The story design and direction of the game
the tip missions show the double sided staff of immersive writing.
you do make a choice as to which alignment you move towards, and then the mission forces you to make other actions based on that choice.
it can be a cool story about your characters transformation
or it can be an annoying "my character wouldn't do/say that"
the best part about them is the NPC's and your relationship to them and seeing them progress. I want to know how Frostfire and Blast Furnace turn out. Something I never cared about Statesman (and I don't care that he died)
I think the mission that made me feel most like a hero is the low level morality mission where you have to overcome Blast Furnace, and then fight off the incoming ambushes, while talking with Blast Furnace between each wave. I also like the changes undergone by these characters. It makes me feel like I'm in a living world where things happen even when I'm not around to see them.
In Camazotz all are equal. Everybody is the same as everybody else.
I think the mission that made me feel most like a hero is the low level morality mission where you have to overcome Blast Furnace, and then fight off the incoming ambushes, while talking with Blast Furnace between each wave. I also like the changes undergone by these characters. It makes me feel like I'm in a living world where things happen even when I'm not around to see them.
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Aye the tip missions are especially great if you are able to run them from 20 - 50
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
Try Praetoria. It has IMNSHO, the best writing in the game.
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
In Camazotz all are equal. Everybody is the same as everybody else.
the tip missions show the double sided staff of immersive writing.
you do make a choice as to which alignment you move towards, and then the mission forces you to make other actions based on that choice. it can be a cool story about your characters transformation or it can be an annoying "my character wouldn't do/say that" the best part about them is the NPC's and your relationship to them and seeing them progress. I want to know how Frostfire and Blast Furnace turn out. Something I never cared about Statesman (and I don't care that he died) |
Like my vigilante choosing a villainous mission. I already made the morality choice for my character to be more evil than before by choosing that villain mission in the first place. I think that's the idea, anyway, for the most part, I try to half form the data around my character based on the decisions I'm forced to make in the game anyway, I don't have too tough of a history for the one I recently did this mission on.
On another ""Noble warrior," scrapper that I'm taking to villain-side just to get patron power pools..well..I am just essentially ignoring his lore for now :P Since he'd never ever do this sort of thing, but eh, then I can just see it as grinding.
I never cared that much about Statesman, I just think that considering his power? He fell in an anti climatic way :P I'm glad CaptainAmerica-Superman-Sue is gone honestly, just think they could have done it a bit better
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
I've had a few... Coarse things to say about Morality and Alignment mission writing in this game, but this is actually based largely around my disagreement on what the various moralities should represent. On a purely technical and even story-telling level, I'd say their writing really is some of the best. Creative and then some, to be sure. I just really find myself disagreeing with what it means to be a villain and a vigilante.
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.
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Make sure you hit Architect Entertainment (AE) also. Lots of good community story arcs in there.
repeat post
I've had a few... Coarse things to say about Morality and Alignment mission writing in this game, but this is actually based largely around my disagreement on what the various moralities should represent. On a purely technical and even story-telling level, I'd say their writing really is some of the best. Creative and then some, to be sure. I just really find myself disagreeing with what it means to be a villain and a vigilante.
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It honestly feels like there's 1 hero alignment and 3 villain alignments in small, medium, and large sizes =/ But even if, again, I disagree with that assessment by the developers and story writers in reference to morality, at least they carry that out well.
It honestly feels like there's 1 hero alignment and 3 villain alignments in small, medium, and large sizes =/ But even if, again, I disagree with that assessment by the developers and story writers in reference to morality, at least they carry that out well.
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I guess these are simply the paths that are easier to depict: Heroism -> Violence -> Villainy and Villainy -> Self-Interest -> Heroism. In a sense, heroes falling from grace become lesser heroes while villains redeeming themselves become lesser villains. But I'd be interested to see the fall of a hero through genuine greed, such as what Hero Corps used to represent back in the day, or a fall via abuse of power, not just "fall via Punisher." The other heroes falling from grace go these routes, but we can't. Doc Quantum is a clear case of abuse of power, though his is in no way secret, and I believe Silent Blade keeps flip-flopping between hero or villain based on whether she's being paid. And "honour," I guess.
My problem with Vigilantes in general is just that I have a different view of what a vigilante is. A vigilante, to me, is someone who operates largely outside the law, but someone who still means well. I'd honestly put Spider-Man and the X-Men there, because these guys generally don't like to have a public face and don't get invited to the police ball, but they're still fighting for what's right. I actually had intended for this to be the fate of a few of my characters, but that's not Vigilantes turned out to be.
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.
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My problem with Vigilantes in general is just that I have a different view of what a vigilante is. A vigilante, to me, is someone who operates largely outside the law, but someone who still means well. I'd honestly put Spider-Man and the X-Men there, because these guys generally don't like to have a public face and don't get invited to the police ball, but they're still fighting for what's right. I actually had intended for this to be the fate of a few of my characters, but that's not Vigilantes turned out to be.
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Murphys Military Law
#23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
#46. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
#54. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.
I think it's because we tend to think of all four alignments as a part of the same progression, when really they're not. It's two paths Hero->Vig->Vil and Vil->Rogue->Hero. The middle alignments have to bridge the gap by themselves. If you wen't Hero<->Vig<->Rogue<->Vil there'd be more room for nuance, but the Vigilante alignment has to represent a decent to villany, while maintaining the ideal that you're right (I.E your jerkass description)
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I think it's because we tend to think of all four alignments as a part of the same progression, when really they're not. It's two paths Hero->Vig->Vil and Vil->Rogue->Hero. The middle alignments have to bridge the gap by themselves. If you wen't Hero<->Vig<->Rogue<->Vil there'd be more room for nuance, but the Vigilante alignment has to represent a decent to villany, while maintaining the ideal that you're right (I.E your jerkass description)
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A bit more realistically speaking, and going off personal experience, it's just as easy for people who are adamantly on one pole of the moral spectrum to shift entirely to the other pole after one event that's strong enough to shift them to begin with. For some heroes, once you start questioning a single part of your heroic alignment, you can't help but question them all, and the answers you get back aren't always pleasant.
Honestly, when the development team first started talking about changing alignment, I did indeed expect it to go straight from hero all the way over to villain all in one singular event. I expected there to be some form of build-up and points accumulation process, but I didn't expect there to be defined stages to it. That's part of why what a Vigilante turned out to mean surprised me so much. I expected alignment changes to be direct, and thus expected Vigilante and Rogue status to be conceptual choices to depict a broader range of choices. In truth, they aren't, they're more a sort of transitional stage between hero and villain.
Again, none of that is "bad," strictly speaking, it's just something I'm not a fan of.
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.
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Why does it have to be this way, though? I mean, I get that from a gameplay standpoint, in the sense that you need progression and you need to space things out a bit more, but from a storyline sense, I've seen more heroes go straight to villain and more villains go straight to hero with no middle ground than I've seen either heroes or villains go through an entire arc. Maybe it's my affinity for epiphany therapy colouring my perceptions more than a little, but if anything, at least it seems like a reasonable fall from grace to go from one extreme to the other.
A bit more realistically speaking, and going off personal experience, it's just as easy for people who are adamantly on one pole of the moral spectrum to shift entirely to the other pole after one event that's strong enough to shift them to begin with. For some heroes, once you start questioning a single part of your heroic alignment, you can't help but question them all, and the answers you get back aren't always pleasant. Honestly, when the development team first started talking about changing alignment, I did indeed expect it to go straight from hero all the way over to villain all in one singular event. I expected there to be some form of build-up and points accumulation process, but I didn't expect there to be defined stages to it. That's part of why what a Vigilante turned out to mean surprised me so much. I expected alignment changes to be direct, and thus expected Vigilante and Rogue status to be conceptual choices to depict a broader range of choices. In truth, they aren't, they're more a sort of transitional stage between hero and villain. Again, none of that is "bad," strictly speaking, it's just something I'm not a fan of. |
The only benefit to being "In the middle" of the alignment system is being able to access task forces and groups on both sides, which is only really useful on low population servers (I am a part of one, so at least I get something out of my brief stinct as a rogue/vigilante), and most everyone I know who plays this game seems to have at least 2-4 semi regular characters they play, and it's going to be likely they can just hop on their villain if they see a call out for some TF on redside.
Of course, their is the argument that you can just use another toon who is on one side or the other for those alignment merits, and the signature story arcs also have alternate rewards for the VIP incarnate system crowd. Of course..that argument is inherently flawed compared to what we originally thought the new "Alignments," would be: equal.
The fact that you have to work around your characters who aren't Champions of Justice or Evil Destroyers just supports the fact they are meant to be played in a transitional way even more. Of course, that isn't really bad, but the role playing benefits of being a rogue/vigilante just don't really make up for the loss of alignment merits, which, coming back after a long time away from the game, I need for building up a new invention set of actually decent enhancements. Playing the market when you come back and your main character only had 20 million influence when you left him isn't exactly easy, and just farming for merits on the side is the better option for power-enhancement for me right now.
The weird thing is that Vigilantes are depicted as considerably bigger dicks than Rogues, and I'm not sure why that is. Rogues are, for the most part, bad guys, but they're lovable bad guys with a heart of gold. All of the Rogue tips have you bowing out of the actually nasty evil and just sticking to helping yourself, and occasionally helping others with the excuse of helping yourself. Vigilantes, by contrast, are depicted as jerks who want to kill and cripple people and come off as considerably more malicious than Rogues and much closer to proper villains.
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The thing is, the Dev's seem to treat Vigilantes and Rogues as nothing more than a transitional alignment, which to be fair it was intended to be, but I honestly believe player motivations reach beyond the initial conception.
A good breakaway from that, and something I've asked for in the past, is to have Rogue Isle "Vigilante" missions and Paragon "Rogue" missions. The Rogue Isles Vigilante can work with a Longbow contact (or some other hero group depending on level Legacy, Wyvern, etc...) and do what other heroes can't, or refuse to do- take the fight to the Rogue Isles- whatever that means. Conversely I have villains that don't want to live by Arachnos' rules and will 'play nice' to get access to Paragon, taking advantage of their trickery to wreak havok on Paragon City with Rogue tip missions.
As it is, the current Rogue in Paragon has to play 'goodie two shoes' and the Vigilante has to become... from what I can tell... a demented self-deluding lunatic that in some cases takes villainy to a higher level than some villain missions. Neither of which really embrace the ideals of a Rogue or Vigilante, but I'm sure are fine for characters on the verge of becoming full-blown heroes or villains, which again is the point of the original "Going Rogue" system. When on the other side, your only option is to be a hero or a villain.
I think our (the player's) desires reach beyond just becoming heroes and villains, but being something in between. The Vigilante who has the will to bring justice to the Isles, no matter what, to the Rogue who will put on a good face if it means they can plunder Paragon for everything it has!
As for following the storyline of the NPC's (which is where the core relevance lies) You couple all of that with the fact you have to run the gamut between each of the alignments to get the full story of each 'Rogues Gallery' hero and villain's decents/ascents in the storyline for the missions to make any sense (been trying to do that recently) and there's a huge issue for story comprehension. There should be enough stories between the Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, AND Villain missions to make the story behind the tip transitions valid. Otherwise, it comes off as a lot of WTF?! (believe me, I know. I used to run nothing but hero tips on my main, and didn't bother exploring the other options until recently)
For me, at least, I think that's where the biggest point of disconnect occurs story wise, and our heroes, vigilantes, rogues, nor villains, should be forced to compromise their respective values to understand the story they're trying to sell us...
If that makes any sense?
Lyc~ the phylosophical werewolf
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
Welcome back!
The writing and mission design really took a leap forward for me starting with the
Keith Nance/Jenny Adair arcs. Thankfully, they haven't stopped delivering the goods since then.
Maestro Mavius - Infinity
Capt. Biohazrd - PCSAR
Talsor Tech - Talsorian Guard
Keep Calm & Chive On!
Why does it have to be this way, though? I mean, I get that from a gameplay standpoint, in the sense that you need progression and you need to space things out a bit more, but from a storyline sense, I've seen more heroes go straight to villain and more villains go straight to hero with no middle ground than I've seen either heroes or villains go through an entire arc. Maybe it's my affinity for epiphany therapy colouring my perceptions more than a little, but if anything, at least it seems like a reasonable fall from grace to go from one extreme to the other.
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Vigilantes and rogues really shouldn't be transition alignments, the way I mostly see them treated these days (presumably due to hero/villain merits). I think they should be independent alignments you could start as and stay as if that's what's right for your character. I remember a lot of initial complaint that there was no reason to be a hero or villain any more, though, so this might be our own damn fault.
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
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I'm kind of surprised people agree with me on the "transitional" nature of Rogues and Vigilantes. And here I thought I was arguing against the grain I mentioned being surprised these aren't treated as final moralities, but do you know what surprised me even more than that? That we ended up with not one but two "middle ground" moralities. Again, I wasn't thinking about this from a gameplay standpoint when I first heard about the side-switching system and I never considered what content a "middle ground" character would have access to and which UI that character would use.
However, this came almost immediately after Going Rogue, the expansion, which gave us Prateoria. Praetoria is a place where there are no real heroes and no real villains. It's all morally grey. It is, effectively, one huge middle ground. Even the interface is grey by default. Now, granted, I later learned that Resistance characters were treated as heroes and Loyalist characters as villains for system purposes, such as the various Valentine's events that require a hero or villain specifically, and I believe they fell prey to the various limitation on cross-faction teaming in co-op zones, but I didn't know that at the time. I genuinely thought that we'd end up with three legitimate moralities, being Hero, Villain and, um... Neutral? I mean, isn't that what Praetoria was supposed to be? City of Neutrals? Well, apparently not. Apparently, it's just a bit of extra content to give Incarnates some context and it was never intended to be a legitimate "side." But that's what I thought at the time, and that's what I expected.
I'm saying all of that to give a bit more context to exactly how I expected things to work from a narrative standpoint and why I ended up vehemently disagreeing with how moralities ended up being interpreted in actual storytelling. Again, the actual writing in there is very good, but even a well-told story doesn't cut it when it's a story I don't want to hear, and that just happens to be what the story of Vigilantes is.
Somewhat sideways of that, a lot of the thematic snarl comes from the fact that the side-switching system actually covers two entirely independent concepts and tries to cover them with one singular narrative device. Those two concepts are a character's actual morality AND a character's area of operations. For years now, hero players have been asking to be allowed to go to the Rogue Isles and start cleaning the place out while villain players have been asking to move to Paragon City where they can commit crime without being under Arachnos' thumb. Both of those are legitimate requests from a conceptual standpoint, but both of them are also unreasonable requests from a technical standpoint because the content for it just isn't there, and there's SO MUCH of it to produce it's unlikely to ever happen.
I mean, say what you will about Launch content, but at least there was enough of it to move people through the levels for the most part. This getting three missions every month and having to pay for them that we're seeing now is NOT going to produce enough content to support a villain in Paragon City AND a hero in the Rogue Isles any time soon, because content production has all but abandoned any sort of aspiration of quantity.
That said, the problem comes when you mix the two. You can't be a hero in the Rogue Isles, because the only way to go to the Rogue Isles is to start down the path of a villain. The Rogue Isles is not a place for heroes, it's where villains hang out. There was a pretty funny quote from Rick Dakan back from 2002-2003 or something like that, where he says something along the lines of "Well, we could have two separate cities, one with only heroes in it and one with only villains in it, but that'd be silly." Trouble is, that's exactly what we got, and that's exactly what requires a character to become evil to go to the Rogue Isles and become good to go to Paragon City. It's a content issue, at the end of the day.
Speaking of content, the path of progression of any of the Tip Mission recurring characters is ridiculous and literally impossible to follow unless you do ALL tip missions from ALL moralities and even then you'd have to have very good memory. Either that, or read up on ParagonWiki. Their stories are scattered both across the level ranges AND across the different alignments AND those stories assume that we actually know who these people are to begin with. And, really, aside from Frostfire... I don't. Still don't, as a point of fact. These guys were pulled together from the roster of random button characters that show up to stop you from robbing banks or show up in jails to be rescued, and their info screens include about two sentences of handwave backstory. And now all of a sudden they're these deep, complex characters? OK, I'd buy that, but at least establish this first, please!
I remember Doc Quantum from the Tip missions where he gives people sadistic choices just because those are written so as to be memorable. So I ran one of these one time and it was good. A couple of days later, I was playing a villain and went to rob a bank when all of a sudden Doc Quantum showed up to stop me. Huh? The hell? Wasn't he supposed to be evil? Well, apparently not. Not at that level, anyway. Then I ran the SupaFreak's Architect arc and found Overdrive helping me. I thought she was a villain? I asked SupaFreak about it and he said she wasn't. I checked and he was entirely correct, but I was so convinced she was a villain. Do you see how it might be hard to keep track of who has flip-flopped to which side at what point?
I honestly would have preferred of morality and alignment missions focused on OUR alignment and morality, as opposed to polluting it with people swapping sides left and right. It diminishes the importance of the moral choices and it just create a fiendish continuity snarl that to this day I cannot untangle.
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.
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GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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I mean, say what you will about Launch content, but at least there was enough of it to move people through the levels for the most part.
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![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
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At least if you count grinding Skulls in Perez Park as content.
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Right now, you can do nothing but instanced missions made in 2004 and still make it all the way from level 1 to level 50 without repeating any of it. As a point of fact, you'll end up outlevelling a lot of it. And a lot of that content is a lot more entertaining to play for the third or fifth or tenth time than much of the newer content, too, since it's not as involving.
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.
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I've had a few... Coarse things to say about Morality and Alignment mission writing in this game, but this is actually based largely around my disagreement on what the various moralities should represent. On a purely technical and even story-telling level, I'd say their writing really is some of the best. Creative and then some, to be sure. I just really find myself disagreeing with what it means to be a villain and a vigilante.
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Quite a few things annoy me about the tip system too.
- How in my opinion that the 20 - 40 tips seem to be a lot more personal than the 40 - 50 ones.
- How Vigilante/Rogue tips seem/feel to be far more entertaining than their hero/villain counterparts.
- How there hasnt been any tips added for a while now despite them being run by quite a lot of people quite often.
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
I have to say, after coming back to the game after taking a 4 year break, I am mostly pleasantly surprised.
When the game was first released, most of it's story was pretty darn flat. The portal missions had a bit more flavor in them than most of the game had, but that wasn't exactly saying much, and that was still a bit after it's "beta" release.
Of course, with new zones like the Hollows and revamped zones like Faultline and the Rikti Warzone, I was happier. The game's story design was going places, and my character actually felt a tiny bit important but alas, life still got in the way, and I had to cancel my subscription, and then I got distracted and didn't feel like I'd be very pleased with the game's lack of development (As I saw it) if I came back anyway.
I read the Dark Horse comics off and on in the meantime (cheap and easy to get), and I was glad the team got involved with Dark Horse, and I was hoping to see such plot integrated into the actual game.
Now coming back, renewing my subscription to "VIP status," and playing through 6/6 of the playable arcs, I was left feeling a bit...unsatisfied. It almost hit that sweet spot, but not quite, and I didn't appreciate how easily Statesman fell into Darrin Wade's trap, along with Malaise seemingly just snapping the way he did, with absolutely none of the conditioning of Sister Psyche left in him.
I could still the great appreciate effort in most of the arc, though. The arc has been a huge step in the right direction, despite it being the millionth time that Manticore had to make a "painstaking" split second arrow shot in any of the lore -.-
That was better than I had expected from the development team, but I wasn't impressed until I was running an alignment mission on my vigilante in the Rogue Isles. I was "Assisting," Blast furnace who had been trapped by Maelstrom with some Devouring Earth, himstuck in his own battle armor and unable to use his powers. I went and smacked Maelstrom around a bit, before being required to talk with Blast Furnace again. He detailed the crimes that Maelstrom had committed, killing small children to further his goals and causes, and my own character only became more infuriated and encouraged to rip Maelstrom limb from limb.
Blast Furnace had different ideas, however, and even though he just confessed that I was his role model of a super being, was willing to protect this terrible villain from the clutches of true justice, just to enable a corrupt and overly "Merciful," system. My character, becoming more of a Villain at this point than a Vigilante, proceeded to beat the snot out of him, only the emergency teleporters saving the younger hero.
Turning to Maelstrom and ready to finish the job i started earlier in the mission, he merely (paraphrased) said we're becoming more alike, and that I'm further down "That road," than he thought, before poofing away to apparent safety.
All that left was my "Vigilante," alone in a cave, Devouring Earth corpses scattered behind him, the Last Man Standing after defeating both of his foes, regardless of their alignment or intentions. They got in his way, and he couldn't have that.
As my character left the tunnel, I was prompted with a message reminding me of something else the Rogue said before he left, that Blast Furnace was going to come back for me someday, to stop his corrupted former role model, that image driving him forward to get better.
And all my character cared about was the fact he'd get to kick Blast Furnaces *** once again.
...
Considering this is an MMO, the way the writing was done, the way interactions were broken done and executed...holy crap. It made me feel something, it made me connect to my game and my character and see things from his eyes as he descends into villainy further every day. Paragon Studios, congratulations. This is the best MMO I've ever played, now and officially. The story telling, even if this level of quality of not necessarily consistent, its peaks strike more emotion out of me than most "Professional," media does. I've always felt the teaming/grouping of this game to be superior and more engaging than most MMOs (I've raided in WoW and been in a relatively experienced position in many MMOs), and the only way it really falls behind now is some aging problems, including the graphics. That's it. The community has always been spectacular, and despite being a bit more elitist than it used to be, it's a far cry better than any other forum or community I've been a part of.
Thank you everyone for your parts and contributions: developers, staff, and gamers alike. You've all helped craft an incredible game, and considering how much I've spent on the game, I guess I've been a tiny drop of water in this flood of excellence
Sorry for any typos I missed ^^; in a bit of a rush.