Samuel_Tow

That's odd. The music was my favourite part of the video, aside from right at the beginning.

If I might make a suggestion: Your beginning is GREAT. I really love the big watery explosion at the hard beat increase in the music. I'd suggest doing this more often throughout the song. In fact, I'd suggest that you time your video to have something big happening every time the song goes "I'd like some POOOUND CAKE!" right where the big beat is. The first one was amazing, but the rest just sort of play over stock footage.

Hardy har har.

Well, it sounds like a bigger change than it really is, and it also doesn't all have to happen all at once. Let's try and paint a first step.

With Marshal Jason Blitz gone (I forget if he's dead or in prison), a new warlord emerges on Warburg. Fortunata Erin Gossamer, disgusted with how the villains of the Isles betrayed her master, takes off her helmet and assumes control over what's left of the Warburg armies and begins a concentrated war against the Rogue Isles, and Arachnos especially for doing what they did to Blitz. This puts extreme pressure on Arachnos, who are already engaged in a war on multiple fronts. Even with their Homerowrld portal disabled, the Rikti are still a real and pressing threat that tie up Arachnos forces in an uneasy backstabbing alliance with the Traditionalist. The events of both Galaxy City and Faultline have put Arachnos in a state of cold war with the US government, who now have a policy of looking the other way when licensed heroes from Paragon City make blatant invasions of Arachnos soil. The Praetorian war is still ongoing, sapping massive numbers of Arachnos soldiers to stem the tide, especially with the uneasy "truce" between the Rogue Isles and the US. And with Mot rampaging in Dark Astoria, causing Scirocco to defect, Arachnos has never been as weak as it is now.

Sensing a weakness in the power structure, Guido "The Mooch" Verandi attempts a power play in order to usurp power over Port Oaks. He overtakes the Arachnos skeleton crew guarding the government building, but is beaten back by Emil Marcone's forces coming to "save" the building. Guido is forced to retreat, occupying the lightly guarded Villa Montrose and fortifying his position there against the attack of both Arachnos and Family forces. Just as it seems like the island will remain in Arachnos hands, Emil turns on his allies and takes over all of Marconeville, along with the government building itself. It transpires that Emil has been receiving massive amounts of guns, men and money from Sbastian Frost on the Mainland, who wants Port Oaks freed from Arachnos customs control to use as a staging ground for his drugs trafficking and smuggling. Emil Marcone declares the island free of Arachnos rule and forms the new independent nation of Port Oaks, with himself as "president."

Family forces now control the entire island except for Villa Montrose, which has been fortified and serving as the base of operations for the "rebels" - Guido Verandi's Mooks. Having taken control of the heavy turrets and fortified the exterior walls, the Mooks are now essentially impossible to shift from their position. Mooks can still be seen throughout the city, fighting with Family forces, setting fires, placing explosives and smuggling supplies to keep up Guido's guerilla war. It transpires that the Verandi at Villa Montrose are also receiving the aid of the Council, whose positions on the island have become threatened by Emil Marcone's aggressive moves to control the island and suppress all other military force. In the midst of the chaos, the Lost have stepped up their preaching, the Hellions have all but overrun Oil Spill and the Snakes have infested Dockside. Arachnos forces still remain on the island, holed up at Fort Hades. They lack the supplies to retake the island, but are holding the position as a landing strip for reinforcements when and if those become available.

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OK, now consider what would have to be done for this one zone to be changed:

1. Swap spawns around. Move almost all Family spawns to Marconeville and have them patrol the streets. Move almost all Mook spawns to Villa Montrose and have them stand around with guns drawn. Move all Turrets spawns to stand on top of the wall around Villa Montrose and make them hostile to spawns around the wall. Move all Hellion spawns to Oil Spill. Pepper the rest of the zone with a combination of the other factions there. Remove Council spawns from the zone almost entirely to simulate them having been forced underground. Move all Arachnos spawns and Veluta Lunata inside the Fort.

2. Swap the banners on the Arachnos tower with the new flag of Port Oaks, or remove them altogether. Either remove the Arachnos propaganda posters or just have them spray-painted over so they're defaced. There aren't that many of those.

3. Build up the wall around Villa Montrose to be higher and look like it's been reinforced with scrap materials. Possibly make it look like it's been shot at and had explosives blown up at it.

#1 doesn't require any art time at all, just someone to sit down and reposition spawns like what War Witch did for the Hollows. #2 requires very little art time since the changes are fairly minor. #3 does require some art time, but it isn't actually terribly necessary. And that's ALL you need to do for one Issue. Change that one zone and leave the others as they are. Then NEXT ISSUE, change another one. I know it's not "simple" or "easy," but it is realistic.

You miss the point entirely. This was never a question of "content villains can run." You can unlock all of Paragon City for villain players and that wouldn't add any more villain content. This is a question of content written for villain protagonists and written to allow the character to express at least some side of evil as an overall running thematic. This isn't the case.

Where co-op content fails is in trying to appeal to both sides and failing to be fair. It's fairly easy to justify villains doing good things without ruining their character. Maybe they had alternate goals, maybe they're misunderstood or maybe they just felt like it. It's not as easy to justify heroes doing evil things without ruining their character, however. It doesn't matter how many people's you've saved. As soon as you violently and wantonly murder even just a single person, you go down for manslaughter. It is for this reason that co-op content has to be hero-centric so as not to completely destroy hero characters, but it is also for this reason that it will never, ever be really applicable to villains and why it needs to stop being the centre of every issue.

Aside from Bane Spider Ruben and Brother Hammond in I23, I honestly can't remember the last time villains got a story arc of their own since pretty much Vincent Ross in I19, if it wasn't even I18. And co-op content doesn't count as "a story arc of their own" because it's not content written for villains. It's about right for heroes, but villains more or less have to do it out-of-character. Again, it's not a question of needing more content, story be damned. If that's all it was about, we could grind Paper missions like back in the day when you ran out of content at level 44. It's a question of story arcs that make villains feel like villains and players feel pleased to be evil. You can't do that in co-op content.

It depends on how it's done. For instance, the old PSX game Fighting Force did it marvellously, mostly because the bulk of its combat revolved around finding pieces you could grab and hit people with. Punch a coke machine and grab the iron bars that fall out, then break them over people's heads. Punch it again and take the air compressor that comes out, smash that into someone's head. Punch it again and drink the cans that fall out for extra health. Or walk into a lift and notice there are four metal bars you can pull out from the railing, an emergency fire axe and a fire extinguisher. It was quite glorious

Champions Online, on the other hand, was a pretty bad example. That game gave you a ton of non-situational powers to use that were usually a lot easier to use and generally better than chucking sign posts and park benches at people. Plus, the whole act of throwing things just looked goofy. No flight arcs, no sense of weight, no sense of impact, always the same animation and everything explodes into nothingness.

In a game that's built around environment interaction, throwing things would work wonders, but it would also be limited to "categories" of things you can throw. In a game that isn't, though? Yikes!

Same for grappling, actually. The only way to grapple with enemies is to standardise their size and shape, and that just limits the game considerably. The most you could do is an ugly gorilla press pickup that rarely looks good.

Personally, I'd like to see both Taunt and Confront take on either some sort of debuff or a "special mode" more so than trading them in for an attack. A lot of Scrappers already have enough. Someone suggested turning Taunt into a reverse Placate, but that sounds like a dangerous idea. Placate is a guaranteed critical, but ONLY if you don't get hit mid-animation, and it's on a 60-second time. Confront is on a... Um, 4-second timer?

Basically, I could really see one of two ideas happening:

1. Tag taunted enemies to receive guaranteed criticals when they're not fighting the Tanker/Scrapper/Brute who taunted them, but have that suppress when they are. I'm not sure if this is mechanically possible, but that's what would make fighting the taunter seem like a smart idea.

2. Put the enemy into a special mode that adds some percentage chance for critical hits to all of the taunter's attacks. That way, using Taunt/Confront becomes a good idea in combat terms as well as in tactics terms, and it pushes Scrappers further ahead since their Confront recharges faster and they already have critical % chance even without this.

That's because we really don't have very strict rules for magic to obey in this game. But honestly, that's for the best. I'd rather have a loosely-governed magic system that I can write any character into than having to worry about creating ghost characters because "the dead cannot change" and mine aren't that one-dimensional.

And it feels like the extra resources he was given actually WORSENED the stories he produced. I'd actually appreciate the game's writing if it did stick to more or less what the Architect provided, but damned if the development team didn't swear to outdo Architect writers in all ways. So we get these over-scripted messes with unnecessary custom maps and custom critters and custom dialogue and custom artwork that seem to have neglected the one thing which makes a good story - the actual story. I can think of no worse offender in this respect than the SSA1, which feels more like a tech demo for a mission creator players don't have access to than it feels like actual content. It's less a story made for us to consume and more a product which tells me "See what we can do? We're so much better than those peasant Architect authors! We can make EVERYTHING custom!" Yes, I see. Can you make your story custom, though? Because it feels like you slapped it together from Lego bricks.

Budget and time constraints are not an excuse. As far as an actual writer's job is concerned, this is neither so expensive nor so time-consuming. Even if we extend this to mission design, the average time needed to make a basic story arc is around a week, not counting QA testing which is typically carried out by other people. I assume it would take longer if the arc needed custom everything, but that's all the more reason to NOT include custom everything. Take SSA2.1, for example. That arc used entirely preexisting maps, almost entirely pre-existing character models, relatively cheap new enemy factions pulled together from existing critters and only a couple very simple scripted sequences. And it was amazingly good. SSA2.1 is good not because it has lots of bells and whistles, but because it tells a good story, and a good story doesn't take as much time and money as people seem to be convinced it does. It just takes a writer who cares about the writing as opposed to about the gimmicks. Well, it takes an editor, too, as SSA1.7 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Basically, time and money are not an excuse for not knowing the lore of the story you're working on, or otherwise not asking someone who does or cross-referencing a lore source. People manage to make shockingly good Architect arcs on their own time after work on zero budget and with limited tools. If actual developers are unable to at least match that, then it transpires that their better tools are more of a liability than a help.

Speaking of the Bolero shoulder fur, Dink already said she'd look into porting it to Sleeveless Jackets. I really, REALLY appreciate that, but I'd also like to offer an extension of this as a goal for the future: Would it be possible to get that fur on all upper body types and not just Bolero and Jackets? I'd appreciate seeing it on Tights, Tights with Skin, Shirts and so forth. I suspect it may look a bit strange, but no stranger, really, than having Clockwork Gears coming out of my armpits, yet that's pretty normal for this game.

And while we're at it, could we please get the Spike Epaulettes ported over to things that aren't jackets? I'd like to see them usable with all categories of upper body. I get that the idea is that they're a military uniform decoration, but I'm sure we can come up with reasons why we're using them on things that aren't military uniforms.

*edit*
And speaking of Jackets so much, it would be nice to see a few more trenchcoat options. The new Imperial Dynasty Bolero options were fantastic and finally gave a point to the "shoulders" category, so can we see the same happen to trenchcoats?

Actually, this would require some work but it's not technically impossible in the slightest. Right now, "ears" are built into every face they come with. Some faces, like the Skull, don't have ears. Some faces, like Sightless, have ears bound to the head in fabric, as though compressed under a mask. Most faces, however, have the same set of human ears.

Why I say this isn't impossible is an artist could go through all the faces and entirely remove their ears wholesale, then re-add those ears back into the Ears category as "human ears," as well as an additional set of "ears under mask." After this, move the "none" option all the way back to the end of the list, have the list default to human ears with a skin texture and you're golden. Nothing has changed for most faces and what has changed for a very few faces can be easily fixed with the proper Ears option.

I would really like to see that, please.

The trouble comes when you consider that we can never really agree on what the "good" parts are and what the "bad" parts are about this game. Some people insist the game is too easy and we want more challenge, so that's a bad part. I like the game BECAUSE it's easy and lets me solo with a relatively slapdash build, so to me that's a good part. I consider an intricate and involved story to be one of the best parts about this game, yet others (chiefly Venture) talk as though nothing in the game's story is worth a crap so that sounds like a bad part.

In general, I agree with you that when you get "this game with all the good stuff kept and all the bad stuff removed" may well turn out something completely different from what people imagine it as. And I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the stuff we really like is at the same time really damaging to the game and the development team's ability to expand it.

And here are a few good examples:

It also showed me that "better" graphics don't necessarily make the game look better. The prevalence of reflective costume pieces that don't take colour well, the design theme shift towards more over-detailed "realistic" costume pieces and the HIDEOUS strain on my system are all factors that some days make me wish we hadn't made the game "prettier."

This is an idea I will always oppose under all circumstances, just because I've seen what it entails. I HATE it when animations are split between the lower and upper halves of a model because it makes them lose all feeling of weight behind them. It makes melee combat especially look like people fighting hand-to-hand while sitting down on wheeled swivel chairs that they roll around the battlefield. Human (and humanoid) posture while standing up involves the entire body. Kinetic firearms "kick," so a shooter must brace to combat recoil. That sort of thing. I've seen games that do combat on the move, and unless it's a FPS game where you can't see your feet, it has always looked horrible.

This is another thing that scares me. If by "the genre" you mean comic books, then I feel this is the worst thing that could happen to City of Heroes from a storytelling or aesthetic standpoint. Right now, the game has a very "anything goes" type of environment that's accommodating to comic book enthusiasts, but isn't alienating to people like me who don't really care much for comic books. In fact, back in 2004 when I was considering buying the game, one of my primary concerns was how true this game would be to comic books, because all I wanted was an RPG in a contemporary setting as opposed to a fantasy one. I didn't want a comic book. I've seen other games try to pull off being a "comic book game" and the results have been gravely disappointing.

If by "the genre" you mean MMOs, then that's even worse. I can deal with a game with a bad setting, but a game with annoying insufferable gameplay is much less likely to keep me around. I've often said I'm still with City of Heroes mostly because this is the MMO which has the least amount of annoying irritating **** that I have to deal with (less so with Incarnates forcing me mess with Inventions, but I guess it was too good to last before). Pretty much the last thing I want to see happen to City of Heroes is for it to become more like other MMOs, by which I mean more like WoW. In a day and age where MMOs are sold based on "has PvP, has crafting, has auction house, has loot, has raids, has guilds" rather than any part of its artistic vision, anything that's NOT like WoW or Lineage II (the two major frameworks these days), the more I'm likely to enjoy it. Too bad that aside from City of Heroes, I really haven't seen one like that.

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All of this is not to pick an argument, Rian, so much as to point out that we, as a community, will never be able to agree on what makes the game good and what makes it bad.

Not everything in the game needs to be spastic, and "corpse-blasting" has never been a reasonable argument. If your team is killing everything before your animations complete, they probably don't need your damage contribution to begin with.

*edit*
I'm sorry if this sounds like an ******* thing to say, but I do believe it. I know City of Heroes is an easy game and I know some sets' contribution can get lost in the shuffle. That doesn't make the sets bad, so much as it means the team is fighting enemies well below their power level.

Not to mention that hockey-mask-wearing, hockey-stick-swinging maniac pretty much describes Casey Jones, and he's a hero in the TNMT universe. RP arguments about what's "heroic" will always fail for the simple fact that a hero isn't made by a spawning idea, but rather by the narrative which brings this idea to light. In the hands of a good enough writer, everything can be heroic. I have a succubus who feeds on people's life essences and leaves them consumed and she's a hero just fine.

*edit*
And I'm VERY interested in the new backpacks. The golf bag doesn't move me, but the two other ones just might. I have at least one giant robot character that I've wanted to give a big technological backpack to, but there really isn't one right now. We have jetpacks, wings, magical floating back details and that AWFUL brown boiler, but nothing that looks high-tech. This, I hope, will fix that.

I wouldn't mind if it WERE a dramatic attention grab, but there's nothing dramatic or attention-grabbing about a beckon. That's why I talked about setting someone's butt on fire or spraying water in someone's face or some other use of actual super powers that's irritating but not damaging. Moreover, attention-grabbing shouldn't equate with mind control, because we really are making enemies act irrationally stupid. As I said - if there were a reason why beckoning someone to attack you gave you a practical advantage rather than forcing their hand, I wouldn't mind it nearly as much.

I tend to think of game mechanics in terms of how they would affect another sentient player. Suppose you're in a team-on-team fight. Who do you attack first from the enemy team: The Tanker or the Defender? Not the Tanker, that's for sure, so being forced to attack the Tanker is just forcing you to make a bad decision. Mind-control or illusion powers can do that, but last I checked, having superhuman strength doesn't give you control of other people's minds.

At the very least, I want Taunt/Confront to LOOK like something that might make an enemy want to attack you, if not ACT as a more potent power. Same for Placate, actually, though its potency is pretty much enough I'd say. It just looks underwhelming.

I'm pretty sure Mt. Rushmore can solo a x8 spawn of pine trees just because granite tends to have a longer lifespan than trees, but that doesn't mean Mt. Rushmore is very likely to get up and punch you. That's what the post you're replying to is saying - Tankers are tough and, given enough time, can also be dangerous, but on any given team, they are pretty much the LEAST immediate threat of all. It's especially egregious with "perma-Granite" Tankers since the key to defeating them comes down to walking faster than they do, which isn't hard.

This is actually one of my big problems with Taunt - it makes no sense when you stop to think about it. I'm sure you could taunt hothead thugs, but when you start talking highly-trained disciplined soldiers or AI-controlled robots, it becomes a problem, that problem being that while the Tanker is hard to kill, it poses not very much of a threat. In fact, it would be logical to target the things you can kill faster first, especially when those things are actually far more dangerous and ESPECIALLY when you can just walk around the Tanker.

When you talk about "tanks" from comic books, these aren't just the toughest guys, they're also some of the most dangerous. Take the Thing, for instance. Sure, he's not very fast and you can probably bog him down with a few annoying minions, but turn your back on the guy and let him land one good blow on the back of your head and see how your priorities change. As far as I'm concerned, it only makes sense for enemies to attack a taunting Tanker if NOT doing so would be an obviously wrong decision. Hence where my oooold suggestion comes in:

Have Tankers (and possibly Brutes and Scrappers) deal considerable additional damage against taunted targets that aren't actively targeting them. Say you taunt an AV but that AV ignores you and goes for your Blaster anyway. Axe him in the back of the head for, say, double damage and see how he likes it. THAT would make a Tanker dangerous, and it would actually serve to make him a threat that HAS to be pinned down or else it will run wild.

Right now, Taunt is tantamount to mind control, and it forces enemies to be stupid even when there's no reason for them to be. Attacking the Tanker is the stupid choice, and if actual players are put in this position, they'll be smart and go for the healer. That's why I'm saying it ought to work less like mind control and more like good judgement, essentially by creating penalties for NOT attacking the Tanker.

Ignoring the fact that pretty much every piece of so-called co-op content is, in actual practice, hero-only content that villains just have access to, that's not a good position to have. Co-op content is beyond old at this point, and I'm frankly getting sick of the "Heroes and villains must work together to stop a common threat! Oh, and er... Villains can be jerks about it, I guess!" angle of... Essentially every major plotline to hit the game. Enough with the cosmic horrors and alien invasions and "bigger than our differences" disasters that requires heroes and villains to work together.

Let heroes be heroes, let villains be villains and stop with this co-op nonsense. I didn't buy it for the Rikti War Zone and I don't buy it now. There's only so much co-op content you can put into the game before you may as well just merge the alignments and be done with it.

I honestly don't like that idea. Sure, some of the new arcs are good, but I REALLY don't like the new approach to storytelling. I've cited a lot of good newer stuff, but that stuff's good pretty much because it's a lot like the old stuff, where you're told what to do, why you need to do it and just let loose to play the game. I don't need scripted sequences, cutscenes, dialogue trees or every boss I defeat wanting to speak with me in order to enjoy City of Heroes. Honestly, I enjoy the old style greatly, and I find all of these old arcs to be good BECAUSE they're simple.

I like kill-alls, and indeed play every mission like it were a kill-all irrespective of its actual objectives. If anything, I hate missions that rush me or force me to leave before being able to kill everything on the map. I like simple objectives like taking down a boss, clicking a glowie or rescuing self-extracting hostages. I like simple clues that pop up in my actual clues window, as opposed to in conversations or text boxes. I liked the City of Heroes of 2004, and my opinion hasn't changed.

If anything, what the old 2004 story arcs suffer from isn't a lack of annoying gimmicks, it's a simple case of just poor writing and padding. To Save a Soul, for instance, sends me to the "psychic plane" about five separate times, once for no reason and four times to get a single individual clue. As far as I'm concerned, all of those missions could have been condensed into one and just had me find all the clues on my first go, or at most two, by having the first foray actually have a point. Similarly, The Organ Grinders has me visit a chemical plant that it turns out wasn't involved in any way, only to accidentally find a 5th Column base under it and go raid that. Just 'cuz. World Wide Red can probably be split up into three parts - start to Moment, then Moment to Wildflower, then Wildflower to Director 17. Division: Line can do with a bit more personality for Angus McQueen and a bit more interaction with C'Khelkah and so forth.

What I'm saying is I don't want to see my favourite old arcs crammed with the gimmicks of modern mission design because I don't LIKE modern mission design. I'll make concessions that some of the newer story arcs are good, but they're good DESPITE all the gimmicks thrown into them, not because of those. In the same way you talk about old stories being good but poorly told, so I see new stories being good, but told through annoying and immersion-breaking means.

Dark Astoria is one of the best pieces of new content mostly because it budgets its "gimmicks" in a smart way and lets me just go out and kill stuff, but it's still heedlessly annoying in more than a few places. Defeating the army of Romulus by relying on an army of unreliable NPCs that die mid-way through is rage-inducing, as is the final mission that does the same thing. The one where I have to essentially camp around a boat at sea and fight ambushes and tentacles all mission is equally as bad because it's just poor gameplay. The one with Scirocco and Ice Mistral with their screen-obscuring power effects and that HORRIBLE full-screen filter where I can't see a damn thing just means I stumble through that mission blind as a bat and occasionally take swings at targeting reticles.

Basically, I don't think ambushes, NPC allies and mid-mission conversations necessarily make for a better game, and I'd hate for that to happen to the old story arcs that I still enjoy. Maybe if our mission designers can keep up the good work from Dark Astoria and SSA2.1, then MAYBE I'll trust them to mess with the oldies, but as of right now, no. These guys have a lot of horrible content to atone for.

That's not a "with skin" piece. It's in the same category, yes, but this it's actually a whole entire texture not functionally different from Tights or Alpha or Tech Sleek. It's a single texture with fabric and skin all in one. The upside to this is the fabric can be a lot more detailed. The downside is you can't alter the skin and the fabric separately. This combo is set in stone.

Traditional "with skin" pieces for women use a basic skin texture that's a carbon copy of Tights, but brown-tinted as opposed to greyscale. It lacks a navel and nipples, for obvious reasons, but the skin texture very much does exist without any patterns, and it looks like a Barbie doll. "Clothes" are then painted over it in exactly the same way as patterns are over Tights pieces, where each article of "clothing" is just a colour mask that tints the base skin a different colour. As with most of the game's textures, tinting the the skin white gives you the base texture that's in the PIGG files, so what you see showing through white Tights With Skin is the look of the base skin texture for women.

It not just might, it will. Masks, like Tights With Skin, are nothing more than patterns over the base head and face texture. It's why eyebrows show through them. They are not functionally different from lipstick or eyeshadows or the back-of-head tattoo. City of Heroes doesn't seem to have the tech to create overlapping textures over the same model dynamically, so if you want two textures on top of each other, you have to compile them together into one static texture and display that over the mesh, meaning that you will need a separate face for every face+mask combination.

While I don't disagree with you on this, I do want to point something out - "painted-on clothes" can be applied over a variety of upper body textures. Any skin texture that's relatively smooth can look the part with tights painted over it, such that the paint looks like clothes. What this means is we can, eventually, get some degree of skin customization that's not just skin colour. Particularly, this is the only way I can think of to implement the muscular skin for women I've been asking for for years now. You CANNOT integrate that into baked-in fabric/skin combos, but you very much can do it with patterns over skin. Unless we get a MUCH broader variety of Shirts for women, and get them such that they don't have this obvious gap between the fabric and the skin, that is.

Slight correction: This was done as a means of giving Fear powers a purpose in I4 Arena PvP. Prior to I4, "fear" type powers would use the effect of Afraid, which is nothing more than an AI flag to cause the critter to run away from the source of the effect. Obviously, this couldn't work on players (some games have tried it and it sucks), so a different effect was needed which wouldn't require the AI piloting a player character. Hence, Terrorize, which acts like a hold but one that suppresses itself for a very small window whenever the Terrorized target is attacked.

I'm still not entirely sure how Terrorize works, but I do know that being unable to queue up powers while Terrorized so that they can fire whenever the short window of opportunity presents itself means you have to basically spam the button and flood your Combat channel with "You can't use powers while terrorized."

It doesn't help that it's not a very good game with a story that's one of the most disappointing I've seen in years.

Yeah, I get it, it's tragic. The whole thing is dark and depressing and oh so tragic. But is this REALLY the sentiment you want to send me out on? "We fought, so many people died, it's all so tragic." First Ward HURTS. Of course it does, it's designed to hurt. In every mission briefing and conversation, contacts never fail to remind me that it's tragic. Vanessa herself earlier told me that "And for this, you must ask men to die." Yes, honey, I get it, it's tragic. But for all of this tragedy, what was accomplished? What do I have to show for all this hardship and sorrow? "It's tragic." Midnight is dead, Diabolique is free (and we all know how that goes) and Katie is still in the Seer Programme... And the story just ends. Sure, we saved the world, but it's a pyrrhic victory when pretty much everyone walked away broken or dead, and Vanessa's constant deadpan melancholy doesn't help.

Mind you, this is before Night Ward, but for how many Issues, that's what we got for an end. "It's a tragedy" and the the story just cuts out like it ran out of tape. I haven't run Night Ward yet, but I'm told this provides closure. Whether it does or it doesn't, however, doesn't change the fact that any good story needs some kind of payoff at the end, something to make me think "Hey, I want to go through that again. It's worth it." For as much as that story is focused on immediate dramatic payoff, it really fails to produce anything at the end but a sputter and a stall. And that really is a tragedy.