Why is the Malta Group out in the open?

He's not supposed to. He works for one of the organizations the Malta Group is influencing. Crimson and Indigo work for one of the organizations the Malta Group is influencing. Heck, they even have pokes and prods into Arachnos.

They are The Conspiracy. Their existence is supposed to be ambiguous, frightening and deniable.

I believe the solution is to approach things with greater care and not contradict yourself. And when you DO change something in the lower levels, then trace changes up the level ranges so later content doesn't contradict earlier content. It's more work, obviously but... Well, that's just quality being quality.

No-one is saying that content progression should never change or that events should never be added to the lower levels that have effects later down the line. What I'm saying is that when something is changed, it should either be change so it doesn't contradict the timeline, or to the timeline should be changed to accommodate it. Moreover, a timeline SHOULD exist. Not necessarily stretching from 2002 to 2011, but still having SOME form of staggered information delivery and at least a few surprises.

If we take the view that at this stage in the game everyone knows everything and we should have no more mysteries and no more surprises, all we'll accomplish is turn what used to be an interesting world into a parody of itself.

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.

They're the minority. They're Mulder and Scully (only more bloodthirsty). They have been dealing with this conspiracy for years and have made it their mission to eliminate the threat, even if nobody else believes them. They're content with not revealing the conspiracy and just killing the bastards responsible.

They enlist your help with an ambiguous task. Help somebody. There were scary people there with weaponry designed to deal with meta humans. Interesting. They ask if you'd like to help them deal with their "friends" from here on out.

So far, the only really "public" thing the Malta Group has done is send a gigantic robot to assault heroes in broad daylight and another to tear down the War Walls. In both instances, it still leaves the public scratching their heads and wondering what the Hell just happened.

Their troops in the streets? Still deniable assets.

The solution to the problem of having less consistency than is possible is to have more consistency than currently exists. The solution to the problem of not having global consistency doesn't exist. The solution to the problem of asking for the impossible is to ask for the possible.

I simply read it as "Lois Lane is Missing... again" or "Robin is exploring his fondness for bondage... again" or "The Joker is out of Arkham... again".

The kid is just unlucky.

As for Monty's arc hero-side being 10+, it's because it involves the lost, which only exist sub-20.

Care to elaborate on that? At what point is it impossible, short of simply not knowing your own plot, to not contradict established stories, or to fix the stories you contradict? Surely the 5th Column to Council both job is better that current state of complete jumble we have now.

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.

So if he's at the top of the FBSA and has a lot of influence with the hero community (most of whom had never heard of him until very recently), and he knows a little about Malta, why the hell is he sending relative newbies after them? These are the guys who eat inexperienced heroes for breakfast. Why, I remember back in the day, big tough level 50 tanks would wet their pants at the sight of a Sapper.

Crimson and Indigo weren't part of any known organization until i6.

Their troops in the streets are a metagame kludge, as is their presence in the Grandville papers.

Arcanaville is referring to teaming. A level 1 teaming with a level 50 is going to be seeing things that "haven't happened yet", while the 50 is seeing things they might have already done.

Personally, I don't see a problem with that, but that is technically 'imperfect consistency'.

"We're lucky, though, that they're using Sky Raiders; it means that Malta is trying to have as minimal a presence in this operation as possible. This man called 'Peter' is probably the Malta liason between the Rogue PPD and the Sky Raiders."

Basically he's betting that there's not going to be any Malta there, and it's just going to be Sky Raiders. So there's the in story justification.

And the other justification is, why have any lower level Heroes save the City? It's too much a risk, Positron should get over Vhaz conning gray, and save the Dam himself instead of sending Dr. Thingamajig and his merry band of catgirls. At some point people have to divorce level from the story and just enjoy a decent arc.

And?

I swear Indigo was the only one to call them "Friends", didn't Crimson call them the Malta Group outright whenever he mentioned them?

You'd be correct. Crimson does not fear the name of Malta.

If that's the case, then we need to stop using the level range as the excuse for storyline inconsistencies as well.

It also doesn't excuse my argument in the slightest. The organizations and groups need to act in manners that make sense for their "modus operandi."

The Malta Group's method of operation is secrecy and deceit when their "jack-booted thugs" cannot achieve the intended goals. The deniable assets move in when the secrecy and deceit fail.

Indigo, Crimson, Shadow Spider, Viridian and Arbiter Daos know the term for the enigmatic group. The rest of the world has next to no idea about the weird, dark-blue dressed operatives that seem bent on making life a living Hell for anybody not progressing the cause of Capitalism.

If he really knows so much about Malta, then he'd be stupid to make that bet.

First off, it isn't a decent arc. Second, we absolutely need to stop divorcing level from story. Lower level heroes save the city, higher level heroes deal with the global conspiracy. So, what is Roy Cooling's arc? Is it a save the city arc? Then why are Malta so visible? Why expose themselves to people who don't know they exist? Or is it ultimately a Malta plot arc? In that case, you shouldn't be sending lowbies, because they would get themselves disappeared if they didn't have PC immunity.

AND, they weren't part of any organization that is influenced by Malta when they became aware of them. They didn't suddenly forget about Malta when they were shoehorned into Longbow for lack of any other heroic group to join so villains could beat them up.

With the devs turning away from street hunts, they're not really needed as zone mobs anymore - making them a villain group that only appeared on mission maps would help to make them seem more secret.

Ah, more confirmation that playstyle options are only getting cut from here on out? Everyone just loves a game where the only thing to do is grind trials!

Obviously not because Roy Cooling, Lord Recluse, and Recluse's patrons are aware of Malta.

Not to mention the background information that's been out for as long as I remember (and quoted earlier) Implies that multiple government agencies are aware of Malta as well as veteren heroes being aware of them and reporting on their abilities. That's actually an even scarier thought, that multiple world government's and agencies (and heroes) are aware of Malta's existance and agenda, yet can't prove they exist or take any real offence against them because they're just that good.

I don't know if he's stupid, lucky, or just like everyone else who works against Malta and is not really interested in if you're safe or how much you know. Just look at poor Melvin and what they were willing to let him go through. Or how Indigo will let you go against a group that she knows is capable of tearing through superhumans, without telling you what you're really getting into.

What I do know is, it's in the script so that's what happens.

I did refer to that, but there is a more fundamental logical argument proving global consistency is impossible given basic assumptions about how MMO story arcs have to work and the limitations of City of Heroes in particular.

1. Our characters progress in both level and time in a monotonically ascending direction. Basically, early levels happen before later ones chronologically for the player.

2. If a future event changes parts of the game experienced at lower progressional levels after a character has progressed out of them, the character's own past will change to be inconsistent with past experience.

3. If a future event changes parts of the game experienced at lower progressional levels before a character has progressed out of them, the character will perceive cause and effect in reverse order.

4. Both #2 and #3 unavoidably create global storyline inconsistencies.

5. Therefore, any MMO that allows future events to change lower level content necessarily introduces global storyline inconsistencies.

6. The only way to add content without creating global inconsistencies is therefore to either a) add content with no connection to prior content or b) always add future content at higher levels than any previously experienced by any player. In other words, the devs would be forced to add no content lower than level 50 now. And later, level 60, then level 70, then level 80, preserving cause and effect to be consistent with content gating. Since that is not an option for City of Heroes, City of Heroes cannot have global storyline consistency in the temporal sense. QED.

I'm mystified that anyone could look at the Atlas Park revamp and think the devs want fewer street hunts. Habashy and Thiery's mission arcs consist almost entirely of hunts. At least the old contacts usually gave you a choice between a hunt and a door mission.

Hence, the Ouroboros explanation of "We had seen a timeline when these meteors landed in Atlas Park, instead." I have no problem with the timeline shifting from right under me and changing both the past things I've done (in the game) and the future reactions those things entail. So long as the timeline remains consisted WITHIN ITSELF, then it being consistent from one day to the next of real time isn't important.

Let me put it this way: Say I start a character in Galaxy City and this brands said character as having started in the "less popular" zone, thus making contacts occasionally referring to me as avoiding crowds. Years later, Galaxy City gets destroyed. My character still started there, but this "tag" now changes to my character being a Galaxy City survivor, which contacts reference, instead. Things have changed, my past has been re-written, but the timeline remains consistent within itself.

A full ret-con is bad, but it's still better than internal contradiction. Once you start changing events along the timeline, then good writing infers that you'd either write them so they don't contradict, or rewrite all contradicting entries so they are no longer contradictory.

Please understand that I mean no disrespect when I say this:

Your #2 is irrelevant, because you're talking about a player's meta-game experience as part of that player's memory. A character's history can easily be ret-conned, because that character's memory of in-game events is whatever the game says it is. If the game up and said "Your villain did not escape from the Zig on an Arachnos helicopter, he was buried under rubble in Galaxy City" then that's what happened. There is, of course, the balance between player concept and the story railroad, but the game is and should be free to ret-con at the very least its own in-game events.

Your #3 is also irrelevant, because players experiencing content which has been removed or altered are locked into their grandfather content until it is finished. This is why all of the original Mercy Island, Galaxy City and Atlas Park contacts were retained - if you had missions for them, you can at least finish them. A character caught in flux is errant to the timeline, but this is a temporary state. Once said character emerges from that state of flux, he is once more consistent with the storyline because his past deeds are ret-conned to be consistent with his future deeds.

This problem of inconsistent timelines exists only if you introduce the player's own knowledge of events, which is immune to ret-cons and re-writes. However, character knowledge can and should be tweaked where necessary. Even if it comes out of the blue.

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 see what you are saying here, but I have a different perspective:

First of all, most events can that are inserted into lower levels are not truly global effects, and are easily things my character could have missed interacting with or not known about. Many players already do this with their bios:

"I was never arrested and thrown in the Zig, I was an established villain with my own volcano base long before I decided to pull Recluse' chain by pretending to work for him."

One of mine is, "I was a hero in Paragon back in the 40s, but retired. Now I'm back, fedora and all, to show the youngsters how it's done." As opposed to being drawn to Paragon by Statesman's call in 2004, or in Galaxy City at the time the meteors fell.

It's up to me as a writer to see to it that my bio jives with canon (or not, and risk the ridicule of Venture). The same thing is evident with many characters that are robots, sentient clouds of gravity and plasma, animated porcelain dolls, or other ...things that then have to shrug off storylines that deal with them catching diseases or having DNA samples taken from them.

Already it is possible for the player to perceive cause and effect in reverse order in the game, and it will always be possible to do so, because you may simply not be at your keyboard when an event happens, and return to see only the aftereffects, then not experience the causative event until you Ouroboros or the event comes 'round again or something. Sure, you can choose to think to yourself, "My character would have been around for that (or NOT, even if they were)" just like you do now when that happens.

Suddenly, Street Justice exists. What, there was no 'bare knuckles brawling' combat style back in the 40s? No, you just hand wave it and move on, just like you do powerset proliferation (or ignore it, like you do with the Origins of Power). Or is it the plan to have future additions to the game happen in Real Time?

"The Rikti suddenly now have battlesuits! News on the latest developments on the war front at Eleven. But first, E!ntertainment reviews the stylish new Circle of Thorns robes. Alastor, take it away."

Now the Devs may have planned truly global effects, like: the planet Earth explodes. History is rewritten so that Paragon City never existed. Your character (whomever or whatever they may be) was hunted down (wherever and whenever they are) and assassinated. But in a world of alternate universes, Ouroboros, and reality-warping psionic devices, do we need these things to happen on a date (Mar 13, 2012) as opposed to a level (Level 35)?

If the Devs are making this move to make things easier on their writers, then cool. I understand that, and canon history may just not be something (like patch notes, which to be honest are greatly improved from launch) that they are going to be able to get a handle on soon.

But honestly, I think the idea of gating certain content behind certain story arcs (similar to how Ouroboros is done) is a better idea.

I am currently playing through Vampire: the Masquerade: Bloodlines for the first time. I am not using a guide. So are some of my friends. As a result, we are getting radically diverging gameplay. Entire lines of inquiry or chunks of story are being sealed away from various characters, because when they choose to let x npc live or not, or take this route as opposed to that, or develop Hacking before Stealth ...it matters. Sure, we can share the experience and discuss things that one character did that another did not, and spoil things for each other and give advice. But the history of each character's progress through the game, and my gameplay experience as a player, is unique.

The effect I am looking for here is sort of a "Crying Game" or "Usual Suspects" effect: sure I knew what the spoiler was before I saw the movie, and the movie was good enough to pull it off anyway, but I was able to go back and experience the story as a whole and as a unit. The player should be able to have the emotional experience of carrying an alt through a story 'for the first time'.

What I fear the Devs are moving toward is more like "Lost" or where you can miss an episode or two, come back to the story, and be ...lost. "Oh, you weren't around when Back Alley Brawler died? Too bad, it was awesome. He used to be in this Strike Force we're playing through, but now he never was."

And as I said before, I respect both you and Venture, and if your perspective is that this is impractical, I'll accept that. I just wanted you guys to see my perspective and why I think it is not only practical, but worth one more try.

If you haven't run into the Malta Group by the time you meet Lord Recluse, you've been diligent in avoiding them. As for his patrons, they don't do much to explain the group, leaving their knowledge about them ambiguous. And again, Roy Cooling's knowledge of them is quite suspect at the moment.

Assuming they are a common threat to him, and they're high-end threats, it's a little unsettling that he's pitting a group of low-rank heroes against them. If he were worth his salt, he would be calling in the big guns to put down the Malta Group threat... Excuse me, to use his words, the "Malta" threat. Even with his inexplicable knowledge of the situation, he fails to mention them by their appropriate title.

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.