job of balancing creativity and continuity - like the new Atlas Park content.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Thanks for the soapbox warning, Arcanaville, but a reasoned and thought out argument is always welcome.
Frankly as a long-suffering comics reader I'd have to go with the simple "don't retcon if you can rewrite". Yet the most brilliant (IMHO) comics concept of parallel universes of "Earth-1" and "Earth-2" is, itself, basically a retcon!
At some level they're going to be unavoidable, but there's no excuse for lazy writing.
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But... shouldn't he be there if he's one of the sigs that could die? He's on the poster. Rather than leaving BAB out, they should be calling it "The Surviving Eight," no?
For that matter, is Numina really on the Freedom Phalanx, or has she been presumed to be since she's also part of the Surviving Eight?
It's still a mess.
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I predict that clean and well written Arcanaville post will be hacked apart and quoted out of context to demonstrate support for abolishing the Cottage Rule in two days, tops.
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Chiming in here to agree with Arcanaville. The number of storylines that have been mangled or abandoned because the original writers moved on is a tragedy. And she makes a very valid point that allowing retconning in story while not allowing breaking the cottage rule is arbitrary, making no sense when analyzed from that perspective.
Great stories are always welcome. Great stories that don't change what we the players "know" (at least without some heart-searching) would be better X 1000.
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Cottage rule has been broken.
My stalker had a power renamed and it effects totally and completely changed.
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Don't they change powers quite a lot? Or stuff like Defiance for Blasters? I know they've changed MoG a bit, and they did something with Kheldians in I21 - and they've got something different planned for Dominators in an upcoming Issue. Plus, stuff like making the Fitness pool inherent and adding a new power to the travel pools and changing the level you can get them at seem to be quite big changes too.
And the way they give out free respecs quite frequently with power changes kinda implies that the changes are big enough to make some players consider changing their power choices and slotting.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Chiming in here to agree with Arcanaville. The number of storylines that have been mangled or abandoned because the original writers moved on is a tragedy. And she makes a very valid point that allowing retconning in story while not allowing breaking the cottage rule is arbitrary, making no sense when analyzed from that perspective.
Great stories are always welcome. Great stories that don't change what we the players "know" (at least without some heart-searching) would be better X 1000. |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I agree with Arcanaville here. 'Cool' does not equal 'continuity change', and nor should it. The very fact that DC Comics is making a move whereby they are changing their continuity wholesale and is being met with widespread resistance from the existing audience should tell any casual observer that.
I'd add to Arcanaville's point, however: continuity from a writing point of view serves two major purposes: the first is to allow a first-time reader to be introduced to a short form of said continuity for purposes of firstly understanding that there is a larger story going on, but secondly to facilitate an anchor point in the reader's experience; and the second is to provide any writer that would work in a shared universe a grounding in the material from which to work on.
Noone reading these forums would disagree that some of the most seminal works in superhero fiction have been or were direct influences from the very continuity on which they were based. Yes, they may have expanded upon them or even deconstructed them, but the point remains that without them these stories would have no point of inspiration or reference to draw upon.
In a game, where admittedly the format is by its very nature fluid and non-static, this must also apply. A player's core anchor in a game is an understanding (however deep or shallow they wish to participate in it) of the world and type of genre in which they exist. Therefore, it's a necessity to have characters around them that inform them of the story as it stands when they first encounter it. Any character after that point that they encounter will expand upon that knowledge or present them with a viewpoint that they may have already encountered. A very obvious example here is the heroic experience of Atlas Park and the stories that this experience takes into the world of Praetoria.
Any writer who therefore comes onto the story of Praetoria would a) look to the existing continuity that's been written and b) want to expand upon or detail the information or viewpoint that has been given already. Continuity is best seen as the mortar that holds the walls of a story together; when you stand back and look at the finished structure, you can see then the process in how it came about. The new story arcs of Atlas Park in the wake of the Galaxy City disaster bear this out; by the time a player comes to a point where they've fended off villains and learned the story of Matthew Hashaby, they can then look back and see how that story has come about to its climax. None of that can be casually discarded and changed for the sake of some new idea.
The only way a new idea or a new way of looking at a continuity is by looking at the continuity itself. Continuity is by definition continuous; you can see how and why one event has come out of another. Or how an expansion or redefinition of an event has come out of the unconsidered or in some cases unthought of aspects of the original. One of the seminal comics events (if I may be so indulged) of my youth was the invention of the Nightwing character of DC Comics. It was by necessity that Dick Grayson was put into a position whereby he would no longer be the Robin character, and the writers were put in a unique situation where they could redefine and expand the character. In doing this, they made an explicit point of delving into the character's own continuity and drawing a new identity (Nightwing) from the various influences it gave. When readers saw this, it was very well-recieved and thought of as an intelligent piece of writing that not only respected the character's present tense, but also the prior history and continuity of that character whilst preserving it.
This then must be the basis for any considered change to a story in an MMO. To make a change 'just because' will leave any player scratching their heads and wondering 'why is it so?' If you cannot answer the cardinal writers questions of Who, What, When, Why, Where, and How, then the readers will know.
Positron mentions the playground of the game. In fact, the playground is a sandbox, and the sandbox is only defined by your imagination. If we didn't have imaginations, there would be no spin-off Star Trek novels. There would be no Expanded Universe for Star Wars. There would be no Justice League cartoon. By all means, look at your characters, look at your stories and ask 'what more can they do? Is there more they can do? Can I bring them to an end?' But never, ever say 'this story deserves to go. That story doesn't mean anything. That story never will.' Because then you invalidate your mortar, and the structure falls apart. At that point, your sandbox has become a jigsaw puzzle where in order to form a picture, you're willing to throw away pieces.
S.
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Positron mentions the playground of the game. In fact, the playground is a sandbox, and the sandbox is only defined by your imagination. If we didn't have imaginations, there would be no spin-off Star Trek novels. There would be no Expanded Universe for Star Wars. There would be no Justice League cartoon. By all means, look at your characters, look at your stories and ask 'what more can they do? Is there more they can do? Can I bring them to an end?' But never, ever say 'this story deserves to go. That story doesn't mean anything. That story never will.' Because then you invalidate your mortar, and the structure falls apart. At that point, your sandbox has become a jigsaw puzzle where in order to form a picture, you're willing to throw away pieces.
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Personally, I think it's important to approach new content with an appreciation of what came before, but not to be necessarily beholden to it. Mostly just agreeing with Positron's view wrt retcons.
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Star Wars EU is actually pretty interesting example. Up until the prequels, the EU was more of a super-set of the canon [that had been approved by one the Lucas companies, not sure which to be honest]. However, with the prequels, a lot of the EU canon came into conflict, changing the EU canon from being a super-set to being an alternative set.
Personally, I think it's important to approach new content with an appreciation of what came before, but not to be necessarily beholden to it. Mostly just agreeing with Positron's view wrt retcons. |
For much of the game's history the Praetors have been not so much powerful that a standard team of 8 could handle taking them on. Come the Incaranate storyline suddenly these characters are "supped up" to levels where the standard team of 8 isn't enough. Although the explanation as to why was eventually written, it was NOT made clear how or why they got all powerful all of a sudden when the first two trials were released.
Nor is it EVER explained in the trials themselves. In other words in-game. Later on a website story posting it's explained. However for someone who has already done the original lvl 40-50 Peregrine Island arcs, and then goes into the trials, the question is "I just beat these guys down, why are they so incredibly powerful now?"
My point is things like that are fine, but they need to be FULLY and CAREFULLY explained and in a timely manner, IN-GAME, and with the content the change happens.
Imagine if a new story arc started in Superman comics where Lex Luthor could suddenly beat down superman without the use of any armor or kryptonite. Yet the arc continued and Superman eventually won, but there was no explanation of how Lex became more powerful within that arc. But there WAS a posting a week after the final issue of that arc came out explaining why Lex was more powerful on one of DC's websites.
I think more than one comic reader would take issue with that.
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After exercising what little search fu I have, I did not find another mention of this blog post by Positron.
Interesting read.
Not sure if this is the best forum section for this, but there it is.