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I brought this point up to Protean, in person, at the Player Summit, and made an especially strong pitch for including LOTS MORE OF THIS STUFF in the game! Protean said that *HE* was the one who inserted that stuff into the resolution of the mission ... primarily as a Test Of Concept as to whether or not it would work (and if anyone would notice). He seemed very pleased to hear me raving in favor of that one itty bitty little writing feature in that one arc ... but then explained that doing that sort of thing makes for a very definite increase in workload for story writing and mission programming, because now you're adding entire extra decision trees that wouldn't have otherwise been required, and on top of that you need to "cover more angles" of not outsmarting yourself as a writer so that everything stays logically consistent with the needs and direction of the plot. Bottom line ... it CAN be done, but it is a non-trivial increase in workload to do it, meaning it pretty much requires the Second Measures What Is to sign off on doing that because you need to budget schedule to cover the extra "cost" of including those alternate Origin story paths inside of missions. So yeah, it can be done ... but it's not a "freebie" effort to include it ... and there is ALWAYS a time crunch for developing stuff, so these sorts of "frills" tend to be the first to get cut, simply because they're "nice" rather than "necessary" for completing work.|
Originally Posted by FlashToo
Differing dialogue options, like in that one Praetorian mission that has you defusing the bombs, or the Origin Of Power arcs. The end result is the same, nobody's concept gets gimped by having the "wrong" origin for their powersets, and what origin someone has is still not shoved into the corner. If it's nothing but a question of writing, it shouldn't step on anyone's conceptual toes.
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So for those of us who APPROVE of letting Protean "go to town" on including alternate Origin Paths in mission objectives ... speak up, here in this thread, and maybe the Second Measures What Is will be more inclined to "allow" Protean to include more of these in both future and reworked/new content.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
I guess Claws and Sam can't think up anything in that scenario...or can't be bothered wasting their time with thinking...I personally think making origins have some effect as an interesting idea...but just that: an idea. Nothing is suppose to come of it but it'd be interesting to see what they could come up with.
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Heh, while I could definitely get into stuff like that myself, it still has its detractors.|
Originally Posted by Redlynne
I brought this point up to Protean, in person, at the Player Summit, and made an especially strong pitch for including LOTS MORE OF THIS STUFF in the game! Protean said that *HE* was the one who inserted that stuff into the resolution of the mission ... primarily as a Test Of Concept as to whether or not it would work (and if anyone would notice). He seemed very pleased to hear me raving in favor of that one itty bitty little writing feature in that one arc ... but then explained that doing that sort of thing makes for a very definite increase in workload for story writing and mission programming, because now you're adding entire extra decision trees that wouldn't have otherwise been required, and on top of that you need to "cover more angles" of not outsmarting yourself as a writer so that everything stays logically consistent with the needs and direction of the plot. Bottom line ... it CAN be done, but it is a non-trivial increase in workload to do it, meaning it pretty much requires the Second Measures What Is to sign off on doing that because you need to budget schedule to cover the extra "cost" of including those alternate Origin story paths inside of missions. So yeah, it can be done ... but it's not a "freebie" effort to include it ... and there is ALWAYS a time crunch for developing stuff, so these sorts of "frills" tend to be the first to get cut, simply because they're "nice" rather than "necessary" for completing work.
So for those of us who APPROVE of letting Protean "go to town" on including alternate Origin Paths in mission objectives ... speak up, here in this thread, and maybe the Second Measures What Is will be more inclined to "allow" Protean to include more of these in both future and reworked/new content. |
I'm betting Sam will pull out one of his specialty themed characters as an example why varied dialog would somehow ruin that character's immersion and Claws could make up a list of possible ways such dialog trees would fly in the face of some concepts.
For dialog, I wish it were possible to make things more complex to add more immersion to character exchanges. Something like a tag system, similar to [male/female], [origin], [supergroup] and so on (I think the dialog command is something like $origin or something...), but rather than calling on a specific predefined string, you can create a dialog when a certain string is present...so you could do something like [$origin;magic.(add text here); technology.(add text here); mutant.(add text here); etc.].
Not sure if that's even possible currently...but It would be even cooler if they added more tags like origin, archtype and stuff but more cosmetic. [$body], [$age], [$origin_type], [$appeal], [$acquaintance], the ability to set these by costume, and go about using these tags to specialize NPC dialog/dialog option choices.
Body- you could specify if you're human, alien, cyborg, robotic, demon, undead, spectral...frankly it doesn't matter how many tags there'd be as you can choose to write dialog for each option or none of them, this would only pertain to those who want specific replies or options for a specific body type. Ex: In Dr. Graves villain arc which asks for something to identify your villain with, it replies with feedback as if you were a living creature but no option if you're a robot or undead. The current option would be under body.human while other dialog would be under body.robotic or body.undead.
Age- more straight forward. Young, old, ancient, ageless and timeless. Young for ages 1-20yrs, old for 20-80yrs, ancient for 80-200 yrs, timeless for hundreds+ years and ageless for time travelers, robots, energy beings that simply don't age or where age doesn't matter or where their creation/existance is for that term only. I put the 'young' only up to 20 because anything older you probably don't need to bother with age differentiation. Ex: your contact wouldn't offer a beer to someone younger than 20, menders would speak to you differently if you were timeless, someone speaking of ancient legends may talk more as if you know this stuff if you're ancient yourself...
Origin_Type- not sure what this may be for yet. But probably for special case origins like trained naturals, magic sorcerers, science scientists and such. And if you're not these special cases, just like all the other tags, you simply put/keep your option an .none
Appeal- This is more of a fun tag. If you want your character to look, feel, appear and be approached a certain way, this tag is for those dialog options. Sexy, Mesmerizing, Grotesque, Smelly, Innocent, Unapproachable...I can see a lot of options to set a character as. Ex: if you make a very young (13) yr old girl character, it'd be icky to have Master Midnight hit on you...but that just might be your look...you might just be that sexy >_> or if you're a male character and you're just that hot (or androgynous) that Master Midnight hits on you anyway. On the other hand, you're a woman of the right age for MM but...well, you're not all that sexy at all...in fact, you may look downright disgusting with hanging flesh and what not or just a sleek robot...what does that say about MM if he's hitting on something like that?
Acquaintance- Personally, I think this might be more automated than by choice. Not sure how, but if you've encountered an NPC before (as a foe/ally in one of *your* missions or as a contact), some kind of tag should be saved in your status...like a badge or something that triggers the tag. Tags would be .unfamiliar, .familiar_friendly and .familiar_unfriendly. Simple.
NO to any thing that would make origins impact ones actual combat ability.
What I and no few others I know in game would like to see would be an expansion of the alignment arc system where each origin would have an arc for thier genre. For example a tech character might have arcs involving computer hacking, and a rise of the machines type scenerio.
Science might have one involving comic esque themes like when beast tried to surpress his mutant genes only to compound the issue. This could easily have pushed him to anger and evil, but was actually the reason he chose to join the avengers to gain public recognition as a hero among the well known and beloved heroes, and show the world mutants could be freakish looking but still human and heroic.
magic well we have so much magic in the game it would be easy. But you get the picture, origin tied unique arcs, that do not give any unique combat boosts.
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Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
NO to any thing that would make origins impact ones actual combat ability.
What I and no few others I know in game would like to see would be an expansion of the alignment arc system where each origin would have an arc for thier genre. For example a tech character might have arcs involving computer hacking, and a rise of the machines type scenerio. Science might have one involving comic esque themes like when beast tried to surpress his mutant genes only to compound the issue. This could easily have pushed him to anger and evil, but was actually the reason he chose to join the avengers to gain public recognition as a hero among the well known and beloved heroes, and show the world mutants could be freakish looking but still human and heroic. magic well we have so much magic in the game it would be easy. But you get the picture, origin tied unique arcs, that do not give any unique combat boosts. |
And this was another point I was going to make in my previous post but forgot because it got pretty long...
But I'd like more 'assuming' arcs. I remember playing...I can't remember which arc it was but it involved going through the Midnighter club and talking with a demon...it felt like the NPCs involved assumed you were a powerful sorcerer and what not. This made my sorceress corruptor feel very much alive.
I'd suggest, as an alternate to some of the other origin ideas, to simply make more arcs that 'assume' you're a genetic mutant, a knowledgeable scientist, an apt engineer, a hard trained fighter, an alien, and so forth.
Got a problem that it would be immersion breaking for your tech robot would to be running the genetic mutant arc and your abilities being referred to as mutations? Then *don't* run those types of arcs...that arc ain't for that character. Wanna run it anyway? Well you can just deal with it.
You know what could be done with this that makes origins actually do something while not screwing with people's game mechanics? Differing dialogue options, like in that one Praetorian mission that has you defusing the bombs, or the Origin Of Power arcs. The end result is the same, nobody's concept gets gimped by having the "wrong" origin for their powersets, and what origin someone has is still not shoved into the corner. If it's nothing but a question of writing, it shouldn't step on anyone's conceptual toes.
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