Olantern

My supernatural Olantern-sense detects a potential AE arc here.

Actually, that's a good point, in the sense that Exalted seems fairly busy, as do all the other servers I've been on. Since it normally isn't possible to play on two servers at once, yet there are plenty of people on an entirely new one, that suggests that we've had a net population gain overall.

Well, if it's used to cover up smilies, I can sort of forgive it.

Ah, I think you are correct. I suppose this changes the problem from "Alfred is wearing a toupee" to "Alfred's bowler looks like a toupee."

***

Is it bad that my primary reaction to the Gotham High picture was, "Man, I'd forgotten what slobs teenagers dress like these days?" (However, I do find the interpretation of Clayface as an artsy guy interesting.)

Also, Batman and Nightwing Katana-woman or whatever her name is are mindless, since they have no crania. Alfred does have a cranium, but he appears to be wearing a toupee for some reason. And the villains of the show appear to be the Three Little Pigs, who presumably lair in evil hideouts made of straw, wood, and reinforced concrete.

Oh, well. I've been surprised before. And even if this is as bad and silly as it looks, it's another thing for me to enjoy not liking about the Batman, whom I primarily appreciate in an "I love to hate him" way.

Additionally, there's the possibility that the advertising and marketing budget for the game is not that high. That is, even if they want to take out a television ad campaign, there's no way they can afford it. (This occurs to me every time I see someone complain that "marketing is incompetent." For all we know out in the non-Paragon Studios/NCSoft world, they're doing a fantastic job with a budget of approximately three cents; there's just no way to tell.)

I'm pleased by the fact that you "don't fault the game" for not supporting something like this. Most players, when they come up with an eccentric concept, rage about how "limiting" the game is. Personally, I am of the opinion that creativity is great, but that you can't expect someone else's product, like an MMO, to support your original ideas as well as your own, original work would. Yes, sometimes that means you have to bend your concept or even ignore something the game tells you. I've been told in the AE forum that my attitude is "stupid" and "oppressive" and that I should "just shut up," so prepare for the thread to devolve into a flamewar ... sorry about that, Samuel_Tow.

This, except mine would also feature swordfights, musical numbers, and a loyal sidekick who is a wisecracking dragon whom only I can see.

In fact, my ideal would probably be a Disney animated movie, only with more sex.

This had me close to smiling, not because of the joke itself, but because I'm convinced that a lot of players really believe this.

I'm sure that is the idea, and it's a reasonable one. But I hope that if it turns out that Atlas Park is not totally overrun with new, free-playing characters, the respawn rate gets adjusted back down. The current rate seems awfully optimistic.

This community doesn't do flexibility.

I agree with this statement. The blog post seems to refer to unpublished material contained in the "story bible" and other design documents. The only example of this to which players have ever been made privy is a piece of the original background on the Minions of Igneous, in which "Igneous" is a mad scientist who discovers the underground creatures. This has never appeared in-game, so, under Mr. Miller's* view, it's fair game to be written out of existence. That's fine with me, but in my mind, that isn't what geekdom refers to as a "retcon." It was never part of public continuity in the first place. I'd refer to this as a zero-case contradiction: one where the only changes occur entirely in nonpublic material.

The problem with zero-case contradiction retcons in a medium like an MMO is that the next writer to work on the material may not realize that Dr. Igneous has now never existed and go on to write a story about him, making the published material confusing and possibly self-contradictory. This is why it's critical not only to track your lore in design documents but also to make notes of any changes you might make to it.

The player base seems more concerned about the other two types of story contradictions, the single-case and the double-case. In a single-case contradiction, new material is created that overwrites existing player perception but does not directly contradict anything previously published in the material. An example of this would be the revelation that there is no Praetorian equivalent of Lord Recluse. For years, players gone on and on about this hypothetical character, even to the point of assuming one existed. Then, when Going Rogue was released, it was revealed that he'd never existed to begin with. If you played a character who worked for or even was Praetorian Recluse, this wrote your backstory out of existence. A single-case contradiction differs from a zero-case one in that in the single case, the devs do not go to any particular effort to correct or change the player perception, and they may even encourage it informally. Other examples here include the appearance of Primal Earth Odysseus, how involved the Warriors are with classical culture, whether the Freakshow are funny or serious, the existence of Avilians as a species and the Blood of the Black Stream as a faction, and how much and in what manner Rikti communicate their dialogue. (I deliberately chose what I consider low-controversy examples to make things clear here, but I'm convinced that most of what the players consider double-case contradictions are really single-case ones; i.e., they exist only because of players' own assumptions.)

Then we come to the double-case contradiction. This is what's being discussed in this thread, as opposed to the zero-case that seems to be the focus of the blog post. This is what geek culture calls a "retcon." In a double-case contradiction, new, published material directly contradicts older, published material. For instance, a character might be dead in one version and alive in another. The problem with double-case contradictions, aside from the contradictions themselves, is that they lead the audience to believe every single-case contradiction is also a double-case one, because "If the devs are so disrespectful of the continuity as to retcon one thing, then they obviously don't respect any of the continuity at all! How dare they wipe out the backstory of my Avilian catgirl!"

I should also note that all this discussion ought to be academic. It's possible to turn any double-case contradiction into a single-case one with a bit of work, though it can be a clumsy process. An example of such a "save" in CoH would be resolving the confusion over Ms. Liberty's given name by using both of them. More importantly for the discussion I think Mr. Miller intended to spark (rather than the one he got), the writer is careful, he can make any contradictions zero-case, meaning players will never see them at all.

***

We should also keep in mind that story always appears to have been a secondary concern for Mr. Miller. He's primarily a games person, not as much a story person. This is a split in gameplay culture that has existed since long before the computer game, back to the earliest days of pen and paper RPG's. Some people play for the background or in order to play a role, while others do so in order to experience the feeling of "beating" the game through application of the rules. Mr. Miller's prior statements indicate that he's firmly in the latter camp. While I have fairly strong feelings on which side should dominate, I recognize that not everyone agrees with me. I do feel that this is something that gaming culture as well as game design culture needs to settle over the next couple of decades or so, though, since it runs to very fundamental ideas of what a "game" is, not to mention whether and how it is "art."

* I try to refer to the developers by their real names in these kinds of discussions. I've always found the CoH practice of giving developers the names of in-game characters confusing. It also leads to things like the player base's dislike of the character Statesman, which seems driven primarily by their dislike of the developer who used that character's name, not the character himself.

If there were one thing I could change about the player base, it would be to have people understand and accept this.

***

I consider most of the i0/i1 arcs to be in serious need of reworking. Though the plots don't need to change, they could be covered adequately with many fewer missions. In fact, with today's quick leveling, it can be difficult to complete some of those long "legacy" arcs before outleveling their level ranges.

I'd particularly like to see Crimson and Indigo's arcs die bloody, horrible deaths. Malta do not make sense as a group found standing around in warehouses; they're generally portrayed as spies and dedicated strike teams. The arcs run far too long, and despite the high stakes in the stories, there's little sense of time pressure placed on the protagonist, even in the timed missions. Further, the contacts themselves are pompous jerks. (While this applies to a lot of contacts throughout the game, most of those to whom this description could be applied aren't meant to be likeable.) I really, really can't stand characters who are written as "wise and capable and all-knowing." (This is one of the reasons Sister Psyche is my most-disliked signature hero, too.)

The arcs involving the Tsoo are also very weak, as previously described here.

Finally, while I don't think it's one of the worst arcs out there, I should mention my particular peeve with Roy Cooling's arc. I don't get as picky about absolute control of every aspect of story as most players who read the text do; unlike them, I acknowledge that the game can't conform all that well to any particular concept of mine because an MMO's content is the same for each player character. So I don't have a problem with the backstory of Cooling's arc. However, I just get flat-out confused every time I run it. There are too many names and too many factions involved for me to keep things straight easily. I played the thing not two nights ago, and I'd have difficulty trying to tell you who the villain in the arc was, simply because there was so much going on behind the scenes.

Well, we already had one garbagy remix/cover of the original in Ghostbusters 2, so it isn't as if there's no precedent.