No quest in any superhero MMO has ever left me feeling more heroic than the Vibora Bay Apocalypse.
It really cut out the fat and got straight to the point. And you are without a doubt, the hero of that story arc.
Resistance runs a close second!
Resistance was wonderful and had a little bit of everything. I honestly wished and hoped (and begged and prayed) that they would expand it so we could see how the rest of the world was like in that universe. Like many people have said, this game has so much potential.
I enjoyed the gear progression and slotting (especially when wringing the most out of set-bonuses when that system was introduced) - far far more in CoX than I ever have in Champs, and that was before the crafting redux stripped what little fun and personalisation out of Champ's old system.
And if you can remember way waaaay back.... old skool CoH with the old Hami-raids - I used to enjoy my almost sadistic misfortune in getting a 'Pacing of the Turtle' drop which was absolutely no use whatsoever in any of my suite of toons. Cue the frantic bartering amongst chunks of Hami's jellified corpse. It was so much fun I didn't even mind the crappy drops.
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Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
The 'old skool' Hollows (before Melissa's redux) properly taught you about aggro-distance.
Being someone you spent the majority of my off-mission time patrolling over Eastgate - I could literally spot without checking my global friends list who the old timers were because they had a far superior sense of spatial awareness finessed right down to the metre!.
Plus I loved the fact that you could make it almost to the mission door and then get entrapped by CoT or have an Igneous' bolder hit you from afar and you fall dead at your team-mates feet at the mission door. Some call it sadistic, but the sense of achievement when you finally made it to the mission door (especially when solo'ing) was reward in itself.
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Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
First of all, I love you Jenny- you're one of my favorite people. I don't get to see you in game much, and you really need to contact me soon. But on to the debate.
I disagree with this. The adventure packs in my opinion have pretty decent writing behind them (Whiteout is the only exception since it's more or less a rip-off of the movie The Thing). I feel the same about Vibora Bay Apocalypse and a few of the lairs. Granted the pop culture references are arguably overdone, but I think it's a little harsh to say that CO's writing is flat-out "dumb as hell".
Did you ever play the Praetorian missions on CoX? CO is some Saturday Morning Cartoon crap in comparison. Praetorian arcs could easily be something found in Marvel Comics. The Apocalypse is okay, I suppose. That's ONE story arc. Bad writing tears up the rest of it. Bad jokes makes it insufferable.
New things don't really matter if a player considers CoX's mechanics to be less enjoyable compared to CO's or due to other factors. I consider CO's gameplay mechanics to be better than CoX's with its emphasis on fixed archetypes, power cooldowns and a much slower pace of combat, so CO will always be a better game to me than CoX in that aspect.
Yes, you're partially right. I still remember being shocked at how fast things died in CO. I remember asking someone if I was in the right area at level 7. But the powers in CO can be cool all they want. There's nothing to do here except the same leveling path and 'story' over again.
Resistance lets you pilot a giant robot. Resistance wins.
But, yeah. Dev support.
I'm currently playing GW2 and not CO (or STO, which is where I was last active), and it comes down, to a large extent, to support.
I prefer CO in terms of genre, range of character options, and so on. But... Arenanet has really pulled out the stops in getting stuff done, and Cryptic's development has been misguided, when it's happened at all.
Why am I posting here? Because I hold out a very faint hope that PWE will someday realize how effective CO would be if they developed it more intelligently, and the game might turn into something I can bear to play.
Right now, I make a new character, have fun with costume, then enter the game and get hit by how utterly pointless the actual game experience is (and how limited Archetypes and no power customization is).
CoT is almost certainly going to fail, but if it doesn't the key will be a dedicated, well-targeted development schedule.
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?
Resistance lets you pilot a giant robot. Resistance wins.
Resistance fails hard when you realize what the books described Multifaria as, and how much potential that area had.
Instead, CO went the cheap and boring 'left hand universe' route where the good guys are bad guys and ho-hum, yawn.
Compare that with the story behind Praetoria in CoX. Then realize that it all boiled down to two guys having a pissing contest over an idea, and CO once again got a cheap version of something awesome.
Here's the thing. Not evry arc was wonderfulin COX but it had a lot of good story arcs. From where the hellions and skulls were getting their powers all the way to the praetorians. They were not always exciting or over the top cliche super heroic, but they always told a well fleshed out story.
Not only did they tell a well fleshed out story but they had back story and most importantly continuity. The minor arcs and less flashy arcs led into the other arcs quite directly most times, setting the stage for their stories to unfold. This flows pretty cleanly all the way up to the top since the various villain groups interact and bargain and fight and take advantage of each other.
Example would be the unexciting hollows quests from Lt Wilcott that lead yiu deeper into the situation until you finally hit Flux and have the memorable showdown with FrostFire. There is also a fair amount of back story to that most people never see as well.
Story isn't always about excitementment and super hero shenanigans, it's about telling a well fleshed out and interesting narrative. One that you will not appreciate if all you want to see is "ehrmagherd makes me do cool stuff...robots and explosions...Michael Bay!"
Are you sure that's true? Because before the end, they changed it (I can't remember if it was a Vet Reward or they gave it to everyone when they gave everyone the Fitness Pool for "free" or a combo of the two) to a lot earlier. Anything they could do for one/some, they could do for all if they wished.
I'm not interested in it. It looks more like a quick money grab than anything else. If it wants to be the next CoX it's going to have huge expectations, and I doubt they will be able to pull it off.
Looking at their models that they are using in the video, it's obvious it's placeholder. I recognize some of those models.
Foxbat bothers me because they want him to continue in the great tradition of 4th wall breakers like Deadpool and She-Hulk. What Cryptic fails to realize is that those other characters work by being the only ones who wink at the audience, while this game is nothing but winks at the audience. So Foxbat's real distinction is that he's the only one not lampshading? Whoop-de-doo.
I wonder if this isn't a consequence of the Marvel-to-Champions shift during the game's development. The writers were suddenly taken from lore that had its own place in the pop culture firmament to an obscure PnP game that would only click with the intersection of RPG players and comic book fans. So anywhere they found a weak spot in Champions lore, they filled it in by finding some external reference. Oh, and I'm sure Cryptic had a writers-room version of the Cole Protocol: Aim in a random direction away from City of Heroes. Thus, Chinatown is drowning in Big Trouble in Little China references to not remind anybody of the Tsoo, and the Black Aces have Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick spinning in their graves.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
I'm pretty sure he was talking about the normal game story, which is pretty lacking, I'd wager we could all agree the adventure packs have pretty nice stories :P. I certainly enjoyed them.
I agree with your stance on that but honestly this entire statement says "you don't care about things you're not interested in. That's really not a meaningful statement in any regard or context.
I think we all agree with you there, too bad it was baked into the game before Paragon Studios took over. Hard coding at the core of the game is almost impossible to fix without breaking everything.
Paragon Studios quite simply put more effort into the game that Cryptic did, it's as simple as that. I remember the change well and I was astonished by the support they gave the game. They didn't claim it was impossible, they claimed it would take a monumental amount of effort.
If it was so easy to do then surely Cryptic would have done it before? Curious enough every single one of those quotes originated BEFORE Cryptic sold COX.
Lets be fair NCsoft purchased COX November 6th, 2007. CO released Sept 1st 2009. So the first post Crytpic issue was "Midnight Hour". This is the major things accomplished between acquisition and the release of CO (Pay attention):
I miss the My
New Magic and Mythology Zones
Arachnos Widow and Spider Archetypes
Started "Powerset proliferation" (sharing powersets between other Archetypes)
Shield powerset
Pain domination powerset (Evil Empathy)
Dual builds
Mac Support
Mission Architect
Costume change emotes
Power Customization (Released 14 days after CO launched)
More epic powerset choices
Sidekicking vastly improved
20% increase to low level experience
Greatly improved the difficulty adjustment system.
Look, this isn't COX/CO when I'm dealing with this post. This is about good dev support that any game would be glad to receive. They did a remarkable amount of work and added tons of things that people had been asking for, many times since launch. They started this from the moment they got clearance from the new bosses.
Admit it, you'd be ecstatic to see that sort of list from 5 updates to CO. They did a good job working hard for 2 years and should be praised. Paragon Studios had talented and committed devs, which kind of makes you wonder when talent like that is left behind and suddenly accomplishes ALOT.
Maybe the devs at Cryptic just couldn't put their hearts behind COX because it wasn't the game they set out to create, and so they left it to do this. But if so why didn't CO receive that kind of TLC? Did they run out of funding to accomplish that?
Regardless, I think they made the right decision. Paragon Studios were the right people to develop COX and they led it into a glorious shining future cut short only by the greed and cruelty of NCsoft. Cryptic was meanwhile left free to make the game they wanted to from the start. I just wish they had supported it better.
Put down that bottle Biff. Everyone knows Aftershock is 2nd to VB apoc. Resistance is a close third. No more kool aid for you sir.
You be crazy, sir. Two reasons why I didn't enjoy that one as much. First, it's all magic. I am not a big fan of the magic stuff, especially since, at the time, it's like all they were doing. Second: OH MY GOD IT'S SO PINK.
Resistance was a cool, classic comic book story with great atmosphere. I loved it.
Foxbat bothers me because they want him to continue in the great tradition of 4th wall breakers like Deadpool and She-Hulk. What Cryptic fails to realize is that those other characters work by being the only ones who wink at the audience, while this game is nothing but winks at the audience. So Foxbat's real distinction is that he's the only one not lampshading? Whoop-de-doo.
Which is even more hilarious because he's probably the only one piece of IP not very changed from the original?
But his fuction should be, exactly, a comedy relief in a more serious setting. Cryptic had it everything in reverse.
Personally, I don't play games for thirlling stories and great drama. Not this kid of medium, not for me.
But at least base level of immersion would be nice and CO with it's constant assault of cheap puns, unnecessary lamshading and badly written humor just killed all its possible immersion.
And immersion IS an important factor in MMO because it keeps some (though obviously, not all) people attached to the game. Which is why Blizzard pays professional writers. It's an investition.
CO missed this opportunity and a large part of possible fanbase.
The sheer amount of fanfics and fanarts related to Blizzard games and CoX speaks volumes. Games can only gain by having immersion.
Put down that bottle Biff. Everyone knows Aftershock is 2nd to VB apoc. Resistance is a close third. No more kool aid for you sir.
I really need to replay Aftershock. I never played it as much as the other packs so my memory of it is hazy at best...and I never did Fatal Error or Whiteout yet.
I'm not sure if there's anything further I can contribute in the discussion beyond the points I've already made about why I don't consider an emphasis on story and plot to be important, so I'm going to try with this approach:
You know that movie Street Fighter? Yeah, that one staring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile. It has a throw-away plot, amateurish acting save for Raul Julia as Bison and a few others including the guy who played Zangief and is considered far too campy for its own good. But know what? I actually enjoy watching it for a couple of things that it does right apart from the bad aspects of it. I also enjoy the fact that the film doesn't take itself seriously. I find it fun to watch.
That's very much how I feel about CO. It may have arguably bad writing, bad voice acting and focuses a little too much on camp, but there are other things about the game that I enjoy that I can overlook some of the things that the game apparently falls short of when I judge the game overall.
CoX's supposedly superior story arcs never were the reason why I even started and stayed playing CoX in the first place. It was all about the atmosphere and existing as my very own superhero in the virtual world environments that were created around the general lore and soaking it all in. That to me is far more important than all the elaborate story-telling you can throw in my direction when it comes to MMORPGs.
And if elaborate story-telling and a well-constructed plot is something that I seek, then I'd go read a good novel, not play a MMORPG.
Except random things can and do happen along the way in comics. A proper story will have random things occurring while the plot is in effect. despite it being a comic, it's pretty silly to think that nothing id going on in the city except the plot at hand. In comics though, for the sake of time and pages, since they are trying to cram as much as they can into a story, the other stuff that goes on, like the few dozen people Superman saves from burning buildings or the broken dams he has to fix or what have you is sacrificed. We only assume this is going on because Superman says so or we have an issue here and there devoted to reminding people that Superman does all these things. With a game, it's harder to show this because we see this occurring in real time. With CO, the world is going to hell in a hand basket and that is what is being conveyed by all the different things going down at one time.
Except when random things happen in comics, like Flash stopping to save a cat from being stuck in a tree or whatever, there is still an overarching story taking place. They're completely incidental to the story at large. Flash still has to race off to wherever to save the day. The comic does not consist entirely of Superman or the Flash stopping bank robberies, jailbreaks, and natural disasters. The only way that those random events strung together would make for an interesting story is if a villain was deliberately orchestrating them to keep the hero busy for whatever nefarious purpose.
In CO, aside from the few exceptions, everything is just random events everywhere. There's no story or plot connecting any of it. With my Irradiates example, Talisman ordering a missile strike just comes completely out of left field. There's no build up to it at all.
CoH, despite your apparent dissatisfaction with it, on the other hand had actual story arcs where events in missions that happen earlier lead up to events that occur in later missions. There was actual plot and cohesion holding their stories together. They even did have the occasional filler mission that was the equivalent of Flash stopping to save that cat to help remind you that you're the hero that will stop to confront trouble wherever it's reported.
It has almost no signature villains. A few small story arcs here and there and for most time it's only camp. We aren't even fighting villains, only the same few sets of mooks over and over. Most of the time.
Bigger names are in alerts and rampages but that's everything.
About the only time when we can face anybody who not only looks, but also performs like a comic book villain is when we are facing PSI inner circle in their mini-arc. And how serious opponent is PSI, everybody knows.
Other named supervillains are just standing there with tags over their heads. They sometimes even are taken from CU and have background.
I like Bunker Buster for a reason. This mission actually looks and feels like a comic book. It has nice gallery of villains (probably all except the Red Winter are Cryptic made but made nicely) and heroes.
In CO, aside from the few exceptions, everything is just random events everywhere. There's no story or plot connecting any of it. With my Irradiates example, Talisman ordering a missile strike just comes completely out of left field. There's no build up to it at all.
Why does there need to be any sort of connection?
An alert sounds off to tell responding superheroes that a robbery is taking place, a mini-invasion is going on, a building is on fire with people trapped in it or that there are hostages being held somewhere. They're all individual scenarios of different threat types that need to be appropriately dealt with by a superhero, especially when so many different villain factions with different and even conflicting agendas are involved. Of course they're all random and there's no connection expected.
EDIT: I also don't see why all of these scenarios have to be tied to some mastermind orchestrating all of it for the sake of a "good plot", because that would be so terribly cliche to me.
I'm thinking this might have been intentional. Why emphasize signature villains when a large part of the appeal was supposed to be that each player could create their own? I'm guessing (and possibly reaching a bit) that the lack of an overabundance of signature villains was a calculated move to shine a better light on the Nemesis System.
You two are just crossing paths in wanting different things, much like the general populace. In this particular case, it's not hard to keep both of you happy because Jenny simply doesn't care about the story, so it wouldn't matter to her if they made them better for kojo.
But it takes all kinds in an MMO. What doesn't matter to one might be a critical element to someone else. But the various forms of MMO players have a hard time empathizing with each other because they're coming from such different mindsets.
EDIT: Oops, forgot to finish.
An alert sounds off to tell responding superheroes that a robbery is taking place, a mini-invasion is going on, a building is on fire with people trapped in it or that there are hostages being held somewhere. They're all individual scenarios of different threat types that need to be appropriately dealt with by a superhero, especially when so many different villain factions with different and even conflicting agendas are involved. Of course they're all random and there's no connection expected.
Because you want to fight comic book style threats and kojo wants the game to recreate a comic book style story. Your way can be fun in a game, but it makes a terrible comic.
Because it would make sense? Even in real life, things just don't happen in a vacuum. Even a good bank robbery needs organization and planning.
Where did the big, giant missile come from? Surely someone would have noticed Irradiates running off with the materials to build it. You're just now noticing a force field in the northwestern corner of the desert and telling me about it?
An alert sounds off to tell responding superheroes that a robbery is taking place, a mini-invasion is going on, a building is on fire with people trapped in it or that there are hostages being held somewhere. They're all individual scenarios of different threat types that need to be appropriately dealt with by a superhero, especially when so many different villain factions with different and even conflicting agendas are involved. Of course they're all random and there's no connection expected.
And it's fine when they're acting as filler between larger, villainous plots. Otherwise I'm getting the impression that none of these villains are planning things at all and just acting spontaneously. I suppose that works well for axe crazy villains like the Maniacs, but it really doesn't make any sense for others like Talisman or Teleios or Psimon whom I assume are all smooth operators. They're supposed to be evil masterminds, right? Well, they should act like it.
No one is claiming that, that's just you trying to build a scarecrow.
Well, when one of the offered criticisms of CO as opposed to CoH is that CO has these "collect bear ****" missions, that rather implies that CoH didn't. And that's a blatant falsehood, as I said.
That alone tells me you didn't get very far. You were only around level 2 or 3 when Praetor White gave that mission.
And it's pretty telling, I think, when I get horribly bored with a game at around level 2 or 3. Even SWTOR didn't bore me that fast.
"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!"
Well, when one of the offered criticisms of CO as opposed to CoH is that CO has these "collect bear ****" missions, that rather implies that CoH didn't.
No it doesn't. But keep building that strawman... maybe someone will go for it. Anything can happen on these forums, right?
And it's pretty telling, I think, when I get horribly bored with a game at around level 2 or 3. Even SWTOR didn't bore me that fast.
Yeah, it's rather telling of your attention span. It's like a gnat's.
An alert sounds off to tell responding superheroes that a robbery is taking place, a mini-invasion is going on, a building is on fire with people trapped in it or that there are hostages being held somewhere. They're all individual scenarios of different threat types that need to be appropriately dealt with by a superhero, especially when so many different villain factions with different and even conflicting agendas are involved. Of course they're all random and there's no connection expected.
Because the simple answer is: Armiger does not sit around all day with a police band next to his ear.
When I am going to 'be the hero I want to be', I'm not going to be 'Police Department with Super Powers' so the 911 dispatcher can send me on menial tasks.
No superhero has been since the Silver Age died. And thank God it did, because we got quality writing. Batman stopped being a pedophile joke, Villains weren't two-dimensional throwaway stories for a one-shot comic, and events that affected the entire world and PROGRESSED the story actually happened.
If I'm going to play in a cartoon, I want to play through an episode of X-Men from the 1990's. Not an episode of Looney Tunes.
EDIT: I also don't see why all of these scenarios have to be tied to some mastermind orchestrating all of it for the sake of a "good plot", because that would be so terribly cliche to me.
Don't Straw Man this, Jenny. You're better than that and we both know it. I'm not asking for a cliche mastermind story. I'm asking for something to make me feel like I'm playing as a superhero, not 'random errand boy/emergency worker'.
The connection from one zone to the next is pretty much as follows: "Yo, I got a homeboy across the globe that needs to holla at you. Take the airplane." The entire game, with the exception of the Vibora Apocalypse and a few comic/adventure packs- has nothing resembling a story. It's all lazy at best. I realize that most MMORPG's are based on 'Go to A and talk to B, do C, bring back D, and I'll give you E'. But that's an outline for a story. That's how all stories work. Just because it's a simple formula doesn't mean you can't make something out of it.
I think that happened in CoX, as far as 'go talk to this guy in this zone'. But as much as some people like the campy stuff, I'm sorry- but I don't subscribe to the mindset that "if something is really bad then it's really good", because I'm not a hipster and I appreciate decent work with effort put into it. Sorry, but I started reading comics in the 1980's. I have a bit more respect for Comics than to see someone make an MMORPG that is a blatant parody of comics more so than an homage.
I think World War 2 games are kinda cool. I don't want to play a World War 2 game full of German fart jokes and buck-toothed Japanese caricatures (Yes, this happened). If I'm playing a Superhero MMORPG, I want it to be about Superheroes- not some Wayans Brothers series of racist jokes, bong hits, and armpit noises with the appearance of Superheroes.
Well, when one of the offered criticisms of CO as opposed to CoH is that CO has these "collect bear ****" missions, that rather implies that CoH didn't. And that's a blatant falsehood, as I said.
So that I can feed you your words (and because I love you a little bit), I'd like to remind you that Lord of the Rings is 'Take this Bear **** and throw it in the fire' when you break it down.
I like Bunker Buster for a reason. This mission actually looks and feels like a comic book. It has nice gallery of villains (probably all except the Red Winter are Cryptic made but made nicely) and heroes.
I love where there is that moment where the villains and heroes face off. That was an epic moment for me.
Because you want to fight comic book style threats and kojo wants the game to recreate a comic book style story. Your way can be fun in a game, but it makes a terrible comic.
Which is why it's a game and not a comic book. The dynamic changes when the medium changes.
And thank you for being so condescending in the way that you quoted me, not to mention others in the thread.
Because it would make sense? Even in real life, things just don't happen in a vacuum. Even a good bank robbery needs organization and planning.
Where did the big, giant missile come from? Surely someone would have noticed Irradiates running off with the materials to build it. You're just now noticing a force field in the northwestern corner of the desert and telling me about it?
And it's fine when they're acting as filler between larger, villainous plots. Otherwise I'm getting the impression that none of these villains are planning things at all and just acting spontaneously. I suppose that works well for axe crazy villains like the Maniacs, but it really doesn't make any sense for others like Talisman or Teleios or Psimon whom I assume are all smooth operators. They're supposed to be evil masterminds, right? Well, they should act like it.
I guess I'm starting to see the difference between how we view the game along with our expectations. You view the game needing of consistent string of interwoven plotlines that make up for grand storytelling. I view the game as a virtual world where bad things just seem to happen in a superhero environment context. I guess it's better to just agree to disagree from here on.
Sense of story may not be the most important thing for all players, but CO failure in this matter may kick this game brutally, if there will be ever competition with better approach in this matter. On a purely practical level of losing players.
Currently CO is saved from competition because DC game has vastly different gameplay and this "be-a-minion" oriented gameplay.
It may not be always that way.
After all, professional companies aren't paying writers for their games just for giggles. It all pays in players retention, just like new actual gameplay content.
I'm thinking this might have been intentional. Why emphasize signature villains when a large part of the appeal was supposed to be that each player could create their own? I'm guessing (and possibly reaching a bit) that the lack of an overabundance of signature villains was a calculated move to shine a better light on the Nemesis System.
It may be the case, given how most nemesis plots are rather classic and actually well done.
But then it everything fails because the whole nemesis system looks like never finished, all missions are the same no matter villain's powers and personality, whole progression is very short and starts too late, on 25 lvl.
Actually, this whole 25 lvl start and timed cooldown on nemesis missions looks very like a way of padding something that was left incomplete, thus lacking content for more frequent play.
Probably if nemesis system was what it should be and starting from 10 or even 6 lvl, I'd be playing only nemesis missions. Not bothering with any other missions.
It may be the case, given how most nemesis plots are rather classic and actually well done.
But then it everything fails because the whole nemesis system looks like never finished, all missions are the same no matter villain's powers and personality, whole progression is very short and starts too late, on 25 lvl.
Actually, this whole 25 lvl start and timed cooldown on nemesis missions looks very like a way of padding something that was left incomplete, thuls lacking content for more frequent play.
Probably if nemesis system was what it should be and starting from 10 or even 6 lvl, I'd be playing only nemesis missions. Not bothering with any other missions.
The nemesis system is a lot like the game overall. It was a great idea and had a bright future but has been largely ignored and not lived up to its potential.
It may be the case, given how most nemesis plots are rather classic and actually well done.
But then it everything fails because the whole nemesis system looks like never finished, all missions are the same no matter villain's powers and personality, whole progression is very short and starts too late, on 25 lvl.
Actually, this whole 25 lvl start and timed cooldown on nemesis missions looks very like a way of padding something that was left incomplete, thuls lacking content for more frequent play.
Probably if nemesis system was what it should be and starting from 10 or even 6 lvl, I'd be playing only nemesis missions. Not bothering with any other missions.
Man that would be awesome. A Nemesis you create and duke it out with over the course of your hero (leveling) career instead of just at the back end.
Which is why it's a game and not a comic book. The dynamic changes when the medium changes.
Except this is a game that is based on comic books, and is going to attract other types of people than gamers.
And thank you for being so condescending in the way that you quoted me, not to mention others in the thread.
You're welcome.
It's just a schtick, don't read too much into it. If it comes of insulting or condescending it was likely a failed attempt at humor. Although I am sometimes condescending, but I'm OK with that.
I guess I'm starting to see the difference between how we view the game along with our expectations. You view the game needing of consistent string of interwoven plotlines that make up for grand storytelling. I view the game as a virtual world where bad things just seem to happen in a superhero environment context. I guess it's better to just agree to disagree from here on.
This is what I'm saying. There's no need for disagreement, really, there's room for both PoVs.
Which is why it's a game and not a comic book. The dynamic changes when the medium changes.
I guess I'm starting to see the difference between how we view the game along with our expectations. You view the game needing of consistent string of interwoven plotlines that make up for grand storytelling. I view the game as a virtual world where bad things just seem to happen in a superhero environment context. I guess it's better to just agree to disagree from here on.
That's not it at all. Like someone said there is room enough for both POVs. Having a better story only adds to the game and takes nothing from you. CO could have far better writing and you'd be just as happy and possibly even a little happier.
For others the story is much more important however. Really the more people that like the game without the additions negatively affecting you the better your experience because the game has more money to spend.
That's why you have to try and look objectively at the entire game. A game is for many people, not just you or I. For instance I got little to nothing from stances and moods personally, but it's a great idea I know others appreciated a lot.
Perfect example of gameplay and story both being important is Dynasty Warriors 8. It's a mindless hack and slash that he been done ma y times before. The gameplay on this iteration is the best in the series I believe, and many agree. However the overwhelming negative comment is that they didn't voice act the story this time around and that takes a lot away from it.
If it still matters in a mindless hack and slash that's is telling the same story that has been told for 10+ years then how much more does it matter to a SUPERHERO MMORPG when both superheroes and MMORPGs are known for their stories and lore significantly?
It's a great game for you without story, that's cool, but please don't be so opposed to the idea simply because you personally are not interested. I'm not opposed to changes the make the game better I'm not interested in personally.
Because the simple answer is: Armiger does not sit around all day with a police band next to his ear.
When I am going to 'be the hero I want to be', I'm not going to be 'Police Department with Super Powers' so the 911 dispatcher can send me on menial tasks.
Are you refering to the menial tasks involving supervillains that only superheroes are typically qualified to deal with?
It sounds to me like the police aren't being layabouts and getting superheroes to do their dirty work, but because they simply don't have the means to deal with those sort of threats. I'm sure that's the primary reason why they call for the help of superheroes so much.
Don't Straw Man this, Jenny. You're better than that and we both know it. I'm not asking for a cliche mastermind story. I'm asking for something to make me feel like I'm playing as a superhero, not 'random errand boy/emergency worker'.
Well I don't see any issue with the "emergency worker" concept. The premise behind CO is that there are many emergency hotspots in the world that require the attention of superheroes anyway.
I think that happened in CoX, as far as 'go talk to this guy in this zone'. But as much as some people like the campy stuff, I'm sorry- but I don't subscribe to the mindset that "if something is really bad then it's really good", because I'm not a hipster and I appreciate decent work with effort put into it. Sorry, but I started reading comics in the 1980's. I have a bit more respect for Comics than to see someone make an MMORPG that is a blatant parody of comics more so than an homage.
You lost me at the hipster comment, because I entirely disagree with using that label for someone who sees entertainment value in camp.
So that I can feed you your words (and because I love you a little bit), I'd like to remind you that Lord of the Rings is 'Take this Bear **** and throw it in the fire' when you break it down.
Well, but they only had to collect the one bear ****. If the GM hadn't had it in for the characters at every turn, they probably could have cleared the whole mission in a single gaming session.
"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!"
Aftershock has this massive idiot ball dropped when your hero agreeds to be posessed by ancient cosmic evil to save a few lost soldiers...
In the effect endangering the WHOLE population of Earth.
This one piece of writing is so stupid. To the point when I consider all this AP excluded from my personal canon.
Not a terribly good writing. Who wrote this one? Liefield? :rolleyes:
Yes and killing Joker would save everyone and things would be better if Superman ran things but that doesn't happen for a variety of reasons. This is pretty par for the course when it comes to comics. In any case, the hero is supposed to "always find a way and save everyone" or at least approach heroics with that mindset. The person is less of a hero and more of a super-powered person when they start letting people die and making judgement calls when another way could be done to save both. If anything, my only complaint about that was that there was no choice allowed in the matter. Or if they want to drive the story a certain way, allow you to make a choice and have you possessed anyways. That said, they should have created a system where your choice actually has ramifications (everyone being disappointed in you for making a decision or something).
Except when random things happen in comics, like Flash stopping to save a cat from being stuck in a tree or whatever, there is still an overarching story taking place. They're completely incidental to the story at large. Flash still has to race off to wherever to save the day. The comic does not consist entirely of Superman or the Flash stopping bank robberies, jailbreaks, and natural disasters. The only way that those random events strung together would make for an interesting story is if a villain was deliberately orchestrating them to keep the hero busy for whatever nefarious purpose.
Except this is an mmo. It sounds like you want a linear story that forces you from one point to another rather than having actual freedom. In a story, it forces you from one point to another. One can't go off and wander about the city and chance upon more events and even more events in a story. You can in a game. Also, there are a lot of things going down at any given time in the game, which makes more sense than villains essentially taking turns to have a plot to do this or that, another thing I never liked about CoX.
In CO, aside from the few exceptions, everything is just random events everywhere. There's no story or plot connecting any of it. With my Irradiates example, Talisman ordering a missile strike just comes completely out of left field. There's no build up to it at all.
You honestly act as if there is nothing tying these quests together. Again, that is what the lore is for. I think one of the problems is, CO has created an environment to allow for role-playing, allow for linear quests, and other things. They designed it for a number of groups in mind. Taken altogether, it looks like a mess to some while it makes sense to others.
CoH, despite your apparent dissatisfaction with it, on the other hand had actual story arcs where events in missions that happen earlier lead up to events that occur in later missions. There was actual plot and cohesion holding their stories together. They even did have the occasional filler mission that was the equivalent of Flash stopping to save that cat to help remind you that you're the hero that will stop to confront trouble wherever it's reported.
CO has story arcs. Not every aspect of the game has to be devoted to a given story arc though. That would be silly. It's funny, people want things to be more realistic in a game, then demand something unrealistic like a constant over-reaching plot. It's kind of silly.
"I tried to look at that page but saw only inane comments."
You know, I know that there's a lot of pop culture references in the mission names in Champs, but the missions themselves aren't (or at least, I don't remember them to be) very campy.
Are you refering to the menial tasks involving supervillains that only superheroes are typically qualified to deal with?
Yes. Those.
Now, let's pretend for a moment. Banks don't have that much hard cash on the premises. Not to mention, banks are insured against this. So, any smart Supervillain is going to look for funding in other ways that don't involve boxing themselves into a secured compound with their backs against the door. It's a bad idea. So what other ways could they get funding? Well, now there's where you can get into a good superhero story.
You said cliche' and 'bank robber' is so cliche' that it's lazy.
It sounds to me like the police aren't being layabouts and getting superheroes to do their dirty work, but because they simply don't have the means to deal with those sort of threats. I'm sure that's the primary reason why they call for the help of superheroes so much.
You're missing the point. This is a mission in CO:
"HOLY FROG FARTS, CAPTAIN POOTIEPOOP- AS I STAND HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET RANDOMLY WAITING FOR SOME SUPERHERO TO FIND ME SOMEONE IS ROBBING THAT BANK AND I KNOW EXACTLY WHO IT IS!"
Seriously. It's this. A series of random people standing around randomly asking me to do tasks. That's bad.
What makes it worse is that these really are RANDOM tasks. Nothing has anything to do with anything else. The closest thing to a 'chain' means that all the missions came from the same random person standing on a corner waiting for a random superhero to come by.
You lost me at the hipster comment, because I entirely disagree with using that label for someone who sees entertainment value in camp.
Let me explain how entertainment value in camp works.
"Oh, look- it's Reefer Madness. God, this is so bad it's funny. Let's watch it."
It's a passing fancy, a chuckle. It's good in small doses. Anything more means it gets ran into the ground. The hipster does this, trying too hard to love something bad 'ironically'. Hipster fits. I find value in camp. But just because I think Flash Gordon is campy doesn't mean I want to decorate my room, own the extended director's cut on Blu-ray, and get a tattoo.
Small. Doses.
CO's camp is in truckloads. And one thing about camp?
Camp usually isn't trying to be funny. It just is. CO tries to be funny and just comes off like that awkward 40 year old making Pokemon jokes in a nightclub.
The TL/DR version:
The way CO's stories are written haven't been seen in comics since before 99% of the people who play this game were born, and they moved on for a reason. Not to mention, you will have a hard time convincing me that this game is genuinely trying to do Silver Age nonsense on purpose- it's just bad, lazy writing for a product that was rushed out the door with an IP slapped against it to hold weight.
Judging by the way some people respond, I think the new CO mascot needs to be Straw Man.
Yes and killing Joker would save everyone and things would be better if Superman ran things but that doesn't happen for a variety of reasons. This is pretty par for the course when it comes to comics. In any case, the hero is supposed to "always find a way and save everyone" or at least approach heroics with that mindset. The person is less of a hero and more of a super-powered person when they start letting people die and making judgement calls when another way could be done to save both. If anything, my only complaint about that was that there was no choice allowed in the matter. Or if they want to drive the story a certain way, allow you to make a choice and have you possessed anyways. That said, they should have created a system where your choice actually has ramifications (everyone being disappointed in you for making a decision or something).
Thing is, by making agreement with Kings of Edom, hero de facto judges that all people on Earth, every animal, plant, even planet itself may be destroyed. You know it during this story. It's no secret for anyone in this mission that Kings are CU equivalent of Cthulhu/Unicron.
To save a few UNTIL operatives who were on duty and by the virtue of being armymen, they knew exactly for what kind of service they are signing.
I can't see how endangering everyone and everything, including hero loved ones, is even remotely heroic.
We don't know if we can save both. How it's presented ingame it makes it very unlikely, down to fight champions.
Unless someone is metagaming into "oh, there will be happy end anyway" thinking, but then this writing is bad because it has no tension.
If this arc would at least reailroad us into refusing ANY negotiations with monsters and trying to save soldiers by fighting them. Or calling Champions... Or even teaming with Supreme Serpent, if we are not supposed to be powerful enough to fight them (but we do it anyway later, so...).
It would be far less idiotic. Instead player is railroaded in the worst possible option.
Because this choice is far from "always find a way and save everyone". Fighting Kings right on the spot would be.
Frankly, hero after this mission should be stripped of his costume and incancerated in Stronghold for making this kind of choice. He or she is clearly too reckless ant not responsible enough to be allowed run around free with superpowers.
To make it worse, in the same mission you have the Supreme Serpent venturing into this realm to stop you. Even villain comes as more responsible person than our hero.
Inconsistency with Batman being de facto responsible for Joker's victims also was pointed few times in comic books.
CO has story arcs. Not every aspect of the game has to be devoted to a given story arc though. That would be silly. It's funny, people want things to be more realistic in a game, then demand something unrealistic like a constant over-reaching plot. It's kind of silly.
You know, I know that there's a lot of pop culture references in the mission names in Champs, but the missions themselves aren't (or at least, I don't remember them to be) very campy.
I think all three of us are approaching the same point from three different directions.
When CO does drama (Vibora Bay, Demonflame/Aftershock, Whiteout), it does it very well. Unfortunately, that's constantly undermined by the sheer volume of Saturday morning cheese surrounding those dramatic moments. It's not like Blizzard doesn't throw pop culture around in WoW, but that game has it's priorities straight. Yes, a dwarf with a name that sounds like Lebowski dealing with a very nice rug that's been pooped on is funny. (Lebowski reference or Blizzard's strange fascination with excrement. Your choice.) But that's an aside, a moment of levity on a very desperate path that eventually leads to Arthas the MF'n Lich King. Vibora Bay leads to Therakiel, who's as funny as a tax audit, but after that, what then? Back to Dr. Scenerychewer and his occasional army of over-engineered cannon fodder?
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Except this is an mmo. It sounds like you want a linear story that forces you from one point to another rather than having actual freedom. In a story, it forces you from one point to another. One can't go off and wander about the city and chance upon more events and even more events in a story. You can in a game. Also, there are a lot of things going down at any given time in the game, which makes more sense than villains essentially taking turns to have a plot to do this or that, another thing I never liked about CoX.
There's a problem with with your analysis.
CO already has you following only one linear path. The only time it ever really divides is during the choice between Canada and the Desert. And the villains are taking turns, it's just that they're acting spontaneously and random in their mayhem rather than orchestrating the wide-reaching plots that supervillains in comics are famous for.
Furthermore, CoH didn't force you on the rails to do EVERY story arc at every level range. There were multiple arcs that you could select from, some where self-contained and some were part of an even larger metaplot. You're trying to claim that CO's randomness allows it to be more "diverse" than CoH when in fact it's the exact opposite.
You honestly act as if there is nothing tying these quests together.
There isn't. One moment I'm helping a reporter regain his evidence of the Gadroon expanding beyond the Fallen Sun Forest and the next I'm helping the same reporter gain intel about Argent's operations in the same area. Where does that come from? I thought he was investigating the Gadroon! Now he's investigating Argent too?
Again, that is what the lore is for.
The lore is meaningless when it's not connected to my activities. It just appears in little glowies randomly spread throughout the maps. It has very little bearing on what I'm doing when it could if the writers had actually cared.
I think one of the problems is, CO has created an environment to allow for role-playing, allow for linear quests, and other things. They designed it for a number of groups in mind. Taken altogether, it looks like a mess to some while it makes sense to others.
No, the problem is that there's no logical progression to each of the so-called "arcs." I keep getting these perks for completing "arcs" in the shape of open books but they aren't even arcs. They're just loosely related collections of missions that have no sense of buildup or climax to any of them.
They're just a bunch of stuff that happened.
CO has story arcs.
Only in Vibora and the Comic Series and Adventure Packs. The rest is just random flailing around.
Not every aspect of the game has to be devoted to a given story arc though. That would be silly. It's funny, people want things to be more realistic in a game, then demand something unrealistic like a constant over-reaching plot. It's kind of silly.
I'm not demanding a grand unified theory of supervillainy. I just want to feel like the events in these "arcs" are leading into the next missions of said "arcs." You claim "plot" is unrealistic, but I counterpoint that the recent government shutdown just didn't spontaneously happen. There were events building up to it.
Except this is an mmo. It sounds like you want a linear story that forces you from one point to another rather than having actual freedom. In a story, it forces you from one point to another. One can't go off and wander about the city and chance upon more events and even more events in a story. You can in a game. Also, there are a lot of things going down at any given time in the game, which makes more sense than villains essentially taking turns to have a plot to do this or that, another thing I never liked about CoX.
I don't think this is what he is saying at all. And I hope you're not sitting there and implying that there is some way to change up the way you play CO. What you're saying is that random tasks from random people with nothing you do affecting anything else- is better than a progression through an arc that takes you to several different locations to deal with different things that work together.
I beg to differ. I'm find doing the same mission another player did. I stop being fine with it when I'm forced to do the same missions that I have already done myself a dozen times. That becomes even more intolerable when the missions just seem like more of a one-line idea rather than an actual plot.
You were almost right about one part.
The fact is, this game DOES NOT allow you to play the hero the way you want. The only 'Role Playing' aspect of it comes from people who are actually ROLE PLAYING elsewhere. There are no choices.
You honestly act as if there is nothing tying these quests together. Again, that is what the lore is for. I think one of the problems is, CO has created an environment to allow for role-playing, allow for linear quests, and other things. They designed it for a number of groups in mind. Taken altogether, it looks like a mess to some while it makes sense to others.
Lore? CO's lore is found in books. Books that you would need to spend money on. I want the game to have the lore IN IT, not have me scouring through sourcebooks to find some validation to an otherwise poorly-written mission or character.
CO has story arcs. Not every aspect of the game has to be devoted to a given story arc though. That would be silly. It's funny, people want things to be more realistic in a game, then demand something unrealistic like a constant over-reaching plot. It's kind of silly.
Is it? Because other games have done this quite well. But I guess you're right, after all CO's got so many subscribers and is a powerhouse in the MMORPG market right now. After all, people just hated that aspect of SWTOR, CoX, TSW, GW2...
Thing is, by making agreement with Kings of Edom, hero de facto judges that all people on Earth, every animal, plant, even planet itself may be destroyed. You know it during this story. It's no secret for anyone in this mission that Kings are CU equivalent of Cthulhu/Unicron.
To save a few UNTIL operatives who were on duty and by the virtue of being armymen, they knew exactly for what kind of service they are signing.
I can't see how endangering everyone and everything, including hero loved ones, is even remotely heroic.
We don't know if we can save both. How it's presented ingame it makes it very unlikely, down to fight champions.
Unless someone is metagaming into "oh, there will be happy end anyway" thinking, but then this writing is bad because it has no tension.
If this arc would at least reailroad us into refusing ANY negotiations with monsters and trying to save soldiers by fighting them. Or calling Champions... Or even teaming with Supreme Serpent, if we are not supposed to be powerful enough to fight them (but we do it anyway later, so...).
It would be far less idiotic. Instead player is railroaded in the worst possible option.
Because this choice is far from "always find a way and save everyone". Fighting Kings right on the spot would be.
Frankly, hero after this mission should be stripped of his costume and incancerated in Stronghold for making this kind of choice. He or she is clearly too reckless ant not responsible enough to be allowed run around free with superpowers.
To make it worse, in the same mission you have the Supreme Serpent venturing into this realm to stop you. Even villain comes as more responsible person than our hero.
Inconsistency with Batman being de facto responsible for Joker's victims also was pointed few times in comic books.
I think the sentiment was that the hero would be able to fight the influence of the Kings while saving the soldiers. It could have been handled better but I don't think the whole thing was bad as it seems. Again though, I personally think they should have left the choice to the character or railroad them into the outcome through "I'm a King of Edom I don't care what you choose hero" type outcome. Not the best but it does make more sense. Then again, you're character is presented as the typical comic book hero so having the plot make the decision for you is the only thing i can fault them for.
I think all three of us are approaching the same point from three different directions.
When CO does drama (Vibora Bay, Demonflame/Aftershock, Whiteout), it does it very well. Unfortunately, that's constantly undermined by the sheer volume of Saturday morning cheese surrounding those dramatic moments. It's not like Blizzard doesn't throw pop culture around in WoW, but that game has it's priorities straight. Yes, a dwarf with a name that sounds like Lebowski dealing with a very nice rug that's been pooped on is funny. (Lebowski reference or Blizzard's strange fascination with excrement. Your choice.) But that's an aside, a moment of levity on a very desperate path that eventually leads to Arthas the MF'n Lich King. Vibora Bay leads to Therakiel, who's as funny as a tax audit, but after that, what then? Back to Dr. Scenerychewer and his occasional army of over-engineered cannon fodder?
I'll agree. There is an inconsistency in tone but in many ways, it's kind of unavoidable.
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Comments
No quest in any superhero MMO has ever left me feeling more heroic than the Vibora Bay Apocalypse.
It really cut out the fat and got straight to the point. And you are without a doubt, the hero of that story arc.
Resistance runs a close second!
Resistance was wonderful and had a little bit of everything. I honestly wished and hoped (and begged and prayed) that they would expand it so we could see how the rest of the world was like in that universe. Like many people have said, this game has so much potential.
Aftershock was pretty damn awesome too.
Hey, the Hollows taught us how to run! :biggrin:
And if you can remember way waaaay back.... old skool CoH with the old Hami-raids - I used to enjoy my almost sadistic misfortune in getting a 'Pacing of the Turtle' drop which was absolutely no use whatsoever in any of my suite of toons. Cue the frantic bartering amongst chunks of Hami's jellified corpse. It was so much fun I didn't even mind the crappy drops.
Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
@Mothers_Love
The 'old skool' Hollows (before Melissa's redux) properly taught you about aggro-distance.
Being someone you spent the majority of my off-mission time patrolling over Eastgate - I could literally spot without checking my global friends list who the old timers were because they had a far superior sense of spatial awareness finessed right down to the metre!.
Plus I loved the fact that you could make it almost to the mission door and then get entrapped by CoT or have an Igneous' bolder hit you from afar and you fall dead at your team-mates feet at the mission door. Some call it sadistic, but the sense of achievement when you finally made it to the mission door (especially when solo'ing) was reward in itself.
Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
@Mothers_Love
Did you ever play the Praetorian missions on CoX? CO is some Saturday Morning Cartoon crap in comparison. Praetorian arcs could easily be something found in Marvel Comics. The Apocalypse is okay, I suppose. That's ONE story arc. Bad writing tears up the rest of it. Bad jokes makes it insufferable.
Yes, you're partially right. I still remember being shocked at how fast things died in CO. I remember asking someone if I was in the right area at level 7. But the powers in CO can be cool all they want. There's nothing to do here except the same leveling path and 'story' over again.
But, yeah. Dev support.
I'm currently playing GW2 and not CO (or STO, which is where I was last active), and it comes down, to a large extent, to support.
I prefer CO in terms of genre, range of character options, and so on. But... Arenanet has really pulled out the stops in getting stuff done, and Cryptic's development has been misguided, when it's happened at all.
Why am I posting here? Because I hold out a very faint hope that PWE will someday realize how effective CO would be if they developed it more intelligently, and the game might turn into something I can bear to play.
Right now, I make a new character, have fun with costume, then enter the game and get hit by how utterly pointless the actual game experience is (and how limited Archetypes and no power customization is).
CoT is almost certainly going to fail, but if it doesn't the key will be a dedicated, well-targeted development schedule.
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?
Resistance fails hard when you realize what the books described Multifaria as, and how much potential that area had.
Instead, CO went the cheap and boring 'left hand universe' route where the good guys are bad guys and ho-hum, yawn.
Compare that with the story behind Praetoria in CoX. Then realize that it all boiled down to two guys having a pissing contest over an idea, and CO once again got a cheap version of something awesome.
Not only did they tell a well fleshed out story but they had back story and most importantly continuity. The minor arcs and less flashy arcs led into the other arcs quite directly most times, setting the stage for their stories to unfold. This flows pretty cleanly all the way up to the top since the various villain groups interact and bargain and fight and take advantage of each other.
Example would be the unexciting hollows quests from Lt Wilcott that lead yiu deeper into the situation until you finally hit Flux and have the memorable showdown with FrostFire. There is also a fair amount of back story to that most people never see as well.
Story isn't always about excitementment and super hero shenanigans, it's about telling a well fleshed out and interesting narrative. One that you will not appreciate if all you want to see is "ehrmagherd makes me do cool stuff...robots and explosions...Michael Bay!"
That being said Cyber, we all know this and the best choice is to ignore it and walk away and simply pretend it doesn't exist. Like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BovXzH36M0I
Ignore the bad. Also Foxbat sucks still.
Changed it to level 4 for everyone.
Looking at their models that they are using in the video, it's obvious it's placeholder. I recognize some of those models.
Foxbat bothers me because they want him to continue in the great tradition of 4th wall breakers like Deadpool and She-Hulk. What Cryptic fails to realize is that those other characters work by being the only ones who wink at the audience, while this game is nothing but winks at the audience. So Foxbat's real distinction is that he's the only one not lampshading? Whoop-de-doo.
I wonder if this isn't a consequence of the Marvel-to-Champions shift during the game's development. The writers were suddenly taken from lore that had its own place in the pop culture firmament to an obscure PnP game that would only click with the intersection of RPG players and comic book fans. So anywhere they found a weak spot in Champions lore, they filled it in by finding some external reference. Oh, and I'm sure Cryptic had a writers-room version of the Cole Protocol: Aim in a random direction away from City of Heroes. Thus, Chinatown is drowning in Big Trouble in Little China references to not remind anybody of the Tsoo, and the Black Aces have Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick spinning in their graves.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
I miss the Mythology zone
You be crazy, sir. Two reasons why I didn't enjoy that one as much. First, it's all magic. I am not a big fan of the magic stuff, especially since, at the time, it's like all they were doing. Second: OH MY GOD IT'S SO PINK.
Resistance was a cool, classic comic book story with great atmosphere. I loved it.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-10-04-can-a-group-of-volunteers-really-make-a-superhero-mmo
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In the effect endangering the WHOLE population of Earth.
This one piece of writing is so stupid. To the point when I consider all this AP excluded from my personal canon.
Not a terribly good writing. Who wrote this one? Liefield? :rolleyes:
Which is even more hilarious because he's probably the only one piece of IP not very changed from the original?
But his fuction should be, exactly, a comedy relief in a more serious setting. Cryptic had it everything in reverse.
Personally, I don't play games for thirlling stories and great drama. Not this kid of medium, not for me.
But at least base level of immersion would be nice and CO with it's constant assault of cheap puns, unnecessary lamshading and badly written humor just killed all its possible immersion.
And immersion IS an important factor in MMO because it keeps some (though obviously, not all) people attached to the game. Which is why Blizzard pays professional writers. It's an investition.
CO missed this opportunity and a large part of possible fanbase.
The sheer amount of fanfics and fanarts related to Blizzard games and CoX speaks volumes. Games can only gain by having immersion.
I really need to replay Aftershock. I never played it as much as the other packs so my memory of it is hazy at best...and I never did Fatal Error or Whiteout yet.
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You know that movie Street Fighter? Yeah, that one staring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile. It has a throw-away plot, amateurish acting save for Raul Julia as Bison and a few others including the guy who played Zangief and is considered far too campy for its own good. But know what? I actually enjoy watching it for a couple of things that it does right apart from the bad aspects of it. I also enjoy the fact that the film doesn't take itself seriously. I find it fun to watch.
That's very much how I feel about CO. It may have arguably bad writing, bad voice acting and focuses a little too much on camp, but there are other things about the game that I enjoy that I can overlook some of the things that the game apparently falls short of when I judge the game overall.
CoX's supposedly superior story arcs never were the reason why I even started and stayed playing CoX in the first place. It was all about the atmosphere and existing as my very own superhero in the virtual world environments that were created around the general lore and soaking it all in. That to me is far more important than all the elaborate story-telling you can throw in my direction when it comes to MMORPGs.
And if elaborate story-telling and a well-constructed plot is something that I seek, then I'd go read a good novel, not play a MMORPG.
Except when random things happen in comics, like Flash stopping to save a cat from being stuck in a tree or whatever, there is still an overarching story taking place. They're completely incidental to the story at large. Flash still has to race off to wherever to save the day. The comic does not consist entirely of Superman or the Flash stopping bank robberies, jailbreaks, and natural disasters. The only way that those random events strung together would make for an interesting story is if a villain was deliberately orchestrating them to keep the hero busy for whatever nefarious purpose.
In CO, aside from the few exceptions, everything is just random events everywhere. There's no story or plot connecting any of it. With my Irradiates example, Talisman ordering a missile strike just comes completely out of left field. There's no build up to it at all.
CoH, despite your apparent dissatisfaction with it, on the other hand had actual story arcs where events in missions that happen earlier lead up to events that occur in later missions. There was actual plot and cohesion holding their stories together. They even did have the occasional filler mission that was the equivalent of Flash stopping to save that cat to help remind you that you're the hero that will stop to confront trouble wherever it's reported.
No one is claiming that, that's just you trying to build a scarecrow.
That alone tells me you didn't get very far. You were only around level 2 or 3 when Praetor White gave that mission.
It has almost no signature villains. A few small story arcs here and there and for most time it's only camp. We aren't even fighting villains, only the same few sets of mooks over and over. Most of the time.
Bigger names are in alerts and rampages but that's everything.
About the only time when we can face anybody who not only looks, but also performs like a comic book villain is when we are facing PSI inner circle in their mini-arc. And how serious opponent is PSI, everybody knows.
Other named supervillains are just standing there with tags over their heads. They sometimes even are taken from CU and have background.
I like Bunker Buster for a reason. This mission actually looks and feels like a comic book. It has nice gallery of villains (probably all except the Red Winter are Cryptic made but made nicely) and heroes.
Why does there need to be any sort of connection?
An alert sounds off to tell responding superheroes that a robbery is taking place, a mini-invasion is going on, a building is on fire with people trapped in it or that there are hostages being held somewhere. They're all individual scenarios of different threat types that need to be appropriately dealt with by a superhero, especially when so many different villain factions with different and even conflicting agendas are involved. Of course they're all random and there's no connection expected.
EDIT: I also don't see why all of these scenarios have to be tied to some mastermind orchestrating all of it for the sake of a "good plot", because that would be so terribly cliche to me.
I'm thinking this might have been intentional. Why emphasize signature villains when a large part of the appeal was supposed to be that each player could create their own? I'm guessing (and possibly reaching a bit) that the lack of an overabundance of signature villains was a calculated move to shine a better light on the Nemesis System.
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You two are just crossing paths in wanting different things, much like the general populace. In this particular case, it's not hard to keep both of you happy because Jenny simply doesn't care about the story, so it wouldn't matter to her if they made them better for kojo.
But it takes all kinds in an MMO. What doesn't matter to one might be a critical element to someone else. But the various forms of MMO players have a hard time empathizing with each other because they're coming from such different mindsets.
EDIT: Oops, forgot to finish.
Because you want to fight comic book style threats and kojo wants the game to recreate a comic book style story. Your way can be fun in a game, but it makes a terrible comic.
Because it would make sense? Even in real life, things just don't happen in a vacuum. Even a good bank robbery needs organization and planning.
Where did the big, giant missile come from? Surely someone would have noticed Irradiates running off with the materials to build it. You're just now noticing a force field in the northwestern corner of the desert and telling me about it?
And it's fine when they're acting as filler between larger, villainous plots. Otherwise I'm getting the impression that none of these villains are planning things at all and just acting spontaneously. I suppose that works well for axe crazy villains like the Maniacs, but it really doesn't make any sense for others like Talisman or Teleios or Psimon whom I assume are all smooth operators. They're supposed to be evil masterminds, right? Well, they should act like it.
And it's pretty telling, I think, when I get horribly bored with a game at around level 2 or 3. Even SWTOR didn't bore me that fast.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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No it doesn't. But keep building that strawman... maybe someone will go for it. Anything can happen on these forums, right?
Yeah, it's rather telling of your attention span. It's like a gnat's.
Because the simple answer is: Armiger does not sit around all day with a police band next to his ear.
When I am going to 'be the hero I want to be', I'm not going to be 'Police Department with Super Powers' so the 911 dispatcher can send me on menial tasks.
No superhero has been since the Silver Age died. And thank God it did, because we got quality writing. Batman stopped being a pedophile joke, Villains weren't two-dimensional throwaway stories for a one-shot comic, and events that affected the entire world and PROGRESSED the story actually happened.
If I'm going to play in a cartoon, I want to play through an episode of X-Men from the 1990's. Not an episode of Looney Tunes.
Don't Straw Man this, Jenny. You're better than that and we both know it. I'm not asking for a cliche mastermind story. I'm asking for something to make me feel like I'm playing as a superhero, not 'random errand boy/emergency worker'.
The connection from one zone to the next is pretty much as follows: "Yo, I got a homeboy across the globe that needs to holla at you. Take the airplane." The entire game, with the exception of the Vibora Apocalypse and a few comic/adventure packs- has nothing resembling a story. It's all lazy at best. I realize that most MMORPG's are based on 'Go to A and talk to B, do C, bring back D, and I'll give you E'. But that's an outline for a story. That's how all stories work. Just because it's a simple formula doesn't mean you can't make something out of it.
I think that happened in CoX, as far as 'go talk to this guy in this zone'. But as much as some people like the campy stuff, I'm sorry- but I don't subscribe to the mindset that "if something is really bad then it's really good", because I'm not a hipster and I appreciate decent work with effort put into it. Sorry, but I started reading comics in the 1980's. I have a bit more respect for Comics than to see someone make an MMORPG that is a blatant parody of comics more so than an homage.
I think World War 2 games are kinda cool. I don't want to play a World War 2 game full of German fart jokes and buck-toothed Japanese caricatures (Yes, this happened). If I'm playing a Superhero MMORPG, I want it to be about Superheroes- not some Wayans Brothers series of racist jokes, bong hits, and armpit noises with the appearance of Superheroes.
So that I can feed you your words (and because I love you a little bit), I'd like to remind you that Lord of the Rings is 'Take this Bear **** and throw it in the fire' when you break it down.
I love where there is that moment where the villains and heroes face off. That was an epic moment for me.
Which is why it's a game and not a comic book. The dynamic changes when the medium changes.
And thank you for being so condescending in the way that you quoted me, not to mention others in the thread.
I guess I'm starting to see the difference between how we view the game along with our expectations. You view the game needing of consistent string of interwoven plotlines that make up for grand storytelling. I view the game as a virtual world where bad things just seem to happen in a superhero environment context. I guess it's better to just agree to disagree from here on.
Currently CO is saved from competition because DC game has vastly different gameplay and this "be-a-minion" oriented gameplay.
It may not be always that way.
After all, professional companies aren't paying writers for their games just for giggles. It all pays in players retention, just like new actual gameplay content.
It may be the case, given how most nemesis plots are rather classic and actually well done.
But then it everything fails because the whole nemesis system looks like never finished, all missions are the same no matter villain's powers and personality, whole progression is very short and starts too late, on 25 lvl.
Actually, this whole 25 lvl start and timed cooldown on nemesis missions looks very like a way of padding something that was left incomplete, thus lacking content for more frequent play.
Probably if nemesis system was what it should be and starting from 10 or even 6 lvl, I'd be playing only nemesis missions. Not bothering with any other missions.
The nemesis system is a lot like the game overall. It was a great idea and had a bright future but has been largely ignored and not lived up to its potential.
Man that would be awesome. A Nemesis you create and duke it out with over the course of your hero (leveling) career instead of just at the back end.
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Except this is a game that is based on comic books, and is going to attract other types of people than gamers.
You're welcome.
It's just a schtick, don't read too much into it. If it comes of insulting or condescending it was likely a failed attempt at humor. Although I am sometimes condescending, but I'm OK with that.
This is what I'm saying. There's no need for disagreement, really, there's room for both PoVs.
That's not it at all. Like someone said there is room enough for both POVs. Having a better story only adds to the game and takes nothing from you. CO could have far better writing and you'd be just as happy and possibly even a little happier.
For others the story is much more important however. Really the more people that like the game without the additions negatively affecting you the better your experience because the game has more money to spend.
That's why you have to try and look objectively at the entire game. A game is for many people, not just you or I. For instance I got little to nothing from stances and moods personally, but it's a great idea I know others appreciated a lot.
Perfect example of gameplay and story both being important is Dynasty Warriors 8. It's a mindless hack and slash that he been done ma y times before. The gameplay on this iteration is the best in the series I believe, and many agree. However the overwhelming negative comment is that they didn't voice act the story this time around and that takes a lot away from it.
If it still matters in a mindless hack and slash that's is telling the same story that has been told for 10+ years then how much more does it matter to a SUPERHERO MMORPG when both superheroes and MMORPGs are known for their stories and lore significantly?
It's a great game for you without story, that's cool, but please don't be so opposed to the idea simply because you personally are not interested. I'm not opposed to changes the make the game better I'm not interested in personally.
Are you refering to the menial tasks involving supervillains that only superheroes are typically qualified to deal with?
It sounds to me like the police aren't being layabouts and getting superheroes to do their dirty work, but because they simply don't have the means to deal with those sort of threats. I'm sure that's the primary reason why they call for the help of superheroes so much.
Well I don't see any issue with the "emergency worker" concept. The premise behind CO is that there are many emergency hotspots in the world that require the attention of superheroes anyway.
You lost me at the hipster comment, because I entirely disagree with using that label for someone who sees entertainment value in camp.
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(That's a quote I'd love to see out of context!)
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?
Whut.
Think about this when you see me in game.
Yes and killing Joker would save everyone and things would be better if Superman ran things but that doesn't happen for a variety of reasons. This is pretty par for the course when it comes to comics. In any case, the hero is supposed to "always find a way and save everyone" or at least approach heroics with that mindset. The person is less of a hero and more of a super-powered person when they start letting people die and making judgement calls when another way could be done to save both. If anything, my only complaint about that was that there was no choice allowed in the matter. Or if they want to drive the story a certain way, allow you to make a choice and have you possessed anyways. That said, they should have created a system where your choice actually has ramifications (everyone being disappointed in you for making a decision or something).
Except this is an mmo. It sounds like you want a linear story that forces you from one point to another rather than having actual freedom. In a story, it forces you from one point to another. One can't go off and wander about the city and chance upon more events and even more events in a story. You can in a game. Also, there are a lot of things going down at any given time in the game, which makes more sense than villains essentially taking turns to have a plot to do this or that, another thing I never liked about CoX.
You honestly act as if there is nothing tying these quests together. Again, that is what the lore is for. I think one of the problems is, CO has created an environment to allow for role-playing, allow for linear quests, and other things. They designed it for a number of groups in mind. Taken altogether, it looks like a mess to some while it makes sense to others.
CO has story arcs. Not every aspect of the game has to be devoted to a given story arc though. That would be silly. It's funny, people want things to be more realistic in a game, then demand something unrealistic like a constant over-reaching plot. It's kind of silly.
Yes. Those.
Now, let's pretend for a moment. Banks don't have that much hard cash on the premises. Not to mention, banks are insured against this. So, any smart Supervillain is going to look for funding in other ways that don't involve boxing themselves into a secured compound with their backs against the door. It's a bad idea. So what other ways could they get funding? Well, now there's where you can get into a good superhero story.
You said cliche' and 'bank robber' is so cliche' that it's lazy.
You're missing the point. This is a mission in CO:
"HOLY FROG FARTS, CAPTAIN POOTIEPOOP- AS I STAND HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET RANDOMLY WAITING FOR SOME SUPERHERO TO FIND ME SOMEONE IS ROBBING THAT BANK AND I KNOW EXACTLY WHO IT IS!"
Seriously. It's this. A series of random people standing around randomly asking me to do tasks. That's bad.
What makes it worse is that these really are RANDOM tasks. Nothing has anything to do with anything else. The closest thing to a 'chain' means that all the missions came from the same random person standing on a corner waiting for a random superhero to come by.
Let me explain how entertainment value in camp works.
"Oh, look- it's Reefer Madness. God, this is so bad it's funny. Let's watch it."
It's a passing fancy, a chuckle. It's good in small doses. Anything more means it gets ran into the ground. The hipster does this, trying too hard to love something bad 'ironically'. Hipster fits. I find value in camp. But just because I think Flash Gordon is campy doesn't mean I want to decorate my room, own the extended director's cut on Blu-ray, and get a tattoo.
Small. Doses.
CO's camp is in truckloads. And one thing about camp?
Camp usually isn't trying to be funny. It just is. CO tries to be funny and just comes off like that awkward 40 year old making Pokemon jokes in a nightclub.
The TL/DR version:
The way CO's stories are written haven't been seen in comics since before 99% of the people who play this game were born, and they moved on for a reason. Not to mention, you will have a hard time convincing me that this game is genuinely trying to do Silver Age nonsense on purpose- it's just bad, lazy writing for a product that was rushed out the door with an IP slapped against it to hold weight.
Judging by the way some people respond, I think the new CO mascot needs to be Straw Man.
Thing is, by making agreement with Kings of Edom, hero de facto judges that all people on Earth, every animal, plant, even planet itself may be destroyed. You know it during this story. It's no secret for anyone in this mission that Kings are CU equivalent of Cthulhu/Unicron.
To save a few UNTIL operatives who were on duty and by the virtue of being armymen, they knew exactly for what kind of service they are signing.
I can't see how endangering everyone and everything, including hero loved ones, is even remotely heroic.
We don't know if we can save both. How it's presented ingame it makes it very unlikely, down to fight champions.
Unless someone is metagaming into "oh, there will be happy end anyway" thinking, but then this writing is bad because it has no tension.
If this arc would at least reailroad us into refusing ANY negotiations with monsters and trying to save soldiers by fighting them. Or calling Champions... Or even teaming with Supreme Serpent, if we are not supposed to be powerful enough to fight them (but we do it anyway later, so...).
It would be far less idiotic. Instead player is railroaded in the worst possible option.
Because this choice is far from "always find a way and save everyone". Fighting Kings right on the spot would be.
Frankly, hero after this mission should be stripped of his costume and incancerated in Stronghold for making this kind of choice. He or she is clearly too reckless ant not responsible enough to be allowed run around free with superpowers.
To make it worse, in the same mission you have the Supreme Serpent venturing into this realm to stop you. Even villain comes as more responsible person than our hero.
Inconsistency with Batman being de facto responsible for Joker's victims also was pointed few times in comic books.
I think all three of us are approaching the same point from three different directions.
When CO does drama (Vibora Bay, Demonflame/Aftershock, Whiteout), it does it very well. Unfortunately, that's constantly undermined by the sheer volume of Saturday morning cheese surrounding those dramatic moments. It's not like Blizzard doesn't throw pop culture around in WoW, but that game has it's priorities straight. Yes, a dwarf with a name that sounds like Lebowski dealing with a very nice rug that's been pooped on is funny. (Lebowski reference or Blizzard's strange fascination with excrement. Your choice.) But that's an aside, a moment of levity on a very desperate path that eventually leads to Arthas the MF'n Lich King. Vibora Bay leads to Therakiel, who's as funny as a tax audit, but after that, what then? Back to Dr. Scenerychewer and his occasional army of over-engineered cannon fodder?
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There's a problem with with your analysis.
CO already has you following only one linear path. The only time it ever really divides is during the choice between Canada and the Desert. And the villains are taking turns, it's just that they're acting spontaneously and random in their mayhem rather than orchestrating the wide-reaching plots that supervillains in comics are famous for.
Furthermore, CoH didn't force you on the rails to do EVERY story arc at every level range. There were multiple arcs that you could select from, some where self-contained and some were part of an even larger metaplot. You're trying to claim that CO's randomness allows it to be more "diverse" than CoH when in fact it's the exact opposite.
There isn't. One moment I'm helping a reporter regain his evidence of the Gadroon expanding beyond the Fallen Sun Forest and the next I'm helping the same reporter gain intel about Argent's operations in the same area. Where does that come from? I thought he was investigating the Gadroon! Now he's investigating Argent too?
The lore is meaningless when it's not connected to my activities. It just appears in little glowies randomly spread throughout the maps. It has very little bearing on what I'm doing when it could if the writers had actually cared.
No, the problem is that there's no logical progression to each of the so-called "arcs." I keep getting these perks for completing "arcs" in the shape of open books but they aren't even arcs. They're just loosely related collections of missions that have no sense of buildup or climax to any of them.
They're just a bunch of stuff that happened.
Only in Vibora and the Comic Series and Adventure Packs. The rest is just random flailing around.
I'm not demanding a grand unified theory of supervillainy. I just want to feel like the events in these "arcs" are leading into the next missions of said "arcs." You claim "plot" is unrealistic, but I counterpoint that the recent government shutdown just didn't spontaneously happen. There were events building up to it.
I don't think this is what he is saying at all. And I hope you're not sitting there and implying that there is some way to change up the way you play CO. What you're saying is that random tasks from random people with nothing you do affecting anything else- is better than a progression through an arc that takes you to several different locations to deal with different things that work together.
I beg to differ. I'm find doing the same mission another player did. I stop being fine with it when I'm forced to do the same missions that I have already done myself a dozen times. That becomes even more intolerable when the missions just seem like more of a one-line idea rather than an actual plot.
You were almost right about one part.
The fact is, this game DOES NOT allow you to play the hero the way you want. The only 'Role Playing' aspect of it comes from people who are actually ROLE PLAYING elsewhere. There are no choices.
Lore? CO's lore is found in books. Books that you would need to spend money on. I want the game to have the lore IN IT, not have me scouring through sourcebooks to find some validation to an otherwise poorly-written mission or character.
And even CO craps on the Lore.
Is it? Because other games have done this quite well. But I guess you're right, after all CO's got so many subscribers and is a powerhouse in the MMORPG market right now. After all, people just hated that aspect of SWTOR, CoX, TSW, GW2...
I think the sentiment was that the hero would be able to fight the influence of the Kings while saving the soldiers. It could have been handled better but I don't think the whole thing was bad as it seems. Again though, I personally think they should have left the choice to the character or railroad them into the outcome through "I'm a King of Edom I don't care what you choose hero" type outcome. Not the best but it does make more sense. Then again, you're character is presented as the typical comic book hero so having the plot make the decision for you is the only thing i can fault them for.
I'll agree. There is an inconsistency in tone but in many ways, it's kind of unavoidable.