Should I play Chapter Six?

What if we got the feature and I promised never to use it in a published arc? I just want it for filming purposes.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

This. They've been churning out so many texture swapped maps that actually make this game's missions feel fresh and new. I'd love to get some of this variety for the AE as well.

Dr. Aeon's already working on SSA2 - and was the mainw riter for DA - I don't think he's quitting anytime soon

Incorrect

The entire WWD storyline is built from the history of the game, including the comics and novels - it's one of the most lore-heavy arcs in the game, and it's shaped by the 7 years of content that came before it.

Echo...

I confess that Statesman, Sister Psyche and Miss Liberty (Alexis) were by far my favorite Freedom Phalanx characters, as I got attached to them after reading the second COH novel. Part of the reason was their age, all of them have been active since at least World War II and probably shared a very different perspective of current events, as opposed to the much younger Synapse, Manticore and Positron, also considered veteran heroes. They also possessed some of the most popular powers in super-hero lore (flight, super-strenght, enhanced durability, psychic abilities, long lifespan), as well as countless ties to Paragon City history as described in the web-site's chronology, though their ingame depictions were weak and slightly bland, mostly because they barely made appearances in the game at all.

In fact, I always felt that Miss L should have had alot more presence in the game (I don't think there's even a plaque mentioning her outside of Praetoria), and it was disappointing to see her introduced only to be killed two missions later. Still, Alexis wasn't a very popular character, so her death is more or less tolerable, if handled in very poor taste with her being executed like a dog without putting up a fight.

On the other hand, killing States and Psyche was a terrible decision, particularly when the new characters the writers are introducing don't seem particularly interesting, lacking any sort of discernible role or background. Does anyone even care about the likes of Leon, LeoKnight, Grym, No Mind or Blue Spectrum? Dillo, Twinshot and Proton aren't as bad as the former, as they at least add some connection to the game lore, but they're not terribly interesting either.

In the midst of all this we have Ms. Liberty (Megan) randomly rezzing obscure villains for no reason what-so-ever, showing us that the story-writers have no problem bringing back the dead or giving characters a happy ending, as long as they are working for the dark side, that is...

Barring some upheaval in the last chapter, the setting that I used to love is forever spoiled for me, no matter how many frisbees they put up for sale in the market...

Good to know. I was thinking of re-subbing, but if all we can expect is more depressing content in line with Who Will Die, I won't bother.

I very much doubt Dr. Aeon even read the novels, or he would have realized that a flying, super-strong, bullet-proof, veteran martial-artist daughter of an incarnate would not simply shake her knees in terror and allow herself to be captured by the likes of Malaise and Darrin Wade without putting up a fight.

Plus, all this monthly tragedy comes with the very obvious setback of not phasing out the deceased heroes. Yes, I know, the devs willl get to it... eventually. In the meantime, should we just wink-wink and pretend Statesman and Sister Psyche aren't really there? I actually have a suggestion to fix that problem - STOP KILLING SIGNATURE CHARACTERS IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO PHASE THEM OUT OF THE GAME!

Hey, Dark Astoria was effing awesome. So if Aeon actually wrote for that, then he has shown he can write well and should stop doing so awful on the SSAs.

As to the OP, yeah, I don't plan on playing SSA #2 'cause of this one. I'm actually only going to play part 7 of WWD 'cause I want to finish what I started. But I don't recommend playing part 6 at all. I did as a villain, which means I didn't suffer through that terrible Oranbega baby sit thing everyone complains about, and I still thought it was lame.

Spoilers to follow. It didn't focus at all on States' death, aside from a random, out of left field Nemesis attack that did nothing for the story. They hyped up Penny only for her to get her *** kicked fairly easily, and she really did nothing for the plot either. The whole Manticore shooting Psyche bit just felt stupid, and wasn't necessary at all. My biggest problem, though, is I'd really just wish this story would've focused on a small cast of characters that we could actually get invested in, because so far it just feels like they're trying to toss every single NPC that they can into the plot, whether they're actually important to the story at all or not. Too much is happening in too small a span of time, and everyone gets to have a big taste of the idiot ball along the way.

The problem is that it was shaped by the worst of the seven years of content that came before it. It's also practically a Random Events Plot with a godmoding Villain Sue. Statesman's death is supposed to be the big thing here despite the fact that he is not a character in the story; he only shows up to die.

The DA material is garbage, too. It's pretty much a blatant haircut of Blackest Night (which wasn't the most original thing in the world to begin with). It's got a gratuitous side trip to Not-So-Ancient Rome thrown in, because time travel is k3w1 or something. And not only does it fridge the Knives of Artemis, but does so by turning the faction into an expansion pack for a Praetorian faction of dubious merit. The "Knives of Vengeance" compound the sin by resembling nothing more than a novice MA architect's first attempt at custom mobs: their costumes are an explosion in a junk factory and their powers are a random collection of new shiny powersets.

Huh... In a single sentence, you managed to describe more or less how I feel. What used to be a interesting, compelling if underdeveloped setting has been tossed out the window and replaced with one that's nowhere near as compelling or interesting, to say nothing of nowhere near as well thought-out.

Honestly, there are few uglier things a new writer can do than systematically murder in a horrible fashion the persistent characters of the previous writers, just to replace them with his own. Not only is this insulting to the work and to the fans that enjoyed the previous characters, it's also a cryin' shame when the new characters are shallow and hollow as our new additions are. The City of Heroes lore of old may not have been very well realised, but it was built on a background of depth in design and storytelling, where each side of each matter has multiple facets and grounded motivation. Instead, the characters we're getting now are little more than cartoon heroes and villains solely defined by the one gimmick that they're introduced with. And that's not a step up.

It occurs to me that my cries for an end to Praetoria, along with some of the others', were less about not liking Praetoria as a concept and more about being sick of all the unnecessary new faces constantly being thrown into the game with little introduction or establishment, with the old faces being simply forgotten. Not only did this practice not slow down, it's moved up from neglecting old characters to MURDERING old characters so we can stop asking about them.

I want to see more of the Nemesis army. I want to see more of Requiem, more of Nosferatu. I want to know what happend to Clamor, I want to finally meet Upstart. I want to know why Dreck worked for Crey and what happened to turn him into an anarchist monster. I want to know how the Circle of Thorns will come to terms with the evil that they have become when they start to remember the good thy represented. Granted, we're seeing some of that with Dark Astoria and the new low-level arcs. But given what's become of the Knives, I'm not sure if that really IS an expansion of the old factions of it's just another case of murdering existing characters to replace them with new ones, only without having to admit to doing it. And we're STILL introducing brand new characters and brand new storylines with only tangential relation to existing factions and stories.

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.

SSA2 is the place for that

This, this made me laugh out loud.

I apologise for cropping your post down, but I feel this is VERY well said, and it points to probably my biggest problem with the SSAs. I don't care how "dramatic" or "impactful" or "major" they are when at the end of the day, they're not fun to play. They're a chore and a pain to go through exactly BECAUSE they're so god-awful pretentious. I don't know if this is someone's idea of what "art" is (and if that's art, I'd rather be uncultured) or what, but the story just drags me through the mud, and for what?

Recently, I received probably the first comment in years on one of my Roleplaying threads (a basic story) reminding me to update an older one I'd forgotten I posted. This older story I wrote was so dark that all the people I showed it during development essentially told me to fix it or they were walking and not helping me any more. I did what I could to make back some ground in subsequent chapters, but being faced with proofreading it now, I... Honestly just don't want to. It's not fun, it's not enjoyable and it makes me angry to read about it. I'm not even sure why I wrote it... Maybe I was just trying to prove to myself I haven't lost my touch for drama, only to realise it should probably have stayed lost.

I know no-one cares, but if anyone wants links, I shall provide.

The point is that a story which leaves me angry, frustrated and disappointed when it's over is not a fun story. I don't care if it's art, it's not fun. And maybe it's just me, but I play games for fun, not to be preached to.

There's a cutscene that's a lot like this in SSA1 right at the end, and it's probably the only cutscene in the entire game that actually deserves to exist, and also serves to give the game a more cinematic feel without being clumsy about it. So I agree with you - that's not a bad idea for a cutscene. But giving me a lengthy "death scene" that I have to stand by and be unable to interact with...

What I find the most offensive are cutscenes that exist solely to make me fail because whoever wrote this couldn't be arsed to figure out how to do it through actual gameplay. It's this notion that it's OK to let us win and pat us on the head in combat because we'll complain otherwise (don't remember anyone complaining about Ajax), but having us CONSTANTLY fail in cutscenes is just fine. This kind of practice makes it feel like the game is cheating because seemingly the only way for me to fail is for the game to disconnect my keyboard and mouse.

Those are what I find offensive. The rest of what you describe I find as boring and unnecessary. There's a reason I don't watch most sci-fi series, and it's not because their plots or writing are bad or because I don't like the franchises. It's because they spend the overwhelming majority of their screen time presenting me with people sitting in a room speaking with each other. The reasons are obviously obvious: It's cheaper to build a set and have people stand in it and talk than it is to create custom special effects for every episode, but once I started noticing it, it ruined a lot of otherwise good series for me.

This, essentially, is what's boring about "talky cutscenes" in City of Heroes. They contribute very little because their tools are so limited (to say nothing of their writing) and because they take away from what's actually impressive about this game, which is how the GAMEPLAY interacts with the writing. Maybe it's basic of me to say this, but I enjoy seeing big energy blasts blow up big things and I enjoy seeing little girls in skirts... Err, beating up monsters. I enjoy seeing girls beating up monsters... <_<

Point is, a long, talky cutscene that doesn't involve me essentially drags the game to a screeching halt, and so far only Valve have ever been able to pull this off. Usually by integrating their cutscenes in actual gameplay and including gameplay actions for me to do while they run. Yes, you DO need a PhD in Theoretical Physics to put a plug in a socket, Barney. I don't see YOU doing it, ********! It helps their characters are also quite well written (Dr. Mossman notwithstanding, though I fear that's more a shoddy voice actress ruining the role).

But in a game where cutscenes are essentially limited to characters standing still, producing speech bubbles and occasionally emoting... That does not make for a compelling cutscene. What it makes for is, amusingly enough, Lara Croft learning about Gianni Bartoli. Complete with characters' mouths not moving, but at least Lara went out of her way to bob her head as she spoke.

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.