GamerKate

... not only has it been commented on, it's also not a pervasive cultural issue in the modern world..? Like... you get that's why this is being brought up, right? Not "It's a bad thing to do!" but "It's a bad thing to do that is frighteningly common in the world today and based entirely on the sort of sexist/misogynistic violence which is so pervasive to western culture that you can hardly play a video game, read a comic, or see a movie/tv-show without it being placed front and center" If people poisoned Orphanages on the regular it'd make sense to compare the two... but they don't. So it doesn't. That is fair, and that is what I get for only having a moment to look and respond. That said, isnt this potentially a slippery slope if this is changed on the reasoning of having a real world analogue? Like, instances where you are using violence by a Male player character to defeat female npcs... as ludicrous an example that is, isnt that worse since you are actually doing it especially if you're a Male villain beating up female protagonists? I don’t think it is. Adding women Skulls and Hellions Etc as well as the men characters as street mobs and minions etc in missions is just portraying a world which is more inclusive. The women goons we beat up are not suffering due to their gender, they’re suffering because they’re Cannon fodder just like their men comrades. MCM

I agree with this. The story works as it's written, but it would be more villanously elegant to betray Harris early and discard him as the crazy tool that he is, while capturing Lt Page for Arachnos. Letting him kill her to no gain is not nearly as much fun as betraying him, IMO. How about just scrapping the mission and replacing it with a simple dialog option at the end. "Harris, security there is still too strong but I can help you. Take these bombs, place them all over the base. I'll set the timer so you can get out." Option 1: give bombs with a 60 second timer set. -Counts the same as completing the mission and sparing Harris. Option 2: give bombs with a sabotaged timer. -Counts the same as completing the mission and killing Harris. Option 3: give bombs filled with knockout gas. -New option. Harris, Page, and the rest all live. You gift Arachnos with a Longbow base full of incapacitated soldiers. Less experience reward but a larger inf. reward. ROFL Option 3 is EEEVIL! I love it. MCM

Correction: NO ONE should have to die for ANYONE to deal with their shit. But yeah, equality amirite? OR! We can just accept that there is writing we do not like and do our best to make better products in the future. Rail on about how you can do it better, sure. You however open yourself up to just as much criticism so be prepared. Leogunner - so what MrCaptainMan said was true, right? Women (being someone) should not have to die for men (being anyone) to deal with their shit. Since the example in this case was specifically about a woman dying for a man to realize his flaws, and not about all people dying for someone to realize their flaws, I think he nailed it, right? You correction is unnecessary and obscures the issue, so not really equality... That's not what he's arguing though, now is it? Because if he were arguing that no one should die for anyone to deal with their shit, there would be an entire laundry list of story arcs in the game that touch or or pass through that exact type of narrative progression. Again, you miss the forest for the trees. Just because something is a trope doesn't mean it's bad, misused, faulty or deserving of ire and revision. I would be interested to see the arcs where a woman is depicted as mentally ill and murders an innocent man and is rewarded with a narrative twist designed to engender sympathy. You're being obtuse making the qualifiers so narrow when your initial objection has nothing to do directly with mental illness and you've merely pojected a gendered objection when you still have yet to prove it was intentional. Fair point. I don’t think that it was intentional, however. I don’t think whoever wrote the arc is a misogynist. I have an arc in the MA which I wrote back on Live. Rereading it again to publish it now, I noticed that it had the same unintentional sexism that I see in the Price of Friendship. My arc started with the hero getting asked to rescue a hostage from the Freaks. The hostage was a women, and a small twist was that it turned out that the Freaks were in fact protecting her from her abusive husband. At the time I wrote it I just saw a ‘standard’ hero situation. But I had written a woman character who was a victim of domestic violence who needed rescuing. Unoriginal and casually, unintentionally sexist. I’m no more a misogynist than I was then, I’m just a little more educated in gender issues than I was then, I think. Anyway, I appreciate that lots of posters here don’t think the arc needs to be changed. I’m also aware that very probably this thread is basically a bunch of men debating something which disproportionately affects women, but until some women give their opinion we have to take that into account. MCM I would challenge someone to find a problem with that story. You're mistaken tropes or cliché with social justice. I don’t see why tropes or cliches should be exempt from being examined for social justice purposes. There are racist cliches we don’t allow anymore, for example, rightly sp. MCM

And when I said that Harris was possibly mentally ill, I was trying to be a little charitable to him Whilst also pointing out that his ‘cure’ for his mental state doesn’t come from him listening to Page before he arc and getting therapy, but spontaneously due to her death. Which is sadly representative of the way in which men often refuse or avoid seeking professional help for their issues to the cost of the women in heir lives, who are expected by society to be nurturers etc and do emotional labour for men. I thought that Harris’s revelation comes across a bit as ‘therapy is for women! Real men suddenly have complete turnarounds through dramatic events involving the suffering of their women!’ MCM

Correction: NO ONE should have to die for ANYONE to deal with their shit. But yeah, equality amirite? OR! We can just accept that there is writing we do not like and do our best to make better products in the future. Rail on about how you can do it better, sure. You however open yourself up to just as much criticism so be prepared. Leogunner - so what MrCaptainMan said was true, right? Women (being someone) should not have to die for men (being anyone) to deal with their shit. Since the example in this case was specifically about a woman dying for a man to realize his flaws, and not about all people dying for someone to realize their flaws, I think he nailed it, right? You correction is unnecessary and obscures the issue, so not really equality... That's not what he's arguing though, now is it? Because if he were arguing that no one should die for anyone to deal with their shit, there would be an entire laundry list of story arcs in the game that touch or or pass through that exact type of narrative progression. Again, you miss the forest for the trees. Just because something is a trope doesn't mean it's bad, misused, faulty or deserving of ire and revision. I would be interested to see the arcs where a woman is depicted as mentally ill and murders an innocent man and is rewarded with a narrative twist designed to engender sympathy. You're being obtuse making the qualifiers so narrow when your initial objection has nothing to do directly with mental illness and you've merely pojected a gendered objection when you still have yet to prove it was intentional. Fair point. I don’t think that it was intentional, however. I don’t think whoever wrote the arc is a misogynist. I have an arc in the MA which I wrote back on Live. Rereading it again to publish it now, I noticed that it had the same unintentional sexism that I see in the Price of Friendship. My arc started with the hero getting asked to rescue a hostage from the Freaks. The hostage was a women, and a small twist was that it turned out that the Freaks were in fact protecting her from her abusive husband. At the time I wrote it I just saw a ‘standard’ hero situation. But I had written a woman character who was a victim of domestic violence who needed rescuing. Unoriginal and casually, unintentionally sexist. I’m no more a misogynist than I was then, I’m just a little more educated in gender issues than I was then, I think. Anyway, I appreciate that lots of posters here don’t think the arc needs to be changed. I’m also aware that very probably this thread is basically a bunch of men debating something which disproportionately affects women, but until some women give their opinion we have to take that into account. MCM

Correction: NO ONE should have to die for ANYONE to deal with their shit. But yeah, equality amirite? OR! We can just accept that there is writing we do not like and do our best to make better products in the future. Rail on about how you can do it better, sure. You however open yourself up to just as much criticism so be prepared. Leogunner - so what MrCaptainMan said was true, right? Women (being someone) should not have to die for men (being anyone) to deal with their shit. Since the example in this case was specifically about a woman dying for a man to realize his flaws, and not about all people dying for someone to realize their flaws, I think he nailed it, right? You correction is unnecessary and obscures the issue, so not really equality... That's not what he's arguing though, now is it? Because if he were arguing that no one should die for anyone to deal with their shit, there would be an entire laundry list of story arcs in the game that touch or or pass through that exact type of narrative progression. Again, you miss the forest for the trees. Just because something is a trope doesn't mean it's bad, misused, faulty or deserving of ire and revision. I would be interested to see the arcs where a woman is depicted as mentally ill and murders an innocent man and is rewarded with a narrative twist designed to engender sympathy. But you are right, this is not really about ‘violence against people’. I of course don’t want to see any morally reprehensible acts perpetrated against men or women, but the issues I and others have with this arc are gender related. I wonder if anyone has read the Women in Fridges article I’m referring to. It’s very interesting. MCM

Correction: NO ONE should have to die for ANYONE to deal with their shit. But yeah, equality amirite? OR! We can just accept that there is writing we do not like and do our best to make better products in the future. Rail on about how you can do it better, sure. You however open yourself up to just as much criticism so be prepared. I totally agree with you! Nobody should have to die for anyone to grow emotionally. So Page shouldn’t have to die for Harris to get his emotional redemption. MCM

It’s not flavour text it’s the Nav instruction to the player. MCM

Ah, and there it is. I was waiting for the "your opinion is irrelevant" response. I'm reminded of that Snickers ad a couple years back with Roseanne Barr, before all the controversy around her show revival. She's playing a lumberyard worker (really another guy, but because he's hangry they had Roseanne play his snarky self). At one point as part of the comedy of the ad, she gets whacked by a log and knocked over and then lays there in the mud with a stunned expression. Pretty standard slapstick stuff. Then came the cries that the ad glorified violence against women. The mind boggles. Anyway, in before threadlock. I can see we've probably hit peak sophistication in this discussion. I unreservedly apologise if I came across as trying to say your opinion was irrelevant. I don’t think that at all. I’m absolutely not trying to start or contribute to an angry flame war or anything. I know that gender equality can be a difficult subject to discuss but I hope we can do so without offense. I can’t stand Roseanne Barr and I don’t recall the ad I’m sorry. MCM

I am not saying that Harris is a misogynist. I am saying that the writing is misogynist because it is a textbook example of the Women in Fridges trope. The arc would be LESS sexist if Harris was unrepentant about Page’ death, because at least then her death would not be narratively pointless apart from serving to act as a trigger for a man’s emotional redemption. Women should not have to die for men to deal with their shit. And the end of Captain Marvel was indeed great .D MCM

I say with without any wish to attack, but I think you shouldn’t have the exact same opinion for the exact same reasons if the genders were reversed. Because this issue - violence against women compared to violence against men - is not equal. Men don’t get murdered for rejecting women to any kind of equivalent level. There is no ‘Men in Fridges’ trope. MCM

Yes it is sexist to say ‘women have to have big boobs’. Also transphobic since some women don’t have boobs at all! :D So thumbs up to the chest slider patch! And as for the BRB, can we have one on Monster Island too? :D MCM

(a) As I said in my post, ‘it’s supposed to be bad-guy stuff’ could be used to excuse pedofilia or racist murder by our characters, but those stories would rightfully be objected to by the playerbase because they’re repulsive. The fact that murdering women for rejecting men is not apparently considered repulsive by some players is because of what’s referenced in the women in fridges discussion, which you can easily find by clicking he wiki link in my OP. TLDR; it’s because of misogyny. I hope nobody wants misogyny in our awesome game. :) MCM

A ponzi scheme made of nested pyramid schemes guaranteed by the winnings you’ll get from playing the shell game! It’s money in the bank! MCM

Yes, you are. Because pretendy fun time games. So, you outright judge others and belittle them, because some people happen to enjoy gaming in a serious way or as a dedicated hobby, rather than your lackadaisical and carefree attitude towards the game? I don't understand how you can take this stance. Don't you see your hypocrisy? You criticize me for not "being a good sport" presumably and grouping with "casual players" (I don't like that term as I have no stigma towards casual players, but regardless) but then you say it's outright wrong to play in a manner where someone might care about efficiency. There are two sets of people here: 1. The anti-counters 2. The pro-counters There are two options: A. We have DPS counters B. We don’t have DPS counters. If we have A: Group 1 gets their game wrecked (because it doesn’t mater how awesome DPS counters made your games of WoW or whatever, for dirty casuals like me they suck ass. Group 2 is joyful. If we have B: Group 1 is joyful Group 2 can still get what they want - Uber teams of DPS dealers who don’t slack off. How? By interacting with human beings and not teaming with people you don’t trust to pull their weight. Like, if there was a ‘fun’ counter in the game, I’d still rather decide for myself rather than team with a silent stranger just because a number over their head told me they were dropping 11,000 Funs p/s Find a good SG, team with other folk who are like you, people who want to contribute their best towards a challenge, and you can also improve your skills at assessing human nature instead of relying on a bunch of numbers. MCM

It's a bit more complex than just "kill an ammo carrier." Let's say that there's a very powerful hero who stood toe-to-toe with an army of Recluse's perfected Arachnoid soldiers in the final showdown and won. He gained his powers through scientific inquiry. He became a scientist because of a deep-seated need to have answers in a world that often didn't have them. He developed this need after his parents - simple middle-class civilians who did no harm to anyone - were tragically killed in a car crash when he was a child. Their deaths were not an accident, and they were far from the first. The part where she mentions loved ones and innocents isn't just for show: Human life only has value to her insofar as it's part of a widespread cost-benefit analysis across a span of hundreds of years. This also extends to saving lives: Gorejaw the Decimator might be a mass murderer who killed several heroes, but his child will go on to do great things, and his birth is still quite a ways off. (It's actually kind of funny in a "makes you think" sense because I can't for the life of me make a serious edgelord character and yet I have this absolute abomination of a human being.) I get the method he uses to tweak history, and it’s cool, but I’m not sure it is made clear enough in your bio. It’s only explained in that ‘for those to heed the call, hundreds...’ sentence. MCM

I’m a PvPer, and I quite like the PvP zones. Getting a Shivan shard without being ganked by a PvPer i count as a PvP win. If I am ever attacked by a PvPer, i just immediately activate Rest so I dont have to wait very long for the experience to end. And the zones are very nicely designed. I wouldn’t want missions in them though. MCM

Lt Harris's arc redside, the Price of Friendship (lvl range 5-7) is terrible. Lt Harris wants to take down Longbow because he asked a woman out and she said No. This in itself isn't so much of an issue, Lt Harris is clearly an asshole, or at best mentally ill, either way his rationale doesn't need to be sound. 1. However, when we get to one of the finales of the arc, the final combat of the mission is against her, and the player is instructed to 'Defeat Harris's GF' - Well, she's not his GF. She told him to gtfo, and you can't be someone's GF or BF if you don't agree to it. She is Lt Page, and the instructions should refer to her as such and not erase her name and reduce her to an attachment for the contact. 2. Unless the player fails the mission, Lt Page dies, and she really dies because previously to the fight you sabotage the medi-porters so she can't be ported to the hospital. The narrative delivery reminds you of this. Now this is villainside, and heroes die, so this in itself isn't such a problem. However: 3. After she dies, Harris falls to his knees and starts crying and regretting it and oh no what have I done, maybe I am really a monster after all?! So what we have here is a man who let's charitably say had mental health issues (paranoia, it would seem by the writing), who refused to get professional help when it would have been appropriate (and it's also implied by the writing that Lt Page suggested that too at an earlier stage), but who comes to a breakthrough and grows emotionally when a woman dies. This is a comic book setting. Here is a story where a woman dies in order to enable a man to undergo character development and grow emotionally. And to add to the Ugh, because of course it's the player's mission, the writing makes the Player do this. The player fridges a woman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators 4. After this, the player does get the choice to kill Lt Harris. But the player also gets the choice to agree with him and tell him he was right. So the player has the option to agree that murdering women for saying No to entitled men is ok. "So what? My character's a villain, and a misogynist!" some might protest. Well, we don't have story arcs where our characters can be pedofiles or murder people specifically because they are people of colour, or where we orchestrate atrocities like the Boston Bombing, do we? And we can't wander around Mercy Island one-shotting civilians either. 5. Lt Page is supposed to be the reason why Lt Harris went mad or whatever. She should be awesome, if we are to believe a rejection from her would be so horrible. As the arc stands, she's nothing special. IMy suggestion to improve this arc's unfortunate ideology is to have everything the same except that the fight ends like this: Upon defeat (or at 25% health if the tech requires it) she says "Attention Arachnos Control. This is Lt Page. Fort Mercy is down! I'm activating emergency teleport! Evacuate!" and activates her own personal teleport device (the standard 'teleport' animation will do). Lt Harris says "What? But we sabotaged the mediport, you can't-" Lt Page says "You don't get to tell me what I can or cannot do, Bill. I don't use the mediport. I rely on myself. Now get some help," Lt Page vanishes. And then the interaction between the player and Harris can be tweaked so that instead of wailing about her death, it goes like this: Harris: "What?... I failed...... she got away, Character? But I was so certain my plan would work. I thought I was better... I thought I deserved her! But she...she beat me... and this, seeing them run and die...doesn't give me anything. Was I... was I right in all of this? Was I truly right in trying to stop them? Maybe... there really is something wrong with me" All the rest can stay the same. To conclude, altering the arc like this would: a. Stop it being such a misogynist trope b. Give our villain a stronger hero (narratively) to fight against c. Not remove the agency from the player, as narratively, the reaosn for the player's involvement was to kick Longbow out of Mercy, not to murder one woman. MCM

Love the ethical calculus concept. I really like the bio, although the last bit makes it seem as though she just has a list of people to go murder and that will somehow cause Lord Recluse to fail. If that is the case (eg she murders someone who then doesn’t deliver a box of ammo to an Arachnos base and an Arachnos plot fails. Repeat x 100,000) then maybe you could make it clearer? Initially I thought she could see the various missions ahead and noted that a side effect was lots of mobs dying. If that’s more what it is, maybe clarify that too. MCM

Baronness Munchhausen and Starslammer are fantastic :D Chrono Dunk! If only we could custom name our powers... MCM

That's actually saying a lot, given how solo friendly CoH is.... coh is solo 'friendly' in the sense that everything can solo, but you're heavily incentivized to team even at low level. In CO it seemed like basically everyone just soloed all the time, aside from in a few group instances. But I didn't play that long so maybe it's different at higher level I don’t feel that in my playing at all. I play with my gf and two friends and duoing or trioing content is my favourite way to play. CoH doesn’t have the ‘holy trinity’ approach of other games, but I feel it has its own version for small teams, eg a scrapper, a blaster and a buffer/debuffer. And I’ve been duoing with my gf with two plant controllers and we’re having a blast. MCM

Sorry, I have to point out a few errors. Maybe you don't plan to remake this character, but I feel you should know. Character's name should be "Main de la Mort" as "mort" is a noun and "morte" is a feminine adjective. As for the battlecry, I'm sorry to inform you that it makes little sense in French. Maybe "Les ténèbres t'attendent" would fit better. Darkness in French is always plural, so the verb should also reflect the plurality. There's also the matter of the person/people it's destined to. If the battlecry is destined to more than one person, or if you want to use the formal form of "tu", it should be "vous" instead. "Les ténèbres vous attendent". Anyway, enough with the French lessons :P Too marks for the polite positive feedback on this. :) MCM

I’m gonna (hopefully redundantly) Add ‘Hell no’ to this. WoW is a great game in some respects, mostly for the HUGE world they’ve created, but the endgame/Min-Maxing focus of the majority of the playerbsse makes it horrible for dirty casuals such as myself. Also, as people have posted, in CoH buffs/debuffs are imo even more useful than flat DPS output. Don’t get me wrong, I love to see an 8-person all-Brute team all on full rage obliterate their way through a mission, but equally an all kin/rad Defender team can be an insanely exhilarating massacre-beast. Besides, there’s a reason why the Avengers wasn’t 8 Iron Men. And if the next Captain Marvel movie is about 8 Captain Marvel clones just going Nova for 120 minutes, it would be an amusing but epic fail as a spectacle. MCM

BEST POST EVER LOL MCM

You can do a "/getglobalname <character name>" to find out. That being said, I couldn't get my signature name on Torchbearer due to someone snagging the name before I could get on, so I can definitely understand your feelings. Snow Globe! Lovely to see another old face from Live! :D MCM