How do you deal with multiple alts running through the same storylines

[hyena69]

Hi, My name is Patrik and I'm an altaholic 😉

 

This means that for instance that my different characters have busted Chernobog dozens of times. I'm in a rp supergroup on Reunion, but getting a bit feed up with the players there more or less closing down the opportunity to base RP on anything happening in missions or storylines, as they also have done the same missions and are negative towards using any of that material for RP

 

Example: The clone factory storyarc from D-Mac. I have a character that due to massive injuries in her back story has been rebuilt as a cyborg, with around 5% biological parts. It made perfect sense to me to use that arc as a starting point for her quest to grow a fully human clone of her, use som Circle of Thorns ritual to transfer her soul to the clone, so that she could live semi-normally again. This was immediatly shot down, as those players had been through the following arch where the lab gets destroyed, and claimed that it would be unrealistic for there to be many dozen of those labs, and anyway that it was irrelevant since in their "reality" the lab had been destroyed and was therefore off limits to use in stories.

 

Compounding the problem is that I'm a bit late to the party. Re-started CoH about two months ago, while the others have been playing since last year and have multiple lvl 50 alts that have been through ALL of the content between them, and have long established storylines going rp-wise which are rather excluding to new characters unless they are made within very narrow parameters. Like forget about Praetorian characters since the founder of the supergroup had defeated Cole in a mission and therefore characters coming through to Paragon must adhere to the concept of her character now running Praetoria.

 

The supergroup itself feels like watching Tempation Island, since it basically revolves around the harem of the founder and how they compete for his attention. Not my cup of tea, and those storylines are utterly uninteresting to me. To increase the problem, the SG consists of real life friends of mine. I could of course just speak up and talk to them about what I'm unhappy with, but they've put innumerable hours into developing that whole harem and get immense fun out of it. I don't want to wreck that by insisting on doing things my way, at the same time it makes the game a bit meh to me as I have absolutely no influence in the storytelling.
 

To sum up this post with a question: What is the usual way of dealing with multiple alts doing the same missions on this server (yes, I'm considering migrating)

 

🙂

Edited October 28, 2020 by hyena69

[Coyotedancer]

Kai and Arte and their friends, comparing notes about their similar experiences with... any set of goons, really: "Yeah. These guys just NEVER learn, do they? I mean, how many times can you fail at trying to take over the world AND STILL KEEP TRYING? Every week, it's the same thing. Gotta give them points for determination, but... Sheesh."

 

In other words, it's just the goons being stubborn. And not terribly creative with their Fiendish Plans. 

[hyena69]

Thanks for the input Coyote 🙂

 

It's kinda the confirmation I needed to decide that my "friends" are being difficult, and I will be migrating over to Everlasting 🙂

[Coyotedancer]

To me, it definitely sounds like your friends are being more than a little unreasonable. I can't promise that you WON'T find people doing that kind of thing on Ev... But it's not something I've run into myself. 

 

Some of my characters and their friends have busted those Skulls in King's Row a fairly ridiculous number of times now... And "Man, these guys just NEVER learn-" has always been the order of the day.  🤣

[CrudeVileTerror]

I'm also of the opinion that given how most of the content in this game is written, we need to be flexible with our interpretations of the lore in missions when roleplaying with others.

Best case scenario:  The mission content is ambiguous enough to suggest that it could be repeated infinitely without meaningfully harming any one roleplayer's character story.

Worst case scenario:  The events of the mission are taking place in a pocket dimension unique to that character, and other player-characters are along for the ride.

And at the end of the day, I figure the best course is to just not spoil anyone else's fun (caveat:  So long as their "fun" isn't harassing other people).

[hyena69]

Completely agree Crude 🙂 And that is why I'm migrating instead of nagging on my friends to change their play style 🙂

[CrudeVileTerror]

Welcome to Everlasting, @hyena69.

I hope your gameplay and roleplay experiences on this Shard will be to your liking!   If I can be of any help, my main account is @VileTerror

[hyena69]

Thanks, moved my first 5 alts over just now, the rest will follow over the next couple of weeks. I'll check out the events calendar and I'm looking forward to having fun here on everlasting 🙂

[Ironblade]

7 hours ago, hyena69 said:

and anyway that it was irrelevant since in their "reality" the lab had been destroyed and was therefore off limits to use in stories.

I don't RP, but isn't one of the guiding principles that you don't negate other people's creativity?  That's definitely one of the ground rules in improv.

[Greycat]

4 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

I'm also of the opinion that given how most of the content in this game is written, we need to be flexible with our interpretations of the lore in missions when roleplaying with others.

This kind of has to be the starting point.

 

Honestly, I think either we kind of ignore the lore and overwrite relevant parts of what we're doing with our own headcanon, treat it as more rare than we do ("yes, six of the others on the team have run this but we'll pretend they haven't, or haven't in a long time," basically) or just ... shrug it off, like we do when we finish a cave mission and the next mission is in that *exact same* cave, but it's now a lab.

[hyena69]

2 minutes ago, Greycat said:

This kind of has to be the starting point.

 

Honestly, I think either we kind of ignore the lore and overwrite relevant parts of what we're doing with our own headcanon, treat it as more rare than we do ("yes, six of the others on the team have run this but we'll pretend they haven't, or haven't in a long time," basically) or just ... shrug it off, like we do when we finish a cave mission and the next mission is in that *exact same* cave, but it's now a lab.

This soo much.

Had my first evening on Everlasting and I'm already in love with the server. 🙂

[hyena69]

34 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

I don't RP, but isn't one of the guiding principles that you don't negate other people's creativity?  That's definitely one of the ground rules in improv.

I tried to hint about that to them, but was about as succesfull as you'd betrying to teach a troll manners 😉

[Greycat]

8 minutes ago, hyena69 said:

I tried to hint about that to them, but was about as succesfull as you'd betrying to teach a troll manners 😉

 

[Darmian]

8 hours ago, hyena69 said:

Hi, My name is Patrik and I'm an altaholic 😉

 

Like forget about Praetorian characters since the founder of the supergroup had defeated Cole in a mission and therefore characters coming through to Paragon must adhere to the concept of her character now running Praetoria.

🙂

Seriously?  Damn.  Who the hell?  I'm on Reunion majority (alts on other shards but mainly Reunion) No, don't tell me.

 

Also, LOL, as an Incarnate level 50 Praet who never left, yeah, sure they did ROFL.  (Although I do feel a bit bad doing iTrials and tend to stay at the back where the boss can't see me!)

 

Many years ago I was an ST in the Cam, and I used to smack this nonsense down every time I saw it rear its head.  Ah well.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Darmian

[Dreamboat]

I generally don't consider of any the game's story arcs or missions "canon" to my characters. If I feel like some of it might work for whatever I'm doing at the time, I can pull it as needed (I threw Galaxy City's destruction into my main character's motivation for being a hero, for instance) but adhering to the lore of CoH just feels too restrictive to me for the most part, and I'd rather come up with my own stuff that my characters have done. If someone else wants to say their character has went through all the game's stories - beat up the Skull leaders, saved Night Ward, rubbed shoulders with the Phalanx, whatever - then I'm not going to tell them otherwise, but 99% of the time I'm probably going to act like I've never heard of any of these people or events. You were leading a strike team to destroy the Rikti portal and cleaned Nemesis' clock into the bargain, saving the world as we know it, and while you were doing that I was stopping the shivering Shakespearean shenanigans of Frozencrantz and Chilldenstern. I guess we just run in different circles!

[Saeletra]

Hey, welcome to Everlasting!

 

If your ever interested in redside, yadayada, Arachnos sales pitch. We exist too!

 

As far as the question goes, I've been known to take in game story arcs and switch them up just slightly and turn them into a major VG storyarc. Usually I deal with it like "Oh? So-n-so is at it again?" For defeating a signature hero (Freedom Phalanx/Vindicators), I've just considered that a character of mine either chased them from the Isles or a Mediporter whisked them away. And then just comment how such-n-such hero has no right to force their brand of morality on the Isles and that isn't it such a pain in the butt to keep having to kick them out?

Although, I did turn Indigo and Crimson into an elite type of agent, rather than a specific person. So I can reuse that as a threat.

[kyothinks]

Our SG usually has one or two arcs that were "canon" to specific characters, BUT the outcome was changed to maintain the status quo. One of our arcanists DID lead a team against Mot, they were eaten, and they survived and bound Mot...but only for that time; Mot cannot be contained forever, even with the power of a goddess and a god-killing sword. And yes, one of our former-Arachnos-soldiers DID lead a team into the Rogue Isles to shut down the WEB...but that doesn't mean Recluse doesn't start building it all over again next week. Did our former Praetorian mercenary squad manage to defeat Emperor Cole? Yeah...once!

 

Our basic rule of thumb is that whatever you do can't ruin someone else's fun later down the road, no matter how deeply it impacted your character. If I get to tell the story I wanted to tell, then it's only fair if I leave other people space to tell the stories they want to tell, too. If we can't reconcile it for some reason, it's a closed time loop and nothing we do changes the timeline but we have to complete it to get out of the loop!

[hyena69]

I'm loving your replies soo much (and am almost tempted to send my friends a link to this discussion so that may learn something)

 

It confirms my instinct that if you WANT to, this isn't an issue.

 

Fortunately my friends were cool about me migrating and I had more fun last evening than any other evening in Homecoming 🙂

 

I look forward to hundreds if not thousands of hours on Everlasting (and as a side note, a shout out to all the amazing costumes I see randomly passing by or at hubs.

[Darmian]

Well, sorry to see you go, but glad to hear you're having fun, and that's what matters in the end, isn't it?

[Kallisti]

My feeling is if your "friends" are getting uppity about something so petty, then they are not your "friends" and you will be very welcome on Everlasting.

 

I have this sort of issue within my own alts - the Kallistiverse means all my alts know each other and even though a lot of them have done the same missions, what tends to happen is certain alts 'own' certain plot arcs. For example Kallisti the Friar owns the Kings Row Skulls arc because in the stories I write to support the characters ongoing growth, she had one of the Skull girls who appears in that arc come to her later for help. Then there is Kallisti Cobalt who is Praetorian and she'll 'own' the Praetorian arc as it has direct connection with her overall background as in my opinion she's got the most interesting background story for being from Praetoria.

Now that is easy for me to manage as its just my characters, but I'd never try to impose this upon other players. You have to be flexible and just accept that its the structure of the game that you will end up defeating Cole or Mother Mayhem or Marauder etc multiple times as you repeat iTrials and just accept it as part of the game mechanic and not get too hung up about it.

[hyena69]

Thanks Kallisti 🙂

 

Those "friends" are a husband/wife team that used to be close friends of mine 10-15 years ago, that I've over time drifted apart from. Hoped that CoX would be a good way to reconnect, and I was obviously wrong, but I'll be damned if I let them spoil my CoX experience, and therefore I migrated here.

 

Honestly I wonder why they play this game at all, since all they do is to stay in their base playing out a story of an alpha douchebag and his humungous harem of hot heroines that compete for his attention. Basically Sims: The Adult version. To each their own, I guess

 

I'm enjoying myself immensly on this server. Never any problems to find cool random RP PUGs to run some missions with.

I manage the plot arcs similarly to you now. The arcs "belong" to the character I feel has the coolest hook to them. For instance the clone factory arcs are "owned" by my widow Special Agent Wulf, since she was turned into a cyborg by the Arachnos after having been a council prisoner and test subject. It gave her a way to recreate her original non-super body and the hope for a normal life. I didn't even know that the factory would get blown up, but it fit perfectly in with her grimdark story. Praetoria is shared between Tankerbells and Cpt Cold Justice. Two loyalists. Tankerbells turned resistance after the Neuron/Mother arcs, while Cpt Cold Justice stayed lojalist hoping to change the system from within (and wouldn't have been able to stomach those arcs and stay loyal). DE arcs are reserved for Avenger of Gaia (an eco terrorist) and so on 🙂

[John Wonder]

@Dreamboat,I had heard that Frozencrantz and Chilldenstern were dead.

[jkwak]

that Praetorian stuff especially is idiotic, its an alternate universe and it is allready estaplished that there are universes almost identical to primal earth who says there is not an earth almost identical to Praetoria where that one player character did not take over and defeat Cole?