GastlyGibus

Other MMO's to me felt like they were trying to make a story to go with the mechanics. Like the developers said to themselves "hmm, we need a mission that involves killing 10 of this enemy, how can we turn that into a story?" As a result, a lot of mission stories in other MMOs feels lazy and phoned-in. "Oh no, the city has a rat problem! Please, can you go kill ten giant rats and bring me their tails as proof?" Now, don't get me wrong, old City of Heroes did this too. A lot. You see this in the endless "Defeat XX Council" missions given by the release contacts. They sucked then, they suck now. But as City of Heroes grew and evolved, the storytelling got better and better. A lot of it is standard comic book tropes, true, but it's still a lot more engaging than the dailies/weeklies of most other MMOs. Is it perfect? By no means. There's a lot of crap content, even post-release (I'm looking at you, Alan Desslock, Mr. "Go beat up Positron for teh lulz"), but I still find myself reading mission text here, even for missions I've played a thousand times by now. I always go through the Faultline arcs heroside. I make it a point to make a beeline straight to Dean MacArthur on my villains the instant they hit 20. There's a ton of great storytelling in this game that other MMO's simply don't have. Even The Old Republic, a game released by the supposed kings of storytelling in Bioware, fell short in this regard. Like I said before, it felt like they were trying to make a story to match the gameplay, rather than the other way around. Even though it may be seventeen years old, I'll still take City of Heroes over any other MMO. City of Heroes was doing things back then that even MMOs released today haven't figured out.

I will make one correction this bit about the the RWZ. You're partially correct, but the main bit you got wrong is this: While I'm here, I'll give a brief summary of the Faultline lore, because that's one of my favorite storylines in the game, and it's available as early as level 15.

I don't think so. Archery has the benefit of faster animations and attacks, and isn't a massive endurance-hog like AR. Power wise they're about the same in my opinion, but you're shooting faster, which means a slight damage boost. I should probably stress I'm not a numbers guy, I don't min-max, and this is all based on my personal experience. I never had issues with my TA/Archery defender, but Assault Rifle was such a slog for me I rerolled it as a corruptor and never looked back.

I know you've already decided, but for anybody else reading this, I would heartily advise against Assault Rifle on Defenders. AR has no secondary effects that can benefit from Defender values, and since you're left with straight damage at that point (most of it being lethal damage to boot) you hit about as hard as a pool noodle. I had a FF/AR Defender that I played to 35 before I eventually shelved them because even on teams I felt 100% useless, and soloing was an absolute chore. Corruptors get the benefit of scourge as well as TA's debuffs to help mitigate AR's lack of them. AR needs to be buffed for Defenders to make it worthwhile as a set, in my opinion. On Blasters and Corruptors it's fine, but Defenders get the short end of the stick, being the least able to benefit from AR's "pure damage" niche.

No, I don't just want positive feedback. I want feedback in general, which is not what I was given. If Random Man actually played my stories (which, again, I must reiterate that it is literally not possible for him to have played all of my stories in two minutes) and have me actual, real feedback, I'd be fine. This was originally just me asking if I could do anything about this. I reported it, for what it's worth, but now it's turned into a discussion on the overall effectiveness of the rating system, which I'm fine with. This issue has clearly demonstrated that the system is flawed and needs to be fixed. I'm not asking for the entire system to be upended. I'm not asking for the rating system to be removed entirely. I'm asking for the system to be tweaked so that randoms who haven't played the stories don't have the option to just rating-bomb whatever they'd like with impunity. Or, as someone else mentioned, possibly add in some kind of completion ratio showing how many players actually completed the Arc in question and how many quit before the end.

Please go back and read my original post. This is not criticism we're talking about. Unless you're sincerely trying to make the argument that this player managed to fully play through and read three 4-5 mission long story arcs and write a review of each one in the span of sixty seconds, then we're not talking about real, genuine criticism. Like most people, I fully welcome people to play my arcs and give me feedback. If you didn't like it, tell me why, and I'll see if it's worth fixing. That is not what happened here. Let me reiterate for you the sequence of events. I play Random Man's story. I play through it all, send in a review at the end from AE, rate it and move on. I suddenly get a message from Random Man, insinuating that I'm being pretentious and also that I'm an idiot for not liking his story. Less than two minutes later, I get sent a nasty "review" on my story arc. I go and check my stories, and in that same less-than-two minutes timeframe, Random Man has rated all of my stories 1 star. Criticism is one thing. Ratings are another. Random Man did not offer criticism on my stories. Random Man threw a temper tantrum and said "Oh, you didn't like my story? WELL, YOUR STORIES ARE STUPID! SO THERE!" and then rating-bombed my stories. Now they show up at 1 or 2 stars each. Now, if any other player looks at the rating, their first thought is likely to be "Wow, this story is rated 2 stars. It must be garbage," and they'll skip over it. I used to manage a small restaurant. You have no idea of how bad reviews and ratings can severely hurt your business and turn away potential patrons. I have long railed against terrible "rating" systems used by sites like Yelp, where people can freely rate anything 1 star without actually writing a critique of why they rated it that, without even needing proof that they actually went to my restaurant. Even if I get tons of 4 or 5 star ratings on Yelp, it greatly hurts the overall score when just one guy with no profile rates one star with nothing written except "this place sucks," if they even bother to write anything at all. I'm sorry, I can't fix "sucks," because you didn't actually tell me what the problem is. Now Yelp refuses to do anything about this abuse of the system (and in fact actually encourages it) and my ratings are now impacted by these folks, which then reflects poorly on my business. That is what happened here with AE. My overall rating is now significantly lowered because of one random tantrum-throwing child, with absolutely no proof or evidence that they even played the stories in question, and now everyone who sees the story won't see any of that, they'll just see two stars, and think "this story must be pretty bad," and look over it.

Writing this at midnight in the back of my truck, so apologies if I ramble or make lots of typos. "Fun" for me, in the context of video-games, boils down to two words: contribution, and reward. Contribution is what I'm bringing to the table. What am I doing to make the situation different? That's one of the appeals of video-games for me, is knowing that 100 different people can play the same game and have wildly-different outcomes. It's not like a ride at an amusement park, where everyone experiences the same exact thing (though don't get me wrong, I love a good roller-coaster), rather everyone has a different experience and has their own contribution. I notice that a lot in the video-games I tend to play most. Take the Hitman series, for example, one of my all-time favorites. Sure, every player gets the same exact mission. "Go to this place and assassinate these targets," but Hitman is fun for me in that my contribution to the game makes a huge difference. Kill these targets, but in what way? Do I take it in a sneaky, subtle approach and try to use a carefully-placed poison in their food? Do I play the manipulator and orchestrate events to get my results? Do I do it down and dirty and sabotage some piece of heavy equipment? Hell, maybe I'm feeling lazy and I just John Wick my way through the mission, guns blazing. My contribution shapes the game experience, and that's something I enjoy thoroughly. I can't stand games where the experience is like an amusement-park ride, where you're stuck on the rails of one particular experience and that's that. Take for example the Call of Duty franchise. Not counting the multi-player aspect, the single-player campaign for every recent game in the series play out exactly the same for everyone. Start a mission, have some dialogue, go to a carefully-designed shooting gallery and shoot some dudes, then move on to the next pre-determined set piece and do it over and over again until the mission is done. Any time spent not doing the shooty parts is spent going through carefully choreographed events that, again, are the same for everyone. "Oh no, a big rock is falling on you! Mash X to push it away!" Boring. In City of Heroes, the contribution comes from both the diversity of the archetype system and the versatility of making different builds. In an online setting, I love feeling like I'm contributing something to the team. I don't have to be the center of attention or the cornerstone of a team, but rather I just like to have the feeling of "if I wasn't around, the team would be slightly worse off, so I'm contributing!" If my Defender casts a resurrect on a fallen ally, I'm contributing, even if only in a minor sense. It's why I tend to complain a lot about the current implentation of the Incarnate system and how it lets some players become literal gods who can steamroll everything. I hardly join teams post-level 40 because I don't like just following along and watching as the one suped-up Blaster or Brute just nukes every mob into oblivion. I want to feel like I'm bringing something to the table, no matter how small. The second aspect is reward, and that's something a lot of video-games seem to get either terribly wrong or perfectly correct, with no in-betweens. Rewards need to be balance in a way that your effort feels suitable to the reward given. In essence, doing a small thing gets you a small reward, doing a big thing gets you a big reward. It's another reason I loved City of Heroes over other MMO's because CoH lacked that intense grind that every other MMO seems to include by obligation. I don't have to farm the same task force 30 times to get a shot at that one rare piece of loot that I really want; instead, I can do a few task forces, all different from each other, get merits, and spend those on the things I want. I have fun when I feel like I did a thing, and I got something cool and enjoyable out of it, but also where I feel the time and effort spent obtaining said thing was worth it. If I grind for 100 hours and all you give me is a reskinned weapon? Sorry, that's not gonna cut it. It reminds me of Dark Souls 2 and the two absolutely pathetic items, "Illusory Ring of the Exalted" and "Illusory Ring of the Conquerer," obtained by beating the game without resting at a single bonfire and beating the game without dying once, respectively. Anybody who has played Dark Souls should know how monumentally difficult this challenge is (especially in DS2 as that game loves to fuck with you and just kill you for no reason), so you think, those rings must be pretty cool, huh? Nope. First ring makes your right-handed weapon invisible, and the second ring makes your left-handed weapon invisible. I guess that's cool if you're into PvP, but even then, the advantage obtained is minimal at best. Those two concepts are what determine fun for me in a video-game. Is the game taking my contribution into account, and am I being rewarded adequately for my effort? City of Heroes accomplishes both of these in a satisfactory manner, and most of the other games I play do as well. That's my definition of fun, at least as far as video-games are concerned.

I'm pretty sure the "bad moral compass" comment was in regards to the arc itself. It was classified as "heroic" and the description of the story was something along the lines of "discover what it means to be a hero..." and I could definitely see what they were attempting to do, but it was poorly executed. You walk into an empty building, click some boxes (all of which had no text by the way so you don't even know why you're clicking them.) Then suddenly this kid NPC appears, says something about saving him, and then you fight yourself (???) and boom, the mission is over. That's apparently what it means to be a hero. I said in my comment to him that it didn't make sense because there was no explanation, and somehow he took that to mean I didn't understand heroism and my moral compass was broken. You didn't have to upvote my arcs. I appreciate it, but I'm not here for validation. I'm mainly here giving context to a situation and asking if this is a reportable offense or if anything can be done, since it was clearly someone revenge-voting my stories because they were upset with me.

You have literally described a review. Regardless, anybody's opinion on how exactly the system ought to be used is irrelevant to this discussion. I explained what happened for context. The point is that a player, in "revenge" for me saying unflattering things in private about their story, decided to abuse the system and 1-star all of my arcs without actually playing or even reading them. It makes no difference if I should or should not have played their arc and offered a comment (which itself is a ridiculous argument to make anyway), what matters is the response. One would also be correct in saying that. Regardless of your actual intentions for the arc, you're posting it on a public system, one which is accessible to everyone playing the game. Anybody can view and play your arc, and once again, the system itself asks you at the end to rate and comment on it. I am literally using the system exactly as it was designed. If you post an arc up in the Mission Architect system, whether you like it or not, someone is going to play it. You are implicitly asking for people to rate and comment on it by submitting it to the public. You are giving people permission to do so by using the system. If you aren't prepared for people to critique your submission... don't submit.

My opinion apparently did matter, enough for them to revenge-rate all of my stories because they were upset. You're making several assumptions here yourself. If they really were "just f-ing around with the interface" then my feedback shouldn't have mattered at all to them. "It's just a test arc, of course it's going to be bad." Based on their reaction, they obviously were looking for feedback. "You srsly look for TYPOS? what is wrong with you? and if it does not make sense you.. maybe you are just having completly broken moral compass." Not sure how you can look at this response and assume they had no clue what they were doing, or that they were just testing the system.

You post a story on a public forum, a public forum that specifically includes a review system for the express purpose of letting players offer feedback. Furthermore they had their arc tagged as "looking for feedback," so, yes, I believe they were asking for critique. Maybe not me specifically, but in general. If you don't want people to criticize your work, you shouldn't be putting it up on a public system and tagging it as "looking for feedback." You cannot seriously fault me for using the system as it was intended. You put arcs up for the public to view. It asks every player who plays the mission to offer feedback and a rating. I did just that. If you didn't want people to critique it, then you either A) shouldn't post it at all, or B) put in the description that it's just for your own personal use. Neither of those happened. "Looking for feedback." I gave them feedback. No, I do not expect them to be grateful for it. I do expect them to be more mature about handling criticism. Again, if you didn't want people to play it, you shouldn't post it, or you should make it clear it's just for you/your friend(s).

Much as I would like to, it would appear they took it down shortly after these messages, as I can no longer find it, even under the "completed" section of the search bar. Also, I can now confirm that they went through all of my arcs and rated them all 1 star. It's honestly hilarious. Shame nothing can be done about it, though. I suppose there's always the option of unpublishing then republishing, but then you'd wipe all of your ratings. Oh well.

So I apologize if this is improper to post, but I just have to share this because it really just rubbed me the wrong way. I try to go into AE and review actual, non-farm missions. I appreciate AE for what it was intended to be, and I like to go in there and check things out when I'm bored of the regular content I've played a thousand times. Now, what I like to do is find missions that haven't been played or rated yet, so I can give some feedback. I'm not going to name names or list arc IDs, but I found one arc that was... pretty bad. Loads of typos, one mission only, clues with no text, and exactly one whole enemy on the map. Needless to say, it was poorly done. I gave it a rating and gave it a critique. I don't act rude in my reviews, I try to offer constructive criticism, so just know this isn't a result of me being rude to this person. Cut to few hours later. I get a tell to my global. It's from the author of said arc. Here's how the conversation went. Names withheld to protect the guilty. Now you can see that last message they sent was a "review" of an arc I wrote. I know for a fact that they didn't actually play it, because that "review" came no more than two minutes after their first message. This was clearly someone throwing a tantrum and giving a bad review in retaliation for my own. Has this ever happened to anybody else? Can anything be done about it? I know ratings and stuff aren't really important, but it's a bit frustrating to have someone throw a temper tantrum and review-bomb your own stories just because you gave them an unfavorable review.

So this is how the character creation process, and by extension, the costume creation goes for me. The first step for me is saying "this character concept sounds cool." All my characters have a backstory, every last one, so the most important thing for all my characters and their costumes is their concept. Once I've got a concept in mind, I'll go for whatever powers sound most appropriate/fun for said concept. Sometimes I pick the powers to go with a concept, and sometimes a concept to go with powers. After that is costume creation. This is obviously the most fun part, as it likely is for a lot of folks. Since I've been playing this game for so long, I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of costume pieces are available, so when I've got a concept, I almost always have some idea of what they're going to look like, and then it's just a matter of making what I imagined with the costume creator. I'll spend quite a bit of time here fine-tuning stuff until I feel it's just right, and then, I'm done! I can never just play around in the costume creator without a character in mind. It just doesn't work that way for me. Every character I make has a story, an origin, a personality, and their choice of dress always reflects that. Furthermore, every time I make a new character and costume, I absolutely must see the costume in action. I can't just make a costume and let it sit there; I have to actually get in the game and see how it looks when running, jumping, attacking, etc... I don't have a whole lot of costumes saved locally. The few that I do have are for characters whose costumes I liked but their powers/concept just didn't mesh well with me. In some of those cases where I really like the costume, I'll save it locally and try to rework it into a new character concept.

Obviously I'd just get in my car where I'm 100% safe. I can just drive in circles all day, and there are literally no gas stations anywhere in the city, so no need for gas. Even a Stone Armor tank in granite armor sitting in the middle of the road couldn't stop me!

I think I might have hit them a little too hard...

I'm glad someone finally brought this up. I'd been meaning to, but I figured nobody really cared about a 17 year old legacy arc from when the game first launched. My two biggest issues with it are, firstly, what you brought up: Janet Kellum provides absolutely no evidence whatsoever for her bold accusation that Julianne murdered Clarissa. Secondly, you're on a missing person's case, looking for some girl who disappeared ten years ago, and then when Night Fox mentions "I think she died" Janet just magically finds a body and gets it shipped to the US. I thought this girl was supposed to be missing? Yeah, I get that we're supposed to believe she faked her death and stole Clarissa's identity, but even with that being the case, how come nobody thought to inform her family? You find a body, you apparently know enough about it to guess that it's Julianne Thompson, but nobody thought to pass the news along to anybody??? Crey isn't necessarily a "big business is evil" mentality as much as they're this game's version of LexCorp. Countess Crey is similar to Lex Luthor in a lot of ways. The smart, talented, but also evil businesswoman who uses her public persona of philanthropy to hide her evil intentions. All of the contacts and missions that deal with Crey show that, no matter what kind of evil stuff they get caught doing, they always have some kind of convenient excuse or plausible deniability to prevent charges from sticking. It's a fine trope to use, and I'd really like to enjoy Janet Kellum's arc where you can finally stick it to Crey and expose them. But, as you've accurately described, the entire arc is one hot mess. It really would be nice if the arc was handed to someone more experienced with writing murder mystery/conspiracy stories, since that's clearly what they were going for. But all of it just makes no sense, and flies directly in the face of not only heroism, but logic itself.

It also leads to problems if you announce one thing and then it turns out you can't do it anymore. As the saying goes, no news is good news.

As far as I can tell, all of the following are used to determine how much EXP a mob gives: The rank of the mob The level of the mob relative to yours How many players are on your team The exact type of mob that it is That last one is where things get confusing and where you'd have to really dig into the game to find out, because certain mobs have different modifiers based on their type. A Tsoo minion at even con to you doesn't give the same EXP as an equal-level Freakshow minion. I do not envy the person who decides to start collecting data on that.

I personally just wish activating the challenge settings on TF's gave you bonus merits. "Hey, you did the Imperious Task Force with 0 deaths, enemies buffed and no inspirations? Have some bonus merits for your effort!" I think that might go a long way towards making people use the existing difficulty settings and making the game harder for those who want to. Anyways, back on topic, another thing I miss from live is PvP. Yeah, I know that's technically not a "live vs homecoming" thing, as PvP really died with Issue 13, but I remember being on live pre-Issue 13 and actually feeling a small threat from being in a PvP zone. It felt kind of fun, in a way, knowing someone could swoop in and take my meteor pieces. Now PvP is a barren wasteland that virtually nobody visits.

To be honest, I kind of miss having to unlock costume parts and slots like capes, auras, etc... I still refuse to utilize those costume pieces and slots until I've done the required missions at the appropriate level. Back on live, it always made me really happy to get to level 20 and go talk to Serge for a new costume, then go to City Hall for my cape. Sure, I can pretend I'm still unlocking it, but it's not really the same feeling, I guess.

This can also be abused to fight enemies at levels greater than +4 for Task Forces that work this way. I was running with a team doing the Manticore TF. The TF is for level 30-35, but will always spawn enemies at level 35. Our team leader was only 31, and forgot that his difficulty setting was at +2, so we ended up having a team of players exemplared down to level 31 fighting against level 37 Crey. It was actually really fun, if not a bit difficult, and I'm actually interested in running more of the sub-50 task forces like this and seeing if it's doable.

This. If you're a Vigilante or a Rogue, the ship can take you to the Rogue Isles in addition to Striga/Talos/IP.

Whenever I run the Manticore TF and we get to the timed mission, Security Chief Manning shouts out: "You are banned from this facility!" and, without fail, I always respond: "Oh, darn guys. Guess we have to leave, he said we were banned. Good attempt, team!" ... then we promptly kick Manning's ass and continue. 😛 And, during the Imperious TF, one of the generals says: "The rumors are true, Imperious can no longer fight his own battles!" to which I respond along the lines of "You're teaming up with evil space aliens and time-traveling neo-Nazis and you're calling us out for coming to help???"