The story design and direction of the game

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.

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.

Try Praetoria. It has IMNSHO, the best writing in the game.

Frostfire's progress is also very satisfactory. Though I wish he some costume upgrades along the way.

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.

Quote:

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.

Make sure you hit Architect Entertainment (AE) also. Lots of good community story arcs in there.

repeat post

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.

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.

Quote:

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.