For me what really got me hooked in CoH was the Signature Story arcs and the Incarnate system. Let me explain, up to about issue 20 the game did not have a continual story that made the game for me rather dull and lifeless, with the exception of the Ritki War that really fell flat as conclusions go. I got the "AAANNNDDD?..." feel towards the end, and it really brought me down like the developers stopped caring. Rush a few issues and here comes the "Gold Side" stories with the Praetorians, and I was hooked again and excited. Signature stories? "Drool". Loved it. Despite the deaths of a few characters (oh Statesman why was your death a "durp" and not a BOOM?) I wanted more. A few games on the market now are doing arcs and evolving story like Star Trek online( to an extent) and major games like Word of Warcraft, my question will this game have the same idea of ever moving comic book or just another Champions or DC Online?
All 4 mutants
Evolution is key. And mutants are key.
I like the sense of a 'big story unfolding in the background'. My real problem is, sorta opposite of the OP, I don't Want any giant major changes. I was appalled when those major characters were killed off and I absolutely refused to have any part in those stories. If for no other reason than the whole thing was pointless.
In one of the Comics, Manticore killed Statesman - For A Reason - and he had a plan for recovery, which put everything back on track. Some people might consider that story apocryphal, but it worked for me. Partly because it DID put 'everything' back the way it was supposed to be.
But, you see, that's because, for me, CoH was not the story of the Freedom Phalanx. No, those characters were the high-class Cameos in the ongoing tale of MY characters. My goal was never to surpass the supreme supers, but simply to be the best 'Me' I could be with my characters. For that to work, those supreme supers were supposed to maintain the status-quo, with maybe some room for a little variation.
IF it was decided that Statesman was, somehow, impeding development of the game, then he should go out with a HUGE bang, take Lord Recluse with him, and they should both go into some sort of intergalactic over-soul position, where they look back at their hundred years of opposition and declare it good-enough. Then the 'mantle' of Statesman could go to another, or be split among the survivors. Unfortunately, poor Positron was just not the kind of character to take over the position, which meant that the whole Phalanx seemed full of 'fail' to me, afterwards. It really did Almost ruin the game for me.
I don't know if they did, or not, but I think the Devs should have brought in a talented story-teller, to map out a more legendary story arc, before they started smashing the foundations of their existing story. I really got a sense that they had no place to go 'next', once they had eliminated Statesman. Also, WTF was the point of deleting Psyche? That just made no sense at all.
So, as A4M said, having that ultra-super story going on in the background was Great, but there needs to be either a continual loop that maintains the status-quo, and/or every story-arc needs a Beginning, a Middle, and an End, but also a [u]Next[/u]!
Be Well!
Fireheart
It made "sense" if you believe that [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators]Women In Refrigerators[/url] [b]is not a sin against good storytelling[/b]. The only "purpose" it served (and I'm having to stretch this definition almost beyond recognition) was so that the "you never saw me coming" Villain of the arc, who had more [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor]Plot Armor[/url] than ANY character has a right to have(!), could steal Psyche's power to Mind Ride another sentient and thus "take over the god" Rularuu.
Yeah, well ... all it REALLY proved was that (Bat)Manticore really WAS [b]The Man Without A Plan™[/b] and that the writing was dumber than a box of rocks dropped from an airplane. I mean ... seriously, dude ... all you had to do was MEZ HER to interrupt her Powers, and you had multiple options to do that in Trick Archery/Archery ... but no ... you had to reach for the SHARP POINTY STICK AND [b]KILL HER[/b] because you never Thought Ahead™ and had any kind of Backup Plan in case anything went wrong! Really ... why didn't you rig that stupid magical altar [i]with explosives[/i] and try to "defuse" the amplifier that was making her Powers run wild BEFORE YOU SHOT HER IN THE HEART TO [b]KILL HER[/b] you stupid idiot (Writer)!?!
Adding insult to the intelligence of the injuries inflicted, the only characters who died in that story arc were Statesman, in a pathetic overmatch made possible by excessive amounts of [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotArmor]Plot Armor[/url] that was so heavy handed it was totally unbelievable, and two women ... the latter of which was done only to "motivate" the male heroes in the story, which is the very definition of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators]Women In Refrigerators[/url].
Yeah, the less said about that [b][i]FIASCO[/i][/b] the better ...
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
So, basically, the writers of that storyline neutered the heroes and did whatever they felt like. That's disrespectful to everyone.
Redlynne, or anyone, really, what storylines from the game really worked for you?
Be Well!
Fireheart
I loved the clone storyline for villains (less so the alternate universe doppelganger storyline for heroes) because it deconstructed a few things while still playing into the fantasy of super heroes. It was fun and memorable, with interesting characters, situations, and everything else.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Oh man, I'm going to have to punt on answering this one simply because my head really isn't a place where I can answer this right now. I'm not blowing you off, Fireheart, but I'd need to go digging through Paragon Wiki to find the good references, and I don't have time to do that right now.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I hope to have an evolving story.. but on multiple fronts.
Ideally I'd like there to be 5 major story lines and every year I want a major expansion on 3/5 of those stories as the city expands.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
It's one of the things I enjoy about the better posters here, they think about what they want to say and have links to help show what they mean.
For myself, I usually enjoyed the Little stories, buried in amongst all of the other stuff. Like the Pawn Shop run by reformed Freakshow.
Or Yin's Market, although, Penny Yin did develop into a much larger story, over time. Actually, Penny Yin's story is probably one of those good background story-lines. Hah, in fact Fusionette's story, particularly when wrapped back into Jim Tremblor/Faultline's story, isn't so bad. If she weren't such a colossal PITA.
Be Well!
Fireheart
My only issue with having a specific overarching storyline is that IMO they tend to focus TOO HEAVILY on the PC in most games.
The player character is somehow THE CHOSEN ONE or THE LAST HOPE or whatever other nonsense that may work fine if you only ever play the content once but gets really old, really fast with alts. It kind of ruins the immersion to play your 7th CHOSEN ONE through the same damned arc yet again.
What JayBezz said would help though. having multiple overarching storylines that you could play through would give you the option to just NOT "save the world" from the Freak/Nazi/Carnie/Mirror universe for the umpteenth time, without missing out on whatever other progression the Arcs offer.
Defeated "Goatee Anthem" on your last character? Go fight the uber corrupt "Super-duper-mega-corp" and destroy their cloning centers this time instead.
I think that having the "Issue" idea that city of heroes/villains used would be a good idea. It allows the devs to extend or introduce new plot points for a season before moving onto the next.
This could be from an Alien Invasion... To a massive natural disaster etc etc.
Cryptic, for all its faults, has been pretty good at avoiding Chosen One tropes. (Although STO could stand a little bit of it. I swear, Starfleet will give you a Galaxy-class just for spelling your name right on the application.)
What Cryptic-era CoH and CO have been horrible at, though, is developing signature NPCs. STO and NW at least have outside lore they can lean on, so they can use the LOTRO trick of "crossing paths" with Gandalf, or Seven of Nine, or Minsc & Boo. CoH had none of that, and CO just sorta skimmed the P'n'P source books, so the Freedom Phalanx and the Champions have amounted to little more than quest and exposition dispensers. Under Paragon, CoH got better, at least in intent. (In execution, well, I'll refer you to Redlynne's most excellent rant on Plot Armor and Fridges above.) At least they're not WoW, where every expansion is based on Wrynn, Greymane, Gul'dan, or the Warchief of the Month dragging every player character into another one of their harebrained schemes. Superhero games are character sandboxes, though, and WoW most certainly isn't.
To me, then, City of Titans has to find the right balance between making sure the players' stories are significant and placing them along side NPC stories that advance the setting in more interesting ways than just making the city a target for one catastrophe after another.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
That has been something I been annoyed with when playing games like DCUO and CO, the main superheroes are really only there to tell you what missions to go on, and like you said "exposition dispensers" I don't want another Prequel Trilogy Jedi Council routine where the supposed big guns just sit around and have you do the dirty work. Having NPC's take significant roles in the overall story and certain missions would be cool. Example: My character helps Batman solve a mystery with both of us at the scene contributing to the mission.
Whoever the greatest superheroes of Titan City will be I hope they will be highly involved in nurturing our characters to become great superheroes.
I accidently ate a bowl of radioactive soup....ok I guess that makes me a Soup-er Hero
I don't know. There are plenty of players who would prefer that the signature characters of an MMO would stay as uninvolved in the story as possible. I'll pull a Radiac and use Guild Wars 2 as an example, and the original Guild Wars for that matter. In both games, there is a particular important NPC who is heavily involved in the players' story and everyone in the fandom absolutely hates them for it. In GW2 that's Trahearne, in GW1 it's Kormir. Both characters are often accused of stealing the spotlight from the player, with Kormir, in particular getting a lot of hate for becoming a god at the end of her storyline. Admittedly, I know more about Trahearne's story than Kormir's so I don't know how justified the hate she gets is, but I know it's exaggerated in his case. If anything, he spends more time praising the player character about how awesome they are and how he wouldn't be able to do anything without them than the player spends doing similar with him, as is the case with all the other NPCs in the later part of the Personal Story. They also tend to be viewed as useless in battle, but this is true for most of the other NPCs who follow the player into battle during the personal story, so that's pretty meh.
Then again, there's also some of the NPCs involved in the Living Story, who were mostly better received, but maybe that might be because people got used to the idea, or maybe it's because they were a bit less involved than Trahearne was. Though it might also be because they weren't as important as Trahearne.
Well I can't comment on Kormir since i never got around to playing the Nightfall campaign of GW1, if we're bringing in characters that worked well and ones that didn't in the GW2 story, I'd like to point out the order mentors - Forgal Kernson, Magister Sieran, and Tybalt Leftpaw. Some spoilers in regards to those characters though - you have been warned.
After the racial story ends at level 30, these are the characters you spend all your time learning to work in the order with, and each one has a certain level of depth to them; Forgal, for instance, is an older norn who's lost basically everything in his life, and all he has left is his revenge against the Elder Dragons, so he's generally cynical and converned about you getting in over your head because he doesn't want to lose someone else. Sieran joined the Durmand Priory because everything in her life is seen as an adventure; she tastes new things, explores old places, and messes with things she really shouldn't because it's in her nature to always be curious, and always try to learn things. Tybalt, the most beloved of the three, is a coward from a race of militant badasses, constantly joking, and sees you as one of the first friends he's had in a long, long time. It helps that his plans are constantly a bit wacky, but in a way that actually works.
And then, around the time when you've actually gotten used to them showing up in your story threads, they call you the best friend they've ever had and march off to die against overwhelming odds so you and a boat's worth of injured people can get away safely.
And then Trahearne shows up. A lot of people felt were still reeling from a character they actually liked dying, only to get replaced by a character with a voice actor that has the emotional range of a molding cabbage and who straight up steals the position as Marshal out of the damn blue. Unless you're playing a sylvari (and most players played humans for their first character. Many don't even have sylvari characters) you have no idea who this leafy jerk is that just swooped in and took the place of your mentor, and the fact that he constantly sounds completely bored even in threatening situations makes people despise him. You go from having an emotional gut-punch to getting the character you liked unceremoniously replaced by this random guy you just met and don't care about. That's why people hate Trahearne - he gets quite possibly the worst first impression in recent gaming history, and he never does a damn thing to develop himself past it.
Oh, and his characterization is also flat as cardboard. Appropriate, since that matches his voice work.
That's the thing. beloved characters spring up all the time when they work alongside you, especially if they have flaws and succeed in spite of them, and maybe you help them grow as an individual through a character arc. Making an NPC get involved in your story isn't a bad thing. In fact, it develops memorable characters and interactions that can feel great and be things people remember for years - I still remember Tybalt getting my necromancer drunk so that I could provide a distraction as he rescued a hostage from pirates, or when Sieran developed a storage device for a corrupting artifact by Macguyvering a bunch of other artifacts together, or even when Forgal marched off to his doom, shouting for all the world to hear that no dragon will make him kneel. Each of the characters felt alive, and, more than that, they felt like they were our friends, and had problems that we could help them with and get invested in.
Another set of characters I love are the three companions you can get in Diablo 3 - Kormac, Lyndon, and Eirena. Kormac is a templar and, over the course of his personal arc, he realizes that his order might be corrupt, and asks for your help to face the fears that such a thing has come to pass. you get invested in his mental well-being, and support him when you realize he turns into a blushing moron whenever Eirena's around. Lyndon is an incorrigible womanizer and thief with a dark past; he's always willing to crack a joke about whatever insane situation you've dragged him into this time ("Angry naked women attacking me? This is my summer in Westmarch all over again.") and while outwardly he's unhesitatingly selfish, lusting after women, wine, and wealth, deep down he's a good man that sends gold to his brother's children and is committed to helping you fight the end of the world. Eirena, meanwhile, has serious temporal dissonance issues as she was asleep for a good fifteen hundred years before waking up to help prevent the end of the world. She doesn't really understand the world she's woken up in, and she lost her sisters family to time and demons, and you help her with both issues.
That's the real trick. You can't just tell us that a character is our friend. You can't make us like the character just because you say "you like this character now". Such a relationship with the player has to develop organically, and the interactions they have with our character are particularly important as that character is [i]us.[/i] He or she is our avatar in the world. The characters in question can push us to do things, ask for our help, and as long as it feels organic, it'll be fine. Some jokes here and there, comments about how much they enjoy working with you, a slightly off-kilter mission where they need your help, and maybe some good-natured ribbing from both sides to let the relationship develop between the player and the NPC. You get the player to form a bond with the character, and they'll overlook any problems such a character has because you do that for your friends. Those are the kinds of characters you enjoy in the moment, and remember long after the fact.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
Well put Halae.
I never really had a problem with Trahearne becoming Marshall. I wouldn't have wanted the position for my characters anyhow. Being head of an NPC organization honestly would be a lot of boring busywork if it were implemented in any realistic fashion (and if it weren't, then it would raise the question of WHY your character was ever made head of the organization in the first damned place).
My problem with Trahearne was simply that he's a BLAND and BORING character that I simply don't care about...
Also I find his aoe knockback power incredibly irritating.
Seriously game Devs. STOP GIVING PLAYER COMPANIONS/PETS UNCONTROLLABLE SCATTERING EFFECTS.