I know I'm late to this party, but I had to throw an opinion in. I don't have anything publish I do have projects I am working on but are no where near completion. I'm not special in anyway just an over active imagination and too much time on my hands. I think just as feedback or opinion based the first release should only hint at a true villain. The initial release should be about the powers and the characters realization of them and the effect it will have on this city. It will bring a true feel to what this world is and what it means to these heroes or even villains. The populations reaction to new and veteran heroes or the disgust at villains old and new. True villains can be born from the this and even expanded on. I read that you had a years plan in advance for where the story should go. In an honest opinion true villains that basically don't want control or money should be the focus and these are the ones that should set the heroes and villains world ablaze.
Just ramblings of my mind. I love what you have all done and wish you the best success.
Travis Gray
Travis Gray
Travis.gray35@gmail.com
It depends what you mean by a "true villain". Maybe we don't want to have an over-arching world threatening good and evil must unite or we are all doomed villain (like say Mot) in the initial release, but we probably still want the various leaders of at least some of the factions (like say Countess Crey).
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
True it would interesting to see the development of that embedded within the storyline instead of already established factions the groundwork can be laid to where the actions of the heroes whether controlled or not lead to this threat. I just think that providing the groundwork for the city raises the question why is this city welcoming to heroes? Why is it soo populated with heroes and villains? What draws them to this city? I guess I'm just a sucker for foreshadowing, putting the heroes to make decisions that will create their own villains will define their abilities. A hero is only as great as the villain that tests him and vice versa.
Travis Gray
Travis.gray35@gmail.com
An adding to that could be all about the city. Is this city going to just accept both large amounts of villains and heroes. If heroes are welcomed with opens arms how are the villains flourishing in numbers. The same idea goes for the villains! For me since I am a psychology major and biased I would say my main question would be is what is the mind set of the residents of the city? The idea of constant clashes between heroes and villains has to take a toll on the city and what types of adversaries would arise from that kind of conflict. Take superman, Lex Luthor is a smart but powerless individual,but yet he fought one of the greatest heroes based on the idea that superman was holding mankind back. I love the genre and aspect of the trial both heroes and villains go through. My one project is entirely that a normal military hero that is corrupted by people and loses his way in to becoming a villain, yet still thinking he is protecting people.
Travis Gray
Travis.gray35@gmail.com
My character believes and fights for order and her main motivation is to create sense of what others perceive as chaos. Her binary thought told her she can either do nothing or take control. But I could totally see her motivations being something other heroes would find troubling.
I consider her a hero; others may consider her a villain; but she thinks herself a Titan.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
My preference would be for a healthy scattering of semi-powerful Signature Villain storylines for the heroes to discover and strive against. Likewise Signature Heroes for the villainous players. Cutting our teeth, as it were. No over-arching world threat at launch. Let the world develop as the players interact and affect it (and feedback their favorites). Then, in Issue 2 or 3 (to borrow CoH nomencalture) we see the rise of the Uber-threat.
Maybe it's not just one Galactus-level badguy, but a Doctor Doom variety megalomaniac trying to make Titan City his own personal kingdom. Or it could be the advent of something like the Legion of Doom, where several more successful villains pool resources to overcome the staggering amount of new heroes.
Leave the "Entire World", "Existence of Humanity" level stuff for down the road.
I've always identified more with the street-level human crimefighters myself. Batman, Daredevil, Punisher and the like. It always seemed a little goofy for my Dual-Blade Scrappers or Dark/Claw Stalkers to be hacking around the ankles of the big monsters. It would be nice if they had more effective ways to contribute to taking down the "Enormous Threat to All Mankind".
The main problem with trying to have a Superhero story that involves "The Fate of Humanity and/or the End of the World" is what do you have left to look forward to the day after? What's left that can top that once you've let the cat out of the bag from a literary point of view?
MMOs by their very nature are open-ended affairs that (hopefully) continue indefinitely. Most of them don't launch with specific plans to close at a pre-determined date some years in the future. If they did it'd be easy to plan for a central "world shattering" plotline to coincide with the planned end of the game. Instead we're left with a weird scenario where game Devs usually have to pull their punches and come up with semi-silly excuses for why their specific "End of the World" scenarios never quite really end up destroying the world.
The best CoT will be able to do is to avoid plotlines that come close to being "global" in scope for at least several years. It's hard not to ramp things up to that level quickly, but it'll make more sense if it takes a long time to build up to Earth-shattering events than it would if we had to deal with saving the world a week after the game launches and we're left with years of lesser, anti-climactic storylines after that.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I would say that the heroes in CoH were closer to them in terms of power and global scope than to the likes of Doctor Doom. It's rather ridiculous to think that a single hero or a team of heroes (be it 8, 20, or 40 individuals) who'd face a global threat. When there is a [i]single city[/i] with a population of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of heroes and villains it is beyond incredulous to think that anyone would agree to send a mere handful out to save the planet. To reverse the perspective, if a few dozen out of thousands of heroes are enough to defeat the threat then, in the scope of the setting, it can scarcely be considered a real global threat.
Sure, WoW has been doing this for years and one can raise the point that there are technological and social concerns about requiring large numbers of players for a TF. Then again, why insist on having an enemy against which the PCs should not realistically be able to compete rather than numerous enemies on a scale that makes sense for the PCs? Keep it on a scale that makes sense for the setting.
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