Blood Spectre

I had an idea. An idea that I think has some potential. But before I go through with it, I was hoping I'd be able to gauge people's interest in the project. I don't really want to go through the effort just to have the Arc buried behind five million farms and never seen by the people who might apreciate it. So let me know if this sounds like something you might want to play.

Here's the premise; our villains get worked by no small number of contacts and npcs in this game. I say it's time to settle the score. Thye lie to us, cheat us, steal from us, threaten us, and undermine our nefarious plots. I propose an Arc where the villain calls a Reckoning. Targets you've wanted to settle up with for a long time will be rendered as custom creatures, and you'll be given a chance to get even.

Right now the list of targets will include:
- Hardcase
- Virgil Tarikoss
- Arbiter Daos
- Archmage Tarixus
- Blue Steel

I'm also open to adding in more targets of revenge if people feel those npc's have it coming, but these are the big offenders in my mind, the one's in most need of the proverbial red-[censored]-beat-down.

The arc would run all custom mobs and mobs that span 1-54 so it would be playable at all levels without relying on the auto SK feature.

But the real question is, would you, or anyone you know, want to play this, if it was done well?

If you would like, I would apreciate a review of my first arc, The King of Thieves part 1: All Hell's Breaking Loose. I don't have the arc ID here with me at work, but I will edit it in when I get home tomorrow morning.

No they haven't. The only way you would have seen that attack before was if you tried to snipe one or something.

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Note that people have had similar complaints about the patron arcs wherein you're forced to betray your employer under threat of Arachnos retribution - sometimes there is a good reason to want to stop them apart from what Arachnos thinks (aside from philisophical questions about the nature of free will, if Scirocco succeeds in his plan, for instnace, it will either brainwash you or erase you from existance), but in some cases (Ghost Widow's arc is the perfect example, and a popular one, given how many fan-boys she has) the only reason to betray them instead of helping them is because you're either more loyal to Arachnos than them, or more afraid of Arachnos than loyal to the patron, and a lot of players resent having that choice taken away from them. Notice that as with your exmaqple, there has been a complete lack of anything being done to fix it.

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Yeah, I didn't much care for those elements of ghost widow's arc myself. Arbiter or no arbiter, my dom would hardly be afraid of Daos, especially with the backing of Ghost Widow, and she most *definitely* would not appreciate being threatened. In a perfect world, she would have taken the false crystal from him, promised to do his bidding like a good little minion, and gone straight to GW to warn her and plot how to take Daos down and complete the ritual in spite of him. My dom may be a villain but she doesn't backstab those who she respects (and secretly, she feels a bit sorry for GW too), and attempting to coerce her into doing something would be about the surest means to get her *not* to do it.

Now, the story would still have to come out the same in the end to keep everything consistent, but ideally it would be possible to get there by two different paths - one where you betray your patron, and one where you don't. We now have branching dialogue possibilities in the game - perhaps eventually the devs will be able to design branching *storyarcs* as well. Certainly the patron arcs would be ripe for such an invention.

Maybe someday I'll write a MA arc exploring the possibilities of the player choosing *not* to betray Ghost Widow. I wonder if Arbiter Daos exists in game....?

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You should go back and re-read the arc, maybe play through it on another toon. Daos WANTS you to let Ghost Widow perform the ritual, so she can return to life only to be murdered by your character. So, Ghost Widow does perform the proper ritual. The problem is, her plan failed, the ritual doesn't work the way she hoped. The new body it makes for her is cold unfeeling ectoplasm, not much different than the spirit stuff she was made up of before, and a far cry from the warm living flesh she hoped for. This failure enrages Ghost Widow, and in her unthinking rage she lashes out at you, blaming you for her failure in classic villain fashion. If you had stayed loyal to her, all it would have earned you was an early grave as she destroyed you in a coldblooded, murderous rage.

Instead, with Daos's blessing, you showed up expecting a fight from her. And whereas if she were left without the Arbiter's interference in her affairs, she would likely have revoked your mediporter codes, Daos has the clout to see to it that you benefit from Arachnos's resources when she turns on you. If not for his role in the story, your villain might well have perished.

Or well, that's how I read it anyway.

a bit of a tangent but I HATE lowering my difficulty.

It feels a bit too much like purchasing victory for my tastes. I normally run on level 4 regardless of toons, for a decent blending of xp and loot, without ever crashing into an AV solo.

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The Vivacious Verandi arc could have ended in hilarity, when all the villain groups you've been messing with figure out it was all you and team up to get payback.

[/ QUOTE ]I loved that arc. Right up until the moment I talked to Hardcase. Pretty sure I never bothered to finish it after that, I really hated that.

Westin Phipps should have you beat the crap out of Hardcase, then dump him in a room with a bunch of demons so they can do whatever the hell they want to him. That would be a fitting ending, making everything much better.

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Unforutnatley it has the same problem as allowing you to succeed at Verendi's plans in the first place - it would change the setting (specifcly in the way that Harcase would be dead). And that can't happen. Not in CoH certainly, and not really as a result of single-player instnaced content in any game, to be honest. The moment after you deliver him to his grizly execution, he'll still be right back there on his streat-corner looking stereotypicaly badass and handing out missions.

It would be fun to have a sort of 'go teach him a lesson' mission where someone highers you to put him firmluy adn violently in his place though, I agree.

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Why can't Hardcase use the same medical teleporters that the villains use. He's connected enough. There's no reason a beat down would have to entail removing him from the game.

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What's wrong with his YouTube Profile? Why do you have to hate the video? I mean sure, the audio is kind of wonky, but I don't think that's a reason to wish him to die in a fire.

And really, "die in a fire"? Isn't that kind of extreme anyway?

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First, I did say please. Give me some credit for manners.

Second, he has a link to an annoying anime song disguised as a "Going Rogue possible leak."

Hence the request for fiery death.

Re: The link in your signature.

Please die in a fire.

Signed
- Blood Spectre

Some thoughts.

1) I dont want smarter AI foes. I love beating up a dumb AI. I wish they were all like to [censored] Cimerorans and crowded into my AoEs. Like feeding dudes into a woodchipper, it's awesome. Moar dum AI plz!

2) I like the new Titans. They're awesome, and they look cool when I fight them, firing off the salvos of missiles and toxic gas. Very cool, very high tech and awesome looking.

3) They're not doing anything that I wasn't prepared to handle when I signed on for a mission against Malta anyway.

4) Malta are gawdamned tough. But I like them anyway.

Edit- huh, apparently you cant say [censored]. The word I used rhymes with "plumbass".

WB Laylia!

I'm considering going to Hero Con but flying out to California from Pennsylvania may be out of my budget. I'm still on the fence.

Hmmm this could be fun

Blood Spectre = Water Ghost Buster
Coiling Cobra = Lounging Mongoose
Doctor Online = Nurse Offdot
Project Dragonfly = Homework Knightspider
Scissor Man = Paper Woman
Nemean = Heracles

Happy first time you were naked in public!

So.. my bios can have line breaks now? I never knew this was a bug, I thought it as a feature.

people watch Enterprise?

Thanks Slax!

Actually, I think it shows which of us is able to post from work, and who would have to do it on their own time.

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The new forums will be great! But starting our post count at ZERO may not be so great for those who have done thousands of posts over the years.

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Does post count really matter?

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it adds inches to your e-peen

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FREE HUGS!

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who has been imprisoning hugs????

FREE HUGS! FREE HUGS! FREE HUGS!!!!

18ish) 1 star a perfectly funny thready, even though you like it, just to be an a-hole.

I'm starting to feel bad at being thanked so profously for my patience. I dont actually have any.

still blocked as of this posting

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sure we will, once the server status page actually says up.

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it will not display "up" until they are a sizable number of people already on the server. If everyone sits and waits for it to say "up" it never will.

and without continually trying to get in, we wont know the difference between the state they are in now, and when they are open for players

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That theory doesn't work so well for all the other pets.

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It doesn't work well for the VEATs either, but do you really think that they're going to completely change the name of the AT to account for those who change sides because they're no longer in Arachnos?

Honestly, I doubt there will be any change to the PPP/APP system. The pools are, in and of themselves, balanced around the ATs they belong too. Creating entirely new PPP/APPs to account for villains that switch sides would be an exercise in redundancy since there are already perfectly serviceable and presumably balanced PPPs to work with. The only problems that really exist are, potentially, the pets, though, it's not entirely out of the question that you brought along or found an individual of the kind that changed sides to work with you.

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While the PPPs are balanced for their ATs and serviceable, it doesn't make sense that after side switching, the villains, who are now heroes, are going to go back to the Arachnos patrons and be like, "Hey, teach me more cool powers with which I can use against you in the very near future."

Ancillary pools make a bit more sense, since in theory they are just newly learned powers, I could get a heroe in the isles learning additional powers. The patron pools, not so much.

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All four Patrons are already teaching villains powers that will be used against them in the very near future. That's how the Patron Arcs work.

Likewise