City of Death ((Spoilers Perhaps))

Well that's what I'd like to refer to the game recently as. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and quite frankly anyone is open to counter my opinion here with whatever argument you would like to make. But for the most part I will say that There has been too much death in the storytelling of this game recently. And it has made the job of playing a hero a daunting task as we wallow through storyarc after storyarc of very morbid material. Now maybe that's fitting for people who might play red side, but I can't say.

I just want to run through the list here of very recent storylines here and maybe folks might see what I'm talking about here.

A new Tutorial featuring the utter decimation of Galaxy City, Something us as heroes can't stop. The result is a zone that is utterly destroyed, leaving countless (( assumed)) to be dead.

The Signature Storyline Arcs that featured the original Miss Liberty, Malaise, Statesman and Sister Psyche all dying. As a hero we couldn't even save any of those people and it made me feel as if my toon's part in it all was pointless. We we're prepared for someone to die, but ALL of those characters just seemed a bit much.

Then if that isn't bad enough we get the ISolo Arcs of Dark Astoria, which feature you going against a virtual Dark God of Death itself. Now I will say that as far as storytelling goes, you guys did a band up job, I really did enjoy it. But That doesn't mean that we're getting away from the overall theme of these Arcs... which was watching one known character after another.... and another.... and another.... get freakin eaten up by the Dark God. Now, I know some of those folks actually make it out in the end (( the only people we know for sure who did make it was Ice Mistral )). But I think your catching my drift here.

This overall morbid theme also shows up in some of these lesser known character missions as well. Too many to name but I'm sure players could give us a few examples.

And now.... with some possible leaked info about i23, it's rumored that a new Itrial will have Tryant nuking downtown Praetoria and a new "Dark Ward" Zone released.

My question is, when is enough enough? There has been too much killing off of characters in the game, which in my opinion is really making playing through these storylines not all that enjoyable. Why try and be a hero when someone is always dying?

I honestly don't know why the game has gone in the direction it has, But I can't say I really enjoy it.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I think is one of the reasons I only do the story thing casually. I use to get upset at plot holes and killing off of this or that character back in the day.

At this point, I just roll with it, but I can TOTALLY feel where you are coming from.

Edit: I did thoroughly enjoy Statesmen getting whacked though.

Night Ward mightn't please you then

Don't worry. I'm sure that when the Battalion arrives it'll be all peace and posies. Absolutely no chance of casualties in THAT story line. So there's something to look forward to!

I think killing off an important character is a way of showing they mean business. If there's no chance that someone is going to die then any threat made in the story is meaningless. If the arc hadn't been named "Who Will Die" then any time a signature hero was threatened our reaction would have been "pffft, yeah right, like they're really going to kill off a major character", but now those threats suddenly have a bit more meaning.

I think it's over due. We haven't seen new hero blood in ages. Penny is the first "real" hero we have seen in a looooooooooong time. And she is legitimately a hero now. What we need is some more new heros we can really identify with to fill in the holes and bolster a new life for CoH.

I vote for a Rikti hero! Not some halfblood like H1.

CoH is just going through a case of delayed onset 90s.

Edgier is better, extreme is best. Heroes not failing = carebear. Dark isn't dark enough so it's time for darkity dark dark. A hero has to kill off at least one other hero for it to be a storyline.

Oh come on. After two years of release and a one year build up Praetoria needs to end with a good bang.

I think what seems to be bugging the OP more is that quite a few of these things are basically holding our characters responsible for things outside what they allowed us to do:

People are mad that heroes didn't do more to combat Mot in DA- WELL I'M SORRY! THE DEVS DIDN'T GIVE US ANY CONTENT RELATED TO IT BEFORE.

Aaron Thiery chews out other heroes for moving on from Atlas, feeling they've outgrown it- I'M SORRY, AARON, BUT THAT'S HOW THE CONTACT SYSTEM WORKS, NOT OUR FAULT WE BURN THROUGH THESE LEVELS SO FAST. Also, he's a hypocrite: you can outlevel Aaron Thiery and he'll tell you to move along. Even funnier since, because his arc deals only with Arachnos, it easily could be made into 1-50

Praetorian war happens- AND PRAETORIAN CHARACTERS AREN'T ALLOWED TO WARN THE REST OF THE WORLD BEFOREHAND!

All in all, it kind of reminds me of one line from Hiimdaisy's Big Long Persona 4 comic: "You wanted to say that [Kanji was taken into the TV] but you didn't have enough common sense."

Quote:

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.

lol @Azure. Loved those comics. I quote that all the time with CoH arcs as well. CoH and Persona 4 both sort of suffer those restrictions.

I say, it's about damn time.

When there's no negative reprocussions, when there's no threat of defeat... who cares? I for one welcome a storyline where bad things can actually happen that don't just get magically reversed at the end of the episode like a crappy kid's cartoon.

Without tasting the bitterness of defeat, you can never know the true beauty of victory. Lets work for our victories, rolling with the punches, being beaten down, until we do manage to do something amazing.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

City of Heroes went from "Saturday Morning Cartoon" style to "OH SHI-"

It's never too much death until everything is dead.

I am fan of the change from fluff to rough in terms of seriousness.

I look forward to seeing some villain casualties in the future.

Funny, I would have considered the "dork age" to be pretty much the entire history of comics.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

Eh, they were just side characters to my main heroes. Sometimes writers kill off side characters to spur main characters to strive to do better.

Yes, there's definitely some points throughout the SSAs where we kind of get stuck on the Narrativium Railroad. But, I can't see most of my hero characters just throwing up their hands in disgust and walking away from a situation this world threatening just because a handful of other heroes died. I know they aren't terribly pleased with events.

Now, my villains? I think they fall into the "How can I take advantage of this?" or the "How dare they try to destroy my home?" school of thought. Anybody that I have that are either too dumb or too powerful to consider the magnitude of events for everybody else would just laugh or scoff at the idea of helping save the world and summarily ignore the SSA to begin with.