First Ward First Impression (Possible Spoilers)

This ties in to my original feeling of there being a 5-year in-game gap between the end of GR's story and the beginning of First Ward. It just feels like there's so much crap missing.

Quoting you out of order here but I think my point is not coming across well. You're absolutely right, a hero can be a hero anywhere. It's not like a character of mine going to the Shadow Shard refuses or is unable to use his powers. Of course not. We're asked to go and help but that's about all we're given. The comparison to Croatoa is fair but when Croatoa was introduced, it wasn't like there was some huge interdimentional battle that was tearing up our city at the time.

Although I too am sick to the back teeth of Praetoria and everything related to it, leaving any links to the current situation aside means that First and Night Ward are stand alone areas that seem to have nothing to do with Primal earth (until you get to Incarnate content and find that the Talons are raising hell in Dark Astoria). If that was the case then they had ample opportunity to make it a completely new dimension unrelated to Praetoria. There'd be no need to badly reuse established characters which, as you correctly point out, clash badly with what we know of them from 1-20 Praetoria.

What I'm saying is that in trying to cater to all three sides, they've missed many chances to link it to existing content and tell a consistent story. Because they had to cater to Primal earth heroes coming to the zone, Katie doesn't remember you even if you're on a Praetorian character, mangling her personality in the process. Had they gone about this differently, they could have used the technology that gives different responses based on your badges. Have one for completing her 1-20 story arc awarded retrospectively and have it trigger a different dialogue tree when you speak to her.

This is what bugs me; that they could have done this with greater care, catering for all three sides. A lot of the arcs in both zones are padding anyway IMHO. They could have had three separate arcs and contacts but they didn't. And that's what makes it feel so distant, remote and unrelated as a pair of zones. And that's a shame because some of the stuff in there is great. It's just these niggles that really undermine what could have been an awesome location.

And in this, I can whole heartedly agree. I play villains to be bad, not the shady sidekick to heroes. Villains are in need of some serious love by the Dev team IMHO.

With more cosmic content on the way, it's possible that the devs could create a story arc for Villains to take over/destroy another planet - but that would open up massive motivation and logic problems in all follow-up red side content.

I don't care what they give us as long as it's evil for once. I'm fairly sure if I had one of my redsiders step on a cockroach just to be mean, they'd later be told the cockroach had world domination plans and that they'd just worked for the greater good.

I get the feeling the developers are starting to realise that people WANT a 1-50 path in Praetoria same as heroes can get from 1 to 50 without leaving Paragon City (aside from instanced missions). This mandates that the zones be accessible to Praetorian characters and be situated in Praetoria, hence First Ward and Night Ward. The trouble here is Praetoria itself.

Let's review how our "scripts" have evolved over the years. City of Heroes back in 2004 launched without having an overall overarching storyline. It didn't have a "point," as it were, thus nothing that took place in the game was expected to need to be justified. What's that? We can now visit a new place called Peregrine Island? OK, let's go do that. Why? Phht! Why not? City of Heroes was much more of a sandbox open world (well, semi-open) where storylines happened and called back to each other, but there was no one single story everything had to follow.

Enter City of Villains. The basic story and mission structure is the same, but now instead of calling to each other in a complex web of obscure references, all stories instead called back to a central "setting" - Project: Destiny, and the broader desire villains were expected to have towards kissing up to Arachnos. It wasn't a specific storyline with specific world-changing events, and it didn't really present us with things we HAD to do or else, but it still presented the world within the framework of an overarching story.

Enter Praetorian Earth. All of a sudden, this is no longer a world, it's a main quest with side missions. The world exists to feed the plot line, events happen and change the status quo and there's a constant pressure for characters to go somewhere or do something. A war is happening, and everything that happens is expected to either be a result of this war or contribute towards this war. Praetorian Earth is, in effect, a never-ending event much more so than it is a "world" or even a "setting." Back in 2004, just plopping down a new zone into the game that's some backwater village on the butt end of nowhere and just buying everyone train cards to it was enough justification for that zone to exist. More places to explore. But today's game has all but abandoned exploration, to the point where it's conditioned us to demand reasons for why we're going to the places we are and doing the things we do.

To my mind, it's better to not treat Praetorian Earth as the setting for the rather horrid Praetorian War storyline, but rather as a world that's broader, wider and deeper than just that one storyline. Consider that a player can do more in the world of Praetoria than necessarily deal with the war and not everything that happens has to have something to do with it. Consider, for instance, a movie like Kelly's Heroes. Yes, it's set during WW2 and it takes place entirely post D-Day war-torn Europe, and it does feature American and German soldiers. But it's really not a movie "about" WW2, and indeed most of the plot has very little to do with the war's outcome or strategy. It's just a bunch of soldiers fed up with being used as cannon fodder going to war for themselves. Why NOT have a Praetorian zone that's like that?

That wouldn't have worked, because Katie's out-of-character behaviour isn't restricted to just the first meeting, or to reactions specific to not knowing the player character. If it were simply mistrust, I could forgive it, especially since I DID play a Primal Earth character through the zone. No, Katie's entire personality is different, such that her reactions are consistent with how she'd treat anyone who isn't a balding psychic woman who came out of a jar. A person can act like a jerk in extreme situations and still be ultimately nice and reasonable - stress does things to our judgement. However, a person who acts like a jerk ALL the time is a jerk, plain and simple. Even if you give him a non-jerkish moment or two.

You can't excuse Dr. Cox's behaviour by saying it's the fault of the person he's speaking with, because he acts like that with everybody.

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.

OK, let's.

Really? Because when I first encountered "Doc Delilah", she didn't even know her own name and had just emerged from years of psychic domination where she didn't really have her own individual identity. So she's got to discover her individual identity as opposed to being artificially held in the mindset of a submissive 17-year old girl.

Then, when she does go out into the world and attempt to do good things, she's being thwarted and undone at every turn, sometimes by people and things that say they're trying to help. (In this, I'll agree with the folks who say that some significant amount of time must have passed between the Praetorian missions and the First Ward missions.)

Like I said, I thought the character fit the story and was effective. And I found quite a difference between Katie "It's really been a riot, but it's time for you to bother someone else" Douglas and Praetor "Don't you want to defend the place like a good little hero?" Duncan. You're welcome to your opinion, but obviously I don't agree with you.

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Pauper

....... wait. What?

No arguments here. The sooner we get away from the dimension I refer to these days as 'The Dev's Folly', the better.

And yes, Katie's personality is radically different all over. It's not just the first meeting, it's everything from all of her missions in both zones. That did bug me but I'm not convinced there could have been a better way of handling. Like not being a jerk for example. Shame really, if she'd have gone all cold on you after locking her back in the network, fair enough, even if it was for her own good. But she's horrible to you for the whole two zones and that bugs me too.

As for consistent storylines, I'd rather make my own. But it's been said that the Devs are trying to tell a full story with Praetoria. I can go with that but somehow they missed the mark with First and Night Ward for me. By not tying it to anything, it falls between being part of a story and a brand new zone and that irks me. I'd rather it was one or the other instead of trying to be both.

That's not exactly what I meant, though. Praetoria could have been something great, and indeed still could. But what's required to make that happen is to expand Praetorian Earth to include more than just the one-trick pony of the Praetorian War. Look at legacy Paragon City and you'll see a place that comes together from decades of Rick Dakan's history and which constitutes a rich tapestry of different motifs, stories, factions and themes. Now look at Praetoria and you'll see essentially a single story with a single theme and... What, two factions? Three if you count the Syndicate? For as much as we chide them for running away from the "Resistance vs. Loyalist" duality and this breaking continuity, that's exactly what Praetoria needs - more stories that break from the central paradigm and give the world breadth.

Even for as small as it is, speaking in terms of land area, the Rogue Isles still have quite a bit of diversity to them, with each island having a different theme, different rulers and its own subset of stories and larger canon elements to deliver. At the end of the day, City of Heroes really doesn't work as a linear-story RPG in the vein of Diablo or Dungeon Siege because that's not how it was made. Neither the contacts structure nor the geography really lend themselves to this. It needs to be treated more like a sandbox and thus given more content NOT related to the same one central story.

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For the genre-savvy among you, it's probably pretty clear that treating Praetoria like a separate, fully-fledged, self-contained world where a character can level up 1-50 independently sounds like a MASSIVE increase of workload, essentially by 50%. Adding a third side ups the "paths" the content team need to worry about from two to three, and you can probably already see how the Resistance vs. Loyalist duality would have bloated this to four. If you thought this would cause a problem, you'd be right, because this - along with the Incarnate system - are exactly what Matt Miller was afraid of when he dismissed suggestions of a level cap increase all those many years ago. He feared it would create a new level range which would take a LOT of content to fill up that people would blow through in a week. I ran Dark Astoria in three days and First Ward in two. I ran Belladonna Vetrano's arc in a couple of hours, and that's with a lot of chatting. And I don't exactly play fast.

If Praetoria is to be expanded into a legitimate progression path, then it's going to need to break from the war... And it's going to need a LOT of content to do it.

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.

That's not going to happen - Praetoria is defined by the freedom vs tyranny theme, and the whole world was written to be limited in its scope to highlight that theme.
Right from Precinct 5, the story has been created to lead up to the dimensional war and the final tirumph of freedom over tyranny - a 1-50 Praetorian path will always be domninated by the war.

You obviously don't know who Doc Delilah is. Either that you or completely missed the point and tried making your own and failed, 'cause I don't understand what you're trying to say. Either way you're wrong.

Also we can see your user name just fine. You don't need to write a signature like it's a letter.

Enough with the hyperbole already. 'Destroying the World' plots are not the only alternative to 'Saving the World' plots.

Personally I think the Dean McArthur and Leonard arcs were a step in the right direction, putting villains in control of the situation rather than being lackeys. I'd love to see more of that kind of flavour.

Ring the bell! We have a winner!

"Putting villains in control of the situation" is very much the sum total of the solution to all the "lackey" problems condensed neatly in a single sentence. I love how you put it, because it puts a specific wording to essentially ALL of the problems I've had with the way villains are written in this game. It's not about how vile we can be or how often we fight villains vs. fighting heroes or how often we cause disasters and how often we fight for the greater good... It really comes down to writing stories that put our villains in control of the situation.

Consider the basic hero vs. villain dynamic that our very own developer team have have cited in the past - heroes are reactive and thus react to disasters as they occur, and villains are proactive thus they create those disasters. You don't need the Mission Architect in order for a villain to be proactive. All you need is a story arc in which the narrative acts as though your player villain is in control of the situation, even if the game still makes the major decisions for you. Trust me, it's a lot easier to suspend disbelief in the face of decisions made for me when the narrative at least pretends I'm making them, than it is when I'm being ordered around like a misbegotten serf.

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 trouble is, it's very difficult to write such an arc without imposing a personality and motivations onto a villain. An arc written for the Joker would be quite different to an arc written for Lex Luthor.

And some villains are happy to be lackys - so long as their orders give them lots of stuff to smash.

It's not nearly as complex once you stop trying to write the player character's motivation instead of the player. Put players in the position where the narrative acts as though they're in control of events, but NEVER explain WHY they're doing the things they're doing. Simple. When a plot development needs to inform the player character's decision, present it as a logical progression of events, NOT as the game telling the player what he wants.

It's really not as difficult as it seems, it just takes a different type of approach and at least a little experience. I'd volunteer to do it, but Paragon Studios would never hire me

There's plenty of content for that already in the game.

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.

No, it isn't simple. Not even close. What are your arcs on AE? I would love to see your genius writing skills.

Sure, but that doesn't mean playing through the clone factory arc doesn't seem like bad writing, because I either have to not play it, or perform out-of-character dialogue and actions.

What do you take me for? "Show me your arcs so I can make fun of them?" Yeah, because there's a chance in hell you'll give them a fair shot. Here's a thought - if you're so intent on showing me how you're right and my story arcs are bad, find them yourself. It's not like that's hard to do.

*edit*
Furthermore, even if you do get around to making fun of my villain story arc written with this in mind, the game already gives you examples of how this can be done, in the form of Dean McArthur and Leonard. It's not hard to do.

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 don't play second banana. I want the power in my hands.

And this whole greater good thing? I've mentioned it before. Several times, in fact.

Sorry, couldn't resist! Totally agree with you though.

Recluse will always be better than you

Except for the part where he never was.

The part where players had their own huge evil organization and ruled several zones?

No, the part where I kicked his face in, then did the same for States.

And I do have an organization.