Retconning: What and why? Your choices

[Scarlet Shocker]

8 hours ago, MTeague said:

Because I never liked the faction as implemented, and I never liked the "maybe you can be worthy of joining us" angle. I'm not interested in joining the Villain Cool Kids Club. I want to usurp and start planning my eventual world domination from day 1, and Arachnos is presented as an unconditionally un-topple-able obstacle to that. Sure, there's the story where you can beat up a future version or Lord Recluse, take his helmet, and put it in your trophy case.  And NOTHING changes. 

 

As I said, I'd prefer a system where you the player can join a faction and come to RULE it, or just meddle and play faction against faction, profiting all the way.  And if the faction you want to join and guide to power just so happens to be Arachnos? Hey cool for you. But maybe I want it to be the Tsoo. Or Malta. Or Crey. I very much dislike the exsistence of Lord Recluse and his patrons as an "Evil Freedom Phalanx" that can never be displaced, can never lose power, can never be challenged in any meaningful degree. Even though the whole CoV setup is supposed to be about your Villain growing to the point of being a possible global threat. 

 

Now, my dislike means nothing. Recluse and Arachnos and the Patrons are never going away. I said as much in my post. This is just, if I had a magic wand and full freedom to reinvent the game in any way I saw fit, that's what I'd do. 

 

I do agree that to be a stand out Villain in CoV, the goal should be to become a faction leader of one of the many villainous groups in the Rogue Isles. 

 

As you say, conceptually interesting but no way to implement it now, but I like your thought processes here. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

14 hours ago, Snarky said:

this is already a really good arc.  (by CoH/V standards...)  working with Longbow?  makes me want to start another AR/DEv Blaster and just start mowing them down...  

 

i would like to see someone tweak the back end code if you kill Harris, (and there are two paths that lead to.  1) choose to 2) be snarky to him and he attacks you...)   the tweak needs to be so if you kill harris you can still progress the last step in Fire Wires arc.  a few times i have had to get GMs involved because Harris had unalived himself somehow....  

 

currently i just try to remember to do Fire Wire and leave Weber for Ouro, but when i forget....

 

I didn't say (or at least mean to imply) that it's a bad arc... but the writing and resolution is pretty... disappointing. Conceptually it's sound but needs more flesh on its bones; "Oh noes, she jilted me I keel her" is weak in the extreme unless it's given a bit more detail. I balance that with the fact it's a story designed for a fast moving game and nobody wants a TL;DR explanation, but I've run it a couple of times now and despite the fact it's essentially part of <my character's> story, I felt like quite the bystander until the very last few moments, by which time it was too late to affect the outcome. Again, game design issues and a common problem with many arcs on all sides here, because of the linear structure of the quest mechanics. 

 

 

[ThatGuyCDude]

18 hours ago, MTeague said:

Now, my dislike means nothing. Recluse and Arachnos and the Patrons are never going away. I said as much in my post. This is just, if I had a magic wand and full freedom to reinvent the game in any way I saw fit, that's what I'd do. 

I think Recluse and the Arbiters are the real problem.  The Redside 'capstone' arc where you pick a patron and help them with their nefarious plots gets decapitated when the Arbiters go "Neener Neener I know everything you're doing and you're going to do this instead or I'll cut your head off".

If I had the power to do so, I'd erase all of the Arbiters from Redside (replace the trainers with the various generic villains from the Safeguards, and the quartermasters with more generic-uniform Arachnos), kill Recluse like Statesman, and make the capstone arc about the power vacuum.  Then, the betrayal at the end becomes a matter of player agency, where they've outgrown their patron and they're making the move to overrun Arachnos.

[Vic Raiden]

Okay, but if Lord Recluse is killed off, then who's going to hand out the LRSF?

[ThatGuyCDude]

17 minutes ago, Vic Raiden said:

Okay, but if Lord Recluse is killed off, then who's going to hand out the LRSF?

A standing mirror.  You look into it and see everything you could be as leader of Arachnos, if only the Freedom Phalanx weren't in your way.  Granted, all of the mission text would have to be rewritten as introspection, but it would be much more satisfying as a villain if you seized the shattered pieces of Arachnos for your own aspirations instead of those of some OTHER villain.

The tougher problem to address is Miss Liberty's Task Force.  Do you leave Recluse there and make that the canonical point of his death (so it would correspond to St. Martial in the timeline) or do you replace him with a swarm of villains... fight the four patrons AGAIN under the grand tower with each getting a buff from one of the beacons, and with their subordinates popping out during the fracas?  Either way, the other versions would get bumped into Ouroboros which might get a little silly with LRSF 1 and LRSF 2 Electric Boogaloo.

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

I think Recluse and the Arbiters are the real problem.  The Redside 'capstone' arc where you pick a patron and help them with their nefarious plots gets decapitated when the Arbiters go "Neener Neener I know everything you're doing and you're going to do this instead or I'll cut your head off".
 

 

I think the Arbiters are one of the more interesting parts of Arachnos. I've seen very little lore in game to define them, but I get the sense they are something akin to Recluses' personal Praetorian Guard (in the Roman, rather than Going Rogue sense.) 

 

The big problem is there's so little about them in game that we don't know what function they truly fulfill but I figured their job was to keep his four lieutenants in line and prevent any potential usurpation. 

 

I would love to see their story told in much greater detail and understand how they came to hold the balance of power