SlickRiptide

There's a fair amount of silliness in the profanity filter of the mission architect.

When you find yourself saying "snip it in the bud" because "nip" is apparently a "bad word" (because "nip" can refer to a small sip of alcoholic beverage? Maybe "sip" should be banned also?) things are just a bit too constrained.

When nobody can title their arc "The (Insert Name Here) Gambit" because Marvel Comics took a common word and named one of their characters after it, there's a problem.

The devs have their plates full for the forseeable future. My suggestion is that you let the players take a crack at the list instead. Publish the list on the forum or as a download on the FTP site. Start a forum thread in which players can nominate words to be removed from the filter. The community managers can then review that thread periodically and send a summary of the feedback to whatever red names are in charge of that sort of thing.

In other words, since this is a player quality of life issue and the devs don't have the time, why not leverage the players to do the brunt of the work?

tl;dr - If someone's going to complain about the body bags then they're going to have to take it up with the ESRB. Pretty much all of the "dead bodies" blueside are represented by body bags in the canon missions. It's a game mechanic. It would never have occurred to me to think of them as literally bags that the villain has taken the time and trouble to stuff a corpse into.

I assume "nip" is a "profanity" because it refers to drinking alcohol. Someone really needs to just turn off the damned profanity filter. If they simply don't have the time to go through it, then post the word list to the public and let us nominate words to remove from it. In fact, I'm going to post that in the suggestion forum.

I haven't played the arc and can't comment on any other aspects of the arc or review.

In any case, Recluse is an ex-patriated American (cue Jimmy Buffet) so why NOT run on the American dollar?

Considering the prices and the location, I'm not sure I'd want to eat whatever is in those sausages...

Prestige isn't about you personally, it's about you as a representative of a greater cause.

When Ken Griffey, Jr. took the risk and ran for home to clinch the American League Divisional Playoffs for the Seattle Mariners in 1995, he earned a fat wad of influence for himself as a player, and a fat wad of prestige for the team as division victors.

When you have supergroup mode activated, you are advertising your team affiliation and some of the influence that you would get is sublimated to the team instead. The fact that it has a different name is purely a game mechanic for ease in bookkeeping.

Not that all of this isn't interesting, but it belongs in a different thread. Manticore isn't going to keep wading through six pages of argument about the universe to find the lore questions that he started this thread for.

Which is to say that if you definitively know the answer to a question, go ahead and post it to save Sean the trouble, but if youre just venturing an opinion or stating an argument then please start another thread for that.

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Uh... I'm pretty sure Troy Hickman plays the game.

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Troy never portrayed Statesman or the Phalanx as arseholes.

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What do you mean 'alternate'? Statesman is a gigantic swaggering bully masquerading under a veneer of respectability because he's the least of a large group of dickheads.

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What do you base this judgement on aside from a handful of comics by writers who never played the game?

I get anywhere from 2 - 5 task force invitations whenever I play. Who said they were dead?

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At heart, all of you agree with me. A one time fee would be far better. You may be ridiculing it, there's nothing wrong with the idea. The continuous fee is more ridiculous than the idea to replace it with a one-time fee.

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Nothing ends a thread like someone telling me that no matter how I SAY I feel, the poster knows that I REALLY agree with him. I'm only disagreeing to be cantankerous because I didn't think of such an obviously "right" idea first.

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Oh, and look: GuildWars doesn't have a monthly fee either!

And that one's published by NCSoft as well!

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Guild Wars is not a MMO and ArenaNet has never advertised it as such.

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Please show me even one MMO that offers a Lifetime Subscription option.

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Lord of the Rings Online has offered a lifetime sub in the past. I almost bought one but decided I couldn't justify the cash outlay.

Wizard101 allows you to "buy" parts of the game. You can play in a subset of the game for free. You can subscribe for a monthly fee and have access to the entire game. You can buy credits and use the credits to purchase permanent access to a zone in the game. (Imagine spending five bucks and buying The Hollows.)

One of my favorite time travel stories is _The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World_. It dances around all of the contradictions just plausibly enough and with enough extra-added-fun that when the whole thing wraps up in a Douglas Adams moment that you're left with the realization that the universe is a weird place.

The fun takes precedence over the plausibility, of course. I don't think anyone ever accused a James Bolivar DiGris story of being anything like hard science fiction.

As far as City of Heroes goes, whether they planned it that way or not, the theory they've been evincing is that the Universe has a tendency towards "temporal inertia". Ouroboros doesn't manage to change the timeline to get the results they want just because they fiddle with time a little bit.

Recluse's Victory is not a picture of the future, it's a picture of a potential future, and the potential depends on, essentially, shifting the equilibrium of the lowest energy state. Our world never changes, and it seems from talking to the Menders that our future also never changes perceptibly. It seems that the "causality fields" are really nothing more than the same kind of "potential" as that of Recluse's Victory.

Ubellman is foiled because the Universe produces an opposing force. Doctor Echo is apparently a real time traveler but, like Ubellman, a self-fulfilling prophecy sort who is thwarted by the inertia of the Universe itself.

So far, the only time traveler who could be said to have done anything effective in changing the past (and therefore, the future) is Holsten Armitage, and we don't really know if he's a true time traveler or simply a whacko who's also a scientific genius.

What's the pitch? I mean, sure you've got aliens and super soldiers, but what's the show about?

"Well, you see it's a bit like Hart to Hart, or maybe Remington Steele, except that she's a human and he's a flying squid that melds with her and sometimes turns HER into a flying squid, which really messes with her love life. Together they fight crime."

One of the things I've taken from these suggestions is that my problem is happening because the conflict arises from Fred going all Charles Bronson on everyone and waving a gun around in order to get what he wants.

The main thing I've taken from these suggestions is that it makes more sense for the accident to involve a large truck and a smaller car. The large truck blocks the road but in a way that appears it might be moved. However, moving it is dangerous for some reason. The conflict arises between Fred and the policeman because he's determined to make the attempt while the police officer is concerned for the safety of the drivers around the wreck. The only gun that gets pulled would be the police officer in an attempt to convince Fred to stand down when he's behaving dangerously.

In the end, I may have to drop the police officer out of the story entirely and have the conflict occur between Fred and the driver of the truck. There's still the question of why the officer agrees to let Fred go and I'm on the fence about whether that would actually occur or not.

This also lets Fred be the good guy in the end and offer a ride to the stranded family without them having to trust a maniac who was waving a gun at them ten minutes earlier. *heh*

Well, lots of good food for thought. Sometimes you just need to get a different perspective in order to get divorced from an idea that you had unwittingly married. Ha ha ha!

You guys are the best! This solves my problem or at least gives me the basis for an alternative conflict. Thanks!

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Why not just remove the priests

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Is it just because it's been a while since I last did an RWZ raid because I don't ever remembering seeing the Rikti Priests pop in for the RWZ raids.

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It was sarcasm, so it doesn't really matter. Substitute whatever Rikti annoys you in its place. The point was to find some players who WILL stop the Magi from "running around" instead of demanding that they be removed entirely, either because the OP's groups refuse to use tactics or they place so much value on bounties that they're too unintelligent to realize that letting a "low merit" Magi mess with your team reduces your overall merit total by slowing down your merit collection from the "high merit" Rikti. (Assuming that Magi really are "low merit" in the first place.)

The OP doesn't want to have to think and plan and hire the right people, he just wants the challenge removed.

So, I need some help with a scene. Since I don't have a writer's circle handy to bounce ideas around, I've decided to turn to you, my fellow forumites for advice.

If I seem a bit vague on certain details, it's primarily because the scene in question is tightly focussed on a handful of people and the "big stuff" happening on the periphery is not really relevant except as a catalyst for the drama unfolding on the small stage, so to speak.

<ul type="square">[*] Backdrop - A city is experiencing an event that may or may not be catastrophic. At present, bizarre manifestations are ocurring. Initially, nobody has been harmed, but people are becoming afraid and making for the exits. The streets have become gridlocked as panicked citizens head for the hills.
[*] The Setup - The narrative focus of the scene is on a man named Fred. Fred has had a mostly harmless paranoia all of his life that the country would be invaded at some point by someone, be it Commies, Terrorists, or little green men. Having prepared for the eventuality, when things turn weird he assumes the invasion is imminent, tosses his family into the RV and tries to beat the rush out of town. He is frustrated at the very edge of escape when a collision between the two cars ahead of him renders one vehicle unable to move. He and everyone behind him are blocked literally a stone's throw from reaching the safety of the freeway. A family much like Fred's is left standing on the side of the ride with a disabled vehicle.

A motorcycle policeman arrives, begins dealing with the situation. The kids are watching TV news in the RV and the general threat level in the city rises from weird to threatening. Fred confronts the policeman to find out that they are all blocked until a tow truck can arrive to move the other car, an event that is clearly going to take a long time if it can happen at all. Fred is warned off after letting his anxiety get the best of him and unintentionally making threatening motions at the officer. He returns to his vehicle in time to hear a news report that escalates the threat level to life-threatening and he snaps. He wants his family out of there right now.
[*] The Conflict - Fred pulls a pistol and threatens the policeman and driver of the wrecked car. Someone needs to move the thing or he'll do it himself. The policeman attempts to keep him calm; the car isn't drivable. Fred's going to push it aside with the RV if it comes to that. Tensions escalate, either the policeman pulls his weapon or someone in another stalled car pulls his own weapon and joins the commotion.
[*] The Resolution - When it seems that someone is about to get hurt, a passing hero intervenes. He talks Fred down, confiscates the gun(s) and removes the obstacle, freeing up everyone to move along. Assurances are given that satisfy the policeman to let Fred go for now in light of larger concerns brewing in the city. Fred is allowed a chance at a small bit of redemption when Mrs. Fred makes him stop and take the stranded family along with them. The scene closes as they flee the city and, looking back, see evidence that they may indeed have just escaped an oncoming catastrophe.[/list]
The problem is the section labeled "Conflict", which is a big problem considering that it's where the dramatic focus is.

It seemed sound enough when I originally kicked ideas around. When it came to plotting it out and writing it, though, it fell apart. The whole thing starts to look more and more contrived.

The police officer probably wants that car out of the way as badly as Fred does. He'd probably ask the driver to attempt to move it if it was drivable at all. If it is, there's no conflict. If it's not, then would he REALLY object to Fred wanting to push it aside with his big rig and make space for everyone else to get by? Why aren't there multiple lanes? Why isn't the shoulder wide enough to drive on? If traffic is gridlocked all around, why can't the police officer just commandeer some people from the other stopped vehicles to team up and simply push it off the road?

The dramatic conflict looks more and more nonsensical, yet the climax of the scene depends on it. Removing the policeman entirely leaves the other driver as the source of conflict, which doesn't work well with the redemption theme that closes the scene. I'd really like to keep that.

So, ideas? Comments? I could use some fresh perspectives on this.

I have to say that complaining to the devs that they should remove Magi makes a lot less sense than maybe hiring some controllers and telling them "Don't let those Magi run around."

Why not just remove the priests and the Headmen and, well, anything else that provides a challenge and just make it a big monkey zoo? Better yet, fill it with Rikti Butlers whose job is to greet each raider and hand him a silver tray filled with merits as a welcome gift.

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Also, I thought Cold Fusion is a misnomer, in that it doesn't make things cold, it just starts from room temperature.

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Yes, precisely. Even a process that heats water to produce steam and somehow causes fusion in the process is cold in comparison to the center of the sun. The word "cold" doesn't refer to the effects of the process, merely its ambient temperature. If you wanted to be really correct about the whole thing, I suppose you'd call it "low energy fusion" or something, indicating that the energy required to catalyze the reaction is a lot lower than is typically required to jumpstart a fusion reaction.

It would be easier to dole out suspension of disbelief if he was written as being less overtly steampunk and more Vernesian. Clearly, he's not limited to a steam-tech level of design and technology. The lore says that all of his gear is ultra-modern, and he clearly has a grasp of concepts like nuclear physics, cybernetics, and computer networking. However he plans to upload his mind into the Rikti telepathic overmind, he isn't doing it with steam.

Practically speaking, we get bludgeoned over the head with the steam engine because the devs/writers have to assume that the reader is someone who might never have heard of Nemesis until "just now", meaning just the time the happen to reading the text associated with some random mission clue or piece of salvage. We hear about steam over and over and over where we only hear about atom rays or cybernetics or advanced chassis alloys once per item and only in the context where it matters.

Like I said, I'd be happier if he was just considered a quaint Vernesian scientist as opposed to a stereotypical Prussian steampunk robotocist. He would actually be more interesting as some kind of long-lived scientific genius with a fiercely held agenda driving him as opposed to being an archaic mad genius who is supposedly always one step from ruling the world but who never quite gets there.

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Lie to me sweetly, don't tell me to stop thinking.

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I would sig this if I could figure out how to do it without completely losing the context.

Honestly, if the devs just waved their hands and said "Nemesis found a kind of steam-catalyzed cold fusion" I'd be happy. It would explain everything, including his apparent grasp of atomic energy and steam-powered cybernetics.

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Good and evil are a myth. They are nothing but subjective descriptors of an event/motive.

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While this is a true statement, it overlooks the fact that life itself is a subjective experience. If you want to find any meaning in anything at all, then you either apply the meaning yourself (in which case other subjective definitions become meaningless or at least peripheral) or you look to society to provide the meanings.

There was no objective meaning to Jeffrey Dahmer. He was simply a creature following instincts that satisfied his basic urges and actualized his pleasure. The lives he terminated were equally meaningless - simply the cessation of biological machinery and the conversion of organic material into other forms of organic material.

Once you start down the road of deconstruction, claiming that there is no morality, or even an objective reality, you really don't stop until you end up with the universe being devoid entirely of any sort of structure or meaning. It's all just an unimaginably big quantum mechanical chain reaction. The Buddhists have it right, essentially. Whatever meaning we attribute is nothing but sensory impressions of the veneer at the top of the true reality, which is nothing at all.

If you're going to have a society of any kind, then good and evil are not going to be mythical, even if they're not objectively definable. That is, if you throw yourself in front of a bus to save your fiancee, others will say "Living is desirable over dying. I would want someone to save me in that fashion if I was in that situation. I will laud this behavior as desirable behavior. This is Good."

The fact that a Catholic priest might say "That was tantamount to suicide, a very bad thing. That was evil." does not make it any less significant. It just means that from one perspective it's good, and from another it's evil. (For the record, I don't imagine a Catholic priest would actually say that, it's just what popped into my head at that moment.) Subjective, yes. Meaningless, no.

Therefore, the context is what matters.

For our purposes, the context is "Comic Book Morality".

There isn't 100% agreement on just what all the fine details of Comic Book Morality are. We have general agreement on the gross details, though. Heroes work for the common good. Villains work for their own agendas and their own personal power. Heroes follow a moral code, however loosely defined. Villains follow whatever code suits their backstory and their purposes. Heroes limit their damage to the punishment of the villainous. Villains inflict punishment on anyone for any reason that makes sense to them.

It doesn't matter if that's how things work in real life or not. We're not playing a game in a real life simulator. Moral ambiguity is only useful in Comic Book World as a temporary dramatic gimmick in most cases. Ultimately, a hero who is not "good" and a villain who is not "evil" are unsatisfying and unfulfilling to the people experiencing their stories.

Satisfying stories is what it's all about, in the end. Except for the achiever types who just like seeing big numbers roll up until they hit the level cap.

Send Niviene a PM with a link to this thread and ask her to consider it.

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even your parents(again, not personal) only want you to suceed because it makes them look better.

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I'm going to reply with examples from my own life, so I'll state up-front that I understand that the post I'm replying to was speaking in the general and not specifically to any one poster in the thread.

Rather cynical view of life, IMO. Without speaking to any other parents' motivations, I can say quite honestly that making me "look better" has never entered the equation of my parenting values or methods. I want my kids to succeed and do better than me because I want them to have good lives and avoid my mistakes. I've made some decisions for the benefit of my kids that made me look rather bad to certain people, in fact.

I want them to make ME proud. Now, you can deconstruct that to be a selfish motive if you want, but at that point you're deconstructing life itself to be self-serving. It's like that episode of _Friends_ where Phoebe gets $2000 as a settlement because she found a finger floating in her soda can, and she can't stand the idea of profiting off of someone else's misery. She can't figure out any way to give the money away, though, because every suggestion she makes is shot down by Joey as being self-serving in some fashion, even if it just comes down to her feeling good about herself for the donation. (She ends up spontaneously offering the money to Chandler if he'll quit smoking.)

My brother is a fireman. He fits the bill of "hero" as society defines it, to the best of my knowledge. The cynic would say "He takes pride in his training and ability, so that's sinful" or "He gets paid to be a Captain and run a fire house so that's self-serving." Like I said, at that point you've taken cynicism to the point that every possible action is self-serving and there's no way to win, no matter how many burning houses buildings he goes into in order to rescue the people trapped inside of them.

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heroes usually have some secret character flaw or trauma hat forces them to see saving people as beneficial for themself.


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This statement seems to me to be basically false. The Peter Parker formula fails for most other usages simply because it becomes trite really fast. It's certainly untrue for any of the heroes on my CoH account. I guess I can't speak to the current crop of comics, but I'm betting that you would have a difficult time actually proving this statement with more than a handful of heroes in print today.