Eva Destruction

As long as the missions 1) don't have to relate to Praetoria or the Well of the Furies in any way and 2) don't require tying up a published arc slot, (and preferably don't require using one at all, just e-mailing the local files, so people whose slots are full can also participate) I'd submit something. It would be extra extra awesome if the chosen missions had a "created by @so and so using Mission Architect" appended to the in-game text. That way the authors get some advertising for their own arcs and people get to see that MA can be used for more than just farming.

Arcanaville should have a custom forum title. Mistress of Time and Space is as good as any.

It was CoV. All Longbow, all the time.

Thank you for this, I will now make sure to do Terrence Dobbs' arc just to hear his dialogue in Dale Gribble's voice in my head.

Dammit! Coulomb2 is stalking me on the forums, taking careful notes on everything I don't like and making sure the devs make it canon to get me so fed up I quit the game before I figure out that Malta is also just a Nemesis Plot. Coulomb2 is actually an alternate universe Nemesis from the future.

See, this is why Coulomb2/alternate universe Nemesis from the future is going to write his arc. The devs are copying us.

Thanks, everyone who responded. It's making me feel a little better about the whole thing. Not the actual canon developments, I still think they're horrible, but about how to handle them. I might even try to get around to those updates this weekend...

Yes, that pretty much sums up most people's experiences. I'm kinda lucky in that it takes me forever to finish an arc, so I don't have time to get too attached to anything before it breaks beyond repair.

Ah, yes, there has been plenty of Dr. Aeon blaming going around the AE forums and global channel. I'm not at all surprised he wants nothing to do with us anymore, although I somewhat think he wanted nothing to do with "us" to begin with, and was more interested in interacting with the people who weren't regular AE users and trying to get them to use it. When that didn't work, he stopped posting entirely.

*Adds Liquid's name to the list*

I hate to say it UberGuy, but you might have an uphill battle convincing people of this. I hope you can, because I want both, but the AE "rewards vs story" debate indicated to me that some people love their neat little categories too much to let them go.

There is one in either Interface or Destiny, can't remember which. Both are only enabled in Incarnate trials.

Aha! Now who do we blame for the Well of the Furies nonsense?

Well if you're cynical, the NDA was because they were aware of player dissatisfaction with concept-limiting powers and railroading storylines and didn't want those dissatisfied players to leave over it. Or they knew some people don't want raids and didn't want those people to leave (although they did announce there would be raids, so I don't know why they'd bother hiding there would be raids.) Or didn't want soloists, people who wanted power proliferation, people who wanted power customization, PvPers, base builders, AE users, etc etc to leave, so they held off announcing the things that would make these people unhappy until the last possible moment so as to eke every last subscription penny out of them.

If you're less cynical, i20 has something that CO and DCUO don't have and they didn't want CO and DCUO to steal it and put it out first. Or because someone broke the i18 Closed Beta NDA and blabbed about Vanguard merits being needed for the Incarnate system, someone blabbed about Shield Charge before the changes had been finalized and caused an outpouring of DOOOOOMMMMM! and forum drama, someone broke the i13 Closed Beta NDA to blab about the PvP changes and caused the worst outpouring of immaturity, vitriol and general douchebaggery I've ever seen on this forum and which included death threats to the developers, people have broken NDA on multiple other occasions, and they wanted to make sure people took the NDA seriously this time. In both cases I wouldn't blame them in the slightest.

But that would allow villains to be proactive in their villainy instead of doing what they're told to maintain the status quo and dropping everything to go help those pesky heroes save the world again so they can pursue their evil - oh wait, my evil schemes will have to wait, the heroes need my help again.

And this is where you lose me. Requiring participation in a GM hunt alienates players who dislike GM hunts. Make a few different GMs for villains to choose from,* award a badge for defeating all of them, each of them awards the standard 2 merits of course, giving players incentive to participate but not requiring it.

And yet what is Ionic Judgement or whatever it's called? An AoE lightning power. Even if you've never had lightning powers before, you can have one now. I haven't had the opportunity to see it of course, but it's pretty obvious where the idea for this slot came from.

I'd argue the exact opposite; these changes allowed for greater customization. Ninja run and Beast run are pretty concept-specific but they're completely optional add-ons, and on the other hand they are an option for people who don't want to rely on Sprint to get around but whose concepts didn't really fit any of the available travel powers. Inherent fitness allowed people to take more AT powers, but also allowed people to take more pool powers if they wanted to, or APP powers if they wanted to. Freeing up power slots removed the "I want to take this power for concept but I have to take Stamina or I'll be gimped" dilemma. Removing travel power prereqs means people can take whatever travel power fits their concept, and not just take Super Speed because Hasten is the most useful prereq....and making Stamina inherent frees up a power pool that they can use to take Hasten too.

It's posts like these that make me wish we still had rep.

I'd go along with this only if we got to pick outside our origin or change our origin. I want robots! Not Warworks though, the only ones that I still think are cool are the War Walkers and they're too big to be practical as pets.

Magic could be "spirits" of some kind, to keep with the humanoid theme.
Zombies, meh. Twisted abominations resulting from the fateful words "God shmod, I want my monkeyman!" are way cooler than zombies, but rather limited concept-wise.

One should support the other, and vice versa.

I mean gameplay in the sense of "beat this guy." The story should give us a compelling guy to beat, and the guy and the means by which we beat him should fit the story. The art should be used to bring the story elements to life and to make beating that guy look cool.

Gameplay in the sense of character creation, advancement, and improvement should be as removed from overarching story restrictions as humanly possible. The only concerns here should be mechanical balance and looking cool, keeping in mind that different people think different things are cool.

I think it represents an erroneous assumption that players fit neatly into one demographic or the other. They don't. I have a multi-billion inf Scrapper whose build and costumes and power customization I regularly tweak, who solos AVs, and who went from "I'm trying out the new powerset" to a character I became invested in when using her as a shameless author self-insert in an AE arc at around level 20 forced me to think about who she was as a character. Tell me, what demographic can this character be neatly filed away under?

Again, some of us are the target audience for this stuff. Roleplayers get invested in their characters and want to keep playing them. Storytellers want to be able to interact with the game's story. Eye-candy lovers want cool new pretties to look at.

I got into a similar argument during the story vs rewards AE debate. Some people want both. A lot of people don't seem to get that, which worries me.

Yes, I read the OP, and furthermore I read the freaking THREAD TITLE. In case you're suffering from a self-induced case of reading comprehension just so you can tell people to shut up and suck it some more, let me help you out:

Thread title:
Does it say "change the pets to something else?" No. Does it say "get rid of the pets?" No. Does it say "give the powers team more work just so Evil Geko can't have an Illusion dom?" No.

Now for the OP:
Note the three uses of the word "pets." Note how in two cases it's preceeded by the word "Praetorian" and in the other it's preceeded by the word "other," implying non-Praetorian for the non-reading comprehension challenged.

Note the phrase "willing to trade the pet power." This implies that a pet power is a desirable thing in and of itself. Now carefully read over the bolded part. Note how it neatly explains why the OP would be willing to give up a power that might be mechanically desirable.

Now note again the bolded part, as it explains quite well why the OP wants this power changed. Holy crap, when you put it all together, and actually read the damn OP like you implied I didn't, it does look like an argument for customizing the Lore pets after all!

I get what you mean. I'm telling you what you're getting. You're getting Statesman's signature power. Either the devs misinterpreted people's requests for "Statesman's signature power," probably partly due to players wording it as such, or they felt we should be content with Statesman's signature power.

But even while some people were doing that other people were complaining about people who did that. So it's obviously not what everyone wanted.

Meanwhile people who tried to write stories had to deal with ratings cartels, ratings griefing, bugs, custom critters that were nearly impossible to balance until much later and checking their arcs after every patch to make sure the latest bug fix or exploit fix hadn't broken anything. People who tried to play stories had to deal with a crappy search engine, an arc list full of farms and unfinished "tests," broken arcs from people who got sick of checking them after every patch, overpowered custom critters from people who didn't bother to try to balance them at all, and no way to filter out the dross and find the good stuff without going to the forums. They didn't give up because they weren't interested in user-created content, they gave up because the implementation pretty much told them to.

Yep, that's what happened on my Silver Mantis run too. When you're running a team at a lower difficulty than you solo on, people are going to play like they're soloing even on a team, to the point where some people forget how to play on a team. It's been going on long enough that some people chafe at Incarnate content forcing them to play as a team again (I'm not referring to the multi-team raids, I'm referring to the single-team Apex and Tin Mage task forces and how some people claim they're effectively too hard.)

And this is key. Statesman's lighting is his signature power. Recluse does not have that lightning. Hero-1 does not have that lightning. It's Statesman's power.

Our lighting is....Statesman's power. Huh. Well I guess nobody can complain about him getting cooler powers than we do anymore. Except, you know, the power to have an alternate version of himself completely take over the game. And no, I don't want the devs to give us that power, if I want an alternate version of myself I'll make one with the tools given to me at release.

Which is too bad, because it's an incredibly shallow one.

From the OP:
So "I hate the lore pets" is a perfectly valid response to the question.

And you were the first one to behave in an uncivil manner.

CoV is an example of a full added-on game world. It has depth. It gives the impression that there is always more to it than what we see. Praetoria has no depth. It gives the impression that what we see is all there is. If we didn't have Primal Earth to give it context, the Praetorian storyline as it stands would end at 20, full stop, unless we wanted to fight DE for the next 30 levels, because it doesn't have anything else to build on.

The same dismissive argument forum posters use when deriding other people who want gameplay and story segregation. Very worrying when coming from a dev.

There was a myriad of ways. They chose to railroad us instead, despite seeing how well that went over with the Arachnos Destined One garbage. But hey, VEATs were massively popular for a while, so I guess players like it, right?

Game developers must be very wary of mistaking excitement over a new shiny for genuine interest in a story development.

A lot of work went into CoV. Issue 7 was about nothing but CoV. Issue 8 had nothing to do with CoV, besides introducing Arachnos to Paragon City, and even then they weren't central to the Faultline arc. They were just there.

Because some people don't like it, and it has already been focused on for longer than any other story has before. Also, it's being tied to character progression in an unprecedented way. So if you don't like it you can't just ignore it and still progress, and you can't wait for the next issue to give you something different.

Right now, the meta-story is too meta. It presents no alternatives but to participate.

Good for you guys. Ignore it if it works for you. For some of us, punching bad guys in the face isn't enough without some context.
Again, if you do that, fine. Some people create characters firmly based in CoH lore.

I capture a lot of prisoners and save a lot of lives. Some of these guys might be more useful or trustworthy than Praetorians. If I could create holograms they would look much cooler and more impressive than Praetorians. Besides, I think the pet has the reflections aura, which makes it pretty clear that it's not a real person.

You are expected to be able to fill them all eventually. Besides, the Lore slot also includes a level shift.

So why not display it before the log-in screen?

Yeah, sure I'll team up with you to fight Galactus. I don't want to team up with you to fight the Abomination, with some terrible deus ex slapped on to explain why he's suddenly so powerful I have to team up with you.

Just like Fire/Kin controllers are all farmers and the combo should never have been allowed?

Rat Swan is Swan's counterpart from the rat universe, which is coming in i25. Kneel before the awesome power of Statesrat!

Power Proliferation is a Powers issue. The appearance of the pets is an art and animation issue. What do you want them to do, animate you an Illusion Dom? The pets' mechanics aren't the issue for a lot of people. They can get art and animation redoing the look of the pets, while the powers team gets cracking on the Martial Arts Blaster secondary

Not everyone is asking for customizable powers. Some of us are just asking for a customizable or non-Praetorian appearance. Of course some people are asking for the moon, some people will always ask for the moon, but what many of us are asking for isn't a balance issue at all. It's an art issue.
Then they should stop writing terrible stuff.

A compromise does not have to be made. Gameplay mechanics should be separate from the game's story. Do you need an NPC to explain to you why you suddenly have the option to learn to fly at level 6 when you never had that option before? Or why at level 41 your Tanker can learn how to shoot lasers out of his eyes? It's handwaved away with a"you can now choose from these power pools" message to the player, and you can choose how you want to explain it.

So if I log in right now I'll get the option to customize my Scorpion Shield, because they kept working on power customization after it was released in an incomplete state?

Adding another pet does nothing but add another pet. For people who don't like pets, that's two Incarnate slots that are now useless to them. For people who don't like Praetorian pets, one of the pets will still be Praetorian. And the Lore slot includes a level shift, which future Incarnate content will be balanced around, so unless another slot gets a level shift that doesn't stack with the Lore slot's level shift you will be gimping yourself by not taking the stupid pet.

I don't classify myself as an RPer either. But damn, does it grate every time I see that Arachnos patron's logo appear on my back. I don't need to be reminded, thank you very much, of the lameo source of a power I only took because no thematically suitable option was available that did what I wanted mechanically.

When the Rikti invaded, players couldn't get away from the story. It affected the game world. And yet, we weren't drafted into Vanguard. We didn't have to drop everything else to go fight the Rikti, unless we wanted to. Even if we did choose to join Vanguard and fight the Rikti, we didn't have to wear a Vanguard uniform to do it. We were offered the option of showing our allegiance to Vanguard through our appearance.

That story was far more visible than the Praetorian invasion, which is supposed to be this huge world-shattering threat but so far only affects Incarnates and people who do one of two Task Forces. The average hero in the streets has no indication this invasion is even happening. The sky isn't turning green and the War Walls aren't coming down. It has less of an effect on the game world, but it's important enough to merit tying our powers to it?

Never mind that "the game isn't a sandbox" is flawed reasoning, considering the game mostly has been a sandbox up until now. The one time they've limited player concepts to suit their plot (Arachnos, the Destined One, and the patrons) there was much complaining that persists to this day.

The Alpha slot was delayed because there was no content to do with the new mechanic. There's a difference.

Players have presented plenty of alternatives.

I only wish they'd let me forget about it.

This is a video game forum so I guess I shouldn't expect an attempt at proper spelling and grammar from anyone, eh?

Stan Lee was allegedly an extremely lazy writer. Besides, silver age comics are hardly examples of great writing.

Why shouldn't I expect good writing from video game writers when I've gotten good writing from video game writers in the past? And why shouldn't I expect good writing from professional video game writers when I get good writing from amateur video game writers?