Camp and cheese are fine, but they should be used *very* sparingly in my opinion. Cryptic still has an opportunity to do something about it.
Dude, this game used to be cheesier and campier than a brie table at a Boy Scout Jamboree. Things started changing around On Alert. What you're seeing is the improvement - most of the campy elements (like the Big Trouble In Little China homages, or the speech patterns of the Black Aces) are left over from earlier iterations.
Give it time - it's getting better...
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Dude, this game used to be cheesier and campier than a brie table at a Boy Scout Jamboree. Things started changing around On Alert. What you're seeing is the improvement - most of the campy elements (like the Big Trouble In Little China homages, or the speech patterns of the Black Aces) are left over from earlier iterations.
You can tell a good and serious story without being solemn about it, and I believe you can make a deep and meaningful tale in a rocketships and rayguns world as much as you can turn the most street savvy and hardboiled elements into adolescent trite that tries too hard.
I see the problem with Champions' stories as being less about pop culture references or self referencing humor and more about a lack of depth, the elements themselves not being used to weave a tale about something or another but just as excuses to beat some bad guys and get some costume unlocks. Even the current humorless brooding vigilante event completely wastes its potential, leaving us with nothing but another shallow storyline that ignores all the interesting twists and implications that could be used to add meaning and complexity to instead give us what is little more than a filler episode with a cool setpiece battle at the end through which you rush in about an hour and then proceed to farm in a daily basis.
There are gleams of good storytelling there but those cases are few and far between, and they never go beyond giving us a brief look into what could have been. This may be related to Champions' nature as a mostly casual game, as you are pretty much expected to jump in, have some lighthearted and not very involved fun, and then go back to whatever you were doing before. Still, it is sad to see so much potential as some stories had wasted like that.
Just my two locals on the storytelling topic.
Keep in mind I am not saying CoX was better nor worse, as I never actually did play that game.
Don't judge until you've had a chance to run Adventure Packs. I like Whiteout, self-contained homage without being silly. Resistance is also a nice chunky classic comic book story (and is LOADS of fun in bits, though also lengthy).
I'm not fond of the Serpent one, but that's a taste issue, and the story in it is worth seeing once for how it interlaces with the others (do Demonflame first).
Adventure Packs are also a great opportunity to work with other folks, because while a good FF build can probably solo them all, it's REALLY hard (and I don't know if most of the ATs can handle many of the APs)
Campaign: The Fenwick Cycle NWS-DKR9GB7KH
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Because playing for little or no rewards being fun for YOU, does not make it fun for everybody.
There are reasons people play RPGs other than just the story. There is also game play, rewards, progression and a sense of consequence and achievement--that there's a final result for all the work you've done (often represented in the form of perks or rewards). That you don't value these things or consider them to be important does not mean that other people won't either or that they haven't been a staple of RPGs since their inception before they were turned into video games.
Additionally, for some people there is also a sense of continuity, and UGC often breaks from that continuity because it is not an official part of the game world at large and their stories might not even have anything to do with game's actual lore (not that I necessarily consider that to be a bad thing but it does break from the rest of the world continuity unless the stories are done for specific characters with specific backgrounds in mind). They're just a collection of stories that other users have worked on that may or may not be good or bad.
Many of them will likely be pretty mediocre for most players' tastes. Only way you can tell is to invest time out of your game schedule to try them. And if they turn out to be bad or not to your tastes and take significant amount of time to complete, all you will have achieved by the end of your mission is waste your time if there's not even any notable rewards at the end.
And finally, another use for UGC content is for Alternate Leveling Paths/Content specifically. Having UGC with minimal or no rewards will not allow UGC to achieve that function, making it ONLY about trying stuff someone else made out. And while I don't doubt that that might be good enough for some, I doubt that it will be good enough for many. So like I said...
Having little or no rewards for Foundry missions would make the whole implementation of it completely pointless for anything but a niche segment of the player population.
I see the problem with Champions' stories as being less about pop culture references or self referencing humor and more about a lack of depth, the elements themselves not being used to weave a tale about something or another but just as excuses to beat some bad guys and get some costume unlocks. Even the current humorless brooding vigilante event completely wastes its potential...
Snip
There are gleams of good storytelling there but those cases are few and far between, and they never go beyond giving us a brief look into what could have been. Snip
Just my two locals on the storytelling topic.
Keep in mind I am not saying CoX was better nor worse, as I never actually did play that game.
I agree with this pretty much 100%
**We Bit of Spoilers, if you haven't done the Night Hawk stuff yet**
I mean...why specifically, other than 'oh he's obviously an evil ceo', was NightHawk investigation Franklin Stone?
And exactly what was it that he uncovered that warranted Stone going through so much trouble to frame him? **end spoilers**
There is a lot of potential, humor is great regardless of genre and good story telling is possible regardless of genre, it just needs to be tapped. And it has gotten better, so maybe its starting to get tapped?
After reading Thundrax's compilation of lore (some of which he actually wrote for the PnP!), I gather that Franklin Stone is the kind of guy who'll go out of his way to frame you and send you to prison if you have evidence that he double-parked once. Nighthawk probably has hard evidence of the supervillains who use ACI, Stone's company, as a supply store...
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Comments
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Give it time - it's getting better...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I'm glad to hear this.
I see the problem with Champions' stories as being less about pop culture references or self referencing humor and more about a lack of depth, the elements themselves not being used to weave a tale about something or another but just as excuses to beat some bad guys and get some costume unlocks. Even the current humorless brooding vigilante event completely wastes its potential, leaving us with nothing but another shallow storyline that ignores all the interesting twists and implications that could be used to add meaning and complexity to instead give us what is little more than a filler episode with a cool setpiece battle at the end through which you rush in about an hour and then proceed to farm in a daily basis.
There are gleams of good storytelling there but those cases are few and far between, and they never go beyond giving us a brief look into what could have been. This may be related to Champions' nature as a mostly casual game, as you are pretty much expected to jump in, have some lighthearted and not very involved fun, and then go back to whatever you were doing before. Still, it is sad to see so much potential as some stories had wasted like that.
Just my two locals on the storytelling topic.
Keep in mind I am not saying CoX was better nor worse, as I never actually did play that game.
Forty cakes.
I'm not fond of the Serpent one, but that's a taste issue, and the story in it is worth seeing once for how it interlaces with the others (do Demonflame first).
Adventure Packs are also a great opportunity to work with other folks, because while a good FF build can probably solo them all, it's REALLY hard (and I don't know if most of the ATs can handle many of the APs)
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
It's not about recreating Batman Begins up in here, it's just about putting a little more thought than LOLcats fer cripes sakes.
Champions was, for a long while, Meet The Spartans in tights. Can we get some Monty Python in this *****? Maybe some History of the World? H2G2?
Things have definitely gotten better tho. Thank goodness.
The cakes were a lie.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Because playing for little or no rewards being fun for YOU, does not make it fun for everybody.
There are reasons people play RPGs other than just the story. There is also game play, rewards, progression and a sense of consequence and achievement--that there's a final result for all the work you've done (often represented in the form of perks or rewards). That you don't value these things or consider them to be important does not mean that other people won't either or that they haven't been a staple of RPGs since their inception before they were turned into video games.
Additionally, for some people there is also a sense of continuity, and UGC often breaks from that continuity because it is not an official part of the game world at large and their stories might not even have anything to do with game's actual lore (not that I necessarily consider that to be a bad thing but it does break from the rest of the world continuity unless the stories are done for specific characters with specific backgrounds in mind). They're just a collection of stories that other users have worked on that may or may not be good or bad.
Many of them will likely be pretty mediocre for most players' tastes. Only way you can tell is to invest time out of your game schedule to try them. And if they turn out to be bad or not to your tastes and take significant amount of time to complete, all you will have achieved by the end of your mission is waste your time if there's not even any notable rewards at the end.
And finally, another use for UGC content is for Alternate Leveling Paths/Content specifically. Having UGC with minimal or no rewards will not allow UGC to achieve that function, making it ONLY about trying stuff someone else made out. And while I don't doubt that that might be good enough for some, I doubt that it will be good enough for many. So like I said...
I agree with this pretty much 100%
**We Bit of Spoilers, if you haven't done the Night Hawk stuff yet**
I mean...why specifically, other than 'oh he's obviously an evil ceo', was NightHawk investigation Franklin Stone?
And exactly what was it that he uncovered that warranted Stone going through so much trouble to frame him?
**end spoilers**
There is a lot of potential, humor is great regardless of genre and good story telling is possible regardless of genre, it just needs to be tapped. And it has gotten better, so maybe its starting to get tapped?
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!