Why is the Malta Group out in the open?

Or start threads like this that are full of speculation and theories instead of complaining about bad writing. Some people might even want to use that Architect thingy I've heard so much about to expand on these loose ends themselves....it's funny how many of these "expanded storylines" involve having fire thrown at you though.

*Whistles innocently*

Praetoria is probably giving them ideas. Sure, there's that whole "a bunch of supers are in charge" thing, but once you get rid of the Praetors and start running the place yourself, those pesky commies won't stand a chance.

Some people are still hazy about "To Serve Man" being a cook book. Never forget that!

Pariahs look like the old "naked alien" Rikti of old, so that connection was never secret, and it was never a real reveal. What people are referring to is the information contained in the Omega Clearance date, namely that the Rikti are not aliens from space, but rather from an alternate Earth where they've modified their own biology to such an extent that they have become unrecognisable as humans, at least in terms of physical appearance.

That's supposed to be a reveal in the 35-40 range, and to the game's credit... It kind of is. You can either get it from the original Omega Clearance, or from the Dark Watcher in the same level range, or from Timothy Raymond who throws it out as an afterthought because whoever wrote his arc did a singularly inept job of it. But all of that is restricted to the 35-40 range.

In fact, when running the Midnighters' arc - at least in the 10-30 range - you run across a "good" Rikti and the narrative wonders aloud how such a thing is even possible. To the game's credit, that's done fairly well.

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 agree with this completely. The game's storyline might change in real time, but so far it seems like this is being handled like changes in the timeline. For instance, Galaxy City was fine yesterday, it's destroyed today, but this didn't just "happen." According to silos, there was a timeline where this never happened at all, and the Shivans instead landed in Atlas Park, so the game's plot changed, but as a result of someone tampering with the timeline.

This kind of explanation is the ultimate saving throw. It allows us to have our basic timeline expand as the player advances in level, but it still leaves the door open for major changes to happen that affect the low levels as a result of events taking place in the later levels. Someone messed with the timeline, so what's happening at levels 1-5 isn't a direct result of what happens in level 45-50, but instead the whole 1-50 timeline has shifted so that something which was supposed to happen later happened earlier, but time progression with levels remains the same.

It's an idea so awesome I'm ashamed I didn't think of it, myself. This is the perfect workaround, and at the same time it leaves no excuse to NOT have the level-based timeline consistent.

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.

The idea that "level progression equals story progression" has been on life support at least since CoV, and as of the destruction of Galaxy City is now Not Merely Dead But Really And Sincerely Dead.

Understood; I think we should toss it a Ressurect, or perhaps a Mutation.

IIRC, very few arcs proportionally in this game are connected to a specific date and can be left alone. The rest can probably be mostly fixed with text changes ('Malta' becoming 'some mysterious organization'). So the new timeline becomes:

2002 First Rikti Invasion
2004 Statesman calls for heroes to migrate to Paragon
2005-2010 Stuff happens that is accessible only in Ouroboros (if that)
2011 Fall of Galaxy City; Freedom generation heroes arrive
2011+ Your current career

Except it doesn't work, because aside from the RWZ and Cimerora, there isn't any "current" content to do past level 30. Croatoa kind of exists in its own space blueside, so it's pretty much unaffected by recent developments, but it's still not enough to get you to 35. And if you consider the defeat of Hro'dtohz and the Honoree to be the end of the RWZ storyline, then that's already over and done with too, and the RWZ arcs are no longer current.

So, what is happening "right now?" The starter arcs, Graves and Twinshot, Death from Below, First Ward, the i17 redside clone arc, Vincent Ross, Roy Cooling, Admiral Sutter, Mortimer Kal, the SSAs, the Underground Trial and maybe the Keyes Trial. Cimerora deals with time travel so it might get a pass. Apex, Tin Mage, the i17 blueside clone arc, all the i18 Praetorian content, Lambda, and BAF are already outdated content. Your "current" career doesn't leave you with much to do, does it?

Y'know, that is really starting to annoy me. So far with the additions of the clone arcs, then the Roy Cooling/Vincent Ross arcs, and now First Ward, which, put together are all 20 - 30, the 30 - 40 stretch is starting to look very, very barren.

Perhaps you misunderstand.

In my idea, what is 'current' is determined solely (or at least primarily) by the level in which you encounter it, regardless of the memories of us old fogies. This is similar to how Franklin Richards has only aged 5 years since 1968, while in the meantime, Kitty Pryde has gone from a precocious young teen to a young adult since her debut in 1980.

So if you are level 35, the missions you get from Technician Naylor or Indigo or whoever are 'current'.

Something like Twinshot's arc (levels 5-20) would need text rewrites to happen 'before' characters start arriving en masse from Praetoria (20+), which event would happen prior to being sent there by Tina MacIntyre (35+) etc.

These are just text changes; hopefully immune to the Code Rant.

No, we should drive a stake through its heart and fill its mouth with garlic.

The storyline needs to progress in real time.

Can you clarify, please?

You mean like a given month's SSA and holiday events are the only things going on that month, and other missions you take happened years ago, quite possibly before you were ever a superhero (if it is a new post Galaxy character)?

No, we should revive it and stop pretending it's dead. The storyline needs to progress with level progression.

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.

This.

Agreed. But I'm not really sure what Venture is advocating for. In a "quest-based" online game, the only way to present the story in an intimate context for individuals--and at the same time include everyone in the story--is to tie the story to the progression of the character. This is no small matter for a game about SUPER heroes and villains.

In a real-time world, few missions can be of much consequence; few heroes or villains can be of much consequence; and the story exists in an almost entirely separate context from what most players experience inside the game. I've played MMORPGs where the only way to experience ANY historical event was to be there at a particular date and time. The first MMORPG ever created is still operating under this principle, and for small parties of adventurers, it still sucks fifteen years later. Imagine if Temblor and Fusionette's arc, or the jaw-dropping "reveal" arcs for the Circle of Thorns or Rikti--imagine if those arcs could only be done once, not by your small team of world-saving heroes, but by everyone on the server who showed up to play.

People who love zone events might be drooling at that scenario, but keep in mind that if such events were the only way to progress the story, there would barely be any story to tell. Long months would pass between events during times when the dev team's priorities shifted. When an Earth-shattering event finally came to pass, your class-A super celebrity Tank couldn't save the Earth by himself, or with a few members of his super group; and not only because thousands of other heroes got the memo that day, but because you had to go to work IRL. Contrast this with your favorite character, who might have saved his neighborhood, or even the city (or even the world) a handful of times this week.

It's implied in the Indigo story arc that most of the original Directors got ousted/assassinated and replaced after the Cold War ended. Malta had to evolve new goals, and the old-timers like Vrabel were in the way.

It can't. It isn't doing it now, precisely because it can't.

You can cure the Lost at level 10, but the mission that formally drops the reveal doesn't hit until the 25-30 bracket. Crey isn't formally outed as corrupt until 45-50 unless you run tips in which case you know at level 20. (Villains get it at level 15 through regular missions.) The Praetorian invasion is all over the place. So is "the coming storm". The 5th/Council nonsense is a Gordian Knot. And on, and on....

If content set B is added after content set A in real time, then content set B must take place after content set A in game time as well. In most cases this means A must be removed to make way for B, and there is nothing wrong with that. Dynamic worlds require change, not mere agglutinization.

This works for me and it doesn't work for me (yes, I mean that simultaneously!). Depends on what character I'm playing. For my own sanity, my roster of characters exists along a floating timeline, i.e. a time-line where people and events are like bobbles floating down a stream (a time-stream!), in which some bobbles are heavier or lighter--slower or quicker--than others. This isn't an extreme difference from a timeline where every person and event is fixed upon the flow of time; it's just different enough to allow a more lighthearted approach to in-character storytelling.

This allows me to play as if my level 50 tank was fighting crime in Paragon years before my Street Justice scrapper started, at the same time allowing for the events in Galaxy City to be happening right now for both of them. How so? Here's the SERAPH explanation. The Galaxy city event represents a really big bobble, heavy enough to create a water-well or tidal-pool in the time-stream, one that is drawing other bobbles closer to it, whether from behind or in front, it doesn't matter.

And, really, if you listen to most players in the game, particularly role-players, they seem to be employing this method anyway, if subconsciously. I'm merely slapping a rationalization on it. But, truth be told, it wasn't my idea in the first place. (Anybody who has been reading comics for a while is already in the know. )

I don't think the content and reveals need to be linear. I just assume that my characters are like Batman or Wolverine... appearing in about five or six different comic books at a time, each loosely tied to the same continuity, but not necessarily knowing all of the stuff at the same time.

My thoughts exactly, I never considered each of my characters to be experiencing the same events like some kind of shared cosmic Groundhog Day. A character born from one of Crey's experimental programs might know all about Crey from level one. For that character, big "reveal" arcs might serve to give him still-deeper information on the conspiracy he already knew to exist in some form.

There's a point where we (as players) should ask ourselves if we're taking things way more seriously than the comic book genre would ever take itself.

So basically it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff?