I actually have something positive to say about SSA7!

Yeah, given my history with the SSAs, that is news worthy.

I really didn't want to try SSA7, to be honest. After the train wreck of a story the first six told, I was DREADING this one. And, yeah, the story hasn't really captivated me so far. It's actually pretty basic. And the writing is probably some of the WORST I've seen in the whole game from a technical standpoint. It's clear no-one proof-read this. Indeed it's pretty clear no-one actually read this after it was written. It's just rife with the kind of simple, obvious mistakes and basic bad grammar that would have been obvious even at a cursory glance. Gems like "I mean, all these mix of people here going to fight Darrin Wade!" are so bad it's actually starting to get funny in an ironic sense.

But I made this thread to say something POSITIVE about the SSAs, and I have to confess... I really like the gameplay in these. This is more or less exactly what I wanted out of the game, at least so far. I'm given a mission, told where I'm going and why, and I have to beat the teeth out of a legion of enemies between me and there. That's all City of Heroes ever needed to be. That's all I ever wanted - combat with context. So far, I've not run into any pesky endless cutscenes and the flow of my gameplay hasn't been interrupted by any "fancy" mechanics. These are just basic missions, populated by an enemy faction which makes sense to be there, with a reason given why I'm running them to begin with. And they all tie together into the same overarching story of the arc. This is EXACTLY what I wanted all along, and it's exactly where City of Heroes excels.

See, this is what I'm saying. When the mission designers stop trying to shock me and blow the back of my skull open with excitement and actually let the game do what the game does best, it's a pleasant experience. Even if the story isn't great and... Yeah, it isn't... But even if the story isn't great, I can still enjoy the game when I'm not constantly interrupted by incessant "theatrics." Not everything has to be a scripted sequence, and SSA7 proves this actually quite beautifully. Whether I like the story or not doesn't change the fact that... Yeah, I'm enjoying running the missions so far. Rularuu Overseers are pain in the ***, sure, but that's neither the mission's fault nor the story's. The point remains that when the game doesn't actively work to ruin my fun, it can be quite enjoyable.

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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.

I can agree with all of that. And I really like your signature.

I enjoyed the SSA7 and was a bit surprised at some of the negative reaction. This is probably another YMMV and I for one had a good time.

The whole SSA was awesome.

I can understand those things Sam. I am a very casual story guy so I probably glance over those things 90% of time focusing in on the battles, most of which were entertaining for me.

It was enjoyable and the Developers probably did one thing here that they should apply to ALL their arcs...avoid over-exposition! There are very few more annoying things than to have to click through "TEXT" "Option A/Option B" "TEXT" for about five minutes then go to a mission where you gain NOTHING for your time spent...yes, I mean YOU Dr. Graves and Twinshot is not far behind.

Just give me the facts then let me smash faces. Delightfully, this arc did both.

see I'm the reverse.

When teaming I just want a fight.

But when solo I want a story. I don't want to just fight spawn after random spawn through a map to the end. I want interesting stuff inside the mission. Side missions. Interesting dialogue. A series of linked tasks that make sense. So I liked several of the individual SSA arcs because of that.

However, I don't replay story based content. I know the story. I will replay combat based content if the combat was fun. Because it is a bit different each time.

Of course, there's still the problem of sensory overload and too much NPC chatter all at once. For instance, I just went through a fight where around six NPCs dropped a speech bubble at once AND I had two caption boxes on the screen at the same time AND a "Trial-like" window special objectives. I got killed by an insta-death beam twice before I figured out what the fuchsia I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to avoid it.

I guess it's still better to have occasional moments of text diarrhoea in what is otherwise a streamlined, action-packed story arc, but I honestly wish whoever's writing those could resist dumping seventeen lines of text on me just as a hectic, time-critical event is starting. Honestly, there has to be a better way to let me know what I'm supposed to do without just tossing it in with the zillions of concurrent NPC chatter bubbles.

Still, for what it's worth, the actual gameplay of the arc hasn't failed me, Overseers notwithstanding. Yeah, lots of fun getting hit consistently through Elude, all my toggles, all my passives and two medium purples. But again, that's not down to the story or the mission design.

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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.

My biggest gripe was how everything was 'wrapped up' at the end in a TL;DR fashion. Penny Yin joining the Phalanx and Posi becoming the head honcho? That would've been stuff I would like to see happen during actual missions. Not just a "oh, btw, this happened too".

You know what occurs to me? All of these things we're "told" are happening that are supposed to be dramatic? I'd actually like to see them. Not necessarily as cutscenes or FMV, but why not as comic book pages? For all the mocking we gave BABs' jaw and Psyche's lips on that Freedom Tutorial cover, the short comic that comes with it is actually a very cool idea. There are so many things that happen in SSA7 that I'm just told about, and many of them would benefit from at least one panel showing them to me. Missiles flying into space, cities being invaded, fleets engaged in battle. There's very little... "Weight" to having someone just mention them. Not even describe, just mention off-hand. Had I even a still picture to show me what they're talking about that would still be superior.

Additionally, the horrid quality of the text just hit lolcats level of snerk. The line "the entire eyes of the world are you on" had me both facepalming and giggling at the same time. This is honestly just bad. It's like a bad BableFish translation, or possibly like someone let Microsoft Word correct "all the world's" to "the entire world's" because that programme simply likes to do that for some reason. In either case, this comes off like it was written by someone who does not speak English very well. And that's coming from a foreign speaker of the language.

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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.

The maps were beautiful.

Part of me felt the "where are they now" epilogue was a bit too long and necessary, but to be honest I know if I they didn't include it, I'd be wondering about it now.

I do actually hope that maybe they might reused some of the first SSA contacts in the future, I mean Alastor, for all his whininess, does have the sort of goal in which you're BOUND to run into the guy again.

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

I tend to agree, Sam. I had so much fun playing SSA7 that it just about made up for having endured SSA6. This is blueside, I'm talking about. I haven't done 6 & 7 redside yet; need to get the character I was running the story on to 40.

As for the others, I enjoyed them all to varying degrees. Thinking back on them, I would have to say that my reaction at the end of most of them was something like "Well the story was ...mostly...okay...but the game play more than made up for it. And what awesome maps!" I thought the whole concept of the contact for SSA2 blueside was absurd, but OTOH, I enjoy SSA2 redside so much that it's the only one I regularly repeat when I have a character in range, or a character I just want to play who needs something to do.

[And on a side note: Really. The maps. Can't say enough good things about the maps, not just in the SSAs but in all the new content from the past few issues. Kudos to you, map-makers.]

Having actually seen the final "clip show" sendoff, I have to say I agree both with the people who like it and those who don't. Again I harken back to games with TERRIBLE endings like Fallout and Mass Effect 3, and how much better they would have been with an epilogue like this, even if it's just a clip show or a narration. Sure, it's not much, but I'm happier to have seen it than I would have been to skip it. I just wish the text boxes lasted longer. Again - I can't read this fast! Stop making me read so fast! I speak English as a second language, after all.

While I very much agree that having an epilogue like this was a good idea, I don't really like how it was handles, in the sense that not a lot of it was terribly interesting. Oh, goody. Non-descript guy in PPD armour is working to create better PPD armour. I ma so thrilled. It's just boring. See, the guy who was always in debt over the collateral damage he did, his fate was actually very creative. Love it!

I think what let me down the most is Positron. This whole string of arcs comes off as a meta trip where one lead developer is pooping on the work of another, and nominating Positron as the leader just seems tasteless. I mean, the guy did WHAT, exactly? He didn't show up once in all seven SSAs. He never had anything to do with anything. He never had a line of dialogue. And yet STILL we had to shove him into the picture because Matt Miller made him. If he had to have such a massive push, why not involve him with story? Why not have HIS entire family killed and have HIM beaten up and humiliated so he "earns" the spot? Just name-dropping him in the end like that, when I might not even know what a "Positron" even is is just bad taste.

I think the biggest mishandling happens to Lady Grey, though. See, her one defining characteristic is that she uses the royal "We" to refer to herself, and in her final dialogue in that scene, it's all "I," "me," "mine." Really, this isn't a hard gimmick to keep consistent. Every time you want to use a first-person pronoun, use the plural and capitalise it. That's it. But then, that's just one more example of this story arc never having been proof-read, so eh...

The whole thing was a surprisingly fun ride for what I'd grown to expect of the SSAs. It didn't waste my time, it interrupt the action constantly and it kept the actual gameplay going, managing its exposition in its downtime. On a technical mission design level, it was actually quite a success. Again, if our mission designers would just stop trying so damn hard and focus on the game's strengths, as opposed to turning City of Heroes into a point-and-click adventure, the game will always be fun to play, story or no story.

I can say without any reservation that SSA7 is easily the least terrible SSA I have played so far.

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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.

TheNet and Arbiter Bacon do a lot of the QA.

I finally, finally get it. Manticore was behind all of it and it makes perfect sense. Why? Well, when you spell Manticore backwards it spells out Lord Nemesis, just with different letters.

Wow. What a twist!