If you haven't looked at the new Skulls, please do.

paging Samuriko!

=D

That's coming for the next holiday event, "How the Skulls saved Halloween."

Following that, the winter holiday features the musical production, "Troll: The Yuletide Carol."

For the last eight years they have NOT been a "mono-ethnic" gang. Why change it now just to change it?

King's Row has never been portrayed as a community that could be called ethnic at all. The lore on the Petrovic brothers is that their ethnic community was located near Perez Park, in what amounts to no-man's land today.

The Skulls could not own King's Row the way they do and still realistically be an ethnic gang. They would have to both recruit from the indigenous community and defeat and absorb the inidigenous gangs just as they did to the Shadows. Either that or the Petrovics are just so bad-*** that they are able to fend off the Hellions single(double?) handedly and the rest of the gang is just for show.

The question in the end, is not "is it realistic?" but "how does it improve the game?" That's a subjective question but from my subjective point of view the answer is, "it does not".

Better to let the Petrovics be the ethnic leaders of a gang that succeeded by outgrowing its roots.

*NOTE* - At the current time, the gang is still a diverse one in the beta, though it seems it might be prone to some sort of "clumping" by the RNG. It's not really an issue, especially since they've stated that they're dispensing with the current bad-movie-dialog as a vehicle for portraying an "accent".

You're having an RNG moment then - there's loads of the Count von Count text still there

Read again, GG. I didn't say it was gone. I said they were changing it which, as you well know, is what Protean said.

"being able to afford"="Have more money"

Yeah, the hairstyles on some of 'em are my only complaint.

Of course, I also like the CoT revamp, so what do I know.

Perhaps, but this makes it not one whit less true.

Plainly you have never spent time on Superhero Hype or any other comics-themed message-boards! Allow me to reiterate that the canon-themed complaining on such boards is epic on a scale that makes Thanos look like Charlie Brown. Or Charlie Brown look like Thanos, whichever. Severe fights between members, pleas to comics-creators, boycott threats, tears, wails of anguish and other such histrionics are every day fare on comics message boards. Do the people at DC, Marvel etc care? I assure you: THEY COULD NOT POSSIBLY CARE LESS ABOUT READER OPINION THAN THEY DO RIGHT NOW. Therefore I view Techbot's complain-for-change campaign re this game's lore as tilting at windmills. Those developers don't care, and I get the distinct impression that the developers here are not overly worried about this issue either.

Not to mention, I dont recall even seeing a letters page in the most recent comics I've read.

Not one of them is surprised, I assure you. Mad maybe, but surprised.... not so much.

Good luck with your one-man crusade, Techbot! :thumbsup:

Oh look, another person who says the devs don't listen to the player community.

Anyone else want to join in on how little the devs care before I post the list of things implemented by the devs that the players have asked for?

I'm not the one whose all "the devs are ignoring their own canon, O NOES!" but... whatevs. I'm a pragmatist.

I have better things to angst about, trust me. They're gonna do what they're gonna do, if we like it great. If we don't like it: great.

The thing being discussed here is developer responsiveness to canon, not developer responsiveness to quality-of-life requests. These are completely different subjects, but feel free to list away.

Fair enough on your last sentence, but you can't say the devs just don't listen to us at all. If they didn't care they wouldn't be working on anything; they'd be throwing darts and watching youtube all day.

There's already been a response by the devs to the current state of the Skulls. While it's not what most people would like to see (that is, most people discussing the issue, not most people in the game) it's still a response.

The listen quite closely to the player community about things that matter to the bottom line.

Powers, missions, y'know, gameplay stuff.


Nobody hangs around an MMO because of the story, they hang around because it's fun to play.


'Lore' is window dressing- important to the appeal of the final product, yes, but basically ephemeral. If the game is a house, lore is the paint and the landscaping that gives it curb appeal. It's nice to have, but it isn't actually all that important to the overall value of the property.

The trim around the window was painted blue, but NOW they painted it a slightly lighter shade of blue?

OMG!!!11

JUST LOOK AT THIS PICTURE I TOOK WHEN I RENTED MY ROOM! You can CLEARLY SEE that the trim is a DARKER BLUE! I've been BETRAYED! This is UNCONSCIONABLE!


c'mon, now.

I hang around for both, actually. I know several posters in this thread who hang around for both. Your definition of 'nobody' is a little flawed.

As for the rest of your post, since I continuously get this whenever I use a comparison:

Game =/= Home decor.

*shrug* Red names have already responded to some of these questions, though they've put the responses on the beta forums which is arguably where they belonged.

I don't really see what the point is of entering a thread that has stayed more or less on the original topic and advising people to not discuss the topic.

If you think it's much ado about nothing, well, that's a valid opinion and it's certainly worth sharing. You would hardly be the only person to hold such an opinion.

If you think that you're "waking people up" or something, or telling them to stop wasting their time, then I can only reply that it's our own time to waste. Kind of like doing an AE farm. The fact is that many/most of the people on both "sides" are veterans who have a pretty good idea already just how much the studio bends in any particular direction. We've been doing this for eight years or more in some cases.

Blanket statements that "the devs do this or don't do that or don't listen or will do just what they're going to do without regard to player opinion" are the sorts of statements that should be thought through before being made. It only takes one example to make it provably false, after all.

In the end, though, there's no harm from discussing people's opinions, especially when the topic is both currently topical and the thread train is more-or-less on its original track. If the whole thing is just the opinion of a small vocal minority and the devs do end up proceding along the path they've already laid out, then we still all had our say. I don't see where that should bother anyone or require anyone to "educate" or "wake up" or otherwise address the players involved in the discussion instead of addressing the discussion itself.

Discussion is fun and stimulating. If the topic fails to interest a reader, the reader is always free to go read something else, right? If everyone was a fatalist and took the atitude that "Well, they're just going to do what they do so why venture an opinion?" then what would be the point of ever discussing the game at all?

They're free to do what they want. It's their game. We DO all realize that, whether we think it's a case of splitting hairs about paint color or we think it's the studio changing the paint and saying "it was this color the whole time". Spirited discussion is a good thing. Nothing is gained by discouraging it or "rescuing" people from their delusions of importance. They typically have opinions even if they don't have delusions about the importance of those opinions.

My definition is spot on.

Let me repeat:

Nobody who doesn't enjoy the gameplay will stick around only because of the story.

Are you sticking around only because of the story?
Are the "several posters in this thread" sticking around only because of the story?

No.

In a game, gamplay is primary.
The devs can do pretty much whatever they want with the Skulls, or Hellions, or Rikti, or any faction, without losing a dime over it.

Since metaphors seem to confuse you, let me state it in less abstract terms:

Structural elements are vastly more important than cosmetic ones.
While they may enjoy and appreciate the cosmetic elements, people decide to stay or go based on the structure, not the appearance.
The cosmetic elements are therefor much less important and more malleable to the creators than structural ones.

Then post that instead of an either/or sentence.


Metaphors don't confuse me. My reply was made as a jab to other posters who belittle my own comparisons and metaphors when I make them, and constantly throw out the "apples to oranges" argument when I do so.

You don't need to talk down to me just because you disagree with me and can't take a joke. Slick had it right: people aren't doing anyone any favors by posting this self-righteous garbage about how they seem to know best and how we all need to stop discussing things we have an interest in.

Then maybe save it for them?
I generally try to restrict the context of my replies to the person being replied to.

I've a well developed sense of humor, but I'm not much of a mind reader.

I suggest entertaining the notion that a "joke" requiring an encyclopedic knowledge of your post history is perhaps slightly too obscure.

Again, your interpretation skills are questionable.
But you're super talented at making things up and pretending someone else said them!

Fixed that bit-- sorry.

From the sound of it, it's just not liked on Male characters. Honestly, the hair on Skulls makes sense to me. Done in black it very much looks like emo hair, which just happen to be the very first people I would think would join a death obsessed cult.

Female club hairstyle looks decent. Male version looks...derpy as @$%!

Bad storytelling can easily drive away customers. I actually know a multitude of friends I used to SG with that just can't get back into the swing of the game and immerse themselves into it anymore because of just how badly the quality of storytelling has sunken. Other folks I know that still play don't even bother running official dev-written arcs, and instead will only stick with things they, or friends, have made in AE (which is something else the devs don't focus much attention on). All because of how badly written the game lore has been.

Hell, I went Premium recently and the main reason I'm not going back to VIP is because I think all the Incarnate Praetorian storylines are so poorly written I just don't think it's worth it to pay money to run them. The iPowers are fun enough, and I think the iTrial gameplay-wise cool, but the storyline in and of itself is enough to turn me away from the endgame.

Lore may not be the sole reason people flock to CoH. But that doesn't mean it's not a reason at all. Good storylines are a hugely important part of video games that people keep saying doesn't matter because it's not actual gameplay. That's false. Especially in an RPG. Story does matter. And like I mentioned above, they have actually lost money because of the quality of their writing.