Of TankMages

I wanted to start a discussion and have a little rant based on part of a quote Positron made in another thread rather than derail that one:

I am not sure the devs are going to be persuaded to come around to your point of view when your similar past attempts failed to garner the attention you seek again at this time.

Soooo... the next armor powerset will be Plot Armor?

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

The Plot Armor will be gadget based. You'll have to find a Plot Device to use it.

Iceman started with Snow to protect himself before moving to Ice. Which I suppose can be viewed as level progression.

That or unlocking costume slots to switch away from looking like a giant snowman.

Given that this isn't a comic book, I think the argument "it works like that in comic books!" extremely childish.

johnny, one thing you KEEP ignoring is that this is a video game based on comics. comics can empower and weaken their characters as needed and often entirely by virtue of the story to avoid making things dull. video games don't have that luxury. we have discussed this before but the "superman curse" refers to the fact that there has never, nor will there ever be a game starring superman that is actually good. why, because while in the controlled circumstances of a comic the author can maintain tension to keep the story interesting, in a strict rule setting the player would either stomp over the challenges (if superman's power was correctly shown), or be dis-empowered to the point they were challenged, in which case it wouldn't really be superman. even in recent hulk games, he can be killed by sufficient amounts of conventional firepower, can you see that happening with "world war hulk"?
Coh is in a somewhat similar boat. make no mistake, we have gotten stronger, maybe a little too strong, but given the pve/noncompetitive nature of the game, it doesn't stand out as much. as arcana has argued in a far more eloquent fashion than i, coh's balance is at least partially what it is because of the inexperience of the original dev team. we were never intended to be as strong as we were even at launch, and a not uncommon argument is that the game lacks any real challenge, even at max difficulty settings. not a comment i personally make, but one that a large enough number of posters have made to make it seem less likely it is just a few munchkins.

Ina way, i think that we dont entirely disagree, many of the things you mentioned are things I am enjoying too, but a common thread through your posts, not just here but over the years is you expect the game to allow you the experience of being the hulk, or superman,even your example of batman evokes one of the most ludicrous plot armored author inflation jobs of comics history, i feel you will always be disappointed because the power levels in comics exist because they have authors who can manage them, and in games that just doesn't translate.

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

Haven't read OP because I know the content: "we aren't tankmages".

The truth of the game is we are tankmages. Well, those of us who are mature enough to adapt to the rules of the game, and build and play properly. Manchilds who insist the rules of the game should be adapted to them personally are out of luck.

What's weird is, most childs realise by age ten or so "I am invincible, my super infinity shield reflects your attack forever and forever" and so on doesn't make for a sustainable approach to roleplaying with anyone but yourself. Teens eventually understand what it entails to deal with others, play a role in a society bigger than yourself.

...Then at the age most people are supposed to develop actual empathy and a much greater understanding of the entire world, some adults seem to think the word "roleplaying" is license to forget everything they learned and to regress to a particulary pouty and self-centered five years old.

What is wrong with you people?

Anyone who interprets roleplaying as "my personal story" should be blocked from the Internet for a month, and forced to play in a theatre troupe for that time.

I think the "comics" argument has its place, but game mechanics take precedence. Especially in this area.

I'm two years away and Johnny hasn't changed a bit, huh?

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

The problem with comparing comic books to video games is that they DON'T compare.

A comic book writer can pose a challenge to an utterly invincible character by presenting them with a moral dilemma that character has to cope with. A video game cannot do that, not realistically anyway.

I mean, honestly, when a video game player is presented with a choice, how many players will voluntarily make the choice that means they lose?

The first SSA storyline is a great example of that. Since the arc basically ended up with the player character ultimately failing, how many threads did we see crop up almost immediately with the theme of "My character wouldn't DO that"?

Video game players will not voluntarily make their characters weaker, and will not voluntarily make their characters lose. The reactions to the SSA making those decisions for us proves that pretty well. And because of that, the limitations imposed on comic book characters through writing are simply not possible.

There's another part of it, and it is purely my opinion. Do-Everything characters are boring. Superman on the DC side, and Sentry and Gladiator (Shi'ar Imperial Guard) on the Marvel side are good examples. Since the characters have no real physical limitations, the only way to challenge them is via writing out moral issues for them to wrestle with. You can only throw so many moral quandaries at a character before it starts to feel contrived.

Look at their weaknesses: Superman has a weakness so rare that only the extremely wealthy or well-connected have access to it. Sentry's weakness is a cornucopia of crippling mental issues, and Gladiator's weakness is his own self-doubt. Really? His own self-doubt?!

Those are weaknesses that a video game cannot possibly replicate in any kind of a believable fashion. How many people playing a character like Superman would ever go and fight an enemy that had his weakness? Very few. Most people would just go around pummeling things that cannot possibly ever hurt them. Superman beating up hordes of muggers and car-jackers isn't a very interesting story at all.

Even my personal favorite comic character, Ghost Rider, is a borderline do-everything character. The limits of his power have never been truly defined, and he once put down Galactus with a single Penance stare (in CoH terms, that's the equivalent of one-shotting Rularuu). What makes him interesting is that Ghost Rider is controlled by Johnny Blaze, who is a normal human with normal human limitations. He is not particularly bright, which leads to him being easily deceived, and he is idealistic, which leads to him making some stupid decisions on occasion. Ghost Rider is incredibly overpowered, but the fact that Johnny Blaze doesn't know how to properly leverage that power is actually quite limiting.

Edit to elaborate: Ghost Rider's limitation is another one that cannot be replicated in a video game. No video game player is going to make a stupid decision if it means his character will lose an encounter. And it is difficult to deceive a player without taking away the player's control of their character.

On the other hand, a character like Cyclops is much more interesting. He has a powerful ability, but he is physically a normal human being. There are tasks he is simply not physically capable of performing, so he needs to figure out another way of accomplishing them.

Spider-Man has a great deal of physical ability, but he is not nearly as limitless as Superman or Gladiator. There are foes he can't take on by himself.

Colossus is very strong and tough, but he can be beaten in a physical fight.

All 3 of those characters are more realistically limited, and they become significantly more powerful as part of a team. The team being greater than the sum of its parts is the main idea that CoH took from comic books. CoH isn't an issue of Superman, it's an issue of the X-Men. Yes, the X-Men can individually accomplish things, but they really shine when all of them come together on a task.

If CoH went more toward Superman, and away from the X-Men, it would lose a LOT of what has made this game so succesful. The tank-mage thing has been tried by 2 other superhero-based games....and it failed both times.

No matter who the player is, at some point being able to do everything by yourself gets old. That point may differ from player to player, but it exists for everyone.

Hey, I only said it has its place. For me, that's for things like "Should we explore this old comic book trope simply because it's a super-heroey thing to do?" For example, the Doppleganger missions were a MUST for me, simply because it's a "trope checklist item". When it comes to mechanics and how things actually work, no, that has to be for the gamers, not the super-hero geeks (like me).

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

To elaborate on my earlier point.

Take an encounter with Juggernaut, who is an extremely powerful character. have you noticed that the writers very seldom pit Juggernaut against characters like Sentry or Gladiator? That's because Sentry and Gladiator can beat Juggernaut in a physical confrontation with relative ease. There is no point to that confrontation unless the writers are trying to humble Juggernaut. In terms of Sentry or Gladiator's story, there is no challenge to it.

Now look at characters like Colossus, Nightcrawler and Professor X. None of the 3 of them can defeat Juggernaut on their own. Colossus can fight him to a stalemate, but will never win. Nightcrawler doesn't stand a chance against him physically. Professor X could telepathically knock him out, but Juggernaut wears a helmet that makes him immune to that.

But when the 3 of them team up against him, they will win. Colossus can keep him occupied while Nightcrawler teleports behind him and removes his helmet, allowing Professor X to knock him out telepathically. Alone, they can't win, but using teamwork makes it an easy fight.

That's the kind of balance the game tries to achieve, and it does so rather well most of the time. Some players can build their character to do a lot of things, but there aren't really any characters that can do everything. MMOs are at their core social games. Giving the players the ability to do everything by themselves basically would make it an online single player game.

I do agree that more character concept possibilities are a good thing, but I don't believe that it needs to come with more power.

Not much I can say that hasn't already been said, but I'd like to add to the idea that truly "superpowered" superhumans are practically impossible to build into a video game, particularly an MMORPG. So what I'd like to talk about is Superman. Namely: there has never been a good Superman video game ever made in the history of video games. The following article is an excellent example as to why.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/vide...e-terrible.php

How do you build a game where the main character is essentially god? The traditional strategy has been to either create contrived, stupid reasons as to why he can't take full advantage of his god-like powers, or alternatively, you pretend he doesn't have god-like powers in the first place. Neither approach has lead to very good games.

Hell, it's a problem even in the writing of a character like Superman. There are two decent types of Superman story: the ones where he's fighting enemies that are at his level of power and the stories that are for lack of a better term, existential. Stories where Superman fights god monsters can be very good, but they're also intensely limiting: an audience doesn't want to read about a character that punches Darkseid in the face every issue. So the alternative are stories where Superman deals with the limits of his omnipotence. Alan Moore wrote some of the better ones.

Take a look at some of the better Superman clones titles:

Irredeemable
The Plutonian, (a Superman archetype) goes completely mad from a combination of guilt and loneliness, because he's fully capable of protecting everyone on the planet. Unable to cope with his omnipotence, he takes a ten minute break on the moon just to get away from it all, and in those ten minutes hundreds of innocent children are killed. The Plutonian is in a real sense responsible for their deaths: he could have prevented them. Even worse, people blame him for it! Unable to live with this responsibility, the Plutonian goes mad and begins slaughtering the people of the world.

Supreme
After Alan Moore took over the title, Supreme became less of a superhero comic and more of a literary and existentialist journey for a god-like entity. The stories are fun, engaging and interesting. They also have very little to do with material that could be made into a video game.

Astro City
In Astro City, there is a superman archetype called the Samaritan. He is the last son of a dying world, a superman who chooses to live amongst humanity, the writer even goes so far as to give him a job at a newspaper. The Samaritan is also fairly miserable. He sleeps 3 hours a night. His every day is spent saving the lives of people, and even stopping to say hello, or allow people to see him as he saves them can cost another person their life. His civilian identity is a pointless sham; he can only spend a few minutes a day pretending to be less then superhuman.

Superman: Red Son
In Superman: Red Son, Kal-El crashlands in the Ukraine and is raised in Soviet Russia. Unlike his American contemporary, The Man of Steel eventually ends up running the entire communist economy on his own, because after all, HE CAN. He builds a world where people are well cared for but where the achievements of human beings are always essentially meaningless. When he is finally defeated by Lex Luthor, he isn't beaten physically, but by having it revealed to him that he has become no better than Brainiac, creating a world that for all intents and purposes might as well be in a jar on his shelf in the Fortress of Solitude.

How do you make such an MMORPG, RPG or any video game platform? Will you have a save vs. existential angst? Maybe every mission arc could end with: "Congratulations SuperGuy! You saved the world from Dr. X, but unfortunately while you were doing that a busload of orphans fell to its death. You will never be able to save all of us." It's just not possible.

Finally, the existence of the Superman in comics naturally reduces the meaning of every other superhuman within the game. Who cares for a Colossus or a Captain America or a Spider Man or frankly, any Marvel hero, when you can be the Godhead? Why play a Firestar when you can be a Firelord?