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

[Major_Decoy]

Aside from making the Freedom Phalanx three feet tall, I have issues with the level 30 hero side and villain side Praetorian arcs.

 

Mr. G's arc is great because dialogue and NPC interactions will change depending on the contacts you've worked with and it's fatanstic except it entirely ignores any history you might have with Penelope Yin and her father. If you came from Praetoria, you're out of luck.

 

By comparison, Provost Merchand's arc is awful. It's mostly alright as a stand alone arc, but it doesn't seem to care what else you've done or who you know. Well, except it will show you the corpses of all the friends you might have made in the First Ward.

[DoctorDitko]

I would do a tight copyedit on all the newer mission arcs.

 

OK, I get it: you're a game designer, and a famous author loves the game, and offers to contribute an arc for free!

What kind of lunatic would edit her prose?

(The kind that got a degree in journalism, rather than creative writing!)

Print editors were ruthless in cutting excess verbiage words.

 

There are arcs where every time you talk to the contact there are four pages of text!

You can't tell me that's all essential. But, again, who is going to tell a Mysteriously Loquacious author "chop it in half?"  

Well, it's many years later, and the time has come.

Edit, edit like the wind!

 

 

Edited Monday at 12:23 AM by DoctorDitko
ed

[RikOz]

On 9/21/2025 at 5:20 PM, DoctorDitko said:

There are arcs where every time you talk to the contact there are four pages of text!

Heh. Not four pages, but there's one Indigo infodump, about six paragraphs long, that I've never been able to finish reading because Malta always ambushes me right in the middle of it.

 

Though, to be fair, I don't think they were specifically intended to ambush me there. It's a general design problem with ambushes that spawn when you enter a zone. Those ambushes spawn near your entry point (in this particular case, usually the FF tram station), but seem to expect to to stay there long enough for them to run up on you. If you aren't aware of their presence and you immediately fly off after zoning in, they have to chase after you, which means that this particular ambush tends to finally catch up while you're talking to Indigo.

[huang3721]

 

Marchand’s introduction came to my mind. The writers placed too much emphasis on his redemption arc. As a result, he appeared more aligned with Paragon City than someone representing Praetorian refugees.

 

Instead of appeasing Primal Earth, he should focus on protecting the remnants of Praetorian society. Yet he sent the remaining Praetorian super to tackle Paragon City’s crime issues.

[gameboy1234]

On 9/11/2025 at 11:59 AM, The Trouble said:

My retcon would be that Darrin was actually manipulated by some other, better, shadowy mastermind - and there is some remnant of the Well and Rularuu power that has combined and lays dormant within him. 

 

I'd second this, except I think I'd have Darrin actually be completely taken over at the end, and it would actually be some ghostly Rularuu spider thing that finally kills States in the end.  I just can't stand that arc.  I see what they were trying to do, but it just doesn't work.  If you want States to feel big, and his death momentous, you have to make the entity that takes him out feel momentous too.

 

[gameboy1234]

On 9/11/2025 at 4:21 PM, Luminara said:

I'd begin by replacing some of the random one-off missions with what I'd call "seeds of Mot".  They're already organized so a character will only encounter one or two every few levels, so a bit of nudging and poking would line them up to create an over-arching narrative that builds up to that finale.  These should be scattered through all three parts of the game (hero/villain/Praetorian), so everyone has an opportunity to see dots that they can later look back on and connect.  

 

This I think is important.  It would take a ton of time for the devs, but going through all the arcs to make more coherent stories overall would be a great thing.  Many zones and stories just sort of "pop up" and then disappear never to matter again.  It's both disconnected and a waste of good story time.

 

I'd probably go one further (again, assuming infinite resources).  I'd re-instate "leveling equals progress in time and story" and make sure stories made sense that way.  Since there's probably now more story than could fit in 50 levels, I'd add account wide badges to the game so that once any character makes it past a story point, lower level contacts open up so that when you start new characters, you find things are different and new plot lines are starting to appear.  I'd start with a fairly standard late Silver Age and early Bronze Age comic plots, with hints here and there of future things but mostly the Issue 1 plot twists (Crey, what the Circle of Thorns really are, Nemesis is a big villain, etc.).  Then stuff changes a bit in tone and also comic age (post Bronze Age feels) as the player levels new characters again.

 

It'd be a ton of work, but if it could be done, I think it would be super cool.

 

On 9/11/2025 at 4:28 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

Countess Crey... who knew? 

 

See, stuff like this.  Crey is just sorta there, and then bam Countess Crey is a big villain, and Manticore was hot on her trail all along.  Needs more set up.  At low-levels, Crey should be held up as this paragon of scientific progress and super hero positivity, with only the occasional "oopsie" along the way.  When it turns out Crey is evil it should be a big shocker.  But to properly set that up is going to take time, and there just isn't enough time at low levels to set up everything.  So using multiple play-throughs to tell the full story I think would be the best.

 

* * * *

 

There's some zones I'd like to see improved and re-vamp.  Not necessarily fully ret-conned, but improved a lot.  I like Croatoa, but the story mechanics there are pretty dated and repetitive.  Needs a glow-up, as the kids say.  Red side needs work too, many stories there and also mechanics feel likewise very dated.

 

 

[gameboy1234]

On 9/13/2025 at 12:31 PM, MTeague said:

I would rearrange the Rogue Isles, so instead of spending your entire 1-50 journey bending the knee to Arachnos, you are presented with a list of criminal factions on the isles, and you the player get to make choices along the way to join/rule one of the factions, and through your actions, help that faction rise to power.  Or, if your character can't be bothered with world domination and just wants money and the good life at the St Martial casinos, you can choose to play all sides against each other, profiting all the way.

 

I'd probably go all "Grand Theft Auto" red side and allow players to more actively choose how they want to interact with the world.  Not just choose which contacts to click on or choose which dialogue choices to pick.

 

Could be hard to do, but something like a Tips system where players get missions and other things (bases? minions?) from interacting with the world would be a start.

 

[Troo]

On 9/10/2025 at 8:06 PM, Scarlet Shocker said:

But, let's assume for this thought experiment we'd got the green light to go ahead and change stuff in game to make it fit better with the overall arcs, lore and game feel. If you were given that opportunity, what would you change, why would you change it and what changes would you implement? 

 

I wouldn't be against some MINOR cleanup. Move some stuff to Ouroboros if needed.

 

Additional content, additional power sets should still be the focus of continued development while supporting the back end. 

 

I would not mind a new tutorial to level 50 arc being created. 

[RikOz]

4 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

There's some zones I'd like to see improved and re-vamp.  Not necessarily fully ret-conned, but improved a lot

Skyway City could use some work. Maybe it's just me, but most of my multitude of alts have seemed to get funneled from Kings Row to Steel Canyon, with Skyway ending up largely neglected.

[Scarlet Shocker]

27 minutes ago, RikOz said:

Skyway City could use some work. Maybe it's just me, but most of my multitude of alts have seemed to get funneled from Kings Row to Steel Canyon, with Skyway ending up largely neglected.

I love Skyway as a concept but given how swiftly we level it's eminently skippable. 

 

I think a lot more needs to be done with it and it's a good example of how XP boosts do not help the game because there's actually some pretty good content there for sweeping. (Less in story arcs, admittedly, at least as far as I recall.) 

 

I remember when I first saw Skyway destroyed in the horrible Duray arc I must admit I gasped in shock and I think I genuinely shed a tear but the Duray vs Duray thing put me off the whole story more than eating Ryker's breakfast