Not all supers are adults. For those whose powers activate as a result of trauma or extreme emotional states, teenage years are a likely time for such to trigger.
Some are kid geniuses, far ahead of their time with their inventions.
Some have been taken on as an apprentice to a more experienced hero, assigned as a sidekick by a hero organization (or are being groomed for super villainy by a more experienced evil mentor, or are a lackey in a criminal organization trying to work their way up -- for respect, for power, for wealth, due to being misled, or simply to improve their lot in life).
Some, all on their own, have the drive, means, or good fortune to enter the crime/crime-fighting career on their own, without outside help, or with a civilian ally instead of a super-powered one.
They're found all throughout comics, and superhero media. Movies, cartoons, novels...
And, potentially due to legal reasons, I fear they might not be allowable as actual player characters.
Even so, I hold out hope. This is the game where we can make ANYTHING, right?
Can I be the young villainess out to make a name for herself? The sidekick modelling herself off a more established hero? The henchwoman who has to prove herself before she'll be given respect? If I'm playing the veteran, is their any facility for having my own young sidekick? A kid minion? A protege I'm training to replace me someday or to be able to go off on their own and continue the good fight in another city?
Can I be the Robin in Batman & Robin? Can I be the Wonder Woman training up Wonder Girl? The Spider-Girl who was simply inspired by an established hero's example and decided to try to make a difference? The kid villainess I can't think of an example of (maybe Skitter from the web-serial "Worm") who establishes her own criminal organization despite her youth, by being smarter than her enemies (and evil allies)?
Or is this going to be limited or impossible for all the reasons other games tend to disallow it?
Sorry if this has been covered before. There are... A LOT of posts to sort though.
Violence against children trips over a LOT of laws. Not even across US states, internationally. If I remember the devs right from discord, for this reason we will not even see any kids in City of Titans.
That's not to say you couldn't use the character creator to try and make a young teen, but there will 0 official support for such a thing.
I think a sidekick npc could be neat to try and achieve through tertiary powers, a side kick tertiary power pool, but how to customize them appropriately would be a whole other issue to figure out within the code and UI.
I was afraid of such. Though, tbh, as long as they are "invincible" (aka unattackable, unharmable, can't be affected by powers, etc.), NPC kids wandering doesn't seem like it should be an issue. World of Warcraft manages it just fine, and I believe there's at least one kid in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
An NPC side kick who you can come to for missions, or who does research for you, scouts an area before you go in to stop the bad guys, etc. seems feasible too. They wouldn't be involved in any combat scenario, they'd probably just be stationary in a base or summonable (beacon? communicator?).
I really don't want to be stuck in a world where there's zero acknowledgement that people other than adults exist, like City of Heroes. Some bystander pushing a stroller or something!
But I'm probably late on the boat to convince anyone.
Ah, well. As long as the character creator lets me pretend and doesn't artificially restrict me somehow, I'll make it work.
I think the last thing we need to worry about is the restriction of the character creator in this game.
As far as kids existing in the game goes, I expect there to be references to some, and for there to be at least a few characters that could theoretically be children. But I sincerely doubt they'll be playable, or at all employable - that smacks up against child labor laws and willful endangerment of a minor in the case of, say, sending them into an air duct for scouting purposes. Unfortunate though it may be, supers that are still minors unfortunately have to be relegated to "permanently offscreen"
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".
Kind of puts classic super heroes like Batman, Green Arrow, and the Flash in a new light, I guess!
I am not a lawyer, a dev could explain it better than I, but here's my approximation.
There's a difference between buying a Batman comic in the US, someone buying a Batman comic from a US retailer to ship internationally, and someone privately buying a batman comic from another person to privately ship internationally.
There's also a difference between a narrative where the Joker beat Robin with a crowbar and an interactive medium.
Fallout needs be censored in India because the player is able to injure the 2 headed cows. It needs to be censored differently in Australia because of the references to drugs.
Warcraft and other games make MAJOR revisions for the Chinese because they don't allow the showing of skeletons and other such things due to respect for the dead.
City of Titans is going to be a single online service, it can't selectively censor it's content per country and thus needs to be as globally acceptable as possible. This includes not allowing anything that could look like harm coming to young children.
Indeed. It's been called on several times in modern media, in fact, with the primary villains in the show "Young Justice" specifically stating that the Justice League being willing to employ child soldiers was a "dark twist".
The reason why those characters known as sidekicks originally came about was because of the way that marketing at DC worked - there's a persistent idea that if you want your audience to connect with a story on a personal level, the easiest and fastest way to do so is to insert a character who can act as an audience surrogate for the audience to relate to. With so much of the audience for these sorts of comics being young men, adding young men into the stories working with the superheroes was a no-brainer back when child protection laws weren't such a humongous deal, and at this point they're so ingrained into the stories that taking them back out would be nigh-on impossible. Additionally, those child protection laws don't apply to non-interactive media as stringently as interactive media, as it's the difference between "A child got hurt oh no" and "The devs allowed the players to HURT CHILDREN", which is a small difference for most people, but a large enough one to cause legal problems for game companies.
But I'll also point out that in recent years, the stories that deal with these characters are specifically ones that deal with a simple fact: These are kids, and they have power. There's no way to stop them from exercising that power, so the best way to handle it is to point them in the right direction and make certain the come out of the problem alive. While, legally speaking, the developers aren't able to endorse that type of storyline, and won't be allowed to introduce children as characters in the story that are anywhere in the realm of potentially being hurt, if a player were to, say, make a young character by manipulating the extent of the controls of the character creator and play with them, then that [i]clearly[/i] isn't their fault, but rather the player's. The devs cannot officially endorse said actions, but legally speaking, it's not their problem at that point, as long as they're not the ones making child characters ready to get into the fight and, legally speaking, all characters are 18+ years old (even when they clearly don't look like it)
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".
I totally understand.
I was just thinking of the "child labor" angle and "putting a minor in danger" and what that says about iconic figures like Batman.
Though, uh, I think Frank Miller jumped that particular shark already with All-Star Batman & Robin (such an awful piece of crap).
Indeed! Also, I just realized how to quote things instead of just replying so it's clear who I'm replying to. Derrrrrp.
Young Justice is a great show. Too bad I'll never see season 3 because they want to put it on their own streaming service. Not paying for another one. e_e
Hopefully they'll at least acknowledge that kids exist in the world, school buildings, playgrounds and the like. Even if they're not actually shown.
Also on the batman thing. "I wear a bright color in the center of my chest that is also where most of my armor is, it draws the eye so badguys are more likely to shoot there... Here, Robin, wear this brightly colored outfit... For reasons."
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I just don't feel teens are the same as young children in terms of creating a character.
Well they should have normal civilian children, just ones walking down the street, like in CoX just random NPCs walking down the street who turn tail and run when they see a badguy.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
CoH had no civilian children walking around, neither will CoT.
*Turns on targeted fire ground field, NPC child stands on it but is not affected*
*Screenshot is taken, people see it online with no context*
*CoT lawyers find themselves having to respond to foreign countries about it since the game is accessible in their region*
Best to stay far and away from it completely.
Even a single villain mission where another villain says 'try this steroid, it will help you take out X hero' would run the game as a whole afoul in Australia.
Penelope! Baby New Year!
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Penelope_Yin_(Faultline)
Penelope Yin's age is never mentioned but is refereed to as a Teenager. She was old enough to work at her father's store. For legal purposes, everyone portrayed in CoH was at least 18, 18 is still young for a hero.
Baby New Year was not a human, but a supernatural entity. It refers to itself as a personification of change. It doesn't even look or talk like a baby, more like a gnome in appearance.
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Baby_New_Year
So, did Champions: Online have any problems in Australia about the Monster Island mission where Doctor Moreau says "try this serum, it will help you take out Teleios"?
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Not that I am aware of. I'll repeat that I'm not actually a lawyer and I could be wrong. But Australia tends to be very tough on any depiction of drugs.
There was also [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Penny_Preston]Penny Preston[/url]
Seeing as how Penelope aged with the game and the game was 8 years old and we saw her become a young hero...I'd say she was younger than 18. However, we never saw her in any real danger of getting hurt either. Not to mention, I recall many considering it creepy that the Clockwork King would take such a liking to Penelope and possibly leading CK to being younger than many thought as well (he was a brain in a jar).
I was just teasing with Baby New Year though :p
To begin with I totally understand the need to restrict any depictions of violence against innocent children in CoT. Like CoH I doubt there will be any "child victims" in the game and also like CoH if there are any "child NPCs" they will be dealt with in very special/limited ways to avoid any appearance of causing them harm in any way.
That said there was never any overt restrictions against creating "child PCs" in CoH. At best I suppose the Devs of that game considered it a "don't ask, don't tell" scenario and to be honest after playing the game for 8.5 years I only saw a small handful of characters that were specifically created/intended to be considered to be any younger than perhaps 15 or so. It was literally a "non-problem" as far as anything I was ever aware of. Clearly if any player were to make it a "problem" they could always be reported to a GM for proper assessment.
Also consider the following: It was very easy to use the character creator of CoH to create "young male" characters that were easily passible as children. Again I never saw a huge number of them but they did exist. The only thing that made it hard to create "young female" characters in CoH was the ironic limitation of the female body model to be able to set their breast size down to anything less than about a C-cup. As one might imagine it's hard to make a passible 6 or 8 year old girl when she's sporting an adult-sized rack.
When it comes to CoT the ability to make "passible" childlike PCs will be, if anything, easier to accomplish. We have already been assured by the Devs that the CoT female body model will be able to be made far more "flat-chested" than CoH allowed for. This is great if you want to create a reasonably waifish adult but it also obviously means it'll be far easier to create pre-pubescent girls as well.
Bottomline line given their existence in many comic books I see no overt reason why a "child PC" should not be allowed in CoT unless of course you literally live in a country that would specifically prohibit it. In those cases MWM could always plug some "legal boilerplate" into the EULA we agree to as players that we collectively consider all characters created to be 18 or older regardless of appearance. Non-problem solved.
P.S. For what it's worth I played several "underaged" characters (like aged 12-16) in CoH for years and never had any problems with them in terms of other players or GMs. Like everything else if you don't play such characters stupidly enough to warrant policing by the GMs I ultimately see no problem with it. Obviously if you as a player have some kind of issue with playing a "child PC" no one would ever force you to make one.
Not really sure why this wouldn't be everyone's "default conclusion" on this matter in the first place.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Because:
1. I haven't used this game's character creator myself.
2, I've been using the CoH character creator for years (so that is my reference point and the lens I see character creation through).
3. I didn't know what differences there would be in that regard or even think to question whether they'd change it because that has been my only experience.
4. You describe above the very issue with CoH that prevented convincing young female characters, so I have a different default conclusion because that's all I know for super hero games. DCUO sure didn't accommodate it, and I didn't play Champions Online long enough that I recall if they did or not.
5. There's a LOT of posts to read, so I don't know all of what's been discussed.
6. In summary: Because literally no other super hero game I've ever played HASN'T restricted it in some way.
When I first joined here, I thought you were cool and nice and welcoming when I posted the thread about disabled heroes. Maybe it's not your intention, and maybe I'm misreading tone (text can be hard that way), but it feels like you're being really condescending to me. I'm not neurotypical. I don't immediately think of or grasp things that may be intuitive to others. I ask for your patience as I learn the ropes and familiarize myself with this different community and different game design.
Please keep in mind that what's "default" for you may not be default for others. For example, "default" for most people is having depth perception, or the ability to walk, but I have neither of those things. My default starting position, mentally and physically, is literally not the default for the vast majority of people.
We all have different circumstances and perspectives. I am trying to learn and adjust to others', so please extend that same courtesy to me.
All I essentially said was that CoH did not specifically restrict/prevent anyone from making "childlike" characters so I saw no overt reason why that state of affairs would be any different here. If anything (as I pointed out with the female body model breast size thing) it should ultimately be even [b]easier[/b] to accomplish that goal in CoT.
Clearly (as I agreed) the general issue of "violence against children" is an important one and ALL public games need to handle that accordingly. But when it comes to the type of characters [b]players[/b] are able to create in a superhero setting I know of no unique reason to automatically assume that characters under the age of 18 would be specifically prohibited.
Everything I've stated here is based on my 8.5 years with CoH and my 5+ years on this forum. Not trying to be "condescending" in the least - just stating an educated conclusion based on all the information currently at hand. If you're seriously worried about it I'd simply make sure it's clear (in your character bios) that your characters are at least 12-14 instead of being say like 5. Even I have a vaguely "iffy" attitude towards playing characters in a game like CoT that are much less than say 12. I've done it in table-top RPGs with close friends but I doubt I'd ever do that in an "open MMO" like CoT even if it's tacitly "allowed".
P.S. I'm fully planning to "resurrect" at least a couple of my favorite CoH characters in CoT and both of them were squarely "teenagers" (one was 15, the other 17). Let's just say I would be genuinely shocked to my core to see CoT try to restrict characters like that in any way based on age.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ny5l9ZF.jpg[/img]
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I believe I can help with a common frame of reference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOdpiKZv5-U
This was the pre alpha chargen video posted in March. As I recall, the female body wasn't as ready as the male body at that time, but in my opinion, this video gives a fairly clear insight into how some of the body sliders will work. Also the following link has the most recent info from a fellow forumite who got some hands on time with the chargen.
https://cityoftitans.com/forum/my-experience-chargen-last-night
Hope this is helpful. :)
That's a pretty good example of this issue. It would be especially awesome if you wanted to play a Fallout game as Deadpool. :)
I would certainly never argue against the fact that most computer RPGs have historically had no child NPCs and prevented players from creating child characters. Even Fallout 76 (that just launched a few days ago) indirectly dealt with this issue by not having -any- human NPCs. All things being equal I suppose it might be "safe" to assume the same of a game like CoT. The only problem with making that blanket assumption is that you'd be totally forgetting what CoH allowed for in terms of PCs.
The "working assumption" I'm always going to start with is that any game that claims to be a "spiritual successor" to CoH (i.e. CoT) is going to at least start off being based on the same general policies and "mindset" that CoH functioned under. Sure the details and actual mechanics of CoT may ultimately be different, but the general idea of what PCs can be and how free they are in terms of character concept needs to be fundamentally the same or you don't really have a true spiritual successor.
I suppose my reasoning on this might have been simple-minded at its core but since "child" PCs were possible in CoH it seems fair to expect they will also be possible in CoT, at least of course until we are told any different by the Devs at any rate.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
As a random counter example, Champions Online has an entire high school in the main zone, complete with loitering students in their letter jackets. And Lord of the Rigs Online has children scattered through all their human and hobbit town environments as a fairly normal percentage of the population. Now that I think about it, one of the most effective Gondorian warriors is a twelve year old kid out avenging his family. [url=https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Tolwin]Tolwin[/url] is pretty vicious, using bear-traps as tactical land mines to facilitate his quest for revenge.
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Yes, my [u][url=https://www.deviantart.com/revanantmorituri]art gallery[/url][/u] is almost entirely screen captures. Tough.