Anyone Tired of COX and Paragon Market

Please understand that I don't say this in a malicious way, but I need to say it: If that's how you feel, then you really have no place holding an opinion the RP aspect of the game. I get not caring about the lore-side of the game. You're hardly alone in this. But you've consistently suggested that no argument about anything lore-related is valid because... Well, you don't care about lore and so it doesn't matter one way or another.

Again, if you're not interested in the lore, that's fine. I don't care about PvP and that's not going to change. But by the same token, I'm not going to go into a discussion on PvP mechanics and strategies and suggest nothing anyone has said important because PvE comes first so what happens to PvP doesn't matter. They could turn it off entirely for all I care. I don't PvP, so I have no place holding opinions on what's best for PvP, beyond explaining what might get me to be involved.

You're really just channelling Venture on this one, anyway - the story is crap, everything about it is crap, nothing matters because everything is crap so why are we still discussing it? You may not care, but I hope it's pretty evident that some of us still do.

Oh, I was pretty well aware that Doc Aeon (the developer) wrote a lot of the new content. There's a reason the "Dr. Aeon hasn't figured out how to kill off the player character... Yet." going around for a while. I'm hoping the big kill of the Statesman will reign the man in somewhat so he can stop killing off secondary characters like the Praetorian Dr. Vahzilok and Cleo and pretty much everyone else who came from Praetoria, as well as stop stuffing people in fridges like what happened with Katie Hannon. Sure, those might not be on his plate (I wouldn't know), but they carry the same cannon fodder named character feel to them as the SSA1.

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.

Oh, nonsense Sam- I love and appreciate RP.
But I realize RP is infinitely malleable, whereas a game world is massively more static.

In other words, RP can easily adapt to whatever the game world throws at it, while the opposite is flatly impossible.

I agree the 'window dressing' of a game is important- my dislike of one of those other superhero games that was supposed to kill CoH sprang largely from the bland, secondhand game universe it described. But if the gameplay had been compelling I might have stuck around.

Conversely, the other superhero game that was supposed to kill CoH had an amazing universe to draw from...but the mechanics were so offputting I deleted it shortly after clearing the tutorial.

When in doubt, side with good game design.
Pretty much every major structural addition to this game over the years has been met by a froth-mouthed contingent of opponents citing RP as the reason for their hatred of CoV/The Market/AE/Whatever.
And it's always a pointless debate because it's based on pure make believe- you can justify or pillory anything using RP logic.

Thus my mechanics first, RP last attitude.

Lore arguments boil down to matters of taste...which is like an argument between two RPers who see something differently. Each is absolute in the certainty of their argument, becuase they're both making up their own rules of engagement.

Likewise with this Statesman thing. You see it one way, other people see it another way- neither is necessarily 'right' because it's a personal perception issue. Zwill isn't going to change your mind about it being some big hit job on Jack, you're not going to be able to change his that killing Statesman was a good story decision.

I mean we'll all go round and round with it, because that's what we do on forums, but there is no absolute right or wrong involved.

Creators made a creative choice you don't like and never will, but logging in to bash heads is still as much fun as ever.

As the old proverb goes, the dogs bark but the caravan rolls on.

My arguments are founded on something besides endless pull quotes from TV Tropes, so I take exception to this baseless character assassination!!1

This is pretty dumb. If lore content is irrelevant, then why does any game designer bother to include it? Even simple games from 30+ years ago had rudimentary themes. You're saying that Pac-Man would have been as much of a success if it just had a plain white cabinet with no markings other than the title "Dot Eater"? No music? No sound effects? Just a maze and some blocks. That's starting to sound like the Atari 2600 version of the game, and we all know what a blockbuster success that was, ahem.

I'm pretty sure that the way a product is presented has a lot to do with its success or failure, especially given functionally equivalent game mechanics (as in that other super hero MMO). A game's lore and ambiance can go a long way in making something that otherwise be tedious and boring into something worth playing.

Afterall, you didn't have to resubscribe to CoH. You could have just closed your eyes and imagined what it was like while pressing the WASD keys, moving and clicking the mouse, and making sound effects with your mouth. 'Cause really, all you're doing is pressing keys and moving the mouse around. Why pay someone so you can do even more of that?

It's an observation of reality.


All games need window dressing, it's an important selling point.

If you take two functionally identical cars and put a Ferrarri chassis on one and a Yugo chassis on the other, I know which I'd rather drive.

But window dressing alone doesn't mean anything absent compelling gameplay.

No, that's not what I'm saying.

I agree.

But again, absent compelling gameplay there's no "there" there.

This game has an expansive universe, certainly large enough and resilient enough to absorb a few personnel changes without suddenly falling apart and revealing the Matrix-style code underlying everything.

OK, I see what you mean, and I see I misunderstood your position. I can definitely see your stance on it, and I agree that you can spin anything into any story because, in the end, it's all just fiction. That's why I started writing, myself - because fiction really isn't limited to matters of practicality unless you want it to be.

That said, though, this is less about what can and can't be done as much as what would have made for a better story. Yes, I can see how you can argue the same as I argued for the Statesman but replace him with anything else. You'd lose his iconic status, but you could probably tell a similar story with Positron. The thing, though, is that you COULD have told it with the Statesman, and now you can't. And I firmly believe that telling it with Jack's creation would have been superior to telling it with Matt's creation.

I still feel like you hold no opinion on the specific matter of the Statesman's demise, though, which I conclude from your comments to the effect that it might as well have been anyone else. And I honestly don't believe that killing him made for a better story than keeping him would have. Maybe that's just because the SSA1 was mishandled like Team Ninja giving Samus Aran a voice and the Statesman's Death plot angle didn't have to suck if it were told properly. I don't know, I just feel that the Statesman could have been put to better use, narratively, than to serve as fertilizer.

While I'll give you that that's a good rule of thumb, I don't think it should be universal argument. I've played a great many games that I played for the story DESPITE gameplay being pretty much crap. I need go no further than the Soul Reaver side of the Legacy of Kain series. All three games (including Defiance) have amazing voice actors and tangled but very interesting plots that I play in much the same way as I watch a movie. Which is just as well because gameplay in those games is crap, and it somehow manages to become WORSE with each sequel. It's very rare indeed that I'd enjoy so much a game that's so fundamentally broken, annoying and generally punishing to play, but these games deliver for story alone.

There are also a number of games that I've played squarely for the visual design and style... I played them because they looked good. NCsoft's Lineage II may well be the worst game I've ever played, and the reason I keep trying to like it (and failing miserably) is because I simply just LOVE that game's Orc designs. In fact, all-caps "LOVE" is an understatement, considering this game more or less informed one of my major aesthetic choices for female characters and served as the basis of inspiration for Xanta. Have you seen what I ask for in EVERY costume request thread? That's where it started. Right now, Xanta is probably one of my favourite characters, and the only one I have artwork for. All of this in easily my least favourite game I've ever played.

Inversely, I've dumped games that had great gameplay but shoddy art design and especially bad stories. For instance, the original Hard Truck: Apocalypse is a deeply flawed game that's more or less alone in its genre, but it's a decent game. The game's sequel, however, has a story that's not worth a crap, and so is the far inferior game. Both games have essentially the same gameplay, with the sequel even having more stuff, but its story is just repugnant and really not worth playing through a second time. And for as many people try to get me to give it a shot, I just hate how Guild Wars 2 looks.

This actually bleeds over into my characters, as well. By FAR my longest-running and most favourite are the ones with the best and most involving story. I'm sure you've seen me post about Kim till my fingers bleed, and this character went from being a throwaway on the doorstep of deletion to one of my all-time favourite characters, all because I wrote a story about her. Frankly, the most I ever really want out of an RPG's gameplay is for it to stop getting in my way and asking me to jump through hoops in order to do what I came to do anyway - have a cool-looking characters kick *** and go through a story which will eventually inspire me to write my own.

It's also why I'm getting ******* sick of the literal quagmire of plotless "retro" indie games that offer nothing BUT gameplay, with no story and aesthetics that even the NES would have been ashamed of.

OK, this was based on a misreading of your post and was, upon reflection, a bit of a low-blow. I retract my statement.

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.

To correct this - I asked John 'Protean' Hegner about this at the Pummit, and he told me that "badges and plaques that mention Statesman are being kept in-game. They are not being modified or removed."

So stuff like the "Alpha and Omega Gambit" plaque in Crey's, etc, those are staying as they are.

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!)

Well, this detours into the realm of literary criticism & personal preference- there's no right or wrong to it.

I'll admit I've never felt much affection for or connection to Stateman- he wasn't visually compelling, he never distinguished himself to me in-game, he was just a brand name. So I don't have an investment in what happens to him, good or bad.

Also I'll note I still haven't finished the SSA, so I have no opinion on the nuts and bolts of his removal from the game world. I'll eventually get around to it, and it'll show up in my 'returning player' thread.

You could certainly be right here- I'll have a better idea if I agree or not after I get through the SSA.



This I don't get...it's like watching a terrible movie because you like the set design, or reading an awful book because the font captivates you.

Games are their gameplay.

The closest I've ever come to intentionally playing a game that stunk was Dragon's Lair way back in the day. Gameplay was just ridiculous- memorizing which way to jump- but the animation was a treat and I really wanted to see what the next set piece was.

But the ideal way to "play" was, of course, to watch over the shoulder of someone else. =P

All of which just adds to the inexplicable mystery that makes Sam Tow into Sam Tow.

Great example!
And truer words have not been spoken!


Anyway, we all know Dr Aeon killed off Jack's characters because he somehow ruined Aeon's RP back when he was just a player. Right?

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

What int he bloody hell does "the face of the game" have to do with lore?

I'll answer that in case you're having trouble: Jack @#%$.

Sure. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a terrible movie. That much is a fact. But I'll still watch it because I like visual aesthetic of it. Say what you want about Square Enix, but the one thing they've always done right, at least in my book, is pretty much just what you described - set design. Not only were this movie's visuals revolutionary for its time, being one of the first CGI movies to focus on actual adult biological humans, but its technology informed so much of the 21st century's vision of the future. The holographic interfaces that movie pioneered have been cropping up in so many other works of fiction right down to Mass Effect. I'd watch that movie just to look at it, because for as uncanny valley as people claim it is, I still like it.

Actually, I feel the same way about that HORRIBLE Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children movie. I'm honestly not sure if that one even has a plot, but DAMN if the fights scenes in there don't make me smile. They're absurd, they're bizarre, they're logic-defying, but they LOOK amazing, at least to my sensibilities. And I'd honestly watch that movie again, but it's... Kind of a vehicle for Cloud Strife to the detriment of his companions whom I've seen to be quite capable in their own rights. Tifa - a fan favourte - has one scene getting her *** kicked and one scene tossing Cloud against, erm... A blue dragon of some sort. I get the feeling it was intended to be either Bahamut or the "weapon," but I can't tell, with the plot being as dense as it is. And yeah, I watched it with subtitles.

Granted, that's more "visuals over plot" in terms of debate, but to me, plot is to a movie what gameplay is to a game - it's why it's made, with the rest being pop corn. But like a game, JUST plot isn't really worth much. Ghost in the Shell 2, for instance, has enough plot to fill a novel, but it's one of the dullest, most boring movie to feature a half-hour cold room conversation and and a triple-wake-up dream sequence within the same run time. I'm sure the plot was great, but I lost patience about half-way through so the latter part of the movie I sort of glazed over glassy-eyed, with little understanding. It had something to do with what it means to be alive and the future of humanity and that whole laundry list every pretentious anime seems compelled to drag around and exposit about several times. I'd have watched it for the beautiful animation, but most of that was spend animating people standing around gormless and talking to each other. Oh, joy.

Oh, I actually have an example of the reverse! One of my oldest characters - Crash - is based around two old animes I'd seen at the time - Battle Angel Alita and Armitage III: Poly Matrix. Both of those movies have... Honestly, really crap animation. Armitage is just mostly incompetent and Alita seems to have been rushed. At the same time, both of these movies served to tell the same basic story of mechanical life form struggling to find its own identity and personality and, like Pinocchio, become a real person. These managed to inspire me to such an extent that probably what is my all-time favourite character is a direct descendent of those plots. Even though both movies are ugly as sin, I appreciate them for the fiction they present, which manages to inspire in a big way.

That's a very one-sided way to look at them. Yes, as a basic concept, a "game" is something you interact with the computer in order to "play." But that's far and away not the only reason a person might buy a game. For instance, I stopped "playing" City of Heroes back in 2004, when I realised what the game's true strength was and where the bulk of its staying power resided: Character creation. Some time towards the end of 2004, I started playing with City of Heroes in much the same way as I played with my Batman and Robo Cop action figure (that said "Drugs are trouble!" when you pressed a button on its chest) way back when I was a little kid. Only this time, I didn't have to pretend-fight and make sound effects with my mouth and essentially smack toys together with my hands. Here was an actual, honest-to-God game which took my imagination and made it a reality.

For... God, years now, I've never really been that bothered by what I do in City of Heroes, specifically. So long as it's not a pain in the *** to do and it involves fighting, anything will suffice. What matters to me is seeing the characters I design throw down on camera in front of me. I can't draw for ****, so this is really the only way I'm ever going to see these people on-screen in a game, and I love every minute of it. Well, every minute of action, anyway. And in-between fights, I try to immerse myself in the game's plot and story, not because of some Venturian quest for Shakespearian writing, but because the game constantly feeds me little seeds of ideas that I can then take and develop into my own.

Hell, the concept of alternate dimensions is something I'd never have become so accustomed to if it weren't for City of Heroes doing such a good job of integrating into a consistent storyline. And that one, single line of text you get from a Tech Naylor mission entry pop-up about the Shard - "It's like being inside the mind of a god!" was enough to earn me several new characters just from the idea I got out of this.

A game with great gameplay can entertain. A game with great storytelling can inspire and enrich. That's been my experience, at least.

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.

See, when I talk about what could have made for a better story, this is kind of what I mean. Having the Statesman fight Wade alongside the player would have been awesome. Bonus points if Wade traps him in the Spell, and the Statesman is clearly dying, but he fights through it an assist the player in the fight, with his health constantly draining. When both Wade and the Statesman are down, THEN the scene plays out, with Wade getting back up, rejuvenated by the Statesman's power.

See, in that situation, there would have been no question about giving up. He would not have given up. Even when mortally wounded, the man would have fought to the last breath until he had literally nothing left to give. That would have been a death I could respect and a death I could admire.

But, no. Because the Statesman's death wasn't planned as a grand event and his final swan song, sending him off with the fanfare of a true hero. Nope. People talk smack about his for several arcs, then he shows up to die, having contributed nothing to the plot. Story opportunity wasted. Good job.

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.

{shifty eyes}

I've watched some soul-sappingly crap films purely because Johnny Depp was in them.

Protean handles more of the Praetorian content than Dr. Aeon - plus, Cleo doesn't die - unless the player is evil

What about letting the hate build for half a decade so that it could explode in the fenzy of rage we saw in SSA1.5?

Hush, you! Neither choice is Good, or Evil in that regard. A good person dies no matter what.

Anyone who has the job title "Chief Interrogator" in the security force of a dictatorship is not a good person

He never played it up, anyway. If you can't acknowledge the man was very noble and put the people, and even the player, before his own safety? I'm going to feel REALLY bad supporting you in the past threads, GG.

Not everyone in a 'dictatorship' is in the same boat. You know better.

And really, Cleo? With all of her so-called 'information', couldn't even be ***** to bother knowing you were with the Resistance or otherwise? Kind of questionable. Even so, she herself did some questionable things. It's a shame EITHER had to die, in the end. But, when it comes down to it, Washington was nothing but noble, while Cleo was sort of skirting.

I really hope she fights this. You both re stubborn as a mule, I may would pay to watch this debate.

... Just for a stupid comment like that, I won't debate it further.