If you really dislike Hi Pan that much, go talk to James Hong (actor) and Gary Goldman and David Weinstein (writers). Hi Pan is a direct parody of Hong's character Lo Pan, from the movie Big Trouble in Little China.
Or are parodies off-limits if they're mocking a terrible stereotype?
"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!"
If you really dislike Hi Pan that much, go talk to James Hong (actor) and Gary Goldman and David Weinstein (writers). Hi Pan is a direct parody of Hong's character Lo Pan, from the movie Big Trouble in Little China.
Or are parodies off-limits if they're mocking a terrible stereotype?
I don't know, let's put Defender in Blackface and see how well that goes.
If you really dislike Hi Pan that much, go talk to James Hong (actor) and Gary Goldman and David Weinstein (writers). Hi Pan is a direct parody of Hong's character Lo Pan, from the movie Big Trouble in Little China.
Or are parodies off-limits if they're mocking a terrible stereotype?
It doesn't mean it had to put in the game. I still wonder what so superheroic is in this movie to base the whole ingame zone around it? Nothing.
If you really dislike Hi Pan that much, go talk to James Hong (actor) and Gary Goldman and David Weinstein (writers). Hi Pan is a direct parody of Hong's character Lo Pan, from the movie Big Trouble in Little China.
Or are parodies off-limits if they're mocking a terrible stereotype?
As time goes by and we get better representations, some stuff can get ditched. I wouldn't do a direct parody of "soul man" either these days., yeah those were done in the past, but stuff just is different, people have different sensibilities and you adapt. if anything, a small time loking at stuff liek robin shou comedies can give you ides for asian comedy touchstones without going into a blatant over the top thing. but unless the parody is making fun of it(like a viper guy talks to hi-pan like that and hi-pan makes fun of him b answering in a overstuffed german accent, not sure how well it worked. Like i said, i tend to be hard to offend, but that was just blaring.
I thought Hi Pan was kinda cute, but rather obvious. Things might not have gone the way they did if Hero Games had gotten around to detailing the Cult of the Red Banner for the PnP as they planned to, before the company downsized.
I dunno... I've played Champions PnP since 1982 and have followed all the incarnations and evolution of the Champs Universe. For the most part I love it, but so often what I see in CO just doesn't look or feel like what I love about it. Maybe I just came in with too many expectations to be objective, like someone watching a movie adaptation of a beloved novel.
An example of humorous dialogue that doesn't feel forced. In an otherwise serious plot, which makes comic reliefs actually needed, otherwise things would be unbearable to read.
But it takes more effort from writer than to spam pop-culture references and fart jokes.
There are few instances where CO humor was actually good and fun. Chaos Key lines from Demonflame are funny, he's a such snarker. Old item descriptions were also actually funy. Humorous and ironic.
If you really dislike Hi Pan that much, go talk to James Hong (actor) and Gary Goldman and David Weinstein (writers). Hi Pan is a direct parody of Hong's character Lo Pan, from the movie Big Trouble in Little China.
Or are parodies off-limits if they're mocking a terrible stereotype?
Big Trouble in Little China is a work of genius. Hi Pan is just, well, lame. Cryptic's parody of the character anyway. Cryptic did a little better with the references from The Thing in Whiteout.
All the parodies just get to be a bit much. The Vacation movies (Griswold), the cast of Anchorman (love the movies, HATE that they have in game parodies here), Twilight references (infinite ughs and barf), a movie called "Wizards" (line from Resistance), Big Trouble, The Thing, and heaven knows what other attempts at parody I have missed or forgotten, for a lot of people, really kinda hurts a sense of immersion.
I hate it when I have just made a new character who I think is pretty swift, runs into some of the npc's. Blech.
Old item descriptions were also actually funy. Humorous and ironic.
But these are far and few between.
Older items descriptions were actually hand written by none other than Jack [Statesman / Jackalope] Emmert. Unfortunately I think he's alittle busy to be writing things anymore.
As noted recently, John Layman, a pretty good comics writer, is responcible for much of the less than stellar humor and parody in the game.
I have to call out everyone who nay-says Hi-pan.
He is a direct homage / parody to Lo-Pan, the excellent and funny villain of Big Trouble in Little China, and while I certainly don't think he's perfect, the accent is indeed spot on how bad Lo-Pans accent was in that movie. Admittedly he got a lot less silly when in full spirit ghost giant form, but as a crotchety little old freak in a wheelchair, he was terrible at English.
He wasn't the only one, either. Several other prominent characters, most notably Thunder of the Three Storms and Egg Shen on the heroes side, also had pretty bad Chinese accents. Some people have them, it isn't racist. It's just a side effect of learning a second language and not being completely done I guess.
On a related Note, Green Dragon should also have a pretty bad Chinese accent, as he disdains occidentals and it's actually hard for me to imagine he'd seek to learn English other than what small amount he'd have too, for his business as a mercenary villain for hire.
[EDIT] Now I see Jon Sills also mentioned this.. I'm glad someone else gets it.
Emmert actually can write. CoV had nice writing and lore. Makes me wonder how CO would look if more writing was made by Cryptic devs, and less by hired writer.
Yes, Layman is a known name. Sadly, being known doesn't mean being infallible. Known names can also halfass things and it's hard to find better proof. I guess he wasn't taking his work on CO very seriously, thus he did complete bull**** with writing. But even if known name gives me a bull****, it remains a bull****.
Now I see Jon Sills also mentioned this.. I'm glad someone else gets it.
Many people gets it, but it doesn't change anything. This post nailed it:
Big Trouble in Little China is a work of genius. Hi Pan is just, well, lame. Cryptic's parody of the character anyway. Cryptic did a little better with the references from The Thing in Whiteout.
All the parodies just get to be a bit much. The Vacation movies (Griswold), the cast of Anchorman (love the movies, HATE that they have in game parodies here), Twilight references (infinite ughs and barf), a movie called "Wizards" (line from Resistance), Big Trouble, The Thing, and heaven knows what other attempts at parody I have missed or forgotten, for a lot of people, really kinda hurts a sense of immersion.
Just because it's a homage to known movie, doesn't change it into something needed or done well. Or if it has place in the game.
With time less and less people will remember this movie and more and more people will see it as nothing more than racist stereotype. And even people who saw the movie may not give a s*** to this homage being forced into the game or over the whole Westside. Frankly, when I play superhero game I want to play superhero game, not some kind of homage to the completely unrelated movies, or neverending gallery of pop-culture references.
What?! Yes Thunder had a thick accent. But the actor that played Egg in Big Trouble and the physicist in Prince of Darkness, I really don't recall him having a pronounced accent.
**cthunist I agree, it doesn't belong in the game, was just differentiating
edit 2 I was trying to quote rune: Dude those voices could not be more different. Hi Pan here sounds nothing like David LoPan. Not even close. Personas, ditto. Lopan is cursed and finds ways too adapt is a complex character, and has actual prescence in lore, while our game npc Hipan screams nonsense, and frankly, does sound sound a bit insensitive, if not racist.
edit 2 I was trying to quote rune: Dude those voices could not be more different. Hi Pan here sounds nothing like David LoPan. Not even close. Personas, ditto. Lopan is cursed and finds ways too adapt is a complex character, and has actual prescence in lore, while our game npc Hipan screams nonsense, and frankly, does sound sound a bit insensitive, if not racist.
There is a huge difference.
You know, I don't remember David Lo Pan getting his L's and R's confused. Probably because that comes from how R's are pronounced in Japanese, not Mandarin. But hey, who lives in Millennium City without learning how to pronounce "millennium" any way?
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
You know, I don't remember David Lo Pan getting his L's and R's confused. Probably because that comes from how R's are pronounced in Japanese, not Mandarin.
Indeed, and that's just what makes him all the more a racist stereotype. The game is just "Hur hur hur, Asians can't pronounce Ls. Hur hur hur."
No. The Chinese have no trouble pronouncing Ls at all. It is purely a Japanese language problem.
I remember an old story that American soldiers fighting the Japanese during WWII would always use passwords with L's in them to trip up Japanese infiltrators. So if the password was "Ali Baba" and what you got back was "Ari Baba"... expect trouble.
Chinese in contrast has L's but no R's. So it's not uncommon to have"fried rice" rendered as "flied lice" with a Chinese accent. On a recent trip to China, one of our guide's stories got derailed when she started talking about the Emperor's... Pole Trees? Poultry? PO-E-TRY! We got a good laugh out of that one.
Another one of her stories was about when President Clinton wanted to meet the man who discovered the terracotta soldiers. I believe his name is Yang Zhifa. Since he was illiterate and didn't know English, Chinese officials taught him some lines phonetically for when he met the President. The exchange was supposed to go like this:
Yang: How are you?
Clinton: I'm fine, thank you. (or something)
Yang: Me too!
What actually happened was:
Yang: Who are you?
Clinton: ...I'm Hillary's husband.
Yang: Me too!
P.S. I also think it's time for Champions Online 2.
Chinese in contrast has L's but no R's. So it's not uncommon to have"fried rice" rendered as "flied lice" with a Chinese accent. On a recent trip to China, one of our guide's stories got derailed when she started talking about the Emperor's... Pole Trees? Poultry? PO-E-TRY! We got a good laugh out of that one.
That's absolute garbage. Mandarin has Rs, it's just that the Rs typically occur at the end of a Chinese word rather than the beginning. Chinese are not Bizarro Japanese.
What I'd really like to see is CO/CoH 2. Hell, maybe even with a little dash of DCUO--not too much :P. They all have things they do better and worse than the other. A game that just used the lessons learned about what works and what DOESN'T work from those that came before would be amazing.
Are any of the "Spiritual Successors" of CoH open to pulling what's great about Champions in and using it? CoT seems like the most open minded of the three from what little I've seen--maybe they'll pull some lessons from CO?
I dunno. For whatever the next gen of Superhero MMORPG's is, there is SO much to learn from CoH, CO, and DCUO as far as what to do and what not to do, someone could really knock it out of the park with a little common sense.
Are any of the "Spiritual Successors" of CoH open to pulling what's great about Champions in and using it? CoT seems like the most open minded of the three from what little I've seen--maybe they'll pull some lessons from CO?
I hate to be a naysayer, but all I've seen of the 'successors' is a project made of equal parts high hopes, bitterness, and nostalgia. It'll take more than some concept art, superhero memes, and a 'screen shot' of a blank desert to sway me.
I hate to be a naysayer, but all I've seen of the 'successors' is a project made of equal parts high hopes, bitterness, and nostalgia. It'll take more than some concept art, superhero memes, and a 'screen shot' of a blank desert to sway me.
Dunno. I kicked around their forums a bit, and if CoT is in pre-production like they say with the cheap but solid and easy-to-use new Unreal 4 engine and 600K just to get started--we could see a decent game one day.
There was something about Epic having them under a NDA too so they couldn't show much. I'm not getting a lot of bitterness from them. Maybe a couple of the forumites, but not the Devs or company.
But, the key words are "if" and "could", it's true.
You know, I don't remember David Lo Pan getting his L's and R's confused. Probably because that comes from how R's are pronounced in Japanese, not Mandarin. But hey, who lives in Millennium City without learning how to pronounce "millennium" any way?
I got acquainted with a Japanese girl when I went over there, and her name was "Rio". I thought she said "Leo". And then she told me no and I thought that she said Leo again.
Eventually she got it through my skull.
Anyway, Champions 2.0 or whatever...
=============
The manpower isn't there right now, but in reality this is the only likely way for Champions to see any real development.
The biggest reason is that they can dump the lifers. No more people riding along for free.
Along with that, they can build it from the ground up with monetization in mind. Rather than try to figure out what sorts of things they can make to sell, they can look at other, more successful PWE games and figure out how to make Champions more like those, complete with the popular for-sale items.
The problem, of course, is whether they could get people to buy in again.
The question is whether or not the players would want to invest the time (and more importantly for Cryptic, the money) into playing the new game from the same company that just shut the other game down.
The writing, though, would almost certainly have to improve.
=============
The game as it is now is a mess. It has been a mess.
The southwestern desert has been a radioactive wasteland since the late 40s, complete with radioactive mutants running around...
Really? The government wouldn't carpet-bomb the place to get rid of the mutants? They just have a few troops engaged in conventional ground combat against a super-powered army?
And this nuclear testing left an old west town still standing?
And maybe if it was just radioactivity it might be a good place for a prison. I mean, hey, people that manage to get outside of the walls end up with a death sentence.
Except there is still the matter of a hostile army of radioactive mutants, including a gigantic mega-mutant.
And someone decided to build a robotic theme park in the middle of the radioactive wasteland with mutants running wild and a super-prison next door?
Great place for a family vacation, if you hate your family.
That is just bad. And I don't care if whatever edition of Champions they are on has that as part of their world.
=============
I wonder what the future may hold for Champions now.
I mean, Cryptic had money so they just bought the intellectual property.
Then they, in turn, get bought by PWE, yes?
So now a Chinese company with probably zero interest in an RPG game now own an RPG game, and their one and only connection to that RPG is hardly a booming success.
I don't want to say that it is on the verge of shutting down, but what happens when they do close the doors? Will they even care about dealing with people that want to produce materials for the RPG? Will they bury Champions? Will they look for a buyer?
The game as it is now is a mess. It has been a mess.
The southwestern desert has been a radioactive wasteland since the late 40s, complete with radioactive mutants running around...
Really? The government wouldn't carpet-bomb the place to get rid of the mutants? They just have a few troops engaged in conventional ground combat against a super-powered army?
And this nuclear testing left an old west town still standing?
And maybe if it was just radioactivity it might be a good place for a prison. I mean, hey, people that manage to get outside of the walls end up with a death sentence.
Except there is still the matter of a hostile army of radioactive mutants, including a gigantic mega-mutant.
And someone decided to build a robotic theme park in the middle of the radioactive wasteland with mutants running wild and a super-prison next door?
Great place for a family vacation, if you hate your family.
That is just bad. And I don't care if whatever edition of Champions they are on has that as part of their world.
=============
I laughed so hard at this. I hadn't even thought of the desert.
I've always thought the game is 'fixable', but it needs to be severely gutted. As in, take the functions of the game, take the tailor, take the powers... but gut all the writing and all the zones and all the missions. Just pull them away.
Here, I'll put things into perspective.
Millennium City: It's pretty much the Superhero capital of the US, right? Why are there demons in the street, Destroids marching up and down the block, massive undergound Viper bases, and an entire side of the city overran with 5 different criminal gangs? When you put that into perspective, people would start to question why the city that the headlining superhero team operates from is so screwed up. Not to mention UNTIL/UNITY, PRIMUS, and a highly-equipped police force... this makes no sense.
Solution? Make Millennium City a 'hub' area with the bank, and connections to various PRIMUS, UNTIL, UNITY, Champions HQ and other contact agencies. There could be a few small 'welcome to the game world' missions in the surrounding area (like, West Side could be a smaller area for newbies but that's it), but overall the city shouldn't be overran by mobs. Obviously you could keep all of the social instances and perhaps move them closer.
That's really all I can think of right now. Truth be told, if the game's areas and writing were gutted and followed closer to what the actual books say, instead of being a bunch of bad pop-culture jokes and forced humor- take the writing seriously. It's still not my cup of tea, but it'd be tolerable and I could enjoy it for what it is. I couldn't complain at all, to be completely honest.
Don't forget the VIPER base that's also right next to the cowboy robot theme park. **** it, go to Canada. At least it lampshades the resort motel there being in the shadow of a mad scientist's tower.
Don't forget the VIPER base that's also right next to the cowboy robot theme park. **** it, go to Canada. At least it lampshades the resort motel there being in the shadow of a mad scientist's tower.
I think the odd choice of locales was the fact that they were working with zone size, aka games generally are scaled down versions of real life. While you might get that city feeling, you certainly aren't going to get a real city anytime soon in a video game, which can occupy more than 100 square miles. I believe Detroit itself covers 123 square miles, though I could be wrong.
I think the other reason they went with their design choice was the simple fact, and pinning this on the CoH players, people were sick of seeing zone bars every few moments. City of Heroes was notoriously bad with them, so instead of making multiple separate zones with more possibly content filled in them, they tried to combine like themes together, but over all it created a mess. Honestly, i could have dealt with more condensed zones if it meant more and better developed content, but it's the past and wishful thinking though I know who I am gong to blame for the reasons why it didn't happen that way. And Cryptic only gets part of that blame.
Oh, my favorite is big "secret" VIPER bunker in the heart of the city, so big and secret that it has to be hidden under big "secret" moving panels and nobody can see it. This Socrates idiot needs a hero to find the base, because obviously big silos, tanks and a host of soldiers are invisible for anyone. Including other citizen.
No wonder MC is overrun by crime - because, seemingly, all citizen and MCPD officers are complete idiots.
Also, no wonder MCPD has no police car on patrols through the city - it seems that all are parked in Westside.
If anything, CO Millenium City makes me want to join supervillain club and help Dr. D delivering the mass euthanasia to the city filled with morons too stupid to live.
So they can't breed.
Fort the sake of mankind.
I don't want to say that it is on the verge of shutting down, but what happens when they do close the doors? Will they even care about dealing with people that want to produce materials for the RPG? Will they bury Champions? Will they look for a buyer?
IIRC is still explicitly Cryptic, not PWE, who holds the IP. And they have it only as long, as CO is existing. It may be a rumor, but I recall people saying that IP goes back to Hero Games if CO is shut down.
The entire region is not the Atomic Wasteland. The Wasteland is specifically two small valleys, almost disconnected. There appears to be a total lack of "radioactive mutants" running about in Burnside, for ex, and once you get across (or around) that area and to the theme park, the radiation has dropped off to background levels. And bombing the place, throwing radioactive debris about all willy-nilly, would be rather counterproductive, don't you agree? Especially since one of the things Greenskin Base is supposed to be working on is a cure for all those mutants, particularly Grond.
Now admittedly, it was d*mn silly of Donaldson to build his robot theme park in a place with no roads...
And you're right, that desert is a great place for a prison. Probably why Stronghold is out there. (You've noticed Stronghold, right? Big steel building, sunk into Devil's Head Mesa, lots of lights, concertina wire, and escaped powered prisoners?)
As noted above, all that stuff is crammed together because the zone could only be so big without overwhelming the actual physical memory space available - we don't have Star Trek computers with "gigaquads" (whatever those are) of storage yet.
"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!"
Big seamless maps are something present in MMOS nearly since the beginning. Old and dated games like Lineage II or WoW have whole continents. WoW maps do look shrunken and not very believable, but L2 had very well scaled maps. It is just Cryptic engine unable to hold anything bigger.
Big seamless maps are something present in MMOS nearly since the beginning. Old and dated games like Lineage II or WoW have whole continents. WoW maps do look shrunken and not very believable, but L2 had very well scaled maps. It is just Cryptic engine unable to hold anything bigger.
I think it would be very odd if all the zones in CO were linked together. How exactly would an island off Japan run into Canada? The problem is the games you mentioned are not based on the real world, whilst Champions is. Cryptic would have to recreate a large part of the world and even if they did each intermediate area as a token gesture, they do not have the resources. I think having to travel to new zones makes perfect sense. It is much better than the way Everquest did it, albeit that is an old game. However, we do need more zones, but not fillers between them.
I think it would be very odd if all the zones in CO were linked together. How exactly would an island off Japan run into Canada? The problem is the games you mentioned are not based on the real world, whilst Champions is. Cryptic would have to recreate a large part of the world and even if they did each intermediate area as a token gesture, they do not have the resources. I think having to travel to new zones makes perfect sense. It is much better than the way Everquest did it, albeit that is an old game. However, we do need more zones, but not fillers between them.
Wrong.
Nobody says all zones need to be linked into one continent. But if engine was more capable, individual zones could be bigger.
And top rank travel powers and vehicles could be of real use.
Wrong.
Nobody says all zones need to be linked into one continent. But if engine was more capable, individual zones could be bigger.
And top rank travel powers and vehicles could be of real use.
You said seamless, implying that there was no joins. As there are no joins in any CO zone, I assumed you meant the joins between zones. If not, what did you mean by seamless?
As to bigger zones, where did you read the engine couldn't cope? Is that an assumption? Lemuria is a really big zone, but the truth is our travel powers and vehicles make zones feel smaller than they really are. If we traveled at WoW speeds, I really don't think individual zones here are much smaller. But, because of the smooth transition between linked zones in WoW, they do feel bigger. Either way, I would settle for a new zone of any size just now.
You said seamless, implying that there was no joins. As there are no joins in any CO zone, I assumed you meant the joins between zones. If not, what did you mean by seamless?
As to bigger zones, where did you read the engine couldn't cope? Is that an assumption? Lemuria is a really big zone, but the truth is our travel powers and vehicles make zones feel smaller than they really are. If we traveled at WoW speeds, I really don't think individual zones here are much smaller. But, because of the smooth transition between linked zones in WoW, they do feel bigger. Either way, I would settle for a new zone of any size just now.
Then don't assume, as it leads nowhere, lol.
Show me wher I explicitly stated "all our zones should be on the same continent" if you are willing to continue. If not, quit it, because it's silly. Unless you simply love nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, but it doesn't make you looking smarter, just playing semantics.
And don't pretend that our zones are soo big. Lemura is roughly the same size as MC. It looks bigger because it's three-dimensional. While MC is mostly occupied by rooftops with few mobs on them.
Unless you are seriously claiming that Lemuria is size of WoW continent. It is roughly the size of single WoW zone, like Elwynn Forest, for example (and single WoW zones have the same shrunken feel as CO maps).
Now imagine that our Desert/Canada/Lemuria is size of WoW or L2 continents.
And I don't have to assume anything. Developers stated, after all, that MC reaches maximum size of zone possible with the engine and it can not be made bigger.
Careful, Meeda. This is where threads begin to take a turn. If someone feels you've 'attacked' something they like, so they start trying to derail it. After that, it's nothing but a flame war. Their general goal is to get this thread shut down because they'll feel threatened.
And some of us will manfully (personfully? Don't want to be sexist, after all) struggle to keep the conversation going on its original course, despite everyone arguing over whose fault it is that it's become a flame war. And then Smacky locks it all down because the original point is lost in a flurry of personal attacks.
How about instead of "attacking" viewpoints (or people), we discuss them? It's bound to be more productive in the long run...
"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!"
How about instead of "attacking" viewpoints (or people), we discuss them? It's bound to be more productive in the long run...
Well, Jon- you see when I was growing up and when you were growing up (there's probably half a century difference *JAB*) we had means of debating our thoughts. We could say we saw things one way, and if people disagreed they didn't take it as a personal attack- they simply said 'I disagree because __', and then the two of them said 'what if..' and then we got great ideas like monster truck shows and donut burgers.
But to be fair, my only means of 'improving' CO involves a MASSIVE gutting.
1- Every character chooses a morality. Essentially, it's basically 'what is the most important to you', and it could have several choices- protecting innocent people, punishing evil, pushing myself to the limits, becoming a legend, etc. This determines some of your missions (What you're fighting and what kind of missions you do).
2- Every character chooses a 'type'. It'd be very generalized, but it'd be another half of your leveling path's theme (more or less how you are addressed, your contact, etc).
There. General idea how to do 'custom tailored leveling path'.
3- The Nemesis system? Either tailor it as well or gut it completely to make room for something useful. Simple as that. Countless ways to do this, but if it were to be either 'what we have now' or 'nothing', I'll take nothing and free up some space. All this does is provide momentary distraction with rewards that aren't worth trying for again after you unlock them all. Worthwhile rewards would be fine, otherwise just scrap this useless distraction.
4- Balance the power sets and encourage team play. It might require things to be a bit more restrictive, and when people whine about not being able to solo 99% of the game, ignore them. An MMO should encourage teamwork, not be a competition to see who can cobble together the most overpowered clown build.
5- Any if 'silly and funny' is used more than once per year as a guideline for any content, then stop immediately. Leave all notes and slides in the room. Set it on fire and start all over. If you're going to put some humor into the game, fine. But stop making every damned thing in the game a joke.
6- Actually read the source material and use it as accurately as possible. Like I said, it's not my favorite but I'd be able to stomach it if it was closer to the books and wouldn't complain.
7- No more pop culture puns and references. Ever. Except maybe mission titles, or something. But don't overdo it. Stop throwing 'almost like' characters into CO, it makes it seem more like a parody- except a parody that's too stupid to stay in 'Comic Book' parody land.
8- Make actual power sets around each weapon instead of giving them one power each and saying 'there, guns powers!' and scampering off to play with magic.
9- Tone the mysticism and magic. A LOT. Keep it around where appropriate, but stop using magic so damned much- it's SUPPOSED to be rare. Shove some of those ideas over to Neverwhatever instead.
10- Make Vibora Bay's crap a low-level instance. Viper > Werewolves. As a matter of fact, make all the enemy organizations a proper threat.
11- Give players a starting body with less absurd proportions. Spread this throughout the game and kill this silly monkey-armed cartoonishness.
12- Dump voice acting and go with text. If you can't read, you don't belong on the internet. And there's only a couple of good voice actors anyway. The rest... are really bad.
13- Make the city look less like Cosmic Playground and more like a real city similar to Metropolis.
14- We have a ton of cool NPC heroes and such. Yet we far too often interact with some boring 'who cares' dude out in the middle of nowhere. Let us link up with actual important characters more often instead of drunken fishermen.
Hm. When you mention restricting the freeform system to promote team based gameplay. I decided to think a little on it. It's quite obvious the freeform system and all of it's glory is a big part of CO's fabric. So, and hear me out. A possible middle ground could be a slight restriction to two power trees (I.E Magic + Tech. Tech + Martial Arts ect.). You could choose two power trees and then have free roam on what power sets/powers to include in your build.
A simple example would be Technology + Martial Arts Power Trees. You could choose powers from sets within those trees, but no where else across the board. So, you could take powers from Single Blade all the way to Unarmed, while choosing powers from Munitions to Archery. However you can't use powers from Magic, Psionics, Brick and Elemental. At a first glance, yes it does resemble COH's power system, but the example here is meant to incorporate FreeForm like ways, while also restricting in certain areas to promote a team based gameplay style. I'm in no way an expert on how both COH and CO power sets work, but this example is just based on observation.
I have a higher tolerance for silliness than you, it would seem - after all, when I got Foxbat's Trout as a costume drop, my response was to create the Fishmonger, an Unleashed with dual-wielded trout, and Fishbat, a Devastator with a Foxbat-parody costume. So I don't mind the attempts at humor, I would merely request that all such be written by someone with a proven track record for making people laugh (people who are not also big Ace Ventura fans, that is - they'll laugh at anything).
As for specific points:
9 - Magic isn't supposed to be rare in the Champions universe; in fact, it's the basic reason there are superhumans and ultratech at all, because a botched experiment by Nazi occultists in WWII unleashed magic (and superpowers, and hyperintelligence) on the world. Tone it down too far, and you're talking about a different game, which may be good or bad, but either way isn't CO v2.0.
10 - Make Vibora Bay a multiply-level-gated zone. At low levels, Black Mask is the premiere hero of the city because the enemies are still just thugs, including one wannabe-voodoo gang and one where the members dress up like animals. This would be good for your Dark Champions idea, I think - low-powered heroes to fight low-powered thugs. As your level increases, though, guys like Baron Cimitiere and what's-his-face, the werewolf leader, begin to show up, and you might overhear some NPC dialog about "the big guy in that church". Eventually, of course, you run into the Apocalypse story line, and part of your heroism is that you don't strangle Caliburn, no matter how much he provokes you...
(That's a lot of work, I know. A man can dream, though, right?)
"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!"
Hm. When you mention restricting the freeform system to promote team based gameplay. I decided to think a little on it. It's quite obvious the freeform system and all of it's glory is a big part of CO's fabric. So, and hear me out. A possible middle ground could be a slight restriction to two power trees (I.E Magic + Tech. Tech + Martial Arts ect.). You could choose two power trees and then have free roam on what power sets/powers to include in your build.
I like it. Simple enough. Might need a lot of refinement and tweaking, but I like it.
9 - Magic isn't supposed to be rare in the Champions universe; in fact, it's the basic reason there are superhumans and ultratech at all, because a botched experiment by Nazi occultists in WWII unleashed magic (and superpowers, and hyperintelligence) on the world. Tone it down too far, and you're talking about a different game, which may be good or bad, but either way isn't CO v2.0.
It's to my understand that actual 'magic' itself is not openly practiced, or even widely acknowledged as real, even within many elements of the superhero community. The average citizen doesn't believe in magic, and sees most of these things as a variation of super powers.
Essentially, there shouldn't be demons walking the street in broad daylight.
I'm not saying cut it out- but tone the 'open use' down a bit when it comes to the stories and mobs and whatnot.
I like it. Simple enough. Might need a lot of refinement and tweaking, but I like it.
It's to my understand that actual 'magic' itself is not openly practiced, or even widely acknowledged as real, even within many elements of the superhero community. The average citizen doesn't believe in magic, and sees most of these things as a variation of super powers.
Essentially, there shouldn't be demons walking the street in broad daylight.
I'm not saying cut it out- but tone the 'open use' down a bit when it comes to the stories and mobs and whatnot.
Yes but we aren't average citizens. A superhero WOULD in fact encounter magic on a regular basis in the setup of Champions Online. Unless we are completely disregarding Vibora Bay and a major part of Canada as not existing.
/shrug
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
Fair number of threats and encounters in Champion Villains isn't magical at all. Regardless of this poor and unneeded excuse for superpowers in original PnP game, there is fair number of opponents that feel just metahuman.
We are encountering a lot of magicky threats in CO because magicky bull**** was most often picked by mmo authors. Not because there is not enough non-cheap non-fantasy stuff in CU to use as adversaries ingame. There could be other things used instead of magic to create larger challenges.
Magic should be toned down in a better game, because CO feels more like Dungeons and Dragons in tights, than like a superhero setting.
On top of this, magic in comic books is used in a quite different way than CO does and magical characters don't look like Faerun fugitives. DC Black Adam? He's magically powered. But do this villain looks like ingame CO evil mages? Nope, he looks and feels like metahuman tights-wearer.
This whole "magic is reason for everything" poor writing is probably the worst part of CU and CO only adds to it.
Comments
Or are parodies off-limits if they're mocking a terrible stereotype?
You mean Magic Dance?
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I don't know, let's put Defender in Blackface and see how well that goes.
It doesn't mean it had to put in the game. I still wonder what so superheroic is in this movie to base the whole ingame zone around it? Nothing.
As time goes by and we get better representations, some stuff can get ditched. I wouldn't do a direct parody of "soul man" either these days., yeah those were done in the past, but stuff just is different, people have different sensibilities and you adapt. if anything, a small time loking at stuff liek robin shou comedies can give you ides for asian comedy touchstones without going into a blatant over the top thing. but unless the parody is making fun of it(like a viper guy talks to hi-pan like that and hi-pan makes fun of him b answering in a overstuffed german accent, not sure how well it worked. Like i said, i tend to be hard to offend, but that was just blaring.
I dunno... I've played Champions PnP since 1982 and have followed all the incarnations and evolution of the Champs Universe. For the most part I love it, but so often what I see in CO just doesn't look or feel like what I love about it. Maybe I just came in with too many expectations to be objective, like someone watching a movie adaptation of a beloved novel.
But it takes more effort from writer than to spam pop-culture references and fart jokes.
There are few instances where CO humor was actually good and fun. Chaos Key lines from Demonflame are funny, he's a such snarker. Old item descriptions were also actually funy. Humorous and ironic.
But these are far and few between.
Big Trouble in Little China is a work of genius. Hi Pan is just, well, lame. Cryptic's parody of the character anyway. Cryptic did a little better with the references from The Thing in Whiteout.
All the parodies just get to be a bit much. The Vacation movies (Griswold), the cast of Anchorman (love the movies, HATE that they have in game parodies here), Twilight references (infinite ughs and barf), a movie called "Wizards" (line from Resistance), Big Trouble, The Thing, and heaven knows what other attempts at parody I have missed or forgotten, for a lot of people, really kinda hurts a sense of immersion.
I hate it when I have just made a new character who I think is pretty swift, runs into some of the npc's. Blech.
That's all I got.
Older items descriptions were actually hand written by none other than Jack [Statesman / Jackalope] Emmert. Unfortunately I think he's alittle busy to be writing things anymore.
As noted recently, John Layman, a pretty good comics writer, is responcible for much of the less than stellar humor and parody in the game.
I have to call out everyone who nay-says Hi-pan.
He is a direct homage / parody to Lo-Pan, the excellent and funny villain of Big Trouble in Little China, and while I certainly don't think he's perfect, the accent is indeed spot on how bad Lo-Pans accent was in that movie. Admittedly he got a lot less silly when in full spirit ghost giant form, but as a crotchety little old freak in a wheelchair, he was terrible at English.
He wasn't the only one, either. Several other prominent characters, most notably Thunder of the Three Storms and Egg Shen on the heroes side, also had pretty bad Chinese accents. Some people have them, it isn't racist. It's just a side effect of learning a second language and not being completely done I guess.
On a related Note, Green Dragon should also have a pretty bad Chinese accent, as he disdains occidentals and it's actually hard for me to imagine he'd seek to learn English other than what small amount he'd have too, for his business as a mercenary villain for hire.
[EDIT] Now I see Jon Sills also mentioned this.. I'm glad someone else gets it.
Yes, Layman is a known name. Sadly, being known doesn't mean being infallible. Known names can also halfass things and it's hard to find better proof. I guess he wasn't taking his work on CO very seriously, thus he did complete bull**** with writing. But even if known name gives me a bull****, it remains a bull****.
Many people gets it, but it doesn't change anything. This post nailed it:
Just because it's a homage to known movie, doesn't change it into something needed or done well. Or if it has place in the game.
With time less and less people will remember this movie and more and more people will see it as nothing more than racist stereotype. And even people who saw the movie may not give a s*** to this homage being forced into the game or over the whole Westside. Frankly, when I play superhero game I want to play superhero game, not some kind of homage to the completely unrelated movies, or neverending gallery of pop-culture references.
**cthunist I agree, it doesn't belong in the game, was just differentiating
edit 2 I was trying to quote rune: Dude those voices could not be more different. Hi Pan here sounds nothing like David LoPan. Not even close. Personas, ditto. Lopan is cursed and finds ways too adapt is a complex character, and has actual prescence in lore, while our game npc Hipan screams nonsense, and frankly, does sound sound a bit insensitive, if not racist.
There is a huge difference.
You know, I don't remember David Lo Pan getting his L's and R's confused. Probably because that comes from how R's are pronounced in Japanese, not Mandarin. But hey, who lives in Millennium City without learning how to pronounce "millennium" any way?
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
I get a little giddy when I hear Shadow Destroyer quoting Skeletor from Master of the Universe though.
...You mean quoting Oppenheimer, right? :biggrin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOsHoqhbUIU
doh, and the actual quote I remember from nemcon happens just before the scene I posted in the youtube video above...
Indeed, and that's just what makes him all the more a racist stereotype. The game is just "Hur hur hur, Asians can't pronounce Ls. Hur hur hur."
No. The Chinese have no trouble pronouncing Ls at all. It is purely a Japanese language problem.
It'd probably make it difficult for people who have the last name 'Li'.
Japanese language doesn't have the 'L' sounds, that's the thing.
Chinese in contrast has L's but no R's. So it's not uncommon to have"fried rice" rendered as "flied lice" with a Chinese accent. On a recent trip to China, one of our guide's stories got derailed when she started talking about the Emperor's... Pole Trees? Poultry? PO-E-TRY! We got a good laugh out of that one.
Another one of her stories was about when President Clinton wanted to meet the man who discovered the terracotta soldiers. I believe his name is Yang Zhifa. Since he was illiterate and didn't know English, Chinese officials taught him some lines phonetically for when he met the President. The exchange was supposed to go like this:
Yang: How are you?
Clinton: I'm fine, thank you. (or something)
Yang: Me too!
What actually happened was:
Yang: Who are you?
Clinton: ...I'm Hillary's husband.
Yang: Me too!
P.S. I also think it's time for Champions Online 2.
Chinese has Ls and Rs. We just flied lice everything to mess with you people.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
That's absolute garbage. Mandarin has Rs, it's just that the Rs typically occur at the end of a Chinese word rather than the beginning. Chinese are not Bizarro Japanese.
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Are any of the "Spiritual Successors" of CoH open to pulling what's great about Champions in and using it? CoT seems like the most open minded of the three from what little I've seen--maybe they'll pull some lessons from CO?
I dunno. For whatever the next gen of Superhero MMORPG's is, there is SO much to learn from CoH, CO, and DCUO as far as what to do and what not to do, someone could really knock it out of the park with a little common sense.
Course, common sense isn't that common, so...
I hate to be a naysayer, but all I've seen of the 'successors' is a project made of equal parts high hopes, bitterness, and nostalgia. It'll take more than some concept art, superhero memes, and a 'screen shot' of a blank desert to sway me.
I speak the language and this is not true at all.
Jenny, don't you speak like... four languages?
Dunno. I kicked around their forums a bit, and if CoT is in pre-production like they say with the cheap but solid and easy-to-use new Unreal 4 engine and 600K just to get started--we could see a decent game one day.
There was something about Epic having them under a NDA too so they couldn't show much. I'm not getting a lot of bitterness from them. Maybe a couple of the forumites, but not the Devs or company.
But, the key words are "if" and "could", it's true.
I got acquainted with a Japanese girl when I went over there, and her name was "Rio". I thought she said "Leo". And then she told me no and I thought that she said Leo again.
Eventually she got it through my skull.
Anyway, Champions 2.0 or whatever...
=============
The manpower isn't there right now, but in reality this is the only likely way for Champions to see any real development.
The biggest reason is that they can dump the lifers. No more people riding along for free.
Along with that, they can build it from the ground up with monetization in mind. Rather than try to figure out what sorts of things they can make to sell, they can look at other, more successful PWE games and figure out how to make Champions more like those, complete with the popular for-sale items.
The problem, of course, is whether they could get people to buy in again.
The question is whether or not the players would want to invest the time (and more importantly for Cryptic, the money) into playing the new game from the same company that just shut the other game down.
The writing, though, would almost certainly have to improve.
=============
The game as it is now is a mess. It has been a mess.
The southwestern desert has been a radioactive wasteland since the late 40s, complete with radioactive mutants running around...
Really? The government wouldn't carpet-bomb the place to get rid of the mutants? They just have a few troops engaged in conventional ground combat against a super-powered army?
And this nuclear testing left an old west town still standing?
And maybe if it was just radioactivity it might be a good place for a prison. I mean, hey, people that manage to get outside of the walls end up with a death sentence.
Except there is still the matter of a hostile army of radioactive mutants, including a gigantic mega-mutant.
And someone decided to build a robotic theme park in the middle of the radioactive wasteland with mutants running wild and a super-prison next door?
Great place for a family vacation, if you hate your family.
That is just bad. And I don't care if whatever edition of Champions they are on has that as part of their world.
=============
I wonder what the future may hold for Champions now.
I mean, Cryptic had money so they just bought the intellectual property.
Then they, in turn, get bought by PWE, yes?
So now a Chinese company with probably zero interest in an RPG game now own an RPG game, and their one and only connection to that RPG is hardly a booming success.
I don't want to say that it is on the verge of shutting down, but what happens when they do close the doors? Will they even care about dealing with people that want to produce materials for the RPG? Will they bury Champions? Will they look for a buyer?
And Mandarin has Rs.
Ex: er, renrenhao
I laughed so hard at this. I hadn't even thought of the desert.
I've always thought the game is 'fixable', but it needs to be severely gutted. As in, take the functions of the game, take the tailor, take the powers... but gut all the writing and all the zones and all the missions. Just pull them away.
Here, I'll put things into perspective.
Millennium City: It's pretty much the Superhero capital of the US, right? Why are there demons in the street, Destroids marching up and down the block, massive undergound Viper bases, and an entire side of the city overran with 5 different criminal gangs? When you put that into perspective, people would start to question why the city that the headlining superhero team operates from is so screwed up. Not to mention UNTIL/UNITY, PRIMUS, and a highly-equipped police force... this makes no sense.
Solution? Make Millennium City a 'hub' area with the bank, and connections to various PRIMUS, UNTIL, UNITY, Champions HQ and other contact agencies. There could be a few small 'welcome to the game world' missions in the surrounding area (like, West Side could be a smaller area for newbies but that's it), but overall the city shouldn't be overran by mobs. Obviously you could keep all of the social instances and perhaps move them closer.
That's really all I can think of right now. Truth be told, if the game's areas and writing were gutted and followed closer to what the actual books say, instead of being a bunch of bad pop-culture jokes and forced humor- take the writing seriously. It's still not my cup of tea, but it'd be tolerable and I could enjoy it for what it is. I couldn't complain at all, to be completely honest.
I think the odd choice of locales was the fact that they were working with zone size, aka games generally are scaled down versions of real life. While you might get that city feeling, you certainly aren't going to get a real city anytime soon in a video game, which can occupy more than 100 square miles. I believe Detroit itself covers 123 square miles, though I could be wrong.
I think the other reason they went with their design choice was the simple fact, and pinning this on the CoH players, people were sick of seeing zone bars every few moments. City of Heroes was notoriously bad with them, so instead of making multiple separate zones with more possibly content filled in them, they tried to combine like themes together, but over all it created a mess. Honestly, i could have dealt with more condensed zones if it meant more and better developed content, but it's the past and wishful thinking though I know who I am gong to blame for the reasons why it didn't happen that way. And Cryptic only gets part of that blame.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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No wonder MC is overrun by crime - because, seemingly, all citizen and MCPD officers are complete idiots.
Also, no wonder MCPD has no police car on patrols through the city - it seems that all are parked in Westside.
If anything, CO Millenium City makes me want to join supervillain club and help Dr. D delivering the mass euthanasia to the city filled with morons too stupid to live.
So they can't breed.
Fort the sake of mankind.
IIRC is still explicitly Cryptic, not PWE, who holds the IP. And they have it only as long, as CO is existing. It may be a rumor, but I recall people saying that IP goes back to Hero Games if CO is shut down.
The entire region is not the Atomic Wasteland. The Wasteland is specifically two small valleys, almost disconnected. There appears to be a total lack of "radioactive mutants" running about in Burnside, for ex, and once you get across (or around) that area and to the theme park, the radiation has dropped off to background levels. And bombing the place, throwing radioactive debris about all willy-nilly, would be rather counterproductive, don't you agree? Especially since one of the things Greenskin Base is supposed to be working on is a cure for all those mutants, particularly Grond.
Now admittedly, it was d*mn silly of Donaldson to build his robot theme park in a place with no roads...
And you're right, that desert is a great place for a prison. Probably why Stronghold is out there. (You've noticed Stronghold, right? Big steel building, sunk into Devil's Head Mesa, lots of lights, concertina wire, and escaped powered prisoners?)
As noted above, all that stuff is crammed together because the zone could only be so big without overwhelming the actual physical memory space available - we don't have Star Trek computers with "gigaquads" (whatever those are) of storage yet.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I think it would be very odd if all the zones in CO were linked together. How exactly would an island off Japan run into Canada? The problem is the games you mentioned are not based on the real world, whilst Champions is. Cryptic would have to recreate a large part of the world and even if they did each intermediate area as a token gesture, they do not have the resources. I think having to travel to new zones makes perfect sense. It is much better than the way Everquest did it, albeit that is an old game. However, we do need more zones, but not fillers between them.
Nobody says all zones need to be linked into one continent. But if engine was more capable, individual zones could be bigger.
And top rank travel powers and vehicles could be of real use.
You said seamless, implying that there was no joins. As there are no joins in any CO zone, I assumed you meant the joins between zones. If not, what did you mean by seamless?
As to bigger zones, where did you read the engine couldn't cope? Is that an assumption? Lemuria is a really big zone, but the truth is our travel powers and vehicles make zones feel smaller than they really are. If we traveled at WoW speeds, I really don't think individual zones here are much smaller. But, because of the smooth transition between linked zones in WoW, they do feel bigger. Either way, I would settle for a new zone of any size just now.
Then don't assume, as it leads nowhere, lol.
Show me wher I explicitly stated "all our zones should be on the same continent" if you are willing to continue. If not, quit it, because it's silly. Unless you simply love nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, but it doesn't make you looking smarter, just playing semantics.
And don't pretend that our zones are soo big. Lemura is roughly the same size as MC. It looks bigger because it's three-dimensional. While MC is mostly occupied by rooftops with few mobs on them.
Unless you are seriously claiming that Lemuria is size of WoW continent. It is roughly the size of single WoW zone, like Elwynn Forest, for example (and single WoW zones have the same shrunken feel as CO maps).
Now imagine that our Desert/Canada/Lemuria is size of WoW or L2 continents.
And I don't have to assume anything. Developers stated, after all, that MC reaches maximum size of zone possible with the engine and it can not be made bigger.
How about instead of "attacking" viewpoints (or people), we discuss them? It's bound to be more productive in the long run...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Well, Jon- you see when I was growing up and when you were growing up (there's probably half a century difference *JAB*) we had means of debating our thoughts. We could say we saw things one way, and if people disagreed they didn't take it as a personal attack- they simply said 'I disagree because __', and then the two of them said 'what if..' and then we got great ideas like monster truck shows and donut burgers.
But to be fair, my only means of 'improving' CO involves a MASSIVE gutting.
1- Every character chooses a morality. Essentially, it's basically 'what is the most important to you', and it could have several choices- protecting innocent people, punishing evil, pushing myself to the limits, becoming a legend, etc. This determines some of your missions (What you're fighting and what kind of missions you do).
2- Every character chooses a 'type'. It'd be very generalized, but it'd be another half of your leveling path's theme (more or less how you are addressed, your contact, etc).
There. General idea how to do 'custom tailored leveling path'.
3- The Nemesis system? Either tailor it as well or gut it completely to make room for something useful. Simple as that. Countless ways to do this, but if it were to be either 'what we have now' or 'nothing', I'll take nothing and free up some space. All this does is provide momentary distraction with rewards that aren't worth trying for again after you unlock them all. Worthwhile rewards would be fine, otherwise just scrap this useless distraction.
4- Balance the power sets and encourage team play. It might require things to be a bit more restrictive, and when people whine about not being able to solo 99% of the game, ignore them. An MMO should encourage teamwork, not be a competition to see who can cobble together the most overpowered clown build.
5- Any if 'silly and funny' is used more than once per year as a guideline for any content, then stop immediately. Leave all notes and slides in the room. Set it on fire and start all over. If you're going to put some humor into the game, fine. But stop making every damned thing in the game a joke.
6- Actually read the source material and use it as accurately as possible. Like I said, it's not my favorite but I'd be able to stomach it if it was closer to the books and wouldn't complain.
7- No more pop culture puns and references. Ever. Except maybe mission titles, or something. But don't overdo it. Stop throwing 'almost like' characters into CO, it makes it seem more like a parody- except a parody that's too stupid to stay in 'Comic Book' parody land.
8- Make actual power sets around each weapon instead of giving them one power each and saying 'there, guns powers!' and scampering off to play with magic.
9- Tone the mysticism and magic. A LOT. Keep it around where appropriate, but stop using magic so damned much- it's SUPPOSED to be rare. Shove some of those ideas over to Neverwhatever instead.
10- Make Vibora Bay's crap a low-level instance. Viper > Werewolves. As a matter of fact, make all the enemy organizations a proper threat.
11- Give players a starting body with less absurd proportions. Spread this throughout the game and kill this silly monkey-armed cartoonishness.
12- Dump voice acting and go with text. If you can't read, you don't belong on the internet. And there's only a couple of good voice actors anyway. The rest... are really bad.
13- Make the city look less like Cosmic Playground and more like a real city similar to Metropolis.
14- We have a ton of cool NPC heroes and such. Yet we far too often interact with some boring 'who cares' dude out in the middle of nowhere. Let us link up with actual important characters more often instead of drunken fishermen.
15- Add vehicles that can be customized.
A simple example would be Technology + Martial Arts Power Trees. You could choose powers from sets within those trees, but no where else across the board. So, you could take powers from Single Blade all the way to Unarmed, while choosing powers from Munitions to Archery. However you can't use powers from Magic, Psionics, Brick and Elemental. At a first glance, yes it does resemble COH's power system, but the example here is meant to incorporate FreeForm like ways, while also restricting in certain areas to promote a team based gameplay style. I'm in no way an expert on how both COH and CO power sets work, but this example is just based on observation.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
@Hope1 ingame. PRIMUS Database Characters
As for specific points:
9 - Magic isn't supposed to be rare in the Champions universe; in fact, it's the basic reason there are superhumans and ultratech at all, because a botched experiment by Nazi occultists in WWII unleashed magic (and superpowers, and hyperintelligence) on the world. Tone it down too far, and you're talking about a different game, which may be good or bad, but either way isn't CO v2.0.
10 - Make Vibora Bay a multiply-level-gated zone. At low levels, Black Mask is the premiere hero of the city because the enemies are still just thugs, including one wannabe-voodoo gang and one where the members dress up like animals. This would be good for your Dark Champions idea, I think - low-powered heroes to fight low-powered thugs. As your level increases, though, guys like Baron Cimitiere and what's-his-face, the werewolf leader, begin to show up, and you might overhear some NPC dialog about "the big guy in that church". Eventually, of course, you run into the Apocalypse story line, and part of your heroism is that you don't strangle Caliburn, no matter how much he provokes you...
(That's a lot of work, I know. A man can dream, though, right?)
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I like it. Simple enough. Might need a lot of refinement and tweaking, but I like it.
It's to my understand that actual 'magic' itself is not openly practiced, or even widely acknowledged as real, even within many elements of the superhero community. The average citizen doesn't believe in magic, and sees most of these things as a variation of super powers.
Essentially, there shouldn't be demons walking the street in broad daylight.
I'm not saying cut it out- but tone the 'open use' down a bit when it comes to the stories and mobs and whatnot.
Yes but we aren't average citizens. A superhero WOULD in fact encounter magic on a regular basis in the setup of Champions Online. Unless we are completely disregarding Vibora Bay and a major part of Canada as not existing.
/shrug
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
We are encountering a lot of magicky threats in CO because magicky bull**** was most often picked by mmo authors. Not because there is not enough non-cheap non-fantasy stuff in CU to use as adversaries ingame. There could be other things used instead of magic to create larger challenges.
Magic should be toned down in a better game, because CO feels more like Dungeons and Dragons in tights, than like a superhero setting.
On top of this, magic in comic books is used in a quite different way than CO does and magical characters don't look like Faerun fugitives. DC Black Adam? He's magically powered. But do this villain looks like ingame CO evil mages? Nope, he looks and feels like metahuman tights-wearer.
This whole "magic is reason for everything" poor writing is probably the worst part of CU and CO only adds to it.
/wtb better made superhero setting*)
*-but without DCUO attached, lol