SlickRiptide

Is this one of those people who are famous for being famous? I think I'm showing my age...

Sister Psyche is defending Galaxy City alongside Back Alley Brawler. If you wanted to either kill her or injure her badly enough to pull Manticore into a situation that could result in his own death/destruction/ruination, you couldn't ask for better than sending her up against a bunch of Shivans while protecting the city.

With the upcoming revamp to Galaxy City, I've picked up some incentive to finish a story that I began nearly three years ago and sort of petered out on after a few months of kicking it around.

The climax of the story is set against the first few hours of the Rikti Invasion. There may also be some treatment of the intervening months,but not in terrific detail as the story primarily focuses on that first terrible day, and then the aftermath of the post-War recovery.

If you have a character that has some backstory on that day and you don't mind him/her/it making a cameo of sorts (probably un-named, observed from a distance), then I'd be interested in learning some of the details of that bit of your char's backstory.

Certainly, the name, location, a short description of the character and a paragraph describing the action. The story is mainly set in Paragon Heights (Galaxy City) but that doesn't mean that action in other parts of the city would go unnoticed.

I'll look forward to hearing any stories people have.

It's a little difficult to judge, because we don't have all of the facts.

If you get access to Praetoria for being a VIP, but you can also get access as a Premium membership by purchasing it for $10, then I submit that Praetoria is not actually gated content. Both sides are paying dollars to access it. The Premium player even has the advantage, in that his access is permanent whereas the subscriber will lose access to Praetoria if she hasn't previously purchased Going Rogue.

If you can buy a $5 Signature Story Pass for one month, then that content is only gated to the extent that the Premium player is making a conscious choice to forgo that content.

Equal access doesn't mean "don't charge anybody for any extra content". It just means that everyone has equal opportunity for access.

I haven't attended all of the podcasts and such, so I'm not sure if we have a complete list of gated content right now. I suspect that we do not. Until we have that list and we know exactly how much of that gated content will be purchasable in the store as an alternative to a subscription, we can't really say just how "quarantined" the content really is.

Let's face it - Troy's issues 4-6 aside, the second volume of the comics became "The Manticore and Friends Show". That by itself was responsible for a lot of the characterization of Statesman as something he really was never originally intended to be.

That's my only reservation about promoting the comics - New players reading them would conclude that Manticore is the signature hero of the game.

My family moved to the general Seattle area in the seventies, just in time for the big recession back then. One result of that recession was that the freeway expansion that was intended to connect Interstate 90 with Interstate 5 was all but abandoned. For nearly two decades, you had these off-ramps leading off into thin-air and exits to nowhere, right in the heart of the city. That image is what I think of when I think of Skyway City.

I think the zone should have had a few never-completed off-ramps and such to emphasize the idea of grandiose dreams, never fully realized.

My primary concern at this juncture is that the incoming masses of new players should not have to guess about the backstory of the game. The comics, for instance ought to be featured front and center so that new players read those and say "Yeah, War Witch! I know her!" and "Yeah, Statesman, he's the Superman of this world" instead of "Who is this dude with the star on his chest and why do I care?"

A great deal of the original design of City of Heroes was inspired by the desire to attract the players who were accustomed to the gameplay of a Certain Fantasy Game that was the 500 pound gorilla of its time. One of the early tenets of CFG (they got better, later) was that they chose to regulate what information the players received. For instance, and this is completely true - When they introduced new spells into the game, they did NOT tell the players what those spells were supposed to do, or they described them in the vaguest possible way.

This led to a situation very much like the following hypothetical situation:

Arcanaville: This new Double Gun Fu powerset doesn't act quite like I expected.
Guinea Pig: Yes, if only there was a way to measure it's effect.
Arcanaville: *walks ten feet away and pulls out giant double gun fu Pistols of Doom* How many hit points do you have, again?
Guinea Pig: Uh, 865. Why? And why are you pointing those things at me?
Arcanaville: Just hold still. This won't hurt. Much.

No joke, that's what the players were really forced to do in order to figure out how the spells functioned. If you wanted to learn the details about the game, you didn't bother visiting the website of the game publisher. You visited the well-known fan sites associated with the game in general and with the "archetype" or activity in specific that you were interested in because that was the only way to learn what was really what.

I sometimes feel that the devs of CoH adopted that "less is more" philosophy about the game lore when they also adopted the design philosophy of CFG that led to things like hazard zones and street sweeping being deliberately more rewarding than missions. (Yes, in the very beginning missions had intentionally sub-par rewards because "quests" were supposed to be for flavor, just like CFG, and killing lots of bad guys out in the world was "riskier" and therefore should be more rewarding. Fire tanks, perching blasters, and dumpster herding helped put the kibosh on that "riskier" misconception.)

We're going on eight years past the original version of this game now, and even CFG long ago gave up the conceit that "less is more". Our game gave up the "less is more" philosophy about powers effects quite a while ago. I think it's time that the devs/marketing of City of Heroes likewise got over the "less is more" philosophy about the game lore.

At the very least, IMO, we should be able to use the Midnight Club "click on things for clues" mechanic to find history books in the university libraries that expand on various aspects of the city's history; even if those just mostly duplicate the existing website backgrounders.

I think that before I-21 lands, that there needs to be some events involving group shots of folks with BaB and the statue, with their "Galactic Fan" badges on.

The tiered model proposed for Freedom is very similar to a tiered model used by Another Large Game Company to launch a freemium version of their Large Well Known Game. (Gotta love forum moderation.)

That game (I wonder if I'll get modded for using a made-up name?), let's call it X; Game X has a well-established end game. The goal of the tiered system was to convert free players into subscribers, very much like Freedom.

The marketing people of ALGC decided that the way to accomplish their goal was to wall off the end-game from the free players. They didn't do this directly. That is, they didn't build an actual wall around the end-game zones. Instead, they created restrictions on the end-game gear and on the use of the market where the end-game gear is traded.

While a Tier 1 or Tier 2 player could certainly attempt to participate in the end game activities, in practice he'd be hard put to contribute meaningfully and he'd be unable to use any of the rewards.

This is the kind of walling off that the video refers to and, in fact, it mostly failed; just as the video predicted. The reason being that the tier 2 players felt they were being railroaded into a subscription when they didn't want one.
It didn't help that the value of a subscription was dubious if you didn't actually care about the end-game. To their credit, the devs bent on the issue and created a way for the free players to purchase tokens that allowed them to use the end-game gear on a per-item basis and that made the Tier 2 players happy - it meant they had the choice that they craved. That was the important thing, you see - not the question of whether the Tier 3 sub meant spending dollars or not.

The situation in Freedom is a bit different, in my opinion. Aside from the limitations on character slots, the Tier 1 and Tier 2 players of Freedom are receiving a complete game experience. They are able to play pretty much the same game that we all played up through around Issue 12, I think. Tier 2 players, meaning that they spent dollars in the store once, even get "limited" access to some of the premium features like the Architect and Wentworth's.

The only thing that non-sub players are being gated from is content that is "outside" of the main stream of progression in the game. Becoming an incarnate is not the be-all, end-all of City of Heroes. There are many, many people who don't give a flying fig about incarnates or even about reaching level 50.

Praetoria is a bit of an issue, but even that is basically a bonus feature - an alternate universe whose original purpose is going to be fairly well sidestepped by the new Galaxy City entrance zone that lets players choose from the beginning what combination of alignment and archetype they want to pursue.

In the end, I don't believe that the video that has some people excited by its warnings, actually applies here. I think the marketing people of Paragon Studios have actually gone to some lengths to address the issues in the video while still reserving enough content for subscriptions that the subscriptions bring real value to the player. Time will tell whether the players perceive it that way, of course.

A lot will depend on us, actually. The forum users of the forums of Game X reflected the attitudes of game devs, in that they considered the Tier 1 and Tier 2 to be free loaders who ought to be subscribing. They regularly came in and complained about every feature that the freemium players got and acted snobbish towards them. That only reinforced for most of the freemium players that they did NOT want to become subscribers.

If we treat the "Freems" like second-class citizens, they will respond in kind. Paragon Studios, whether they realize it or not, is taking a bit of a gamble that WE, the players, will be a class act and welcome those new Tier 1 and Tier 2's into the fold, show them the ropes, and show them just why their game will be that much more enjoyable as a subscriber.

Lake City is a suburb of Seattle. It lies within the city limits and is subject to the governance of the police and city council of Seattle. It's a Seattle zip code.

Regardless, if you look on the right maps it is still labeled "Lake City" and all of the locals still refer to the area as "Lake City", despite the fact that the incorporated city government of the township of Lake City was annexed into Seattle and ceased to actually exist many years ago.

In any case, the residents of Paragon City have clearly never had any problem with inventing nicknames for the various sections of town that they occupy. The fact that Galaxy City was named as a "city" well after it was already a neighborhood of Paragon City and not an actual town any more is unlikely to have bothered anybody very much.

I am holding out some hope that Doctor Vahzilok will come out to help defend the zone. That would make for an interesting take on the whole hero/villain co-op meme.

I always liked "Lion Plaza". I chased quite a few punks through here. That parking garage behind it is the site of a number of battles from my "signature" Hero's early career.



I'll miss eavesdropping on the Vahzilok surgeons - "The freshest meat is right by the Brawler fellow." "If you want real choice limbs, do go check out that Brawler fellow. The youngest ones tend to flock to him."

In the interests of preserving access to existing content for players that desire such access, I'd like to see the current Galaxy City teleport beacons continue to function. That is, using one would send a Hero to the current Galaxy City zone. Presumably the new tutorial zone will be accessible through Orobouros just as Outbreak currently is accessible in that fashion.

Consider it a "veteran's perk". A legacy thing that only pre-I21 bases have. The creation of the beacons can be halted. Just don't deactivate or remove the existing ones.

For that matter, if someone wants to enter an allied SG's base and use their beacon to get to Old Galaxy City and collect all of the badges there to earn a beacon, go ahead and let them. It would be a sort of an easter egg, IMO.

On another note and maybe I shouldn't mention this - When Paragon Dance Party was removed from the game, and then replaced by Pocket D, there were people who had logged out of the game inside of Paragon Dance Party.

As it happened, when those players went back and logged in those characters, they discovered that they were STILL in Paragon Dance Party. The zone existed still. The doors leading in were just all closed, so to speak.

Anyone who wants to keep access to Galaxy City over and above whatever access might be available from Ororbouros, might do well to create a character whose only purpose is to "live there" past the launch of Freedom.

As far as that goes, I have to wonder what will happen to the super group teleporters. Hmm... *heads over to suggestions forum*

It will be interesting to see how the balance of power shifts. Just as Atlas Park is the home of the Hellions and King's Row is the home of the Skulls, Galaxy City is the "home" of the Vahzilok - a newbie science character spent a fair amount of time working the Galaxy City beat.

What will I miss about it? Everything, really. Several years ago, a forum poster started a thread questioning why Galaxy City even existed - from the standpoint of a new player experience, this poster felt that it was redundant with Atlas Park and it split the player base needlessly instead of funneling new players together as it "should" be.

My response at the time was a sort of mini-essay that analyzed Atlas Park and Galaxy City as the thematic "poles" of the city. Yin-yang, male-female, active-passive. Whether it's the back-story, the atmosphere, or something else, there are many people who have an attachment to Galaxy City whereas I have hardly ever heard of anyone forming an emotional attachment to Atlas Park.

Unfortunately, Atlas is iconic of the game and, as Joss Whedon likes to prove again and again, you get a lot more dramatic mileage out of killing something that the audience cares about.

People, devs included, who say "Well, just take a story mission in Ouroboros and you can visit the old zone whenever you want" are people who really just don't "get" it. The loss is not about badges. Galaxy City is as much about Galaxy Girl and her part in the story of Paragon City as it is about an alternative to spam in Atlas Park. It's about being connected to a living, breathing part of the history of the game world and about feeling like some part of the city is actually "home". For whatever reason, this is something that they never succeeded at doing with Atlas Park; at least not for me.

Atlas Park is "downtown" where Galaxy City is "old town". In an ideal world, we'd have both. However - The devs today seem to agree with the poster I mentioned, that the new player experience should be streamlined and funnel everyone into a single space. It's too bad. I'll miss the place.

I've decided that my true ultimate freedom would be the freedom to discuss the ******** game industry without having to self-censor every statement and invent creative ways to discuss the work of other companies on other products in threads that are NOT compare and contrast threads, without actually talking directly about them.

Troy is clearly the avatar of Beetlejuice.

Hickman! HICKman! HICKMAN!

*POOF*

It's SHOW time!