The story design and direction of the game
That's not even remotely true. I'll grant you that up until about Issue 1 when mission completion gave almost no experience, you could run out, but since then, the game has had more than enough MISSIONS
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On that note, I did have an idea for levelling a character the "old-school" way. I just couldn't decide if I want to think of the Hollows as old-school... I still think of it as "that new zone"
![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
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You did say launch. The focus of the game changed a lot during the first few issues.
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Like I said - you can argue the actual QUALITY of the content, but what cannot be argued is the QUANTITY of it. Yes, I'm aware of the "quality of quantity" moral lesson of contemporary society, but that only really works when you have a certain critical mass of quantity to satisfy basic demand, beyond which you can expand.
Let me put it this way: Suppose for a moment that the development team decided to make a legitimate third side to the game. Let's even suppose that's Praetoria. Now suppose they tried to populate this third side with missions the way they're making them now. How many missions do you think it would take to craft just ONE unique path to level 50? I can tell you for a fact that it's not three or five or ten or twenty. That's HUNDREDS of missions which would need to be written, and at the speed of three per month, that's years and years.
Even if we give our writing team credit and acknowledge that they're making these three missions AND whatever's on Test for Dark Astoria, that's still not a lot of content. It'd be barely enough to cover 45-50. Even if we're generous and go with Praetoria, that needs content 30-50, and that's a LOT of missions. Probably a few Task Forces, too. Maybe some Radio/Scanner/Whatever missions and a Mayhem/Safeguard variety. Maybe Praetoria-specific Tip missions, too. That's a LOT of work.
To be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing a HUGE influx of very simple missions and very basic story arcs. That's my entire point. I get sacrificing quantity for quality, but I just don't want that to be the ONLY type of content we get.
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 said "Launch content," as in "the content the game shipped with." Aside from Atlas Park, all of it is still here. Even back before Issue 1, there was enough of that to get me to level 38 without running out and without running TFs, and that's before the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa.
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Don't take this the wrong way, Sam, but are you al right? You've come off awfully combative lately.
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
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Are you saying that facing mobs that do insane -regen [as an example] totally negates certain powersets like willpower to be useless?
![]() STILL not happy that all of my willpower characters have to pull 1/2 minions at a time just to stand a chance without inspirating up for every fight. [Dont even get me started on iTrials with them! ![]() |
-Many more attacks than Primal mobs. Praet mobs tend to have 2-3 attacks base or higher, even at minion level. Hellions, for instance, have a piddly ranged attack and a chunkier melee attack at minion level, only one ranged attack at LT level, and its only when you get to the much rarer bosses that you actually get something scary.
-Exotic damage types. Energy, fire, psi, all stuff that the vast majority of sets don't resist until later level.
-Massive variety in positional damage. Most Primal mobs only do Melee or Ranged damage. It's not until later that you get into AoE territory. Praets hit you with this from the get go, even more problems for SR characters.
-Exotic debuff types. -Regen, -Def, -pretty much anything they can throw at you they will. Again, WAY earlier than Primal mobs start throwing. The only exception to this rule being Vahzilok, with their stacking -rech/-speed darts of doom (not to mention toxic damage). I swear the same sadist who designed the Vahz mobs had a hand or two in Praetoria.
-Cheaty tricks. It's usually not until later on that mobs begin to do things like rezzing each other or the like. Oh look, Praetorian clockwork do that from day one. My surprise is comprehensive and sarcastic!
-Ambushes. Oh gods, the ambushes. Not a mob 'fault', per se, but whoever designed Praetorian missions had something going on with ambushes. In a sick and perverted, not to mention painful, way. The never ending god damned ambushes, man!!
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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![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
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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Right. And I made a (perhaps somewhat snarky) remark at some of that launch content, such as: "go kill 20 skulls in Perez." "Oh you're back already. Go kill 20 more!" "Well done, now go kill 20 Hellions in there." This was part of the content that took you to 38. And while I don't exactly miss it, I do kinda miss it. Or at least the spirit of it.
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And I'm specifically "combative" (I like to think of it as "argumentative") in the area of content design because I'm honestly and gravely concerned about the content design approach of the current development team. There seems to be this notion that it doesn't matter what quantity of content gets produced, and it's perfectly OK to make just a scant handful of missions, if only they're packed to the gills with "stuff" like complex scripts, endless dialogues and custom enemies. I don't even want to argue about how this is distracting (it is to me and some, not to others), but this ensures that we will NEVER get another large infusion of content ever again. Not for money, not for the price of our subscription, not ever.
That's OK in a game that already has oodles of content besides, like City of Heroes classic already does, but it's a literal death sentence when you start exploring new level ranges and sides, such as Praetoria or the Incarnate system. This approach to "one over-engineered mission is better than 50 simple ones" is KILLING ME! Possibly literally, if I pop a vein on my head.
That's why I'm so defensive of old content. Not because it's great (it really isn't), but more because it IS good, and it hurts me to see people dismiss it out of hand. Yes, the technology of story-writing in 2004 wasn't the best and many missions were made during a mad crunch for a deadline, but you know what? They're still there, they still function and they still let me get through the levels without having to repeat the same small handful of tasks over and over again. Current mission design makes mission creation FAR harder than it has to be, because each and every mission has to be a custom-tailored work of art, and that simply isn't needed. I want to champion the notion of budgeting story creation effort and more meet on the bones of those bare-bones stories we keep getting, saving the good stuff for specific high-impact moments.
There's nothing wrong with Launch content. It can be improved, yes, but the basis of "Go to an instance and kill a boss, and here's why you're doing it" very much IS a legitimate and often entertaining approach to mission design. That's all I'm saying.
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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There's nothing wrong with Launch content. It can be improved, yes, but the basis of "Go to an instance and kill a boss, and here's why you're doing it" very much IS a legitimate and often entertaining approach to mission design. That's all I'm saying.
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I don't really mind the missions of the exact sort you're describing in this quote, but I do actually enjoy the more complex missions - the ones where you defeat the boss and a new objective appears, or where you go click on someone in mission and they say something to you. I don't value complex narrative trees, but I actually like smaller arcs that do more per mission, especially if "do more" involves plenty of combat.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I don't really mind the missions of the exact sort you're describing in this quote, but I do actually enjoy the more complex missions - the ones where you defeat the boss and a new objective appears, or where you go click on someone in mission and they say something to you. I don't value complex narrative trees, but I actually like smaller arcs that do more per mission, especially if "do more" involves plenty of combat.
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My point isn't to stop making complex missions, so much as that we really need a more balanced approach between complexity and simplicity, as well as between quality and quantity. By all means, make short story arcs with overly complex missions. I never said they were bad. But don't make ONLY that sort of content.
*edit*
But yes, I do disagree with you on short story arcs. I am personally not a fan of them. I simply don't City of Heroes as a game that has the technical capacity to deliver "interesting" gameplay, so attempts at it just end up leaving me irritated as they prevent me from punching stuff. But again, I'm not asking that these kind of arcs stop being made, just that there be more variety. I would honestly pay good money for a 20-mission arc with a decent story even if every mission were a basic defeat-all.
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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The general use of shorter, more concise arcs is one of the reasons I preferred CoV's mission structure to CoH's. Most of my recent characters brought to 50 were villains, but I recently went back and leveled up an old lowbie Controller hero. I found the experience of the arcs boring and frustrating compared to CoV because of large numbers of missions defeating all foes (often without saying in the mission objectives that they were defeat-alls), usually in the same kinds of environments. I think the fact that this grated on me is noteworthy, because I actually like defeating everything. But there's a difference between choosing to do so and being forced to do so.
I'm well aware of, and even agree with, many of the complaints about the overarching story in CoV, given how it spends so much time having us be lackeys of Arachnos, and making us fight Longbow and Arachnos ad nauseum. But even with all that, I so much prefer how CoV's arcs are put together and how almost all missions are actually parts of arcs (less "stand-alone" missions).
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I liked the original content we had. Otherwise I wouldn't have been around for as long as I have.
I also like some of the new content in moderation. The "modern" and "advanced" mission layout takes a lot of development resources though, and the more of it we have, the more we expect it. Plus, honestly, the more "special" it becomes, the less replay value it has (to me, anyway).
I really like the revamed Faultline zone, but I don't want every zone to turn into Faultline. I like the new Atlas Park, but I got tired of playing through it after just one or two playthroughs, and it's just easier to streetsweep (or DfB) out of it, than run those exact same arcs again.
Basically, the more specific the story gets, the less freedom you have for making up your own reason for helping out and that, at least for me, takes away some of the fun of playing through it. That doesn't mean I don't want to see zone revamps, I'd just prefer a happy mix of the two story styles.
Tip and newspaper missions actually are fairly close to our original mission layout... except they don't progress the overall metaplot, or really take you on a tour through the background story of the city (which, to me, means that only running newspaper missions is out of the question. Gets boring!).
Anyway. I'm rambling. To sum up: I like new content (at least new content that isn't specifically designed to suck for stalkers. *cough*firstward*cough*). But I also like old content, and I don't like to see old content sacrificed for new content because it makes the overall meta story of City of Heroes really weirdly fragmented when you just yank out an entire zone worth of old story clues.
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
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I liked the original content we had. Otherwise I wouldn't have been around for as long as I have.
I also like some of the new content in moderation. The "modern" and "advanced" mission layout takes a lot of development resources though, and the more of it we have, the more we expect it. Plus, honestly, the more "special" it becomes, the less replay value it has (to me, anyway). I really like the revamed Faultline zone, but I don't want every zone to turn into Faultline. I like the new Atlas Park, but I got tired of playing through it after just one or two playthroughs, and it's just easier to streetsweep (or DfB) out of it, than run those exact same arcs again. Basically, the more specific the story gets, the less freedom you have for making up your own reason for helping out and that, at least for me, takes away some of the fun of playing through it. That doesn't mean I don't want to see zone revamps, I'd just prefer a happy mix of the two story styles. Tip and newspaper missions actually are fairly close to our original mission layout... except they don't progress the overall metaplot, or really take you on a tour through the background story of the city (which, to me, means that only running newspaper missions is out of the question. Gets boring!). Anyway. I'm rambling. To sum up: I like new content (at least new content that isn't specifically designed to suck for stalkers. *cough*firstward*cough*). But I also like old content, and I don't like to see old content sacrificed for new content because it makes the overall meta story of City of Heroes really weirdly fragmented when you just yank out an entire zone worth of old story clues. |
There was an odd charm to missions that don't exist now, even if I enjoy the higher quality level writing itself now more often, the overarching back-drop of missions doesn't exist as strongly in the new content as it does the old.
My original main being a Katana/Regen, I basically built him to be a soloing machine that never really needed much help from anyone, only that help would be nice. This didn't happen very much until I was about level 30, but the character did achieve that nonetheless. Most of his leveling has been with classic content. There's quite a few story arcs that I loved going through because, despite the fact each mission was decently boring and very repetitive, I was interested in the developing plot. The higher level my character became, the better a plot he'd end up getting pulled into, and by the end, I'd know something very interesting about some villain group or a hidden secret about some signature villain that I didn't know before.
See, this was a bigger issue when Paragonwiki didn't exist, or anything like it. There wasn't an easy index for some juicy details on the Rikti, or how the Lost became how they were, or etc. In a way, the missions were merely a tool to unlock background lore that would be fun to think about. That intrigued someone like me, as I am a bit of a history geek and love finding out little facts and unknowns about our world that most people don't see, and I'm equally that way in a complex fictional setting.
Unfortunately, this only sustains you for so long. While those tidbits of information were interesting...the missions themselves weren't exactly..engaging. This is a big reason I loved the Hollows and Striga island: They seemed like interesting compromises between the two implementations within the game for plot.
While I do enjoy a lot of the writing in the Tip missions, I have to admit...it's a sort of feigned "Overarching," story that, like some have pointed out, you have to make full rounds across the whole alignment system to even start to figure out. The "Plot," is, at best, loose, once you lay out all the missions and try to figure out some sort of start or finish. I think this may be the bigger problem with stories now and their structure, compared to before. The plots themselves have shifted into the other extreme, from background lore facts to in your face dialogue chains of shallow boredom, when most the time, there's absolutely no reason for those chains to be that long. The story team got on well enough with less text, and just as much meaning.
I would prefer a shift with the current level of engaging writing (I think before it wasn't the writing as much as it was the story design, way back in the day, that kept me going and wanting to do more story arcs), with a formula of missions with a bit of diversity along with plot that keeps you guessing a bit and more tempted to play the mission out until the end to figure out what happens instead of you rushing through it to the end and then just reading the synopsis on paragon wiki.
This isn't even bringing up continuity, which is another area they kind of dropped the ball..though, that would imply they ever had a good handle on said sphere in the first place >.>
So, I would just prefer a good balance of what they get right now with what they used to get right in the past, and to throw away the fat. Long AND short story arcs TTYM, but make the long ones with better conclusions than the short ones, and make the tinier arcs have a point, instead of feeling like 3 random missions slapped really hard together that happen to have the same enemy groups (sometimes...), with no real plot or story development that's deep to speak of. I personally got that vibe way too hard from the Rogue Isle missions, especially non-Grandville ones. I gladly level up my heroes to 50 before making them villains if I intend for them to be such in the end.
It's interesting to see how a discussion on the actual writing of the game turned into a content discussion with a light emphasis on writing :P Nonetheless, this shameless tangent is of the highest quality! :P I personally love "Derailments," like this, so by all means, continue.
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I think, overall, there are several levels of writing. There's the actual dialogue in individual missions. There is the writing that ties a story arc together, the writing that ties together the overall story of a themed zone and the overall meta-plot behind the scenes, with breadcrumbs scattered across the levels that you may or may not pick up on.
I really liked the writing, and presentation, of that meta-plot, and I feel it is being sacrificed for these new (-ish! The Hollows is still new, dangit!
![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
If I was a new player today, I think I would either be really confused about the backstory of the game, or I'd ignore that there even is a backstory, which honestly I feel is what is currently being encouraged.
And I think that's a shame, because the backstory (and the way it was being presented) is what drew me to the game in the first place.
...and as a villain, I'm a little tired of saving the world, but that's a discussion for a different thread.
Thought for the day:
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
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Honestly, I didn't even think of it as derailment. For me, writing and content are all but synonymous in this context.
I think, overall, there are several levels of writing. There's the actual dialogue in individual missions. There is the writing that ties a story arc together, the writing that ties together the overall story of a themed zone and the overall meta-plot behind the scenes, with breadcrumbs scattered across the levels that you may or may not pick up on. I really liked the writing, and presentation, of that meta-plot, and I feel it is being sacrificed for these new (-ish! The Hollows is still new, dangit! ![]() If I was a new player today, I think I would either be really confused about the backstory of the game, or I'd ignore that there even is a backstory, which honestly I feel is what is currently being encouraged. And I think that's a shame, because the backstory (and the way it was being presented) is what drew me to the game in the first place. ...and as a villain, I'm a little tired of saving the world, but that's a discussion for a different thread. |
But anyway, what exactly is wrong with the Hollows as a zone with story? They dialogue (unless they changed it recently) isn't really overdone, and it's a lot of missions that are pretty near similar in a row that do come to a head near the end of their respective arcs, usually culminating into something interesting for the lore (usually about the Hollows as a zone itself). Again, I see zones like the Hollows being a decently good middle ground for the old style of "Do these generic and near random missions which are semi rewards to give you pieces of interesting lore," and "We are going to oooh and awe you with semi fancy whatevers at the price of any depth in the story." It met both pretty well and especially considering that you can get travel powers at level 4, the Hollows doesn't take too long to get through at all anymore.
Striga was in line with this as well, but I don't feel much that way for Croatoa. That zone has always felt like an overly puke-green foggy landmass of butchered mythical references mixed in a blender at a frat party. Only select parts of those missions really seemed good from a writing OR content perspective in my book.
But anyway, what exactly is wrong with the Hollows as a zone with story? They dialogue (unless they changed it recently) isn't really overdone, and it's a lot of missions that are pretty near similar in a row that do come to a head near the end of their respective arcs, usually culminating into something interesting for the lore (usually about the Hollows as a zone itself). Again, I see zones like the Hollows being a decently good middle ground for the old style of "Do these generic and near random missions which are semi rewards to give you pieces of interesting lore," and "We are going to oooh and awe you with semi fancy whatevers at the price of any depth in the story." It met both pretty well and especially considering that you can get travel powers at level 4, the Hollows doesn't take too long to get through at all anymore.
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Striga and Croatoa are not much different, where only really Lars Hansen and that fat guy near a tree having an actual story. Yes, the zones have a pretty comprehensive setting and yes, the various random missions do play into that setting, but I still vastly prefer actual story arcs that have a cohesive narrative and at least a roughly set sequence of events. Even something as relatively simple as BoneFire still has enough structure to be called a story, but I really can't say the same about the Hollows, Striga or Croatoa. Or about the Shadow Shard, for that matter.
Mind you, I agree with both of you. I find that the more specific a story gets, the less desire I have to play it a second time. I keep saying it in the hopes that someone will pick up on it, but I've always seen City of Heroes as a sandbox game. As a sandbox game, much of the fun in City of Heroes comes from making your own fun, plotting your own course and finding high places to jump off of. Story and plot are necessary to provide a framing device and give you at least some motivation to play the game as intended, but at no point should they be so pervasive that they actually replace the game's core gameplay as a selling point.
I get that story always suffers from the limitations of gameplay. I don't like it, but I can comprehend why that is. But what I CANNOT accept is when gameplay suffers for the sake of the story, because there is never a legitimate reason for it. There are no "technical limitations" when it comes to crafting a story. There's nothing a story can't do. It's gameplay that's the limiting factor, and as such the story needs to be written to be doable through gameplay. It's when you twist and hamper gameplay to enact a story that the game really grinds to a halt because, ultimately, you're not playing a very good game then.
That's really not an argument about short vs. long arcs so much as an argument about "involved" vs. "loose" arcs. The more specific an arc becomes, the less freedom there is to try new things and find new experiences when you replay it. Ye olde City of Heroes might not have had a great story, but it gave us a pretty damn fun sandbox, and this let us make our own fun to a great extent. We wrote our stories, we made our action figures and we just sat down in the sand and played with them. The City of Heroes of today is trying so hard to bring us a "cinematic" experience that it really does begin to feel like I'm supposed to sit and watch this game, as opposed to playing it. It feels like I'm being given one and only one way to appreciate a story, and once I'm done appreciating it, I have no real reason to return.
Let me explain something: One of the most entertaining aspects of City of Heroes, at least to me, has always been motivation. I'd be given a mission, then I'd stand up off my chair, pace the room and try to figure out... Why WOULD Crash agree to this mission? It doesn't seem like something she'd do. But maybe there's more to it? Maybe she does have a reason? I wonder if there isn't some extra depth to her character I could explore to explain this? That kind of re-interpretation of our actions is what I found so much fun, and yet in recent years, the game has done so much to tell me WHY my characters are doing it that... I really have no reason to think about it. I just follow the plotted line once, safe in the knowledge that it'll be the exact same experience again the next time.
It's interesting to me how games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Arcanum and other "kit-built" games can be so entertaining for so many years exactly BECAUSE the player's interaction with the environment is so abstract and thus so open to interpretation. That's really what City of Heroes used to be, once upon a time - a game that didn't exactly shine in terms of execution, but REALLY excelled in terms of high-concept ideas that fed my inspiration and imagination. At least in City of Heroes, I consider the greatest success in story-telling not as that which gives me the most flashy story, but rather the one that most makes me want to tell my own.
Take a look at most of my posts on the subject of storytelling, and you'll see that the root of my problem with it is most often my disagreement with the writers as to what constitutes a good story. There was a time when there was nothing to disagree about. You could argue that there just weren't any good stories back then, but I just feel there was much less emphasis on rubbing it in our faces how good a story is.
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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What I find wrong with the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa is that they have no real plot. They have a setting, but no structure to the story. David Wincott has a few unconnected missions before he kicks you off to Flux, who has a few unconnected missions until he up and tells you where to find Frostfire, then kicks you off to Julius who's just giving you random assignments until he runs out of esoteric stuff he needs done and then passes you on to Talshak. It isn't until Talshak that an actual story starts to develop where one mission leads into the next and where all the missions can't just be done in any order. Talshak is the first to have a story, and his story ends up in a timed, difficult 8-man Trial in a level range that people spend barely any time in.
Striga and Croatoa are not much different, where only really Lars Hansen and that fat guy near a tree having an actual story. Yes, the zones have a pretty comprehensive setting and yes, the various random missions do play into that setting, but I still vastly prefer actual story arcs that have a cohesive narrative and at least a roughly set sequence of events. Even something as relatively simple as BoneFire still has enough structure to be called a story, but I really can't say the same about the Hollows, Striga or Croatoa. Or about the Shadow Shard, for that matter. Mind you, I agree with both of you. I find that the more specific a story gets, the less desire I have to play it a second time... |
Thing is, that's a bit of a contradiction. There was an overarching story that was loose in the first 5-10 levels of The Hollows: The area has been destroyed and devastated, and now gang members are taking advantage of the situation and moving in to have an extension of their gang war. There are materials to take and use (like the weapon caches) and various objectives to use and take advantage of.
Thing is, I don't have to remotely reach for these conclusions, it's basically and literally spelled out simply multiple times why you're doing these things, and they would be (mostly) realistic real world responses if it actually happened, assuming we lived in Paragon, anyway :P . It's a devastated zone that just recently was destroyed, and this is the chaotic fallout in a city filled with semi-powerful criminals. Why aren't there better and more powerful villains there? Well, because the artifacts and items available in the aftermath aren't very good (for the most part, the Circle knows a bit better though :P), so most mid level and higher villains passed it up for better pastures, so the low-mid level villain groups have the best chance of benefiting from the event, scrounging the rubble and establishing bases away from the long (yet sickly) arm of the Paragon Police and the city's heroes.
Your heroes role there is essentially helping be damage control, therefore, and that's kind of the point of a hero anyway :P The story arc involving Frostfire was a bit weak, but again, that's leaving it open to imagination and did lead up to one of the few members of the "Rogue gallery," that I enjoyed, because I had actually seen this character when he was he was a two-bit elemental villain.
It really has everything you listed in it, I just don't know where the disconnect is :P There's lots of actually realistic and practical reasons for the zone to be the way it is, the missions to be constructed the way they are, and also why heroes would be there helping out. And at the end of the zone, you dofind out a few things if you went all the way through, and being around when the zone was first released, I did do that. The drawn out trial was a bit excessive, but if they mere toned that down, the zone would stay a pretty darn decent early game zone, one of the few. Far more engaging than kings row, or skyway city. And that's kind of the point of these zones...the whole area contains a plot or a story at it's core, with anything else branching down from that.
It's essentially a very extended story arc with missions in the middle that do come together to form a realistic narrative.
Striga isn't as strong in this regard, but it is nonetheless, in the spirit and most of the implementation of the Hollows. Again, I don;t think Croatoa was like that at all, and it feels like an odd mish-mash (For the most part) from both a narrative mission perspective and villain perspective. It felt like since the Hollows that they were trying harder and harder to recreate a good experience they did in that first story zone, and while Striga was passable and decent, Croatoa definitely flopped. I have yet to play through Cimerora...but I'm not exactly excited to do so, either, so I can't comment on that. It just feels like they were stepping away from a story-zone-arc into the wannabe cinematic experience you mentioned with the midnight squad and Cimerora, so I haven't been motivated to explore it.
The crimes of the Praetorian mobs are utterly legion;
-Many more attacks than Primal mobs. Praet mobs tend to have 2-3 attacks base or higher, even at minion level. Hellions, for instance, have a piddly ranged attack and a chunkier melee attack at minion level, only one ranged attack at LT level, and its only when you get to the much rarer bosses that you actually get something scary. -Exotic damage types. Energy, fire, psi, all stuff that the vast majority of sets don't resist until later level. -Massive variety in positional damage. Most Primal mobs only do Melee or Ranged damage. It's not until later that you get into AoE territory. Praets hit you with this from the get go, even more problems for SR characters. -Exotic debuff types. -Regen, -Def, -pretty much anything they can throw at you they will. Again, WAY earlier than Primal mobs start throwing. The only exception to this rule being Vahzilok, with their stacking -rech/-speed darts of doom (not to mention toxic damage). I swear the same sadist who designed the Vahz mobs had a hand or two in Praetoria. -Cheaty tricks. It's usually not until later on that mobs begin to do things like rezzing each other or the like. Oh look, Praetorian clockwork do that from day one. My surprise is comprehensive and sarcastic! -Ambushes. Oh gods, the ambushes. Not a mob 'fault', per se, but whoever designed Praetorian missions had something going on with ambushes. In a sick and perverted, not to mention painful, way. The never ending god damned ambushes, man!! |
I like having new enemies to fight but this was like the original (test server version) of Outcasts and Trolls in the Hollows, but with less control and more debuffs.
Now that I've come back I started new characters that seem to handle Praetoria a lot better.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
Thing is, that's a bit of a contradiction. There was an overarching story that was loose in the first 5-10 levels of The Hollows: The area has been destroyed and devastated, and now gang members are taking advantage of the situation and moving in to have an extension of their gang war. There are materials to take and use (like the weapon caches) and various objectives to use and take advantage of.
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Saying the Hollows has an overarching story is like saying City of Heroes has an overarching story - there are many specific, isolated plot threads, but there is no consistent "main story" or main narrative to follow. However, at least the broader game is comprised of complete, ordered stories, whereas the Hollows is a place that can support only a scant few stories, maybe two or three, and yet it's broken up into two dozen unconnected individual missions.
In the very simplest of terms, the Hollows offers no real connection between missions. They all just trace back to the setting - devastated crime-ridden zone. That's not a story, and that's what keeps me out of the zone. No mission appears to achieve anything because no missions reference it after the fact.
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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You have a setting, but no actual story. What you call an "overarching story" isn't actually a story, because it has no beginning or end, it has no act structure, it has no plot. It is a setting - the backstory of how the zone became what it is, as well as a general explanation of why we're there to begin with. But what it lacks is a story for the events we're actually doing. It has no structure, no sequence of events, no logical progression from one event to the next. Which is to be expected - most of that zone's content can be played out of order, so there's no way for it to have order of any kind.
Saying the Hollows has an overarching story is like saying City of Heroes has an overarching story - there are many specific, isolated plot threads, but there is no consistent "main story" or main narrative to follow. |
What's clear to me with info gleaned from these arcs is that there is a larger rather specific backstory for the game world, but our characters do not know all the specifics. The "toybox" of specific content gives our individual characters a specific role in that backstory. Initially, that role is one of discovery, but often later, at higher levels, we become important players in the story. Think of how we start learning about Crey, interfering in "street level" plots of theirs, and eventually uncover the true identity of and arrest Countess Crey.
We can choose to ignore the overarching world stories, especially early on, because we start as relatively bit players in them, largely peeking in through small viewports. But as we progress in level, and the game injects our characters more deeply into the specifics, the less and less like a "sandbox" (or diverse "toybox") I feel the game becomes.
I think many players want this progression, though they might quibble over how it is presented, as it is important to making their characters progress from being relatively unimportant to significant in the game world's events. It's hard to continuously indicate significance in poorly defined stories, so presentation of increasing significance is going to tend to create increasingly specific plots.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
The "new style" of CoH story is what I assumed the game was going to be like before release and what I subsequently figured they'd be adding as soon as they had time to work on non-filler content. Wouldn't you know it, I was right! I just didn't expect it to take them years to get to it. To be more fair, the Hollows was definitely an early attempt to engage you with the environment you're in and to give the so called story arcs an actual arc to them. You start out by meeting a rather hapless cop and by the end, in theory, you're rescuing his kid from mystical forces.
The hollows failed as a storyline not because of bad writing or a lack of ambition, rather simply because the game wasn't up to the task back then. The zone was horrendous to navigate, aggravated by the fact that every spawn was vast and sprawling and missions had you criss-cross the zone. I don't remember if the ability to call contacts even existed in issue 2. What barely existed was exemplaring: if the stars didn't align for your pick up team, or if your seven friends didn't coordinate their leveling precisely, good luck running that trial. You know, the one that supposedly ties together the plot threads of the zone, only unless you're the team leader and you take the time to read everything on a hard-as-hell-at-the-time trial with an uncomfortable time limit you won't see a single word of exposition. Even if you did do that it was unsatisfactory simply because the tech didn't exist at that point to have exposition occur during missions except via clues, which trials never had.
Imagine how frustrating mission design must have been for the game's first writers. They certainly didn't lack big ideas, yet leader-only text dumps were their one and only means of expression. Praetoria, tips, faultline and so on are better because their designers had the wherewithal to make them better. Legacy content was hobbled by default.
It seems to me that they'd have loved to have had at least a couple contacts per zone that dealt with that zone's character. You can almost see it in a couple of the Kings Row contacts, but that may as well be coincidence: Kings Row's character is out of control gang violence, and its arcs simply had nowhere else to send you trotting off to (apart from Galaxy City, and Perez Park... the horror, the horror.). One look around Brickstown should be all the proof one needs that something big was supposed to happen with that prison, for instance, but they were never able to make it work. Actually when I put it that way I recall that the prison was indeed meant to be the site of a trial, as was the mystery geometry BEYOOOOND THE DAAAAAM in Faultline. Odd that it took them seventeen issues to add the next trial that they were to add, heh.
I have to say that although I still believe that many of the Redside arcs are better than Blueside (Ghost Widow's origin story with Wretch encountered in the 20s is a wonderful tale), I AM finding much of the GR stuff good too. There have been many complaints over the years (some by me...) about Redside arcs not feeling 'Villiany' enough. Often we felt like errand boys rather than villians in our own right.
Yhen along came the Villian switching arc where I encountered a future version of myself. I was told I'd made a terrible mistake in the future and I had to fix it NOW or repeat the same mistake, I encounter myself several time during the mission, each time from farther into the future. The final ME was an awsomely powerful shadow of the future me when I've destroyed ALL life in the galaxy and still exist...utterly alone. My future self tells me NOT to steal the power in front of me of else everyone will die...but me.
So, in order to become a villian, I do exactly that, but this time I steal it ALL instead of merely part of it, the better to insure my victory and survival. To me THAT'S a villian...someone who KNOWS his decisions will bring about the deaths of everyone and he doesn't care.
Yeah...I praised the writers greatly that day...
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
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I think many players want this progression, though they might quibble over how it is presented, as it is important to making their characters progress from being relatively unimportant to significant in the game world's events. It's hard to continuously indicate significance in poorly defined stories, so presentation of increasing significance is going to tend to create increasingly specific plots.
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Where presentation comes into play is that I don't think this works on such a micro scale, and I don't think it works for the same reason I don't believe three-mission story arcs work very well. On the micro scale of a story bit being contained within just one single mission, there just isn't enough there to engage me, because every story element has to be cut down for size. Having standalone mission try to tell a broader story, at least in my eyes, works far less reliably than having standalone actual stories come together to tell a broader setting, just because the standalone stories have enough screen time to make me care and to tell a compelling story that I'm going to remember.
That's not to say I want ONLY stories, mind you. I find one of the biggest disappointments in content since Faultline to be the complete and utter lack of one-off missions for contacts. I really enjoyed the fact that Launch content provided us with a balance of the different types of content. We had story arcs, we had standalone missions and we even had hunt missions. Obviously, the method of choosing which kind of mission we were picking was... Uninformative, but I still like the variety presented.
I find the Hollows to fail for not offering a proper story arc and overfocusing on one-off missions, and ironically enough, I find Faultline to fail for offering ONLY proper story arcs and no standalone missions at all. Either extreme is hurtful to the experience, in my opinion, and a mixture of both is the superior choice. For all the crap I've given City of Villains' writing because of the fetish with Arachnos, the I6 writing has just about the perfect balance of this. Each contact comes with a few standalone missions that help establish the setting, as well as several short story arcs that snap together to form a longer story. I may disagree with the plot from a story perspective, but on a technical level, that's EXACTLY what I want to see.
Actually, I'd say Crimson is a good example, but that man has an entire level range's worth of content just to himself. He has a HUGE story arc that can easily be split into at least three episodes, and he then has at least a dozen "mini-arcs," stories comprised of three or four consecutive missions that tell of one Malta plot or another. I can only assume that creating all of Crimson's content was a mammoth task, but he still remains easily my favourite contact in the game just because he has a very good balance of long stories to short stories and because he has SO MUCH content that actually has some thought behind it.
Of course, newer zones like First Ward seem to treat this kind of story arc and standalone mission segregation literally. You have a main plot of characters who offer only a very linear sequence of missions following a specific plot, as well as a few repeatable-mission contacts who supposedly help establish the broader setting of the zone. I've not run the repeatables in First Ward, but the repeatables from Borea in the Rikti War Zone didn't leave me impressed as they feel more like "work" than like story bits, but at least I can appreciate the idea. I'd still like to see one-off missions show up for storyline contacts, though.
Once upon a time, the way stories were told assumed that much time has passed between when you handed in the previous mission in the arc and when you asked for the next one. Contacts would say things like "I'll have that checked out in a lab" and if you spoke to them immediately thereafter, they'd say it's been checked out, like sending something out for chemical analysis takes 10 seconds. That, I assume, is where one-off missions were supposed to take place, in the sense that you'd hand in a story arc mission, run a one-off, then pick the story back up. This really isn't how newer storylines are being written these days, because everything always seems to be urgent and each mission's debriefing assumes you'll pick the next mission's briefing immediately thereafter. I'm not convinced this is a good thing, but I can't really argue it's a bad thing, either.
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 find one of the biggest disappointments in content since Faultline to be the complete and utter lack of one-off missions for contacts. I really enjoyed the fact that Launch content provided us with a balance of the different types of content. We had story arcs, we had standalone missions and we even had hunt missions. Obviously, the method of choosing which kind of mission we were picking was... Uninformative, but I still like the variety presented.
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To me the broad difference is similar to episodic TV series, where some shows have almost completely independent episodes and other shows have such tightly sequential stories that missing an episode means you may not know what's going on the next week. I like both, but I become more engaged in the tightly sequential ones.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I much prefer the arcs to one-shots.
Especially when one of those one-shots is assigned to every mission contact in the zone and you eventually reach a point where you have to take that one mission to advance any contact. But that was early City of Heroes and the designers' perverse love of forcing street hunting and hazard zones onto players.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
Are you saying that facing mobs that do insane -regen [as an example] totally negates certain powersets like willpower to be useless?
STILL not happy that all of my willpower characters have to pull 1/2 minions at a time just to stand a chance without inspirating up for every fight. [Dont even get me started on iTrials with them!
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