SuperOz

I only found this out a little while ago, and I have to say I'm sorry to see you go. I'm sure you probably feel it's time to seek out some new challenges after six years, and in the video game/MMO industry, that's practically an eternity. You'd probably be the first to reflect on how vastly the game has changed since launch.

It's also ironic that my current character, who's only half a level from 50, is playing in Peregrine and constantly zooming past you from mission to mission. I will definitely take the time to stop and pay my respects.

I also hope that you as the player aren't afraid to make your voice heard talking about the game (I'm extremely pleased to see that you're going to be able to playing now without the stresses and strains of working on powers) and that you continue to share as much as you have your love of things geek and things game-related. It's people like you who continue to bring us all back here, because it really is true that few game developers are as open and approachable as the Paragon Studios staff, and you and BaBs particularly were.

I got to speak to you once at the anniversary celebrations along with BaBs and found you incredibly approachable and pleasant.

My sincerest wishes for your future employment; I don't think they realise just who they're getting....


S.

Just some quick comments on this one....

As for why wrestling is on SyFy: Essentially World Wrestling Entertainment pays networks a lot of money to air their shows and they virtually guarantee you an 18-35 demographic. WWE does bounce around networks a bit but they are normally a pretty good draw. When the wrestling did first start on SyFy, they played with zombies and weird characters on their shows, but then quickly ditched it.

As to the cancellation of SGU: I'm not surprised at all. I think the whole 'grim and realistic' type of SF show and that kind of show generally has plateaued and people know it. Having characters that are not only unlikeable to the audience but to each other is putting the noose around your neck early on. And SyFy are desperate to recreate the critical and mainstream success of BSG, but they and the producers of the BSG stable of shows are going back to that well far too often and they'll wind up diluting what goodwill remains for the original show.

I personally don't know anyone who stayed with SGU in any real meaningful way and I think it was a mistake for the Canadian producers to go this route. The original SG continuity and cast of characters had a strong genuine following and it's always a bad move to ignore that.


S.

Ahhh...Walk on the Wild Side...we get that out here in Australia too. Funny funny stuff.


S.

'Blink' is outstanding, and Steven 'The Grand Moff' Moffat is a fantastic writer. I thoroughly and utterly enjoyed the first Matt Smith season and the two parter season finale was wonderfully audacious.

Pretty much all of New Who is good (aside from Davies' propensity for Peter Jackson levels of sentimentality at times), with occasional lapses courtesy of Mark Gatiss normally.

One of these times I should share the story arc and stories I wrote for my Doctor Who roleplaying game...and yes, there is a proper version of it out there now.

S.

From one Aussie to another Ozzie....you'll be missed, mate. Have a cold one on Christmas and think of us.


S.

Seven pages later....

Initially, as a writer, I was very enthusiastic about the AE and what I thought it might be able to do (this was before I saw the initial 'final' product).

One of the regular in-game missions that always stood out to me because of its pacing and breaking from the regular format of 'all the NPC's on this map you have to fight' was the RWZ mission where you attended a peace conference. To this day if it pops up for me, I'll go dressed in a tux.

So I thought: 'I want to do that! Gives me a chance to tell the story through NPC's.' And I immediately faced frustration a) Because I couldn't access that map and b) At the time, it was virtually impossible to have a virtually combat-free mission (or so I thought).

So I stepped and stayed away from the AE for a long time and let other SG mates write stories (which invariably in my experience went between ridiculously hard missions with walls of text to arcs starring, written and played by the author...with the apparent intention of just grand noting themselves).

I agree entirely that the rating system is broken as deployed; if anything, perhaps the rating system should be used via the descriptions of the arcs. So you break it down by Drama/Comedy/Canon/Non-Canon and so on and find Like/Dislike arcs under those categories rather than lumping everything together like some high school talent competition. So I could happily search in my Drama section and a ticketer or farmer could find what they wanted too.

What kept me away for a long time was what a number of people have mentioned, which is the very existence of the AE buildings in-game. Superheroes playing holographic games of their own missions? Sounds kind of ludicrous, and it wasn't til recently that I thought of ways I could use this to my advantage, using its own in-game story existence as a jumping off point for stories.

I realised that if it's a holographic system, it's still an electronic medium, so villains, heroes, spy groups...they could all utilise it for threats, challenges, covert missions...I did a single-mission arc just this last week with the major NPC mobs from Praetoria and wrote it under the pretext that Longbow wants heroes in Praetoria to scout for them (thus giving people an RP/IC reason to go to a zone that tops out at 20 and has no appreciable mobs but plenty of badges).

I'm totally not interested in having five-star arcs, or Hall of Fame or anything like that. I write because I enjoy writing, and whilst the AE can't do everything I want it to do, I'm still writing with the intent of people hopefully enjoying what I do put together. I'm not out to win popularity contests or feed people XP. There's 50 levels of content I can't even begin to compete with on that front. Heck, I give credit to the Devs for even offering players such potentially powerful player content tools. I admit I would like to be able to take that technology and put down temporary events in the game world, but I still look at the sandbox which is the CoX mythology and set myself the challenge of writing sequels and follow-on stories to the ones I myself have enjoyed.

I'm also with an SG now that has its own section in our forums for AE content, we regularly put together RP and AE events and encourage creativity, so perhaps I'm in a better than regular boat, but I write for the AE like I want to write anything: so that I see things I want to see, and maybe others do too. And to me that's the essence of writing, and it gives me great pleasure just to do it.

For me at least, the AE is another place to express that.


S.

I agree with this to an extent, Sam....but I have to qualify that by saying that I feel what Paragon Studios are doing here are pushing their own boundaries. They themselves have said they're doing things in these TF's and in fact in the whole zone of Praetoria that they've never done before.

I can't fault them for that. I don't know if what they're doing now they want to apply to the overall gameplay, but I've never felt these things are exclusive in any way. If it were, then it'd be like fantasy MMO's, where you need special weapon/armor/items just to get in the door, let alone fight against the horrible nasties. No, here you just have to form a group and off you go. Even this issue lets you go and do these things. Does being an Incarnate help? Absolutely. But they haven't gated that to any of us; anyone who wants to do that can go off and do it and the way to improve those abilities isn't gated either.

TF's in my mind are group content play that you do with people you like hanging out with (or maybe by yourself with a group of individuals also), and it should deservedly be a highlight of a story (or a story unto itself) that stands out. Now, not all our TF's are like that (out of the original six TF's, only Positron's has been given a makeover to the point where people love doing it enough to exemp down happily), but Praetoria's stories are pretty epic with some definitely epic choices and none of that is gated at all.

Are the new TF's different? Certainly. Are they replacing regular content? Hardly. Ask anyone who played in Praetorian Earth.


S.

I'm the same somewhat, at 51 months and counting now...I don't deny there are features I want to see in the game and the budget to back them up (say what you will about a certain other superhero game in production, but at least the scope and richness of attention to detail is something I would love to see much more of here. Not to say it doesn't, but I hope the gist of what I'm saying is clear.)

There's also things I've always wanted to see in superhero games that aren't here yet, such as destructable/breakable objects and the ability to manipulate the environment (read: pick up things and throw 'em in various ways), but CoX has been brave enough to release powersets such as Dual Pistols that has its roots in pure aesthetics over stat-crunching. I keep coming back for things like that, the exceptionally strong mission and story arc writing (I don't think anyone can deny that Praetoria's arcs were smart, not condescending and gave players a sense of empowerment they didn't have before, along with the most important element...choice), and the willingness to experiment with their own formats in fields like power animations, costume design and even just pure cosmetic things like emotes.

Sure, my dream would be a CoX that looked like NCSoft's stablemate game in Aion, and had some of the features I listed above, but I also feel every lesson the developers learn by producing miracles out of a six-year old (and older coded) game paves the way for a successor when inevitably that time comes. I don't think anyone here would doubt Paragon Studios ability to make a City Of...sequel if it came about and have brand new and more powerful tools to improve upon the experience.

And I think that's the key; the developers here strike me as wanting to challenge themselves and their game, and I get the sense that they treat the game and all its code as their 'old girl' and care for it deeply. I don't wish this iteration of the game to go away anytime soon, but when or if that time comes, I'll know they've done all they can and again want to challenge themselves.

And how many games and game developers can you say that about these days?



S.

Then hire kids who think they know the Silver Age to write their books.



S.

Geeks rock. When're we getting those Glee folks off tv so we can have Geek, the weekly tv show about how outsiders come together in a society of their own....?


...oh wait.


But that is a seriously cool series, and if I were to advise that girl, the first thing I'd say is 'Jabba the Hutt wasn't killed by a boy...and he was the worst criminal in the entire galaxy'.

May the geek be with you.

Always.


S.

Ignore these people. The reason Grandville is called Grandville is because unknown to everyone, Zynga bought the rights to the Rogue Isles and turned the Web into an internet phenomenon called Farmville.

And you wonder why Recluse rants so often...he got cut out of the profits.



S.

Hm. A chance at fleeting fame! Which will probably have fled as soon as I've posted this...

SuperOz occasionally starts occasional threads to do with occasional thoughts he has, only to occasionally look over them and wonder how it's turned into a flame war about Catholicism vs. Islam.


S.

Well, this is all meant to be the response Post-Crisis to the 'Superman has no life' argument that plagued him during the Silver Age. Byrne pushed for (and got) the approval to put more of the focus on Clark and turn both he and Superman into romantic leads.

The first twelve or so issues of his run nearly always have Clark being somewhere where he gets five o'clock shadow or something so he can look more 'manly'. And yeah, the whole stuff with Diana is just overblown hype...I should point out that Byrne is directly responsible for a particularly notorious issue of Adventure Comics where he's teamed up with Big Barda and they are mind-controlled by an Apokolips character called Sleeze, who basically gets them to make porn....

Make of that what you will.


S.

Awesome. I heard about this before, but I had no idea about the comic.

Way to promote the game and that you can game and have a happy marriage!


S.

Jane Badler was seriously hot for my teenage self...and then they had Sybil Danning join in! RAWR!


S.

It is a strangely addictive show, and does sneak in some very sly humor about things. I noticed a running gag about Iron Man refusing to talk about his failed relationship with She-Hulk, referenced by War Machine (yes, Rhodey!) thusly (bearing in mind it was an 'evil Iron Man but real Iron Man is innocent' story):

Iron Man: How do I know that's really you?
Rhodey: How do I know it's you?
Iron Man: Well, what's something only the real Iron Man would tell you?
Rhodey: Well, you broke up with She-Hulk when you discovered she...
Iron Man: Alright, it's you!

There are sneaky gems like that all the way through...and MARK HAMILL is the voice of the Red Skull! And lord help me...George Takei is Galactus and James Marsters as Mr. Fantastic...I'm sure they do it for young relatives or kids....


S.

- This is just like being in a mosh pit.
- Have you guys seen the Windows Phone ad? The bit where the guy says 'really'? That's how I feel.
-Look at me. Now look at your friends. Now back to me. I am bigger than your friends. Now back to me. Look at your weapons. Now back to me. I have free tickets to that place you hate. Now back to me. I'm about to make you suffer.
I'm a tank.


S.

Also sad to hear of this, but he passed away with family and friends close by.

I'm sure he'll be cracking them up, wherever he's gone.

Where's that?

It's a place where the deceased go, but that's not important right now. I just had to...


S.

Well done as always, Michelle.

As someone who's got a couple of short pieces up on YouTube myself (hey, not above the self-promotion here!), I have to say that you've been an influence on working inside the confines of filming in a game with relatively few tools.

One day, my current situation of moving to a new place to live notwithstanding, I'll put together a body of work that is half the quality of yours. Truly. I often wish I had more time and more patience to work on my own stuff just so I could send you a message to say 'hey, look what I done!'

I look forward to you expanding your projects and trying your hand at different kinds of work.


S.