Gods or Superheroes?

So was there a point in that paragraph, or what? Yes, I understand the game mechanic of a level 54 enemy coming at the end of the game because that's how you challenge end-game players. Thank you for your efforts, but that is not a hard concept to figure out. The complaint is that they made those enemies rock-throwing citizens who, according to their own narrative, should stand no chance against supers who eat cyber-tanks for breakfast. There's no reason why they couldn't have made that trial involve enemies more powerful in the narrative.

All you've really done is offer an extremely explicit example of why rock-throwing citizens present a gameplay/narrative disconnect, because there are other rock-throwing citizens who, according to narrative, have pretty much the exact same capabilities, and yet one set of rock-throwing citizens could stomp all over the others.

You spent two paragraphs arguing that, but okay.

Well, see, you're wrong about that. The first part, I mean. People (Blood Red Arachnid, at least) are trying to argue that the very existence of the disconnect is an opinion, and that's what's really got me irritated, because that is provably false and we can't even begin to have a discussion about why we do or do not like something when someone is obscuring the issue by pretending that facts are opinions (or vice-versa).

I don't mind when people say they don't have a problem with the gameplay/narrative disconnect, but I do mind when they try to tell me that it doesn't exist, because it is a problem for me and I can't begin to have a discussion about how to fix that problem when others are ruining it by yelling about how the problem proven to exist doesn't.

Personally, the reason I don't like the disconnect because it feels like such a letdown to go from winning a slugfest with a walking tank to requiring the help of a dozen others just to be effective riot police. I like the steady gain in power that the game offers, it's one of the major draws of the RPG genre, and the narrative we've got spits right in its face by keeping that power gain strictly in the mechanics, totally unacknowledged by the story.

Even a debuff that removes all of a hero's added DEF and resistance, effectively making them equivalent to a normal human, shouldn't suddenly turn them into feeble infants incapable of fending off a few rocks. Especially given how fast our heroes are still hopping from building to building. As a matter of comparison, a statistic compiled years ago from Los Angeles police reports showed that 75% of all firefights between police and assailants, which are at ranges of less than 30 feet, missed their targets, and the vast majority of the other 25% were non-fatal. There is just no way to make the TPN Killer Protester make sense.

The narrative either needs to make them heavily-armed IDF forces, or the game system needs to dispense with the idea that a "level 54 civilian" is anything but absurd and logically and mechanically untenable. But, as I've said before, this is not just a failure of presentation, in my mind, but an indictment of the level system all together. On the one hand it could be explained that someone at Paragon had a synaptic misfire and let the idea of a level 54 civilian slip past all rational scrutiny, but I would argue that it is the presence of levels (in the classic/clunky D&D mold) at all that tempt (drive?) such ridiculous "design choices" in the first place.

Yes, mother.

Except without that PR, you can't get the message out about Cole lying to entire populace of Praetoria, because they won't listen to psychopaths who are willing to murder civilians. And before you go "But I don't care about Praetoria!" then your choice is to not run that trial, or pretend it doesn't exist to you. My response is based on those who do run TPN (which ironically is run more than MoM).

Disintegration isn't, but it use to be if you couldn't out-heal it, and it's considered a super-cheap gimmick of KIR, next to the Pulse. Malestrom's OHKO is "Marked For Death", where he puts a cross-hair on you. If you don't break line-of-sight or at least get far enough away when he uses "Time To Die", you instantly faceplant. Simple as that. But, if Maelstrom didn't have that, he'd just be a standard tank-n-spank, like Seige and Nightstar already are.

Because some people do care. You shouldn't say "We" like you're actually speaking for any number of the player-base. The forum board doesn't even constitute a majority. And as far as saying they aren't trying to be consistent, can you state with any certainty they aren't? Your only evidence is the existence of examples where gameplay and mechanics do not line up. But if that's supposedly evidence of their laziness, it can also be evidence of a lack thereof. We don't know if they could or couldn't find a way. Maybe the juiced up civilians was the only way they could make the trial fair. Maybe they DID use level 1 civvies, but found that ONE mistake (misfired Judgment, etc, etc,) resulted in an instantaneous failure for the entire league. Admittedly this is just a hypothetical, but you get the idea. You're assuming laziness where the evidence doesn't exist.

Because you're comparing early game to end-game. If you're going to compare two things, at least make the comparison relevant. Compare the rock-throwing civvie to any other end-game mob. Or, rather, what I'm trying to get you to do is recognize that the end-game content isn't always going to be internally consistent BECAUSE it's end-game. It's going to be Level 54 because all trials are level 54.


And I apologize if I made you feel that way. I openly recognize and acknowledge the disconnect. It's one of the unfortunate caveats of MMOs. And it's present in -every- MMO to some extent.

And it sounds like what bugs you is the end-game requiring a group effort, which you feel somehow diminishes the power you've earned, mechanics-wise, am I right? Well, I don't know what to say to that. The problem is that, until the DA content comes to Live, there's no way to get an acknowledgement right now. But at least in the DA content there IS an acknowledgement.

...Do you know what mechanical/narrative consistency means? This whole paragraph is gibberish, so I'm going to assume you don't. Of course I'm comparing early game to end game. That's the whole point. Mechanically speaking, our characters have progressed leaps and bounds since early game. Narratively speaking, they haven't progressed at all. That is the source of the disconnect. How on Earth could you possibly think that's not relevant? The whole point is that a rock-throwing citizen should not be an end-game mob. That just doesn't work with the narrative. They need to be something other than a rock-throwing citizen, even if they have identical mechanics.

And what the Hell makes you think that end-game mechanics can't be consistent with the narrative? That doesn't even make sense! Do you know what these words mean? All it means is that what happens in the game's story and what happens in the game's gameplay are roughly the same. Which means when, in story, I can punch out a cybertank and civilians are no longer a threat to me, in gameplay I can also punch out a cybertank and civilians are no longer a threat to me, and vice versa. It is trivially easy to write end-game content that is consistent with the story. People do it all the damn time.

Well, then your only option is to ignore and not play that content, because it's obvious that it's not going to change to what you'd like. And I think at this point I'm done with the discussion, because this debate is going in circles.

No, it isn't. It is driven by a lead developer who just doesn't seem to care about a consistent narrative. It's driven by conflicting priorities. The end-game team's priority is clearly the mechanics, the story is just slapped on as an afterthought. In most other places the enemies manage to level up with you, to present a credible threat. A level 5 enemy has a handgun he bought from some guy in a back alley. A level 20 enemy has a machine gun he bought from a weapon-smuggling cartel. A level 50 enemy has a super-advanced high-tech high-powered rifle with armor piercing rounds that was specifically designed by the world's top weapon designers to take down people with super powers. This is how enemy progression works within the level system. If a Malta guy pulled out a handgun he bought in a back alley, I would consider it inconsistent.

The people of Praetoria are idiots, and people seem to keep forgetting that it's a co-op trial.

You could out-heal it, therefore it's not a one-shot kill. I don't consider the pulse particularly cheap. It was predictable and consistent, and again, you could out-heal it.


Then what is it that he has that people were complaining about being ganked by as they were leaving the hospital?
Simple. Switch them to IDF, add non-combat civilians. The civilians are brainwashed into seeing our attacks on the IDF as atrocious war crimes. Therefore, we have to avoid attacking the IDF until we can take out the telepaths so the civilians can see that we're just acting in self-defense.

Nope, my other option is to complain about it on the forums until the people arguing in favor of it are forced to resort to "if you don't like it don't play, I'm done with this thread."

What does co-op have to do with anything?

Likely his teleport MA attacks. He uses (to my knowledge), Dragon's Tail and Crane Kick, easily dealing several thousand points of damage.

Normally I would have been done, but then you had to come and say this. I mean really, do you WANT people to throw their hands up in disgust and walk away? Because it doesn't actually prove you right or anything. It just means they can't actually discuss anything with you.

There's Dark Astoria.

But Eva apparently thinks that's full of "holes" and "inconsistencies" as well.

I'll just sum up the whole thread:

There's not going to be content that will satisfy everyone's wants or needs, mechanically or narratively. But what exists obviously satisfies enough people that Devs continue to make it. And it's unlikely that trend will end.

And I would get up and walk away. Moreover, this game has no DM, it has no set group of players I have to kowtow to and I get to choose what I do, when I do it and why I do it. You're arguing against easily the game's greatest strength - that we're able to make our own characters that guest-star in someone else's campaign setting.

City of Heroes is not D&D in more than just plot and settings. The game "City of Heroes" is not D&D, does not play like D&D and is not beholden to D&D traditions.

Should I try to compromise, I might as well log out and go home. This game is worthless - and I mean that in all seriousness - if I can't play my own characters in it. If I wanted to play whatever the setting dictated I should play, there are better games out there for it. My collection of Steam games is large enough to provide a wide variety of character types to choose from, taking part in games designed to fit them precisely.

I'm not interested in "compromising" my vision and "bending my knee" to anyone else's concept. It's my way or the highway, and the simple fact is that up to a couple of years ago, the game was much more accepting of this, especially on the hero side. City of Heroes' greatest strength is that it promotes imagination and creativity, rather than forcing you into a rigid narrative like every other MMO does.

No, it won't. "Slow and steady" counts in years, and that's not acceptable. Not even close. And that has nothing to do with RP. Time sinks of this magnitude are simply not acceptable.

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 is like the old "If you don't like it, then quit!" arguments of 2004 and 2005. They're a good way to shut up your opposition in a forum argument, but they're very BAD at actually keeping the game afloat. Yes, our solution is to just not run this Trial. Surprise! That's exactly what people are doing, leaving the development team's time, effort and investment worthless and pointless. "Just don't run it!" is not a solution, and I can bet you dollars to doughnuts that most of the people who say this wouldn't be that happy if we actually took their advise. Because then we'll be wondering why nobody runs this content.

The fact that villains don't care about the public opinion of Praetoria. Leaving Praetorian Earth for the Rogue Isles has an explanation to the effect of "Who cares about saving Praetoria and stopping the war? You can build your own power base, gather an army of minions, and when Cole finally does come, you'll beat him down, too!" The Praetorian iTrials are hero content that villains are allowed to participate in with the same old excuse of "greater threat." It comes off as feeling like villains are working a nine-to-five as heroes so that they can afford the opportunity to be actual villains.

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.

Well, considering there's more than enough people (myself included) who will run the content? I don't think the loss of the people in this thread who state they hate it will make any significant impact.

...Does the fact that if the villains do nothing and let Cole overrrun Primal Earth they'll either be enslaved or just outright killed ever register? At all? Or the villains actually not care enough about their own well-being?

This thread is not the only place I've seen this sentiment given. I've seen it given all over the forums and, furthermore, it's an excuse to not try and make better content because... Really, who cares? If people don't like it, they won't play it. Remeber PvP? Yeah, we didn't play it.

But again - that's the same mentality given to people unhappy with City of Heroes back in 2004 and 2005, and the subscriber numbers tanked, and tanked hard. I'm not saying the two are necessarily related, but I AM saying that you're not a member of such an overwhelming majority as you think, and Trial participation is not such a static guarantee.

A couple of points:

First of all, no, not all villains care enough about the world. A number of mine seek to destroy it anyway, and a number of others can simply pick up and leave if they so fancied. Moreover, the departure blurb talks about building up a power base and challenging Tyrant, not begging heroes for help.

Secondly, just how many times are villains going to be asked to do hero work "for their own good?" They do that against the Rikti, they do that against Romulus, they do that against the Coming Storm, they do that against Praetorian Earth and now they're doing that against Mot. When are villains going to be allowed to do villain stuff IN NEW CONTENT? Specifically, when are they going to be allowed to be villains in end game content against cosmic threats?

Do you realise what the game is saying? "You're allowed to be evil when you're playing in the playpen, but when the real threat comes, you have to be a hero because otherwise you'll die." It's the same story five times over and it's getting old, to say nothing of demeaning. At this point, I'd say just let Tyrant invade and we'll worry about it late. It might make for a more interesting story.

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.

No. Stop whining.

If you want to bring up AT modifiers, then that would contradict being power growth since some AT's have a decrease in modifiers as they level. In fact, most do in some form. AT modifiers cannot be called anything more than specialization, unless you count negative growth as "power growth". From the context of this discussion, I assume you don't.

Power growth by definition of having more powers assumes that players have taken those powers. Anyone has seen enough characters with horrible power choices to know that higher level charcter =/= stronger character. This doubly goes with the enhancement system, which is the game's equipment engine. Later powers are also not necessarily "better" than the previous powers (See DPAT and situational usefulness). This also doesn't deal with performance at those levels, which can be horribly skewed to situations or in Blaster's case just downright useless to get more and more and more attacks. In these cases, the AT is objectively becoming weaker despite having more powers.

Strength by proxy means the proxies are powerful, not the character. Making fire into a sword shape instead of just shooting it from your hands doesn't suddenly mean that you've become bullet proof. Likewise, level shifting doesn't encompass the entirety of scaling enemies. If the devs were to make a Level 50 Hellion, they certainly wouldn't just take the previous enemy and change his level value to 50.



So longbow aren't not the same as their lower level counterparts despite having no graphical change, sharing the same name and the same basic weaponry they started with at level 10? But, since the nullifier get a beanbag launcher, that means that the nullifier rifle that was used at level 10 that you are immune to are suddenly better because of the beanbag launcher. If you want to say that because I said level 1 longbow (in actually the staple longbow start at 10 and 20) has the entire case for the idea being incorrect, that is just nitpicking.

Everyone knows that enemies get more abilities as they level up, but the presence of an incendiary grenade doesn't mean you are fighting completely different longbow. It is still the same longbow with a new toy. For this, Longbow are not representing a gradual power progression that somehow grants immunity to previous encounters, but representing relative power stasis where the new tricks of villains they fight are dealt with by having new tricks of their own. Their own skills with the weapons don't reflect growth, but refinement, just like the superpowered enemies they face.

For this, the additional enemies that are tied in with any group that has relative power stasis do not break this mode of stasis. The 5th Column throwing out werewolfs and mechs doesn't change that the grunts are still using the same weapons, and ergo imply stasis. The additional strength of the new enemies do not reflect an inexplicable ascent to being untouchable, but an easily trackable expansion via power diversity. Now, there is a relationship between power growth and power diversity in the sense that being able to do more things and being more refined at doing them equates more power, but nonetheless this doesn't provide a means to grant immunity to previous weapons.


Facts say nothing. It is only through personal interpretation that we can reason about them. Now, whether or not an opinion can be correct or incorrect depends heavily on the way in which it is handled and the realm in which it is presented. If someone says "this is my opinion of things and nothing more", then this cannot be incorrect due to evidence because it is merely the statement about the position that someone holds, and thus is self evident due to that someone holding it and saying so. Someone stating an opinion can be incorrect if they are not stating their own opinion or lying about it, but this is largely inconsequential to the world since people act about the opinions that they do hold, and not the ones they don't.

A person's opinion being correct or incorrect only matters when it is not being stated as an opinion, or not operated on as an opinion. When it is being states as fact is when it becomes subject to evidence and evaluation by other parties. Case in point, the reason why your interpretation of the story is being debated at all isn't because you hold such an interpretation, but because you are both behaving as if it is not an interpretation and you are also not stating it as an interpretation.






Since I have been hard wired to avoid double posts from previous forums, I'll just add this second section to it.

According to alternate interpretations to the "inexplicable growth to immunity" view, the first example you provided above, however factual, is completely meaningless to the consistency of the game. You might as well say the game is inconsistent because roses are red, and violets are purple.

As for the second statement, it is false. The "narrative" of the game is quite abstract, since I haven't seen an explicit statement that says "A Citizen throwing a Malotov Cocktail at a Bone Daddy should not be able to fend off or defeat a Bone Daddy". I have seen the game imply quite the opposite with an entire power origin: Natural. According to Natural Power origins, there are superheroes who are "super" only in the sense that they have trained hard enough and worked out enough to become a superhero, fighting with swords, guns, and smoke. Not only does this imply that every citizen in the game could go Green Arrow on the bad guys, but it means that every citizen is being lazy and/or suffering from a mentality that has prevented them from doing this. Nothing more, since as we've seen from natural heroes, all it really does take to take down a Bone Daddy is to chuck a big enough rock at them.

Stating that natural heroes are unnatural is an internal contradiction to the very definition of natural heroes, so such a statement cannot be true.

You know, you said that the consistency of this game was quantifiable. So, what quantity is it measured in? Is it Joules? Kilograms? Amperes? Slugs? Surely the consistency you are referring to as quantifiable isn't the statistics definition where you are measuring the already numerical outputs and measuring the deviation of these numerical outputs, because that isn't a quantity. That is a scale, relative to each phenomena in an experiment that requires a preconceived hypothesis to be tested against to have any real value to an end.

The Natural origin is also supposed to cover aliens (like Superman or Martian Manhunter) who aren't special by the definitions of their own species, but who are akin to demigods compared to humans. When these characters take on giant mecha and survive (and even win!) we shouldn't be too surprised since they are, well, akin to demigods on Earth. The fact that the "Natural" origin in CoX is overly (and uselessly) broad and covers characters who are merely highly trained humans should not blind us to the fact that not every character is a superhero just because they share origin space with those who truly are.

When you say, "Hey civilians should be able to fend off a Bone Daddy since my Natural origin, acrobatic, martial artist Robin clone can!" you aren't really demonstrating the inherent logic of an ordinary human's ability to take on a supernaturally empowered gang Boss, but rather demonstrating the inherent illogic of a highly trained human's ability to do so. And before you bother to point out that the comics allow this sort of thing to happen all the time, I would point out that such cases are handled by having the hero defeat the overpowering foe with clever tactical stunts that CoX does not permit, or by extricating the hero with poor writing. Neither of which help CoX justify the notion of ordinary (including highly trained) humans going toe-to-toe with giant mecha (or Bone Daddies) in contests of delivering/withstanding direct damage.

Your ability to pretend the gameplay outputs results different from the results it actually delivers is irrelevant to the discussion. Stop bringing it up.

Actually, it does. Citizens in Atlas Park fall under attack from low-level Skulls and Hellions all the time and are unable to defend themselves, requiring your assistance. This is often something which is made explicitly clear in mission text wherein you are called upon to go save them. Even if a citizen with a rock could stand a chance against the Bone Daddy in narrative, they would not win without contest.

The game mechanics are inconsistent with the narrative because the citizen is overwhelmingly more powerful than the Bone Daddy in game mechanics, but not in narrative. Potential doesn't matter, because that Bone Daddy could also potentially train up to level 50 and become a Natural Origin super in the style of Batman or the Joker. But at the moment you fight him at Perez Park, he hasn't, and at the moment you fight the rock-throwing citizen, they haven't, and the fact that the citizen could represent a narrative threat consistent with their mechanical threat someday is irrelevant to the discussion we're having.

I'll rephrase this again just to make sure you get it: It doesn't matter that a rock-throwing citizen could be Green Arrow, because they aren't Green Arrow.

And those rock-throwing citizens have not trained to that level, nor do they have swords, guns, or smoke, so you have no point.