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A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the 5th Column and the Council
There are certain villains that just resist all logic and refuse to go out of style. Case in point: Nazis. Despite the fact that they were a political party in a war that ended about 70 years ago, somehow it's still satisfying to beat them up. That was the basis behind the initial placement of the 5th Column on the launch of City of Heroes... a position that was later usurped, then reclaimed, and now remains in a sort of back-and-forth limbo. You can't talk about the 5th Column without talking about the Council because the two groups are almost the same. Of course, one is a lot more reprehensible than the other, which oddly makes them far more interesting. Put simply, it's a tangled web of subterfuge and backstabbing, and the two organizations are still struggling for dominance on the streets of Paragon City. They're like a slightly more accessible version of Nemesis for one another.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: What we need on the road ahead
Here we are after the kick, and I have to say, thus far 2012 feels pretty much the same as 2011 but with fewer weather effects. But it also brings the opportunity to ask for a new round of features from City of Heroes, and as I think you've all learned by now, I'm always willing to ask for new stuff for the coming year. Just look at all my requests from last year and you'll see what I'm talking about. So did I get what I wanted? Well, we got a big new dump of improved content after all, which sort of fulfilled my first request. There's been no word on any new archetypes, and we only got two full issues last year, unless you count the little half-issues in between. Let's call it an even half. But those weren't predictions, after all; they were just wishes. So what do I think we should wish for over the next year?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: 2011, year of freedom
It's just about time for us to bit 2011 a fond farewell, something that I'm sure some of us will be glad to do. And just as I did last year, I thought now would be a good time to look back at the five biggest stories pertaining to City of Heroes over the last 12 months -- including the very obvious one. But there were other stories, some of which might not be about the game proper do but still impact the market. I will definitely say that last year seemed to have a larger number of stories that shook up the status quo in the game. In comparison to last year's various major changes, Paragon Studios took this year in a bit more of a low-key route, the huge shift in the game's business model notwithstanding. But it was still a year of changes, just like every year, so let's take a trip down memory lane at my picks for the top five stories.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The story's the thing
Story is important in the superhero genre. For most people, stories are what originally makes the genre interesting over the more ubiquitous fantasy or science fiction options. And for every superheroic comic with lackluster execution you can point to, there's something else you can point to that provides some fascinating new takes on the archetypes and ideals. OK, maybe that correlation isn't quite one for one, but the point is made. Stories are a big deal, and as a result, the way story works in City of Heroes is worth examining, especially since another game has recently come out with an emphasis on storylines. So, doubly relevant. If you're only going to read the introductory blurb here, though, I can bottom-line it for you without the rest of the column -- the approach is pretty schizophrenic. The game has some moments of brilliance and some moments of idiocy, and there are also some near-choked with a general apathetic vibe. It's kind of what you'd expect from a story told by hundreds of people over seven years. The times when it's on, sadly, are somewhat scattershot, which makes it hard to say, "This is worth playing just for the story."
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The power reset
Respecs are a powerful tool in MMOs. They're a way for you to feel confident that no matter what choices you make when developing a character, you can make better ones further on down the line. Instead of worrying with each character decision that you're locked in to something you never wanted, you know with confidence that you can always back out if turns out that your abilities are actively causing you to die in horrible and unwanted ways. And in City of Heroes, you get three of them. This is the sort of thing that raises a few eyebrows, since having a limited number of choices to rectify your already-limited number of choices is not something to inspire confidence. And I'm not going to lie to you: It's certainly not the brightest decision in the world. But the hard limits on the total number of respecs you get doesn't actually mean you're forever locked in to terrible decisions. The fact of the matter is that for a number of reasons, you won't really care.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Vahzilok
A lot of the villains in City of Heroes started out as pretty nasty characters and only got worse from there. You can certainly justify why the Skulls feel the need to be a bunch of vandalizing thugs, sure, but it doesn't change the fact that the gang formed because a couple of thugs got to be top dog in the area. The Sky Raiders have always pretty much been out for piracy, the Circle of Thorns are one side of a battle of evil against evil, and the good acts that come out of Crey are more a testament to the size of the organization than anything. And then you have the organizations that started out with good intentions. Often times these groups still have good intentions, in fact -- it's just that they don't have good ways of executing them. So it goes with Dr. Vahzilok and his loose coalition of involuntary surgeons. Oh, sure, they're modern boogeymen on the streets of Paragon City, but their goals are noble -- a fact that's easy to forget when you're faced with zombie bombs.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The Incarnate divide
The other week, our regular feature Global Chat featured an interesting comment by Blackcat7k regarding the City of Heroes Incarnate system. I'm not going to duplicate the entire comment here, but I'd encourage you to go read it so that we're all on the same page. In case you're in too much of a hurry to read, however, let me sum up: It's essentially lamenting that the Incarnate system has fundamentally broken the game's leveling and endgame structure, forcing players down a very narrow path in order to participate in most of the recent content additions. Long-time readers and perpetual archive trawlers will remember that I did an article about precisely what could happen when the Incarnate system went live about a year ago. Well, we've had quite some time to see the system in action and find out what works, what doesn't, and so forth. And the thing is, the comment was right. The bad outcome has come to pass, in many ways. The endgame is the Incarnate rush, and if you're not a part of it, you're on the sidelines. Of course, I'm not entirely convinced this isn't the best that could be hoped for.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Snakes
For the first several villain group spotlights, I haven't been focusing on problems that are unique to the Rogue Isles. This is not entirely by accident -- City of Heroes was what came first, and generally speaking, I'd say the most relevant villain groups started out in Paragon City. And most of those groups do wind up interfering with your activities for Arachnos, too, so it sort of balances out. But Mercy Island faces its own problem, one that starts slithering up from the depths... Unfortunately, this is also a threat that very quickly gets sent back underground. The Snakes are not really what you'd call a big-ticket villain group; they skulk in the shadows and are very quickly supplanted by other villainous organizations. And with the revamp to Mercy Island, they're no longer even your first enemies off the boat. So it's probably for the best that we remember the Snakes now because there might be no more Snakes to remember tomorrow.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Topical cannon
One thing I've been asked, on occasion, is whether or not I'm ever going to run out of things to write about City of Heroes so long as the game is still live and getting updates. The answer, in a word, is "no" -- I started writing when the game was already fast approaching its sixth anniversary, and with everything that's changed since then, I still don't think I can possibly tackle everything under the game's banner. But that having been said, there are also things that I naturally find more interesting than others. PvP is a fine example. I've stated before that I have zero interest in the game's PvP scene beyond an academic curiosity, although I definitely do want the players who are interested to be happy. (They aren't, in case you weren't aware.) And if there's one thing I'm being reminded of recently, it's that there's a certain charm to letting things go out of your hands and letting the readers pick out what you're doing.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Lost
Paragon City has the same problems as any large city. Drug addiction, financial ruin, and any number of other horrible circumstances have conspired to give the city a large population of the homeless and hopeless, left wandering the streets and trying desperately to survive. But something emerged within the homeless population of the city, something that smells of a familiar evil and a problem that was never appropriately dealt with the first time. If your goal is to defend the system, your enemies will find the people whom the system has failed... The Lost are among the saddest of all of the villainous groups in City of Heroes because at their core the group is made up of people who in many ways simply had no options. It's not even that they turned to crime out of desperation. These are people who, for better or worse, were blameless of anything more than minor crimes and poor decisions. And then they found themselves knee-deep in a war, moving from one sort of victim to another.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: My plans lie in shambles!
Welcome to another installment of A Mild-Mannered Reporter, where you've all stumbled into my trap. Yes, you thought that I was going to have a column discussing another villain group due to the end of the last column, but no. Today might not quite be the anniversary of City of Villains, but it's close enough for our purposes to look back at the impact that the first expansion had on... Wait, what? You mean I already did that? Foiled again! Of course, it's not really a surprise. It's hard to picture a world without the villains running around, even if the world conspires to give them a bad name -- not to mention the bad name they give themselves. But in honor of this anniversary, I want to look back and reminisce about a couple of nefarious features that the expansion brought with it that haven't held up quite as well, for better or worse.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Circle of Thorns
Most of the lower-level enemies you face in City of Heroes are temporary threats at best. They're there, definitely, and you have to deal with them, but they aren't going to stick with you for the long term. You move on from the starter zones and they drift out of your memory. The only real exception are the cultists you occasionally run across, robed and whispering about destiny as they abduct citizens for very visual rituals. The Circle of Thorns never quite goes away. It's one of the most insidious groups within the game's setting, made all the worse because of its dogged persistence. And the funny part is that the group's not even particularly concerned with the heroes or villains of the setting. It's busy trying to finish a war that happened centuries ago, a war of gods and great sorcery, and everyone who gets killed is just collateral damage.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Begin again again
If you like playing a few hundred different characters, City of Heroes definitely supports your terminal fear of the endgame. Unfortunately for me and my dreams of seeing that endgame with any reliability, I do indeed like playing dozens upon dozens of characters, meaning that my character select screen is an array of dozens of characters in carefully crafted outfits, many of which characters are not yet eligible for capes. It's one of those habits that I would dearly like to break, and so I'd eschewed making a new character despite the promise of a new starter experience for heroes and villains alike. Unfortunately, I am also a recidivist. When I talked about the latest update, more than a few commenters called me out, rightly, on the fact that I hadn't really played through much of the new content that the issue had to offer. So I decided that now was the time. I was going to make myself two new characters -- one hero, one villain -- and I was going to see what the new experience was like. And I was going to do so while smoking because it seemed somehow appropriate.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Outcasts
One of the elements that doesn't get explored often enough in MMOs is the concept of the people who didn't quite make it. It's generally accepted on some level that adventurers or superheroes or whatever you play are a cut above normal people, but there's still a point at which you stop being a Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster and start being just a guy with a gun and some toys. And the people just below that mark, just shy of reaching the big time, have a story to tell, just like the player characters. So today's look at City of Heroes' villainous groups highlights one of the game's suggestions about what happens to those people. It's a group composed of those not quite strong enough to make a name beyond thuggery but just strong enough to be more dangerous than the low-level mooks you don't even notice. I'm talking, of course, about the Outcasts, the elemental-themed gang of mutants that terrorizes Steel Canyon, goes to war with the Trolls, and makes a cottage industry out of being almost good enough to hit the big time.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Freedom content
So last week, I had meant to cover all of the impressions from the head start of City of Heroes Freedom. What I actually managed to cover was the Paragon Market, which is to the whole of City of Heroes what my nose is to the rest of my face. It's not the first time that a small part has taken over a column, though, and so we're bravely forging ahead into the actual content updates that came along with this patch. And let's be honest, they're pretty significant -- a new zone, a new signature arc, changed power pools, and so forth. Unfortunately, my time with the new content hasn't been as extensive as I would have liked, so there are some parts of the update that I really haven't gotten to sink my teeth into just yet. But I can definitely offer my feedback on what I have seen so far and hopefully rectify the stuff that I've still missed out on in the near future. So is this update all that and a bag of chips, or is it somewhat less awesome than advertised?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Post-survival
So we've had a week to adjust to the new state of being for City of Heroes. OK, maybe a bit less than a week, what with all of the server issues and maintenance, but it's been something close to a week. That means that as a collective playerbase, we can start looking back at the launch and taking a slightly more critical eye. We're no longer running on speculation about how the launch will go; we're running in the wake of the relaunch, expansion, whatever you want to call it. Last week, for those of you who've forgotten already, I wrote a piece specifically about surviving the release when it went live. Now that we've had a chance to go through it, there are some things I got wrong, some things that need more elaboration, and some things that I've just revised my opinion on. Since we've all survived the head start at this point, let's look at what it actually entailed, yes?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Surviving a headstart
Last week, I promised more villains. And I really did plan on doing just that, before it became clear that the headstart program for City of Heroes Freedom was kicking off... well, yesterday. That's one of those pieces of news that's just a bit bigger than chatting about villain groups, so it takes priority. Sure, it's not quite the opening of the gates and the acceptance of free accounts just yet, but it's enough to get players exploring the new content before the non-VIP side of the screen gets to experience the hybrid setup. As those of you with astute memories or a good sense of pattern recognition have probably already surmised, this is a bit problematic from my point of view, as I'm writing this column before the headstart has actually happened, but we're going to be live right after it starts. As a result, I can't tell you with certainty what the launch has brought thus far. But I can certainly speculate on the world being overrun by players flush with new powersets and the new starting areas, not to mention some new costume pieces to help spice up the deal. So what are my survival tips for the first moments of the headstart program?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Matter of pact
We're back online in this neck of the woods, and that means that I can catch up on all of the things that I missed over the past week. And even within the fairly focused sphere of City of Heroes, there was a lot going on -- a headstart for subscribers, the removal of leveling pacts, more details on the rewards you can uncover for Signature Arcs, and the lowdown of the Seed of Hamidon event. Interesting stuff, all around, but it was the pact removal that first jumped out at me. One of the things that CoH has been loath to do over the years is remove things. That's part of why the game has become so all-encompassing for so many players -- every new system has built upon its predecessors, adding new options, moving in new directions. So the removal of one of the game's interesting features struck me as a little odd just because it's something that's nearly without precedent in its lifespan.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Whose side is time on, anyway?
So last week I promised our next little enemy spotlight, but that was before I realized that this past weekend was that delayed double-experience extravaganza in City of Heroes. (I could have checked a calendar, sure, but I assume they're a form of witchcraft.) Based on past experience, this week should be a recounting of my time in the magical land of double or nothing, right? Well, not so much. Due to a perfect storm of circumstances, I didn't get any significant leveling in, and this weekend is also coming before a dump of several new powers rather than just after. So unlike last time, this time I mostly just took part in other activities. (If you really have to know what I was doing, tune back in on Saturday.) So instead, I'm going to take the time to talk a little bit about Temporal Manipulation, partly because I'd like a bit of a do-over for the past weekend, and partly because I'm not sure if I like it just from reading about it. It strikes me as a set that could be very good, but in its own way that might be kind of a bad thing.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Someone dies at the end, part two
Welcome back to our intensely morbid two-part series on the answer to the big question from the first City of Heroes signature arc -- namely, who's going to die? The first part from last week covered the four choices that have the most front-cover exposure. If you were forced to name four members of the Surviving Eight off the top of your head, those are the names that would probably come up first, due to both the developers and general storyline importance. Of course, there were a lot of other theories in the comments last week, including suggestions that death is coming for one or two of the members of this week's list. And there were some good arguments in there... but those are arguments that can just as easily be wrong, something I'll address when we jump past the break and start off with the only survivor who doesn't have a task force to his name.
