McSpazz

I'm sure this can be done much, much faster by someone with a higher pain tolerance than I. To you, I wish the best of luck and the strongest of drinks.

Ladies and Gentlemen...BEHOLD! No, this isn't the result of me running the Mapserver event. This is the result of me, after about seven months of not overly aggressive playtime, leveling a character up almost exclusively through street sweeping. The one AE mission you see completed there was for RP purposes, but even so, 80 is hardly a drop in the bucket in the number of defeats I needed to reach this point. The rules were simple. No missions of any kind. Anything that provides a mission completion reward is off limits. No joining a team of more than 4 people including myself unless the only objective is to defeat a giant monster. No SKing up to a level higher than 5 above my own. No farming of any kind. That means that while I can trick or treat and knock on doors, I cannot join a large team of people spamming doors. I basically skipped the Mapserver event on her. No AE. An exception was given for an RP event that didn't amount to much experience. Double EXP is allowed (because I don't hate myself THAT much) Optional Rule: No crafted enhancements except for invention origin and procs. This can be lifted at level 47. Was it painful? Yes. I'm glad I did it though. It was an odd departure from normal leveling that kind of gave me a new perspective on the game. Inspirations were more valuable, exp debt was more painful, and I had to be more careful about what kind of mobs I tackled and how. It often forced me onto a more even playing field against enemies that, in the past, I just steamrolled with a kitted out team. Literally any foe my own level was a potential hazard. I also learned that Perigrine Island is TERRIBLE for street sweeping due to weirdly irregular mob level placement and a small area. I got my last few levels in Grandville. Why do this at all? Between incarnates, set bonuses, and the speed at which you can level up, there's not just a lot of the game you miss but a sense of hazard. This gave me an honest to god feeling of being a street level hero clawing their way to the very top and not once looking a mob and not just assuming I'd win. I think this might be the most satisfying ding to 50 I've ever had. Now, if you excuse me...I'm going to be over here in this corner. Doing what? Not this challenge again, I can tell you that much. Probably finally unlocking my last three costume slots. Yes. I even put that off for this.

In Founders Falls along the central dividing canal (where the Pocket D entrance is located), civilians being forced into Circle of Thorns Rituals output the following text: It looks like the code has a missed closed quote or something along those lines.

Well, yes, but actually, no. Your level, as you said, is your security level. This is what is utilized by the pencil pushers to identify what kind of threats you can handle. While it does reflect power mechanically, trying to use it to determine power level as a measure of power level breaks down once you start applying it literally throughout the game. For example, the Family exists throughout the game from zones as low as Port Oakes all the way up to level 50. While their bosses are changed up some as are the weapons they use, they are still, overall, a bunch of dudes with guns. My favorite example for this, however, are Snakes. The Snakes exist as one of the lowest level enemy groups in the Rogue Isles and they remain that way. Right up until Grandville when they show up as level 50 enemies. What exactly is different about them that would explain pure power level? Not much. That's entirely speaking on lore, though. I can't speak much on PvP, but as far as Incarnates go? Yes, they are the more recent driver of making older content feel less intense. However, set bonuses LONG before Incarnates made the game trivial in many ways. It was then and now totally up to us to try and keep our expectations in line.

It's generally kosher to say you were involved but not necessarily responsible. Some things, such as TF's or even some of the story arcs you mentioned in your second post, could reasonably require a support team for the main team to do their thing. Nobody really needs to know who was responsible for most events, really. Just look at major busts of criminals that happens in the real world. The arresting officers are rarely made widely known. It's the criminal that got caught that's all over the news. Exactly right. You do have to get a little creative. Basic, common sense explanations usually work the best. Especially if there could be multiple reasons for things to be as they are. For example, Vahzilok's organization was made up of very dedicated individuals. Countless madmen just as dedicated to his cause as he was. While the organization as a whole might not have its figurehead, many would continue his work. Your thoughts on the Lost is a great example as well. As for the other things? Arachnos might not be actively excavating in Faultline anymore, but they have every reason to maintain outposts there. After the amount of money sunk into securing those positions, keeping those bases operating as forward outposts goes without saying. The Council is much more difficult to explain. The organization has been SEVERELY crippled by the outcome of that storyline which leaves their activity around Paragon more than questionable. The only surefire explanation is that they are potentially imploding in slow motion, but irregularities like this are far harder to explain away. Most people seem to just ignore it and pretend they're just as they always were. Not ideal, but until we get a better resolution, it's the most expedient.

It might not fix the issue, but the existence of hard mode at least suggests the existence of enemies on par with your character's mechanics. I do know that the devs are working on creating level 50 variations for ALL groups, so maybe, at the very least, a level 50 Hellion will help implant the idea into people's heads that the numbers beside your level aren't the be all end all to power level.

Until new lore is made, a lot of MMOness lore considerations requires a great deal of twisting to make sense. Some cases, like, Dr. Vaz, are far harder to work with because content about his operation kind of end abruptly. However, most people don't realize that, by the lore's most strict interpretation, he is no longer a threat. Hell, I didn't even know that until Chase mentioned it. Mismatches in how NPC's speak of the timeline is, unfortunately, more of a consequence of Paragon's later storylines. While there are some things early on (like Dr. Vaz) that can cause some confusion, their later storylines often introduced finality to threats that continued to exist in earlier content. The Praetorian War is one example, but there's also Dark Astoria and, even more potentially surprising, the Council. After the New Praetorian arc concludes, their organization is effectively put onto its death bed. Some other things can be worked around with some clever writing. The destruction of Galaxy City might have been 13 years ago, but perhaps the ramifications of it are still ongoing, Perhaps the areas of the city directly on the other side of the War Walls have to deal with Shivan attacks once in a while (not unlike the Rikti). Likewise, even though a cure for the Lost was created, the Rikti, the ones making the Lost to begin with, have no reason to stop making more Lost. Adapting the Cure to new iterations of the Lost mutation could very well be a constant struggle. But all of this is, of course, headcannon. Trying to balance all of this out can be an extreme pain, but some MMO's are harder than others. Final Fantasy XIV and its ever advancing timeline comes to mind. The best you can do is figure out what explanation is the least intrusive and run with it.

It's probably one of the harder arcs to do, to be honest. It's not every day Grandville gets stormed head on, let alone someone takes down Lord Recluse. The same can be said about running his strike force to take down so many high profile heroes. One option is to make it all some kind of simulation or you assaulting another dimension for some reason. Separate what you are doing from the main cannon in some way. The second is to add additional story beats to the arc as you go through. Maybe there's something that's lowering the power of the big players. Maybe you aren't actually defeating them so much as you're distracting them. For the big arcs like Liberty and Recluse, you have to really flex your creative juices to find good ways of making sense of what's happening. It really depends on the context of why you're running them. Basically, if you can accomplish the same goal by running a custom AE arc, you should consider it.

One of my earlier posts was on headcannon, actually. Just about anything in the game can be presented in a way that can make accepting it as cannon for your character with a little twisting and altering presentation. However, unfortunately, thinking it out and actually implementing it is often more work than people are doing what feels like a one-off that won't really be mentioned again. But these things stack up. Even if you don't directly reference an old Ms. Liberty run, you're still likely going to kind of subconsciously remember beating the snot out of Arachnos' highest lieutenants, the Patrons, and then Recluse. The ease of which these fights that should, as far as the lore is concerned, but extremely difficult is something that can linger in the mind. Hard fights and losses stick to the brain better than easy victories. I imagine that the more hard mode TF's get released and the more new content touching on old threats, the less pronounced the issue will be in the long run. Here's hoping, anyway.

I think there is a reasonable push and pull at play and I definitely agree that what you are describing can be a problem. I don't think there's a perfect solution to separating your character from their apparent achievements within the game's standard narrative, but one of the best I've seen actually came out of the FFXIV community. While some of your earlier achievements in the game's story could be shared (such as participating in battles and the like), it becomes less and less viable as the story goes on until you're literally saving the world. Thus, a saying arose: Even if you are a Warrior of Light, you're not THE Warrior of Light. It's entirely possible for a character to have done amazing things, tangled with immense foes, and all without claiming the spot of the singular or one of the characters that did "the thing". Which brings me to... This is actually part of the reason I encourage people to push their roleplay beyond what the game's mechanics and baked in stories give you. The world is only static if you focus on the constants and the things beyond your control. Not every achievement your character has will be known to the whole world and not every threat they face will be widely known. Maybe your character has been fighting a constant war against a Crey subsidiary or maybe you're fighting a high ranking Arachnos operative who oversees a special ops team out in Etoli. What you are describing is a similar struggle found within fanfiction communities. Wanting to write a story that feels part of the source material but not so in lockstep that it feels like you're somehow trying to replace it. There's a reason why the more "cringe" fanfiction people look at involve writing for the original cast as if they were just another element in the fan fiction. You don't have to have a story change the entire world to leave an impact or to be meaningful.

I don't remember the exact conversation we had when you proposed the Roleplay Workshop, but I'm glad I agreed to join in on it. If it weren't for the workshop, I'd have never considered writing my tutorials up here on the forums which I know at least some people have used as resources. Even when people weren't interested in coming to the workshops themselves, some have still felt the need to send me tells to thank me for running them. I almost always tell them I appreciate the thanks, but point to you as a big reason why they happen at all. More than anything, I feel that the effort to guide other roleplayers to improve themselves is something that extends well beyond the workshop. The creation of several roleplay discord servers for Homecoming, the regular SG and VG recruitment fairs, and even the acknowledgement of the devs and moderators of the roleplay community (the very existence of this thread on the forums is only the tip of the iceberg) shows a general desire for roleplayers to be better and to never stop being better. While you just tapped into that and gave others the motivation they needed to really highlight that, none of that would have been possible if not just for your own contributions but for the community's willingness to entertain those within the community desiring to push others to do better. I'm proud enough of this effort that it unironically sits in my resume. I'm glad to be part of it and look forward to see what else comes of it.

Just as the zone topic says. Found at the Perigrine hospital.

I think that your overall post really summarizes a lot of my own feelings on how the city actually is in terms of lore. If the streets were literally filled with roaming gangs and monsters, we'd need the national guard in addition to the heroes. All well said. I'll admit that this post is biased in terms of where my own characters have fallen in terms of interactions. There was a time when I was quite guilty of making my characters super jaded and I didn't realize the importance of, if a character is going to be jaded, to follow things up with a yes-and. What you said in the quote, most certainly, is what I want players of characters who are jaded to try and both recognize and lean into when roleplaying. You can both be jaded but still provide reactions that the other play can play off of. Also, to be clear, I don't want anyone to think I have an issue with characters that are jaded as a concept. I could have framed my post around extreme ambivalence, but that's not usually how I see it explained.

Entirely fair! I hope that I made it clear, but I do think some amount of jading does occur. What I'm arguing for is to consider the depth of the jading. What I want to encourage people to avoid is to let characters become so jaded to the threats in the world that they hardly flinch when facing it. Though, it's worth remembering that there is some evidence that, for some, the threats of the world has kind of done the opposite of jading and made people instead paranoid and even bigoted. The billboards that read "Earth for Humans" and the existence of the Malta show as much. All of this is just to say that the reactions to the world can vary greatly and it can lead to more interesting interactions to consider each new encounter and how it affects your character rather than lump most things into a similar pile.

Yes and no. Think of it like this: You could be surrounded by heroes and the concept of a super hero likely isn't surprising to you. The idea of someone who can fly, psychics, magic, etc. likely isn't going to be overly shocking. However... @kito is far closer to what I'm getting at. What kind of things a civilian will see as far as "weird" activity goes is likely going to differ greatly from someone that frequently and intentionally interacts with it and sees things that might not make it to the papers. I'll use Crey as an example: A civilian is unlikely to know just how crooked of a company they are. Most who have negative opinions of the company likely view them as a really skeezy company who gets up to all sorts of bad behavior. A street level hero will likely start noticing a lot of weird stuff connected to Crey but be unable to connect the dots. A medium strength hero is likely aware that Crey does all sorts of illegal activity which they hide behind shell corps, but don't know the full extent. A top tier hero as likely BEEN to some of the most heavily guarded Crey facilities and might have even gotten top executives arrested. Of the examples you gave...well, the types of things you're jaded too still vary greatly. Different factions are represented in different areas of the city. The kind of potential threats a civilian will encounter can vary wildly. While the game has random NPC's standing around at random locations and taking up space, remember that this is a video game. The only areas of the city that are likely as dangerous to just waltz around as it appears are likely hazard zones. So not only are civilians limited by zone as to what sorts of threats they count encounter, they could go quite a long time indeed before brushing against something that wants them dead or worse. Superadine is actually a REALLY interesting point as, if you can believe it, its usage might have actually been WORSE in the past. According to the game's lore, it was being actively produced and distributed en mass with the intention of spreading it as far and wide as possible until it was finally shut down. Its effects are also far more widely understood which makes it a far less desirable drug to take blindly if you're trying to get bulked up. Given how much the game talks about Superadine and the efforts taken to curtail its usage (including some verbiage that resembles anti-drug campaigns of the real world), there has certainly been a great deal of general education around it (as this has been shown to reduce drug usage when paired with other preventative measures). So someone who was around in the 80's for its mass explosion of usage and the likely huge number of Trolls it created would likely have a different reaction to it than someone who wasn't. If you want to get super complex, how jaded you are and what you are exposed to also differs based on who you interact with. A sidekick to a well known hero is going to be jaded to some concepts more than someone jumping into things solo for the first time. Remember: your character, by the way the game is designed, is exposed to the full depth of what the world has to offer without many restrictions. Most people don't have that kind of opportunity.

One thing I tried to to point out (mainly with my example to LTT and Mythbusters) is that even if you become jaded to certain aspects of the job, that doesn't mean you become jaded to every aspect of it. Jaded responses are often a defense mechanism as well which, even if you are jaded in the moment, might not make you jaded to similar experiences or trauma in the future. It makes me think back to the discussions that were had under my MRP post. Even if you no longer fangirl out over every hero you encounter, there might be certain heroes that you still freak out over meeting. Even if you're a battle hardened Vanguard combat medic and no longer flinch at the thought of combat, maybe you never quite get used to how people cry out in pain when you're trying to patch them up. The actual process of becoming jaded to something is rarely a universal thing from my experience. I'm not sure I'd say it's lack of care as much as lack of interest, but we're kind of splitting hairs at that point. From my experience, hero characters rarely get jaded to where they no longer have any interest in saving lives, but the threats they encounter suddenly don't matter. Everything blends together into a soup.

Hey all! It's me! Spazzy! I wanted to expand on something I've tried to push both in workshops as well in my write-ups. Not just because I want to make this opinion of mine explicit but also because I want to try and directly encourage others to take on a similar outlook. One of the most common issues I have with other people's RP styles comes down to not so much a character's lack of wonder at the world they inhabit but more so something that seems to spread to all of a person's characters. The all to common trope of "I've seen worse." More often than not, it almost feels like more of the player becoming jaded and used to the world rather than the character. 1. Some Perspective On Heroes and Villains It's easy to get lost in the weirdness of living as a hero in Paragon, so I'd like to try and use some raw numbers to better put metahumans into perspective. I'm going to try and be as generous as possible to give a situation that I feel is the most realistic projection of how things probably are. Given the aftermath of the Rikti war devastating most major cities, Paragon seems to be positioned to be one of the larger cities in the United States. For the sake of comparison, I'll be using the city with the largest population in the North East outside of New York: Philadelphia with a total population of about 1,603,797. For the number of heroes in Paragon, while I could use the peak total online players of Homecoming, that's obviously not a fair comparison since not only can a single player have multiple characters but I myself frequently state that we should be wary of using game mechanics (or in this case game statistics) to reflect how the world works. So, instead, to be extra generous, I'll say that the hero population in Paragon is about the same as the number of police in New York City (the largest in the nation) at about 36,000 officers. So, even in a scenario with what I feel is an overly generous population to hero comparison, that still means that superheroes make up only 2.2% of the population. However, the game makes clear that not all metahumans are super strong. That means that, of that 2.2%, the number of powerful metahumans is doubtlessly smaller, the number of incarnate level heroes is even smaller, and the number of true incarnates is even smaller than that. Even if you wanted to argue that the population should be smaller or compared to another city in New England, taking the population of Boston (650,706) puts us at 5.5%. Keep in mind, this is STILL utilizing the largest police force in the entire country as a point of comparison and we are still a relatively tiny fraction of the overall population. In fact, if you take the Boston metro area (including the surrounding suburbs), that population jumps to 2.4 million which, while still smaller than New York, brings the total percentage to just 1.6%. You could argue that the ratio of metahumans overall is higher since this is only considering the number of heroes, but, regardless, the number of non-metahumans to metahumans is going to lean towards non-metahumans or at the very least the types of metahumans you encounter are going to be above human averages but not insanely so (ie: most Skulls and Hellions). Basically, if you don't know someone who is a metahuman, you probably know someone who knows someone that is a metahuman but that metahuman is, more than likely, not overly impressive. It's even more stilted if you look at the ratio worldwide. Paragon and Etoli are the epicenters for weirdness of the metahuman and supernatural varieties. Imagine how mundane the rest of the world likely feels in comparison even if what the world of CoX considers as normal would be madness to our eyes. While the technology of Paragon might be advanced, the proliferation of it to the rest of the world has likely not been overly aggressive. Just look at how long it took for the PPD to get access to mediporters. Likewise, while there might be stores where you can just buy magical equipment and books (ie: Talos), Paragon is on a direct intersection with multiple lay lines which is a huge reason why the Circle of Thorns are based underneath Paragon in their massive cave network. So why point all of this out? 2. Banality In the World of Darkness game Changeling the Dreaming, there's a concept called banality. The idea is that it's sort of the opposite of creativity and wonder. It's the therapist berating a child for having an imaginary friend, an art teacher tearing up a picture a student drew because it wasn't what the assignment asked for, or maybe a struggling artist throwing in the towel and working a 9 to 5 because they gave up on their dreams. When I see a character encounter something strange, something they have certainly never encountered before, something they have no answers for, and their only reply is to shrug and say that Paragon is a strange place, and carry on like it was just another day in Paragon? I think Banality. The reason why I started with pointing out how tiny the metahuman population is compared to everyone else and why Paragon and Etoli are unique compared to the rest of the world is because I feel like it's something players often take for granted. Sure, people say, "Welcome to Paragon," when someone comments on how weird something is, but it's a phrase used so often in relation to every type of weird that it almost becomes a thought stopping phrase when faced with something strange. To help put this into context, I have a civvie character from the UK and it was actually genuinely refreshing for a career hero to admit to her that he wasn't really sure how to talk to someone that wasn't also a hero. So isolated in his bubble of who he interacts with that talking to someone that doesn't fight for the city made him feel off kilter. Likewise, I've noticed that other players seem to genuinely enjoy her reactions to the weirdness around her as the crazy that can happen around Paragon is so alien to her. Everyone reading this has doubtlessly had an experience where you have a character with some weird trait and, upon meeting them, another character was just like, "whatever." It feels awful because it makes you feel like you didn't actually make something unique and attention grabbing. It can be even more devastating if it's in relation to a story arc you're running and that reaction is in relation to the threat you've put before the protagonists. It becomes an arms race to create more and more outlandish story beats to try and breach that jaded persona that so many characters have garnered. However, I don't think it's your fault. We (that is to say the players) are just so used to existing and playing in the world of CoX that we take for granted the thrill and danger that comes with the territory. For every person who speaks about Hamidon, a giant incomprehensible monster that controls one of the greatest threats against humanity and has taken over the world in other dimensions, with fear there is someone else who shrugs and says that they beat Hamidon up every night in Hamidon raids that are, admittedly, not run as nightly IC events. For every character that meets some terrifying monster and shows genuine anxiety, there's another that prepares like they were just about to take down another Skull. Can this be a serious character trait? Certainly! In fact, there could be really interesting stories to be told about someone so jaded by the world that they struggle to emotionally connect with others. However it happens so often in roleplay that, even if everyone that does it says it's a character trait, I wonder how often it actually is. 3. Some Examples Back on Live, I distinctly remember the lead-up to Dark Astoria's "revitalization" into what it is today. We had a decent idea of what was going to happen, but only broad strokes. Roleplayers that acknowledged something was coming ICly had characters frantically try and figure out what was going to happen and prevent it. An effort the players knew was a doomed endeavor, but one that made Mot's rise all the more meaningful to them. Mot was spoken about like a boogeyman and most of everyone treated sorties into Dark Astoria with the utmost seriousness. Generally, even after the community kind of acknowledged that Mot was officially defeated, people still treated the zone with a great deal of caution. What changed? Time changed. As Incarnates got fleshed out, so too did the difficulty of the zone falter. As that happened, the attitude characters had kind of shifted with it. It just became another hazard zone. Hamidon is another great example of this. Hamidon used to be treated with, arguably, even more hesitation and fear than Mot was. Much like Mot, that time was when fighting him wasn't a nightly event that could be completed without much planning. Before he got a major nerf, fighting him was a huge undertaking. Even after the nerf, fighting him was still a difficult task. Once again, now that Hamidon can be taken down on a nightly basis relatively quickly (thanks in large part to Lore pets), I've seen more and more characters shrugging away the threat he poses. Lord Recluse was also an example of this back when the gradual power creep of the game hadn't made the final confrontation just another TF boss fight. Despite being one of the most powerful men on the planet, on par with Statesman, people look to the few missions where you are capable of beating him up one on one but forget the context that comes with it. Others think of the raid on Grandville as just another TF, just another Ms. Liberty run, and defeating him just another Tuesday. Because it's so easy, people forget who they're fighting. Rularuu in particular is a very interesting example because while people will generally take him seriously in character, they often don't realize the abject threat he poses even when contained within his dimension. There's plenty of lore that suggests simply existing within his domain and straying too far from Firebase Zulu can have a directly negative consequence on the psyche through simple passive exposure to his will. But, of course, the zone isn't really traveled much these days. What was once an end game zone is now more of a monument to a simpler time for the MMO. 4. What's the Problem With Being Jaded? Some level of jading will inevitably happen to a character. It's the consequence of constantly facing threats and encountering oddities. The issue I see is more so when a character becomes so jaded that nothing really phases them anymore or even garners a reaction beyond dull surprise. Sure, they might frequently fight Council and the sight of a War Wolf isn't going to make them scared shitless anymore, but just look at what they're fighting. Super soldiers are shooting at you! Giant wolves are charging you! Nictus are shooting dark clouds of bad energy at you! More often than not, this is a situation that could kill you. You'd think that that kind of action would elicit something other than huffing for breath. A character could say, "sounds like a Tuesday for Paragon" as part of their reaction as a means of accepting that some appearance of something that is outside of their norm is real. However, at some point, it just being "another day in paragon" comes off, at worst, more like a character has no survival instinct. More commonly, however, we come back to what I said before. Characters or stories with odd characteristics, beats, powers, traits, whatever...they're brushed off or only given a few seconds of appreciation before it gets chucked into the "Another Day in Paragon" pile. Another weird thing that the character or player doesn't feel like addressing, so it becomes some swamp gas hallucination that they'll never have to think about the moment they leave Pocket D. This can be really discouraging to people and can even make potential story arcs just not happen. I've had characters display clear red flags for something being wrong with them or in their life and they were basically ignored until I moved from red flags to a megaphone. Just presuming everything is normal and fine because things are always weird takes away likely realistic reactions to serious events. That's...just kind of sad. It can also be a direct result of players becoming jaded to being able to steamroll so much of the game's content. I frequently rant and rave about how only looking at the game's lore through game mechanics can make you underestimate the threats the world has to offer, but that does very much come through how the character talks about things. I don't think it's a coincidence that just about every example of characters downplaying the threat posed by something in the game's lore has some kind of explanation that comes back to power creep and the gameplay experience for the player. 5. What Can Anyone Do? I generally don't call this out in specific situations because I feel like it's not possible for me to tell when other people's characters are jaded to the point of it being a problem. Hell, finding the point of being jaded that makes sense for your character is such a case by case problem that the only advice I could give is, "Do what you think makes sense." I don't just want to leave it there, though, because that doesn't help anyone. Instead, I'm going to ask you to REALLY ask yourself if you aren't underselling a reaction because you, as the character's writer, never see the moments where your character goes to the DMV to get their license renewed by some old lady in oversized glasses. Really ask yourself if your character would just brush something off because it's just not as impressive as other things they've seen. Just as a random example, the employees at Linus Tech Tips review crazy stuff all of the time. They frequently do weird and wild experiments and set-ups. Their reactions, however, are almost always genuine and, while some aspects of what they do might be unremarkable to them after frequent exposure (such as just how much expensive equipment surrounds them every day), they still have a sense of wonder at the things they pull off. The same can be said of Mythbusters. I don't think I ever saw a moment where they weren't absolutely giddy at the weird stuff they were going to get up to that day...even if they got up to weird stuff the previous days before that. If you aren't sure how to gauge how far from the norm something is, imagine how a random civilian living in Paragon might react to what your character is seeing. Just some cubicle worker stumbling across whatever is in front of your character. Then ask why specifically your character isn't having a serious reaction. The fact they've seen worse doesn't explain the lack of reaction, it only explains the lack of certain reactions. Really dig deep. Also, don't forget to consider what's normal to your specific character. A character who only deals in technology is likely going to get stunned by magic even if they are aware that magic can surprise them. So just open your characters up to that sense of wonder. Don't just default to making every character get jaded to the weirdness that occurs in their day to day life as a hero (or villain). If they are jaded to hell and back, consider what complications that can cause when interacting with people who aren't. Simply waving strange things off and moving on is just closing the door to possible interactions. There are few things in roleplay as sad to see as that. This post is tangentially part of my series talking about roleplaying! You can see the full list of posts Here!

This is true to an extent. If you enter a roleplay with plenty of warnings ahead of time that X bad thing might happen and then X bad thing happens, getting upset that it did happen is kind of silly. However, it's worth remembering that you can still walk out of a roleplay at any point. Sometimes, people who know that bad thing might happen think they can handle it and then discover that, no, they couldn't handle it. That's still not something they should take out on anyone else, of course, but it's better to let them walk away than make them feel they have to defend themselves.

I can definitely relate to this. When I was dealing with an abusive relationship ages ago, I could almost feel myself becoming a different person. Looking back, the most horrific thing that's stuck with me wasn't the abuse itself but what it did to me. The sense I was becoming someone who I never was. After I got out of it, a lot of my time recovering was spent just trying to reclaim who I once was in some small margin. A lot of RP that dives into serious topics, unfortunately, is far more focused on the surface level shock value more so than the underlying horror. It's part of why I encourage people to research these kinds of subjects.

WARNING: THIS POST WILL BE DISCUSSING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DARK AND OFTEN UNCOMFORTABLE TOPICS IN ROLEPLAY! VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED GOING FORWARD. IF YOU BELIEVE YOU HAVE ANY TRAUMAS THAT COULD BE TRIGGERED BY A BROAD DISCUSSION OF DARK TOPICS, PROCEED WITH CAUTION Okay, now with that out of the way, HI! It's Spazzy again! I've wanted to make a write-up discussing how to handle roleplay tackling more mature and darker themes for a while, but I wanted to get more write-ups under my belt to ensure I could approach it with the respect it deserves. Unlike my other write-ups where I generally try to avoid injecting too much of my personal opinions or provide explicit instructions on the right and wrong ways to roleplay, this one is going to be a little bit different. While I am not going to demand you heed me on this, following what I have written here almost directly ties back to what I believe to be at the very core of any successful roleplay: consent and communication. Unlike most roleplay, a failure in either of those can not just lead to an unfun experience or drama but can actively lead to someone involved reliving trauma or otherwise have reason to get personally offended. If you agree with my post talking about consent and communication, you should probably agree with the explicit prescriptions I am making here. As stated at the top, viewer discretion is advised. While I will be holding to the rules of the forums, I will be mentioning topics that can upset all the same. Also, while not all dark and heavy themes will require the extreme level of care mentioned here, I am going to be focused on outlining how to handle far more severe topics as it's generally easy to wind back protections than implement them after the fact. If we're all onboard, let's proceed. Fiction is a great way for writers to explore often horrific concepts in a safe manner. Sometimes it's an exploration of their own trauma or their frustrations with the world. In a roleplay setting, extreme effort should be taken to not just ensure that everyone involved is comfortable with what's happening but also that what you are representing is being done with caution. 1. Getting Our Definitions in Order Before we go forward, we should talk about what we're even talking about in future sections. There are two forms of roleplay we are going to be concerning ourselves with. Mature roleplay (sometimes called MRP) and Dark Roleplay. Mature roleplay often covers the darker side of the setting the world is in. Topics can include explicit depictions of war, PTSD, trauma, stark depictions of mental illness, etc. To try and illustrate the difference, while a standard roleplay session might include mentions of war or even a depiction of it (ie: battles played out as seen in Star Wars), mature roleplay will hold far fewer punches and not whitewash the experience (ie: the Omaha Beach scene of Saving Private Ryan). While normal roleplay can cover terrible subjects, MRP aims to try and not just give a more realistic depiction but also enable participants to give realistic reactions. Dark Roleplay is a bit harder to define. Not only is it not universally called Dark Roleplay, but it is itself an offshoot of MRP which can lead to confusion. While Mature Roleplay goes into darker subjects and explores potentially traumatic scenarios, Dark Roleplay generally holds no punches, depicts every aspect of a dark topic, and sometimes even relishes in it. The best way, I feel, to underline the difference is from the context of the horror genre. Horror, as a genre, often dives into really dark subjects and is frequently used to explore the darker side of the human experience. However, it's very clear that the movie Child's Play, a story that contains a great deal of violence, heavily differs from the Hostel series which is not just extremely graphic but also almost fixates on the spectacle. 2. The Ultimate Points of Caution No matter if you are doing MRP or Dark RP, if at any point you believe a topic is bound to come up that is known to often tie into IRL trauma or PTSD, you MUST provide a trigger and/or content warning. This is not optional. A blanket trigger warning is better than nothing, but if you know there will be mention of a something that could trigger someone's PTSD, mentioning from the top that it will come up can mean the difference between either someone having the time to ready themselves or just not attending and later on having someone suddenly leave the event or have an episode for everyone to see. If you don't care about upsetting other people, at least recognize that someone becoming upset that they were not warned ahead of time could completely derail an event. There are also some things, mainly things that come up in Dark RP, that you really shouldn't do to begin with. If not because there is nothing to gain from playing them out, because others will perceive you playing them out as a black mark on your character. While the most common form of Dark RP that fits this description would be explicitly playing out a sexual assault, it's not impossible to find other subjects that would be highly suspect to fully play out in a roleplay. More importantly, as far as roleplaying in City of Heroes goes, playing out some of these darker subjects to their bitter end can legitimately be against the ToS and, should it be discovered, could lead to severe penalties. Next, a strong reminder that nobody you roleplay with is your therapist. You should never use roleplaying in an MMO as a form of therapy without a therapist's explicit recommendation and, if you do, everyone involved should be aware that is what is happening. In addition, you should only accept someone's request to help with this form of therapy if you are very confident in your abilities to not just roleplay but also communicate every step of the way. MRP might be a route to go about processing your trauma, but it's not one that should be approached blindly. Also, remember the ToS and Code of Conduct. While the mods are aware of what a roleplayer is and are therefore more understanding of the stuff you post while in character, posting overly mature content in a public area (like Pocket D or your description) or even partaking in extreme content in private (like a base) can still land you in hot water. If you are in doubt on if the story you want to portray is acceptable, consider doing it outside of the game such as in a private discord. You have to get pretty extreme to get punished for what you post in a private setting, but it is still worth considering before proceeding. Lastly, and somewhat tied into the above note, remember that there are children playing this game. Yes, it's an ancient formally defunct MMO that most tweens and teens probably aren't rushing to play, but they do exist. Many people who grew up on City went on to have kids and have been keen to share their love of the game to their own children. If you intend to do roleplay that you would hesitate to do with a stranger's kids, you should pause and make sure everyone is of the appropriate age (whatever that might be). Many groups, regardless of MMO's, will often put a hard requirement of members being at least 18 years old for this reason. 3. Know Why You Are Doing It While injecting tough subjects into roleplay can make them far more poignant, it can also come off as a very weak attempt to try and make your story feel more important with little purpose. Edgy for the sake of edgy is generally just going to get you eye rolls. So, when using dark subjects for your character, there are two things you should consider. The first is figuring out how it impacts your character and why that dark subject in particular cannot be accomplished by another method. For example, if you wanted to explore a character that has PTSD in general, you don't have to make them the victim of excessive torture to get that result. In contrast, if you wanted to have a character that specifically explored the consequences of using torture, it would be more appropriate. The reason why you should only utilize these dark themes when they serve a purpose is because, more often than not, these dark elements do not exist within a vacuum. There are people who have survived war, have been violently assaulted, struggle with abuse, etc. They aren't just a stat modifier or a fun fact. It's something real people have gone through. That's not to say you can't use these traits and identities. If you are going to do it, you should do it with intent and purpose. 4. How to Prepare It To start, the standards apply. Research, research, research! Just like any other character, if you aren't personally familiar with some trait your character has, you should research it! It goes a bit deeper than just having a general understanding of a topic like you might normally settle on. If you are going to go into darker territory, however, figuring out explicitly how this impacts your character, how they feel about it, and how it has shaped them ahead of time can prevent things getting messy in the future. For example, a character who was forcibly mutated against their will and suffers PTSD as a result could easily have pretty heavy associations to sexual assault. If you are intending to have that implication, spending some time to consider the implications and consequences on your character can help ensure that anyone interacting with your character who have personally experienced SA don't feel as if their own experience has been cheapened. You should also consider who you plan on making your audience. The darker the subject and the more explicit you are going to be, the less likely you should make the character be intended for a general audience and instead only for a select friend group. 5. Using Your Description As I said earlier, you should only step into the realm of MRP if you're certain everyone else involved is onboard. Obviously, that's not something you can do through a character description or with someone you have literally just met. Remember what I said earlier: the difference between standard RP and MRP is, more often than not, the level of detail. Going back to our comparison of Star Wars and Saving Private Ryan, here's an example of how war could be mentioned in a description in two ways. RP MRP While I kind of went to an extreme here, it was mostly to point out that the MRP description could still exist alongside the first without being expressly stated within the description. By leaving details about a character that can fall into MRP, you can ensure that the only people you reveal that aspect of the character to are those you interact with directly and can get a sense of if they would be okay with it. One thing to note is that, if that dark aspect of your character is core to who they are, you should have some kind of indication of the angle your character is taking. Adding an MRP tag in your description can accomplish this, but so can ensuring that your description's vibe, overall, maintains a general 'vibe' of what they are like without being explicit about what it entails. If people aren't interested in the tone of your character's description that avoids being explicit, they probably wouldn't be interested in the explicit description either. 6. Running the Story The absolute first thing you should do is make sure everyone understands what's coming and is okay with it. If someone that wanted to come to your event suddenly realizes, at any point, that they can't handle it? Either give them a means to overcome the situation quickly or let them bow out. Always, always, always have an escape route for stories that are too hot to handle for players be it IC or OOC. If you don't care about the emotional care of your players, at least recognize that doing this ensures that anyone that cannot handle your story any longer feels no obligation to force themself to continue. On the flipside, don't just agree to an event you know will trigger you. I know you probably don't want to get left out, but it's seriously not worth it. If and when you are triggered, you'll derail the event and cause a fuss. If you thought you could handle it but later find yourself unable to, don't stay silent just because you don't want to cause a scene. Send a private message to whoever is running the event and tell them where you're at emotionally. Maybe you just need a moment to collect yourself, maybe the event needs to stop, maybe you just need to extract yourself from it. Regardless, forcing yourself to endure is more likely to lead to more problems than offer resolution. 7. Aftercare If you suspect someone involved in the event had any issues, reach out and offer a shoulder. While much of the time you'll likely not have anyone need to talk about it, it's better safe than sorry. Your focus here should be reassuring whoever is upset and hear out why they are upset. If they are simply handling their reaction to the event, just be someone they can talk to. If they're upset because of how you handled the event, hear them out and decide for yourself if what they are saying is a reasonable complaint that you should consider for future events. This will more than likely be more necessary for very heavy topics like abuse or PTSD, but it could come up for other things as well. Note that responding to player feedback might come up long after the event is run. Don't get offended if someone comes to you at any point with negative feedback. There is almost always room for improvement and, if your method of displaying some dark theme wasn't quite accurate to the reality of things, it's always worth adjusting the presentation for a later event. Sometimes, despite every attempt, someone attends an event that they shouldn't have and they won't be open enough about their upset to discuss this with you. It'll be bottled up and it won't be some time later that they make this an issue. If you find yourself the one upset long after the event and never made your upset known, remember this: while your feelings are valid, you should have spoken sooner. Whoever was running the event could not adjust things to fit your needs without knowing it was needed and they could not address your concerns if you never made them. It's better late than never, but getting angry that your concerns were never respected when nobody knew they existed to begin with. Give whoever you find at fault some benefit of the doubt and try to work with them to prevent this from becoming a problem in the future. If you find yourself the one on the other side of the above drama, remember this: Just because they never spoke, just because they remained quiet, that doesn't mean they can't feel upset. Try and work with them once you find out things are not peachy and learn what went wrong so you can at least address it in the future. If they refuse to cooperate and work with you, you certainly cannot force them. Let them come to you when they're ready to talk. 8. Final Considerations Some steps here can be skipped if you know everyone very well or have run events like this in the past. However, you should never close yourself off to criticism for heavy themes or someone's expression of upset. These subjects are considered "mature" or "dark" for a reason. If you aren't mature enough to express empathy to those engaging with these subjects, you probably weren't mature enough to try and lead these events or even participate to begin with. When referring to the events of the roleplay later on, you can refer to section 5. While it spoke on how to use darker elements in a character description, this also can apply to talking to someone in the present about it ICly. Focus on the facts, don't feel required to give express details unless requested. Lastly, after EVERYTHING I have just covered, be sure to ask yourself just how dark, gritty, and explicit your concept needs to be. More often than not, the more extreme depictions of events and topics I have written this for won't be what's on the table...but all of this should definitely be on your mind if you stick to a story that delves into the darkest aspects of humanity. If you don't have to go that dark, ask yourself why you need to. This is part of a series of tutorials regarding roleplay! You can find the full list of tutorials here!

It's also worth pointing out that different personalities, both that of the character and of the player, can heavily influence how easily you can weave between groups. It's, more often than not, not even within your control and can even vary depending on the community you are in. I've had friends that were basically ignored by one MMO's community while in another they were basically a celebrity. Also, if you're going to steal my schtick, I'm going to include you in my master list. So there. 😛

That doesn't fix the problem. That prevents it from occurring at all. A fix would be preventing this from occurring when a respec is done.

The way of activating this bug is super niche, but here we go. I had fly and hover active on an Arachnos Widow veet. At level 24, I was forced to level up and respec. Upon completing the respect while no powers were active, my character was flying. I saw this happen once before after a respec, but I "fixed" it by turning fly on and off before I could nab screenshots to show it actually happening. So my best guess as to the actual trigger is respecing while fly is active.

Just as it says on the tin. The base item is "side mounted" currently. In case it isn't obvious what the problem is, the metal on the bottom of the camera is the hinge the camera on top looks up and down with.