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Why isnt Champions darker?
zer303606
Posts: 124 Arc User
when everyone allmost "besides a couple of crazy ppl dressing up as rainbow clows" is a dark hero?
i mean we all got them dont we. and somewhere in a dark corner of our mind we want a darker game.
it will generate money and PR for the game.
so my basic question is why ?
is it becouse of certain bosses at work or, i mean there is a dark version of CO allready right?
just need to make it into reality.
vibora bay is ok for darker heroes the enemies doesnt feel like something from spongebob or something atleast.
please make it cryptic/perfect world/whatever.
-cheers
i mean we all got them dont we. and somewhere in a dark corner of our mind we want a darker game.
it will generate money and PR for the game.
so my basic question is why ?
is it becouse of certain bosses at work or, i mean there is a dark version of CO allready right?
just need to make it into reality.
vibora bay is ok for darker heroes the enemies doesnt feel like something from spongebob or something atleast.
please make it cryptic/perfect world/whatever.
-cheers
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And the 90s are thankfully over.
it was for alot of ppl yes.
People, I'd agree with, a lot, maybe when it was shiny and new but if you wanted to play single player mode Redside was the place to do it not too long after it was released.
and yes the is a Dark Champions PnP setting that Cryptic also own but havent really dipped into for the online game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Champions
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And if you're under the impression that the vast majority of characters in CO are edgy antiheroic redblack demon ninjas who were thrown out of Hell for scaring Satan, you might want to actually leave Club Caprice once in a while and patrol the streets. You'll find a lot more characters like Caliga, or Offender, or Thundrax, or Captain Punchfist, or...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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nah man. its just observations from ren center and such in all these years.
dont care about 5 ppl with silverage heroes.
im talking about all newcomers with red and black characters.
i mean i got alot of toons myself and a couple of silver age ones.
but im dark in heart so personally i wish this to happen
So are you saying that "rainbow clown" can't be a dark hero?
...
Wearing blackredder with spikes and pointy things, doesn't make a dark hero. It's causes just giggles among your fellow players.
...
Maybe most of us escape our dark corners of our mind into a game dressed as "rainbow clowns".
Your "need to make" does have some numbers showing there is a real need?
Most of the PewPew/SlashSlash game are allready about "dark gritty heroes".
I bet most of us are not too keen dressing up black leathers to be "darker heroes".
...
I have high doubts of Cryptic making Dark Champions just because the way of Rainbow Clown Champions is doing.
Every blackredder new comer really should drop the *i'm bad. i'm bad. i'm really really bad* act and actually try the "rainbow clown".
And vampires/werewolfs/zombies have outgrown of their darkhero scene long time ago.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
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The black/red color palette makes for easy visually striking combinations with emotionally striking cultural connotations. I don't blame newbies for throwing together a blackredder with a background right out the the darkest days of the 90s. I was guilty of it myself (costume-wise, darkitydarkdarkgrimdark backgrounds weren't my thing) when I started CoH.
But then, as I played the game, and ran into the Rainbow Clowns, I saw there were more options with other colors and styles and found myself to be quickly one of them.
Don't get me wrong, I love dark heroes. Most of my characters wear dark clothes, typically raise the dead and otherwise defile the fundamentals of what we consider to be wholesome, and generally have bare midriffs where I can manage it.
I was raised in the 90s were every other comic had a brooding hero in dark colour pallette moping over killing someone.
The first comic I read was one which was 30 pages of Batman patrolling Gotham, moping. No plot, no combat, just 30 pages of 'this city is sick, and I am the symptom of that sickness".
I recently picked up the comic of Injustice: Gods Among Us and the dystopian alternate DC setting is honestly rather scary in how dark it is.
But quite frequently I get bored of this, especially if I do multiplayer stuff and don't just solo grind questionite. Why?
When everyone's dark, individually special, and brooding... It's the boy scout in primary colours that steals the show. The clown is superior to the mime, as the clown has an inner fire that the mime's intriguing silence cannot hope to match.
It's much harder to be a Paladin than a Blackguard, and yet somehow more satisfying.
Champions is hella dark. Characters have traumatic backstories, the setting itself seems terrifyingly fragile when you know as much about the universe as I've picked up from the books.
But the facade of Golden Age natures, the pristine city of Detroit... It's only skindeep.
You know this, you've quested! This is a Metropolis-esque city with demon cultists and gang shootouts around every corner! This is where advanced technology is only BARELY on par with ancient magics that DO NOT REST!
This is where hope battles against despair, and it looks like they're equally matched, meaning it might not ever end.
It's as dark as you analyse it. Similar to my policy on villains (there is no heroic action that cannot be done for villainious reasons), there is very little in this setting that isn't slightly twisted if you look at it from the right perspective.
From the horror of bodysnatching holoemitter spies all the way to the futility of any action when you know there's possibility infinite worlds that may interact at the turn of a plot device, there is true cerebral horror in this world we play in.
I don't know if it needs blatant darkness. I feel that ruins the awakening terror that all is lost and the juxtaposition of determination and hope laid against it.
They are? News to me.
Not particularly. I have a few "dark" characters, but they just represent a small corner of the types I make. I don't need the game to be darker. I'm a Bronze Age comic fan. Most of the "darkity dark" that followed seems annoyingly unimaginative and fun-sucking to me.
What reason do you have to believe that?
You can't change how people make their characters. One of the main points of Champions Online. Make a hero you want to make.
Theres plenty of games where you cannot change how your character looks like.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
We get all the darkity-darkness we need from the villains. Let somebody else build City of Punishers.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
{ how Zed feels about what bulgarex posted }
-
I have only 18 heroes, a small number compared to many, but everyone is a Hero of the Sun and proud of it.
While Chocolate Rampage uses The Cursed Arche, this is mostly for the visual effects. Epidemic is actually a cloud of soothing milk chocolatey goodness that pacifies the criminals until the police can lock them up.
Seriously.
In any case, it would be nice if CO took itself a little more seriously. Most of the mission content consists of "LOL POP CULTURE REFERENCE LOLOLOLOLOL! DERP!" without any further depth.
sorry to hear that.
you all make sence some deeper then others, but i remain in my quest for a dark champions online.
doesnt have to be black red with pointy things tho. as finn allmost said , i whould be more scared of a rainbow clown then a guy dressed in black leather and skulls.
but darkness doesnt have to be those things.
well there should be atleast an option for us ppl that dont want to dress up as rainbowman of the giddy sun of happyness. and fight mobs that are straight out of a morning cartoon.
i mean yea games are silly as it is, but it could be cooler.
not everyone wants to be spawn, some ppl just want a more mature story to live yourself into.
-my two dark cents
ps. hope i didnt offend any rainbow warriors out there lol.
There is, it's called Character Creator. And your imagination.
Dark doesn't mean cooler.
This is internet. You probably have.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
and its hard to make a "darker" toon with these silly mobs.
i can deal with that sure. if the mobs we are fighting where more gray side then light side.
ii love the costume creator but it seems that my imagination is halted by the setting of the game.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
/unlit 0.25 gives a lovely dark feel to the game.
(1 is default value)
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just that needs more darkness thats all.
-thanks for reading
@dr490nbr347hi / Playing since January 25, '11
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yes the deadpool clones, batman clones and all the other things that the new people think they are being original in copying.
Or the people, who for some strange reason, think being 'bad' is cool. It's not.
same as the amount of bloatform characters- why isn't everything huge.
all the near naked female- why isn't Millennium city a nudist colony.
Strangely in the time I've been playing, I've seen mostly other ones.
WE did have a plague of Black & grey when Night Avenger At was released.
BY the way, I have just over 100 characters. The only one which can be described as a red/blacker is Dead Fool- a zombie clown.
and to zer303606,
which mobs ;
purple gang- criminals
VIPER_ international criminal
Mind Inc- take over the world criminals
Argent- business criminals
DEMON-magical criminals
DR Moreau- thinks turning people into manimals is a good idea
Telios- thinks people make good components
Gadroon- invading the planet
Qulaar- invading the planet
How exactly are any of these light side?
darkness in what way?
more suicides, drug use, get taken over by horrors from another dimension(comic series), blowing up of innocent civilians,etc.
This is not a comic book series where they have to put as much drama into it as a (un)reality TV show, in order to sell.
Go try DCUO and see the Villain missions, they are exactly the same as the Hero ones but form the other direction.... well except one where you kill exactly the same people for exactly the same reason.
and here we get to the real reason;
I like this , so change it to be the way I like
Edit: one last bit.
Dark champions is a skill based game. IT is based on normal people, not super heroes.
The people themselves are not required to be dim, dark, frustrated vigilantes out to get vengeance on whoever killed their parents, sister, brother, pet dog.
It is merely that they have to be sneakier and use the dark to hide.
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Sunrise and sunset in MC are kind of nice, but the other 23 hours of the game's time looks too bright. There's demons all over Downtown but the lighting doesn't suggest there's evil lurking everywhere one bit. West side is so well lit the police could snipe all those criminals from a brightly colored hot air balloon with old tyme music inspiring the turkey shoot.
Go into a skanky sewer or crusty otherworldly crypt, same global lightning.
The unlit command really shows this, change that one setting and the whole world dips into darkness, all the myriad lamp posts and light bulbs in maps do absolutly nothing to generate light and/or cast shadows. Same goes for our powers, I'm surrounded by a big glow from my lightspeed, but it casts no real light.
Why is it like this? The graphics engine started its development before 2004 and it's pretty much stuck there.
I think what you're trying to say is not really "a darker" champions. You want something more in tune with what is actually expected in real life, and have it brought and more pronounced here in the game.
A crime where people are actually killed infront of your heroes eyes.
Graphic crimes involving things as horrific as ****, first degree murder, etc.
Parts of the city where even super heroes despite being present, just don't give an aura of "safety".
What you are asking for what I feel, is that you want the ESRB rating of this game to go from "Teen", to "Mature". In so showing a more gritty, and frankly, more true approach in terrible calamities of the real world, and reflected here in the game.
In essence, I don't think you want a "darker" champions, but a more "real" champions where everything can't be saved by a super hero.
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Presto. Darker Champions.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Long (and more serious) answers: Because the game is based on a PnP superhero game created by Hero Games, in 1981, coinciding with the height of the Bronze Age of comics. The original Hero Games crew. particularly George MacDonald, conceived of the game as a love letter to mid-to-late 70s Marvel, and many of the earliest creations are pretty much Marvel knockoffs with the serial numbers barely filed.
Other authors joined the line over time. Some, like those who wrote Enemies III, gave it an silly, self-parodying feel, others (like me) added a more modern tone indicative of late Bronze age/early Iron Age books. When ICE bought Hero in 1987, they appointed Rob Bell as line editor. Rob aimed for a more serious tone. There was still no shared world supplement; the closest thing to one at the time, the villain compendium Classic Enemies, was written to bring the game into line with this tone (a Champions Universe book did come along toward the end of the ICE age, but did little to shape the direction of the line).
The Champions superteam were conceived in the late 1980s by Rob, who wanted a new team of archetypal heroes, both to introduce new players to the game, and to give the covers of Hero Games products a consistent look. (The rights to the previous archetypal team, the Guardians, were held by the small press comics company Heroic Publishing; the cheesecake tone of their comics was not especially endearing to ICE, and this spurred on the development of the Champions).
The line took a tumble in the mid-1990s, largely due to the misfortune of Hero's parent company ICE. ICE sold the rights to Champions to a company called CyberGames, who attempted to revive Champions in the late 90s as Champions: New Millennium with a (heavily criticized) Iron Age look and simplified mechanics. They essentially alienated their customer base without replacing them, and CNM was a failure, though the supplements for CNM are (IMO) quite underrated.
In 2002, when two long time fans and authors, Steve Long and Darren Watts, bought the rights for Hero, they reshaped the world and the Champions Universe further. Steve, for the most part, restrained his trademark dark age grittiness, though some of it made its way into various villain reconstructions, including Destroyer (though I had done my best to move Destroyer away from being a Doom clone ten years earlier in Classic Enemies and Day of the Destroyer). Darren took the lead on the Millennium City book, setting it in Detroit, and blowing it up (borrowing an element from CNM, where Destroyer destroyed San Francisco. Being more of a Silver age DC fan than any of the major previous contributors, Darren added certain Silver Age elements (like Doctor Silverback) that would receive prominence in the online version. Steve also (gleefully) removed some of the sillier elements of the game, notably CLOWN, a team of prankster supervillain clowns that were pretty divisive in fandom.
The Champions roster evolved to its current one when Steve Long took over, with Defender the only survivor of the original Champs team. They also published a version of Champions Universe that set the tone and established the background lore for what became this game.
In 2008, Cryptic Studios, in a bind when Marvel dropped their MMO, turned to Hero Games for a background to salvage their work. Jack Emmert had been a big Hero System fan, and he and Steve Long were on good terms. John Layman was hired as writer, and Bill Roper was brought in as executive producer. For some reason, it was decided that the game would have a very light, not-very-serious tone, at odds with much of the material in the actual license. Numerous nerdy pop culture references were thrown in; though some have used the terms "Silver Age" and "camp", in my opinion, it's probably more accurate to describe it as "nerd humor for people who don't know when to stop beating a joke into the ground".
I think it's safe to say the tone of these initial missions was not very well-received. From Vibora Bay on, the game assumed a more serious tone, and in places where the game delved into the mystical side of the Champions lore, which was largely the product of Allen Varney, Dean Shomshak and Allen Thomas, quite dark. It should also be noted that Layman did a very good (IMO) job with the tone of the Vibora Bay Apocalypse, which along with Resistance is probably the best piece of storytelling in the game. The game didn't completely abandon its light-hearted roots, sometimes to its cost (Green Dragon, Redsnake, I'm looking at you); for the most part, later additions reflected the tone of modern North American comic books much better than the launch missions, though even at launch, some of the higher level missions (late Canada, MonsterIsland, and Lemuria) reflect a more serious tone. But players' intial contact with the game came through missions featuring a lot of silly pop culture laiden references and those missions are the ones that shape most people's perceptions.
And that's the story of tone in Champions and Champions Online: originally based in Bronze Age Marvel, but with dozens of authors adding their own quirks and stylistic preferences to the works over the years, filtered through various iterations of the MMO production team. Personally, I like a mix of tones, and if I want to play an urban fantasy game or a dark gritty action game, there are better alternatives.
it was too much to hope that i would get to do the "adjust your gamma" joke. wasn't it.
anyhow, the early game was silly but check aftershock, it gets grimmer. and your aesthetic is up to you, you can choose to be funny or you can choose to be dark age.
-Another note: In addition to the people who are the actual, full-/part-time writers on a game, a lot of missions and other text is written by devs whose specializations aren't necessarily writing. It's kinda like Duke Nukem and Starcraft, how much of the writing was pop culture references or snarky jokes. Those are just more fun to write, if you aren't trying to bring out a particular feel. (Note: This is me hypothesizing based on the sense of humor I've seen in the Cryptic culture, I don't know for sure that this is the case.)
-Definitely agree that Steel Crusade was good writing.
i havent tried steel crusade yet as i dunno. im gonna try this asap.
btw. you guys looking for writers by any chance?
who will try to keep the game in teen rating.
and i think you meant canadascott btw ^^
The very first mission of Steel Crusade is possibly one of the darkest and most disturbing one in the game. The rest of the missions are pretty fun, too, but be warned that when the final mission says "2 or more players recommended" they really mean it this time.
im more of a tim burton darkness fan. but your idea sounds appealing. shame about the teen rating going away tho.
I've had the honor of fighting alongside Thundrax in a few Blood Moons, usually in my persona of Happifun Security System X-4. Dude definitely knows his stuff.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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ok sorry guys. i seen thundrax a couple of times in ren center. nice looking toon.
Yet for some ODD reason, this game Attracts Horders of Blackredders... which makes me sad
Why trying to be Evil, Dark and EDGY (OW THE EDGE!) in such a colourful and Whimsical game like CO...
On one side, comic geeks. On the other, gamers. Oh, sure, there's some crossover, but anecdotally it seems to me to be predominantly "gamer first, then comic fan" types. People for whom the point of games is "destroying stuff". Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that. They can play their game and I'll play mine.
Customization IS our largest draw here.
Or I'll kick up Mass Effect 2 on the XBox. "Those were the days, Shepard. Us against the unknown, killing it with big guns..."
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