*spoilers* The Freedom Phalanx are incompetent!

Good call.

The lack of exposition is the most glaring flaw in the SSAs for sure. Had there been more exposition, it may have cured any number of the other problems.

My Honest bet is that GW would come down hard on Mako and Scorpion, her existence is tied to Arachnos so she has a vested interest it not letting it fall apart, and she has enough power to lay down the law in a major way before things fell apart to much, and I would imagine she would take no guff from anyone like Recluse sort of does, Mako and BS start squabbling she Soul Storms both of them and makes it clear that she won't tolerate childish behavior and the next one to open their mouth gets Soul Stormed permanently.

I don't know if anyone feels the same way, but this thread has helped me condense a lot of my runny thoughts into single, brief sentences. This is one of them.

For years I've been trying to point to exactly this problem, and the SSAs aren't the first piece of problematic content, they're just the most obvious ones. People occasionally tell me that they don't like large missions, that they don't like long story arcs and so forth, but... That's just what it takes to have at least some semblance of build-up. I'm not even talking about a three-act structure (which the SSAs don't have). I'm just talking about something as simple as juxtaposition.

When the story is all action and drama all the time, then it dulls our senses and robs the action and drama of their impact. Like addicts developing immunity, we're simply no longer phased by the story tripping over its own feet in a mad dash to get all the climaxes out of the way like its husband just called that he's coming home early tonight and it's eager to finish and kick us out the back door in our undies. You need to have a story which hits fast points and slow points intermittently, because the big action set-pieces and dramatic reveals are that much more impactful when we have something to compare them to.

I hate to do this to whoever writing these stories, but the breakneck pace and small number of missions is starting to make the game's storytelling feel a lot like a Michael Bay movie - all explosions all the time, with characters we're supposed to care about because they have a film crew following them around just off-screen. You can't ramp up if you start at full throttle. There's nowhere left to go but into total absurdity or even outright parody, and the game strays boldly into both without actually meaning to far too often.

My first reaction to the SSAs was "They're nice, but three missions are not worth $10." And they're not, that's the basic fact. Story development is REALLY falling into the WW2 German War Industry trap of wasting SO much resources on every single unit that they never make enough of anything, whereas their competitors simply churn out inordinate amounts of much cheaper, much more plentiful stuff and bum-rush them out of the scene.

At some point, the mission designers need to stop think about what they're doing. Is it really worth it to have a custom map, custom enemies, custom cutscenes, custom scripting and custom dialogue in EVERY SINGLE MISSION? Is it worth it, really, if that means we don't get more than three missions per few months? Once upon a time Paragon Studios explained that they can't make every mission custom. It was simply not feasible if they wanted to provide a meaningful level of extra content. That's why they used pre-fabricated semi-random tilesets. That's why they had so many missions be essentially "Defeat such-and-such and his guards." And I bought it. I understood what it took to give us a decent amount of content, and I was OK with it.

Since 2004, I've been asking the same question: What's wrong with giving a whole ton of very basic missions with a very simple plot? A Family snitch has come forward, but the Family want him dead. Go rescue him. Zombies dragged some poor woman's kid in the sewers. Go get him back. The Council is developing a new weapon of mass destruction. Go stop them. Nemesis may have started using magic. Go find out what that's about. I can put together 10 of these in my lunch break, because there isn't all that much that needs to be done. Pick a map, pick an enemy group, put in an objective or two, then spend five minutes to think up a basic story behind it and you're done.

Ever since the Architect came out, storytelling went to hell in a handbasket. I don't know if it's the mission design team trying to outdo the players (bad idea, there are thousands of us), I don't know if Paragon Studios actually hired players who made Architect arcs (and would make the same mistakes in regular content as they did in their fan work) or what, but this insane complexity in mission design has to stop, or at least be toned down. I didn't buy this game to watch a movie. I was under the impression that I bought a sandbox RPG, presumably one where I'm supposed to make at least part of my own fun. I don't need to be led by the nose constantly, and hurried through half-baked story arcs because the mission designers took so long populating a map with fires that they didn't have time to make more missions.

The SSAs suffer for their unnecessary complexity, and they suffer greatly. They almost completely shun traditional methods of storytelling, like clues and briefings, in order to abuse every "new" system to cram as much unnecessary detail into every event that I get tired just trying to get through a mission. Give your story some elbow room, and maybe we won't have to trip over each other trying to tell the other 3/4 you had to cut!

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.

That's the story I want to play.

Based on what Positron has hinted it possible.

I think the arc (hero side) sets up for the passing of the torch. Freedom Phalanx doesn't look like will hold up for the long haul whether you want to call it incompetence, or genuine human mistakes.

You know what? This statement alone hits the problem square on the head.

In my previous post I said that there's a lot of reference to the novels, and there were probably things that are going on in the Dev's (and Aeon, the storyteller in this case I believe) minds that aren't readily apparent to us players in the SSA's. They're only 3 missions long each, and they're trying to tell a complex story in a VERY short ammount of time.

A lot of the story here is based off the two novels that were made about the game. There's elements of character I had drawn conclusions from because I knew them from before. Thinking back, I do recall explaining stuff to my SG as I ran it with them (I read the mission text and stuff 'cause my wife and a couple others in the SG like when I 'do the voices' for TF's and stuff so they can all hear the story). By virtue of that, I'm probably more inclined to try and understand and/or forgive why the characters took the actions/choices they did.

However, this is another grave error in this mission arc, and a big oversight in the game itself. Any other writing errors for this aside, folks shouldn't have to do "homework" to get that depth from a story being told. In that respect (and I'd have to play it over again with that in mind, ignoring all the lore I know, to be sure) the SSA's fail because, on their own merit they don't give you time or do things to make you care about the characters. It works better (I think) if you go in giving a damn and understand them a bit to begin with.

There's lore and stories out there for folks to get aquanted with them, but not really in-game, and since that's where the players are, it REALLY needs to be built into the game itself, not in a couple of old novels that you won't find in most bookstores nowadays, assuming you know they even exist to look for them.

They've started incorporating them in game as more than standees to dispence Task Forces, like with Manticore and the shining stars, but that's just a tiny start, and far too little, far too late for this set of SSA's.



**the next paragraph contains tip mission spoilers- if you don't want to read them go to the closing paragraph- Thank you!**

Though as an aside, I hope if they do incorporate them more into the game, they write them well... Most of the side hero and rogues gallery folks (like Flambeaux, Doc Quantum, Ms. Thistle, etc) should all probably be locked away and have the key thrown away if you follow their exploits in the tip missions as you level. They all undergo radically alignment shifts or just do really dumb things. I understand they're also kind of representative of the Hero/Vigilante/Rogue/Villain system, but still... they're really messed up based on their stories as you level through the tip system. There really does need to be more stable characters throughout the game as we level, hero and villain alike. To this day, I still can't buy FrostFire becoming a hero (like in the "Ms. Thistle's Plea" top level Hero Alignment Mission) or worse, that he's going to became a prominent player, and even premire savior in the future of the game (like in the "My Other Selves" top level Villain Morality mission).

**end spoilers**



For all my personal beefs with Arachnos, they're villains I can see as villains worthy of the name. We need heroes that can do the same. That's one of the main reasons I've wanted to see Hero Patron arcs. We learn so much about the villains in theirs, and so there's more connection to them from players... in more than just powers the players can choose from.

Wouldn't surprise me if things don't get shaken up on the Rogue Isles. They lost ground in Mercy, and with Statesman gone, I'm willing to bet The Well is going to lose interest in Recluse... which would be... interesting.

I feel this way too, more than anything else. There's a lot of complex emotions and plots being laid out in 3 mission installments doled out in 7 chapters, that is supposed to take place over the course of a character's carreer (since for all intents and purposes levels=time in the game). I think we are supposed to have formed attachments, or at least assume we have over this span of time, but for players playing them one after the other and scrutinizing the whole as a single linear arc, I can see how folks would see it as less than the sum of its parts.

I agree with you. It needed more time and inventment into forming the relationships with the player nescesary to give the proper... gravitas... to the story they wanted it to have.

I wonder how boring that'd be, how loud people will whine they can't skip over cutscenes to get to their farmed rewards, how annoyed people will get that dialog scrolls too fast between NPCs and how many threads will be made explaining how much of this a waste because people just speed run it anyway.

A more likely solution would be weekly dev publications that do this *outside* of the game so that they may leave the meat of the game (combat...characters can't DO anything else in the game but take action. They cannot negotiate, find clues, crack codes, track suspects, build solutions, etc. because STILL people will complain "My character wouldn't negotiate", "My character can't talk", "My character doesn't build technology") *inside* of the game.

Exposition is lovely...when you don't have 7 other people breathing down your neck because they've done the arc 15 times already. Your solution seems to fail to take that into account.

On the contrary, I personally would be thrilled to have prose stories that acted as bookends to each chapter of the SSA. I think that would be a fine way to expand the story and tell the parts of it that aren't conducive to scripting in a computer game.

I'm not requiring that every chapter be two hours to play through, either. In fact, if they were progressing weekly instead of monthly then they wouldn't need to be any longer than they already are, and you'd still get four times the story, at least by my math.

Oh, and if there's a full connect to mission designers to mission writers and map makers, I'll agree. I remember when Back Alley Brawler, the Dev, used to say things like "If you figure out a way I can fix the math behind a power with my animations, I'm all ears" (this is a paraphrase, his original response was far wittier). Different departments have different designers, managers, and goals. That sometimes, unfortunately, affects the goals and designs of other departments. Ol' Doc Aeon may not have had a choice about how many missions/chapters he could fit the story in, and is doing the best he can. Maybe it's in response to how many custom maps the 'map design' dpt. can make, maybe it's something different altogether. For all I know, someone decided that "player's brains can only handle 3 missions of story... go!" and that's the metric. If it's about maps, do some more with non-specific maps and include it in the overall lore, and not just the SSA's. if it's about player's brains... they need to be sacked.

I'm at least inclined to assume the former.

I've noticed an emerging tendency for the writing to refer to matters not previously discussed in-game. If we're to believe that there's a story being told here through the actions of the player/character, then at some point every one of them, new or old, needs to have been given the opportunity to access the parts of the story beforehand that will serve as the foundation for later parts of the story, if those parts become pertinent. Information from the novels or even from the boards...not everyone's going to know about that stuff, and I don't think it's a good idea to leave too many people in the dark.

As a specific example, Prometheus casually mentions that, surely, by now I must know that Statesman is an Incarnate of Zeus, and Recluse is an Incarnate of Tartarus.

Well yeah. I knew that. I read it in the second novel. But I don't think my characters ever actually heard that anywhere in-game before.

Similarly, the business about the Well showed up a little quickly. For such a pertinent plot device, and to tie it so closely to our characters, I don't think it got as much allusion and reference leading up to the endgame as it should have been given. The player was never made to ask 'what does make super powers possible?' except possibly during the Origins of Power stuff (which I've already stated could have been worked on a bit more carefully.) Again, I had some idea what woke super powers back up in the world, because I read the first novel. But my characters didn't.

I think the idea of Statesman embodying Zeus and Recluse being Tartarus is mentioned in one of the load screen help chats... but yeah, that's probably it. It might be mentioned in one of the Oroborous stories, but I can't readily say for sure. and I actually care. I can't imagine what folks who don't, think.

Only in-game has The Well been referenced to being, in any way, conscious. I don't think at its inception (recalling everything I remember Jack teasing at, and anyone else before or after that mentioning) implied that The Well was sentient. If I had to guess, it was a 'later' development that they're now using Prometheus to explain. However, Prometheus being a Titan that was overthrown by 'the gods' like Zeus and Tartarus, they at least did their homework about Greek myth to try and change it, which might make it palatable depending on how it plays out.

All that aside, your point still stands. Outside of a possible load screen tip and something that might be mentioned in an Oroborous arc, how are we to understand Stateman and Recluse's ties to ancient myth? That's the connection I was mentioning and defending earlier, but have since decided is the core issue. If someone who is loyal to the game and has done everything they can in it still feels clueless without needing to turn to a dubiously available external source they may or may not even be aware of, then there's a grave error being made.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind using even out-of-game sources, like the history of Paragon City on the official site. Yeah, it's not technically in-game, but it could easily be. And even if it's not, it's still an official resource available on the official site, and it's not too much to read through. But having to read through a whole series of books or comic books written by people only loosely affiliated with the game's actual canon just to get the emotional context of what's going on seems like really bad writing.

Basically, if you have a reason to believe your viewers might not have a firm grasp on the complexities of your story because they haven't read the source of your inspiration, then you HAVE to include that into the story. If you can't manage to do all that in three missions, then make more than three missions. If you can't afford to make custom maps for more than three missions, then... Don't make custom maps for more than three missions! Hell, don't make custom maps for more than one, frankly. If you can't afford to make more than three missions so complex and heavy on scripting, then don't. It's not necessary that every missions be fiendishly complex or have some sort of gimmick.

It makes me feel sorry to say this, but the SSAs honestly come off a lot like The Last Airbender movie. They're almost all exposition trying to explain why things are happening and why we should care. Every character exists solely to deliver narrative and move the plot forward, every scene feels rushed, plot points are brought up and immediately resolved. And all of this because the movie tries to condense the entire first season of a show - 26 30-minute episodes - into a 90 minute movie while still hitting all the major points, having the full body of plot and replicating all the characters while stating their personalities and motivations in plain explanation.

The result is a hot mess that an uneducated viewer would be hopelessly lost in, and one familiar with the source material will be left to backtrack and piece together why that was a good idea in the first place. You can't bring up plot points in the same scene where they become relevant. You need to establish these things. Obviously, establishing "these things" take screen time, and the SSAs have precious little of that. You can't just tell me a person is sad, angry or stricken with grief, ESPECIALLY if I don't actually see this person anywhere in the story which is telling me this. You need to give me some context, establish this person's emotions, give them screen time to develop. The SSAs feel like they're trying to retell a novel in the space of a newspaper ad.

Actually, this is the "we need more bio space" problem all over again. Verbose people like myself end up with longwinded stories for their characters spanning many different chapters, involving many other characters and many complex turns of events. Condensing this down to 1024 symbols is impossible if you try to keep every plot point in, lest you end up with a bullet list of "This happened, then this happened, then this happened..." like I'm reading the Dr. Quaterfield TF Souvenir. The only way to have some semblance of style in that description is to leave out the information that can't fit so there's room to say actually talk about the things you left in.

The SSAs really do feel like someone tried to cram a full 15-mission story arc into each 3-mission SSA and still tried to keep all the plot points in, so we spend most of our time having the plot and people's characters explained to us via exposition, or at best depicted by VERY brief character moments. I would gladly pay for longer story arcs that had room to actually tell a story, even if they don't have custom lava in all of them.

Oh, yeah, those... Part of the reason the Tip mission sigs come off as such a mess is because someone had the brilliant idea of putting a linear story in what is an inherently non-linear system of progression. I'm told that if you had all the Tip missions for all four alignments and all level ranges laid out before you, you could chart the path of redemption or folly of each of the characters presented. I buy that as a though exercise, but that's not how it plays out in-game.

For one, these characters are never established. They're just some random people who show up to stop or help a bank robbery, and yet all of a sudden I'm supposed to care about them? O noes! Miss Shock is convinced that Mangle isn't evil, just misunderstood! Who the **** is Miss Shock? Have I seen her before? And who's Mangle? That one guy I broke out of jail in that one Mayhem mission I no longer remember doing? And I'm supposed to care about his redemption based on the words of someone that feels like I'm meeting for the first place? Or... Did I meet her before? Wasn't she the one that one villain of mine stole his cape that he never wore from?

The Tip mission characters feel like I joke I don't get because I's based on a reference I don't understand. These characters are treated like they're supposed to be at least somewhat famous, like we're supposed to know about them, but they're never established and they change so rapidly I can never remember if they're supposed to be heroes or villains in any particular tip. At one point, I thought I'd gotten used to Doc Quantum being a bad guy, since he shows up in so many missions. Then I ran a Mayhem mission with a villain of mine and Doc Quantum showed up to stop me. Huh? Is he a hero in this? Is that before he turned villain or... What the hell is going on?

I agree with your assertion wholeheartedly - we need a stable, static background against which we can develop our own identity. We need villains we can know, and we need heroes we can admire. We NEED this persistent, consistent world to give context to the stories told in it. When nothing is true and everything is permitted, then there's nothing to get invested into in the actual world. There's nothing to care about. I wanted my stories to be about my characters, yes. But I didn't want this to happen at the expense of robbing the world of its own story.

You make a good point. Introducing these characters to players and actually involving them in the world they inhabit in a way that would have them cross paths with us often would be a good way to give them characterisation. Lord Recluse is actually a good example of doing this without actually having the character show up in person. You don't meet the man until damn near the end of the game, but his presence is almost palpable all throughout the game nonetheless. You have people talk about him, you have people carry out his orders, you can see the results of his style of leadership. You get a sense of WHAT he is as a person. I just wish we could get more of an insight into WHO he is as a person, too, but that's still a good start.

The Phalanx, by contrast, don't have even that. The sum total of their characterisation up until the upper 40s is "they exist." The one run-in I've had with Miss Liberty where she isn't regurgitating form letter trainer dialogue made her sound like a pleasant, cheerful, nice person, though maybe that's just me being quick to judge. But that's it. I'm not sure I've heard the Back Alley Brawler utter a single word, and most of the old signature TFs suffer from the pre-Launch problem of impersonal writing, so they don't really send their personalities across with their mission briefings. Like every other Launch contact, they're an extension of the Mission Terminal structure Cryptic were originally going to go with.

In short, I have no reason to care about these people, because I don't know them. Even if we ignore that the only opportunities to get to know them come in the form of forced teaming, they aren't very good, either.

Manticore showing up to "help" the Shining Stars is an obvious exception, of course, as that does involve him in the story, but it involves him in a really disheartening way. It shows him to be an *******, a control freak AND it shows up the player in the worst possible way. Aside from that one off-hand conversation with Ms. Liberty, this is our first introduction to the Phalanx, and it's in the form of a jackass who sends armed thugs to shoot at people as a "test." And then he's smug about it. AND THEN we're supposed to feel honoured to have been graced with his presence and money. I know it's supposed to be an honour, but it comes off like King Jaffe Joffer offering Cleo McDowell money in return for the honour of his daughter in Coming to America. It's more insulting and patronising than it is endearing.

You know what I'd love to see? An open discussion with the Statesman on broad subject philosophy. Or maybe a conversation with Positron on technology's effects on mankind. Or maybe a basic chat with Synapse on the finer points of hitting on hot chicks. Anything which shows me what these people's dreams and aspirations are, anything which shows me what they think about when they're not fighting crime, anything which shows me the person behind the mask. Even if the person behind the mask is the same as the mask 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.

As I heard it, he was an Architect-using player before he was hired into Paragon Studios. As such, I'm sure he's more than capable of telling a good stories without needing custom resources to be manufactured for him. So management says they can only spare the resources to customise three maps. OK, roll with it, use the three maps in question, then add three more missions that use generic maps and write your needlessly complex scripts into those.

Look at it this way - you don't need EVERY mission to be special. When everything is highly-complex climax, then those climaxes start to lose their specialness.

I disagree. Not with our heroes and villains being the big stars, not at all, but I disagree that we had to make the signature characters look bad in order to make our characters look good. It comes off as incredibly petty, and it makes ME feel petty by association. It also nullifies the achievement to a great extent. It feels like a pity victory that I earned not because I was worthy, but because everyone else who was more worthy just didn't show up to the competition.

Much like there's no honour in fighting level 1 Hellions when you're level 50, so there's no honour in surpassing people who are not worth looking up to. If these guys are not built up to be worth my respect and admiration, then the act of surpassing them has no meaning. It is an empty gesture of pandering to my most basic emotions, and it's really just missing the point.

I never hated the Phalanx. I admired them BECAUSE they deserved their position by right. I wanted to become what they represented, myself. To me, dragging your idol through the mud so he sucks like you do is the exact antithesis of having an idol to begin with.

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.

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 want to skip over cutscenes to get to more stuff to kill. If I wanted to watch a movie I'd watch a movie.
Yeah. It often does. Nothing plot-crucial should ever be contained entirely in NPC dialogue. If they say something important, they can drop a clue with a recap in case someone missed their dialogue.

Who cares? If there aren't a million cutscenes and overly complicated scripting it doesn't interfere with speed running in any way.

So run the arc solo or with someone who also wants to take the time to read the story. You only need to run it for the story once. Then you can go back to speedrunning with your friends.

Ding ding ding!!!! We have a winner!!!!

For that matter, you don't need a needlessly complex script for every encounter either. Whatever happened to the bad guy gloating about his evil plan while you fight him, then swearing vengeance as he drops? Pull the blueprints to his death ray off his corpse, describe it in a clue, get on with the mission.

At least with the Dark Astoria arcs, I have hope that they've figured out how to strike the right balance of exposition and action, scripting and straightforward fights, special maps and reskinned offices. Then again, the 1-20 Preatorian content also gets it right, so I fear the sparing use of special shinies may be due strictly to time constraints and if they could they'd make every arc a jumble of complex scripting, backtracking, and walls of text.

This. There was nothing wrong with the old way of handling missions. I have nothing against adding to it, but replacing clues, briefings and basic storytelling with all the new-fangled clutter which doesn't do a much better job but gets in the way of the action is not adding to it.

As for a more thorough reply:

I've always felt that City of Heroes should be able to work on two separate levels - story playthrough and just killing stuff. That is to say, the game should accommodate a player who just wants to kill stuff and doesn't care about the plot by letting that player go ahead and do that without constantly interrupting the action. The game should also provide plenty of story to go along with the action so that a player who actually is interested in the story can pause for a moment and explore it.

Briefings, debriefings and clues are an excellent device for delivering exactly the kind of narrative that's conducive to being enjoyed by those who care and skipped by those who don't. Unlike captions and NPC dialogue, clues and briefings can be read at the player's leisure, so a player who doesn't read fast enough (like me) can delay reading until there's enoigh time to get into it. Unlike cutscenes and dialogue trees, a player doesn't need to read a single world from clues and briefings, aside from the ones coloured orange to indicate a timer or another catch, so a player who doesn't care or already knows this stuff can skip it.

The reason I say this is because arcs ARE enjoyed on both levels. When an arc first comes up and no-one has played it, people who care about the story will run it for the story. It is vital that on this first paly-through, the arc delivers a solid enough story to engage, inspire and impress. That's the story play-through. However, when the arc ages and people run it multiple times over, the "spark" in the story wears off, and even I'm tempted to just just click the text boxes close, because I already know this stuff. I like the action, I like the enemies, and I just want to keep moving forward and punching dudes in the face. That's the "just kill stuff" bit.

City of Heroes is not a movie nor a comic book. It is a game, and one based on replayability, too. Its storytelling needs to be paced like a game's story. If it's not, then said story grows really old really fast. People often tell me that I think too hard and I should lighten up, but what choice do I have? When I run the same damn story for the fifteenth time, how can I NOT over-analyse it? How can I not but see all the minor, niggling flaws? And I'm not the only one replaying past content. The game is DESIGNED around it. Content should be built, then, with that expectation in mind.

Ask not what people will think of your story the first time they play it. Ask what they'll think the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth time. Because that's the kind of game you've made.

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.

Too long didn't read, cliff notes?