Author Topic: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story  (Read 46552 times)

Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #40 on: December 05, 2012, 08:00:23 PM »
Thank you for writing this.   I'm not a professional critic, or anything, but I know what I like.   I feel satisfied with this as an 'ending' that allows for a new beginning, either in another game or with the ressurection of CoX.  It was very well considered.

I understand if the game gets picked up this is unlikely to be made canon, but I feel like it could be.

I believe the devs were going a completely different direction with the Battalion and the Coming Storm.  They did mention the next villains after the Battalion would be the Dimensionless, and there's a sample cut scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM) that implies the Battalion might have been a more human-like army.

I tried to be as consistent with existing canon as possible (but I'm not a canon expert: I looked up a lot to try to confirm my memories, but its still possible I made a few errors here and there) and I tried to avoid contradicting things I thought might be coming, but in the end I felt I had to go my own way on the story, and not try to write what I thought the devs were going to do next.

I do appreciate that many players have told me that in the absence of a closing arc they consider this to be essentially the canon end of the game.  That makes all the effort worth it.

Perfidus

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #41 on: December 05, 2012, 08:04:17 PM »
I avoided the official forums in the final months. I never posted much anyway, maybe... 400 posts in a span of five years. But in the end days, the forums were unreadable. All the negative people trying to stop us, undermining us at every turn... it wasn't anything I wanted to deal with when I had a finite amount of time enjoy my home.

I didn't regret that decision at all until the day after this arc was run on beta. I had never even heard of it until after it'd taken place. Had I braved the den of negativity that was the official forums, I would've been able to find out, and attend.

Alas. I'm glad I at least got to read it here.

Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #42 on: December 05, 2012, 08:42:01 PM »
Incidentally, since the forums are structured a bit differently here than the official forums were, I'm never entirely sure where to start threads based on content.  As I indicated on the official forums I would do, I started a thread talking about some of the backstory and behind the scenes stuff regarding both this story and the in-game event in the multimedia section.  Its here: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,6709.0.html

Any and all questions regarding the technical details of the in-game event or the process of developing the story and the event are welcome.

Colette

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #43 on: December 05, 2012, 11:48:30 PM »
"I had never even heard of it until after it'd taken place."

Same. We'll have the chance to enjoy it in AE again. Wait and see. And I look forward to meeting Arcanaville there, too. I expect she's a trip!

Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #44 on: December 06, 2012, 12:05:12 AM »
"I had never even heard of it until after it'd taken place."

Same. We'll have the chance to enjoy it in AE again. Wait and see. And I look forward to meeting Arcanaville there, too. I expect she's a trip!

The in-game event was not an architect mission, it was a zone event held in the Rikti War Zone on beta.  We managed to gain administrative access to that shard, and I asked a group of players to help me plan and execute an event in there as part of this story.

The second section of part seven of the story is an abbreviated description of what happened during the in-game event.

Blue Pulsar

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #45 on: December 06, 2012, 12:36:54 AM »
The Dream Doctor smirked, and for the first time since the meeting began he looked right into the eyes of Silos.  "I need a Nemesis plot."


...

Soooo epic.
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Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #46 on: December 06, 2012, 01:25:13 AM »
Editor's note: in paragraph six of part five, some people may have wondered which drug fueled criminal gang was called the "unicorns."  Apparently the forums replace "Trolls" with "unicorns" automatically.  This text error has now been fixed in the reposted story in this thread with a syntactic sledgehammer.

Colette

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #47 on: December 06, 2012, 01:35:18 AM »
YOU stole my Syntactic SledgehammerTM? I need that back!  :gonk:

faith.grins

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #48 on: December 06, 2012, 01:47:53 AM »
Editor's note: in paragraph six of part five, some people may have wondered which drug fueled criminal gang was called the "unicorns."  Apparently the forums replace "Trolls" with "unicorns" automatically.  This text error has now been fixed in the reposted story in this thread with a syntactic sledgehammer.
Lol.  OK, after looking at how you fixed it, I would argue that's more of a ball-peen hammer than a sledgehammer.  Now, if you'd posted an image of the word, that would be a sledgehammer.

(I mean, seriously, it's not the most elegant solution I've ever seen, but it's certainly an appropriate amount of effort for the problem.)
Aram:  "Man, just look at all this.  Sometimes it's hard to believe that we get to live surrounded by such wonder."
Gamal:  "We don't live over there." Aram:  "We don't?"
Gamal:  "No.  We live over there." Aram:  "... But it's all on fire."
Gamal:  "Yes it is, Aram.  Yes it is."

Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #49 on: December 06, 2012, 01:57:21 AM »
Lol.  OK, after looking at how you fixed it, I would argue that's more of a ball-peen hammer than a sledgehammer.  Now, if you'd posted an image of the word, that would be a sledgehammer.

(I mean, seriously, it's not the most elegant solution I've ever seen, but it's certainly an appropriate amount of effort for the problem.)

Syntactic ball-peen hammer doesn't really have the same ring to it.

Drug-fueled criminal unicorns should probably be saved for a successor game.

faith.grins

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #50 on: December 06, 2012, 02:08:13 AM »
Syntactic ball-peen hammer doesn't really have the same ring to it.
I've always been a fan of the word "cludge."  It's always sounded clumsy, y'know?

Drug-fueled criminal unicorns should probably be saved for a successor game.
Enh.  There's already a level in Diablo III where you get to slay unicorns who bleed chocolate.  It'd feel like a rip-off, methinks.

Of course, we could always just make a faction somewhere of dudes who dress explicitly in pink and wear viking helmets with only one horn.  Their primary rival gang could be the Dragons, and their major beef could be their idea of which fantastic animal is more realistic.  Dragons could be the fire-based faction for that level range and they could be the arms-dealers in town, the Unicorns could be mostly drug-runners and mostly melee weapons and Pain Domination-esque powers.  You could walk past two groups duking it out and hear one of them shout, "Your wings aren't even evolutionarily sound!"

Hrmm.  We could make that work.  I like how your mind works, Arcana.
Aram:  "Man, just look at all this.  Sometimes it's hard to believe that we get to live surrounded by such wonder."
Gamal:  "We don't live over there." Aram:  "We don't?"
Gamal:  "No.  We live over there." Aram:  "... But it's all on fire."
Gamal:  "Yes it is, Aram.  Yes it is."

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #52 on: December 06, 2012, 02:19:43 AM »
These questions apply not only to writing, but for any self-venture. Writing for most people tend to lay between self-venture and dependent on others, though. Technically you are your own boss, but you still have a publisher/editor calling the shots.

If I was to offer any advice to writers (without any experience in the field  :o) I would say basically the same I tell any prospect Indie developer:

  • Keep your job.
  • After hours, work on your own personal project.
  • Publish it digitally, times are changing and you don't NEED a publisher. Kindle, iBooks, Nook stores, sell directly.
  • Sell cheap, $0.99 to $2.99 tops.
  • You will make very little on your first attempts but eventually may start making some money.
  • This is extremely important: Aim low. In the case of books, don't shoot for the next 1k page masterpiece. Stick to short stories at first. The more complete works you create (start to finish) the more you will learn about the entire cycle, and the better prepared you will be for the next one.
    You will get feedback faster, you will learn what works and what does not work faster. You will get paid faster.
    It's pure win/win/win to do shorter jobs at first.
If, and only IF, you find  yourself in such a successful position that you can pay off your mortgage, your car, and your food and property taxes for the next year, THEN feel free to quit your job and continue doing your writing and publishing your eBooks on the stores I mentioned above.

But the questions posted by Victoria are key. You must be ready to be your own boss, but you must be ready to be your worse boss. The boss that demands the most out of you than anyone ever demanded before. You should be capable of becoming your worst nightmare: a boss that can read your mind and slap you for even thinking about slacking.

It will be stressful, but if you have what it takes, even if you end up not making a living, it can be extremely satisfactory to hear from customers that loved your product.

Pet peeve alert: you may not need a publisher but you more than likely WILL need an editor.  The last three self-pubbed e-books I bought all desperately needed one.  It really underscored to me that I need to stop doing two things: 1) assuming people are as good with words as I am and 2) offering my editing services for free.
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johnrobey

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #53 on: December 06, 2012, 12:51:57 PM »
I avoided the official forums in the final months. I never posted much anyway, maybe... 400 posts in a span of five years. But in the end days, the forums were unreadable. All the negative people trying to stop us, undermining us at every turn... it wasn't anything I wanted to deal with when I had a finite amount of time enjoy my home.

I didn't regret that decision at all until the day after this arc was run on beta. I had never even heard of it until after it'd taken place. Had I braved the den of negativity that was the official forums, I would've been able to find out, and attend.

Alas. I'm glad I at least got to read it here.

Ditto just about everything you wrote here, Perfidus.  I found those final weeks on the official forums to be hell.  (I'd never read or contribited much to them prior to the Sunset notice.)  Most of what the doomies had to say I simply had to skip after a while.  Perhaps some were "unicorns" seeking attention, but I'd give others of them benefit of the doubt as their particular way of coming to terms with our collective loss--which does not mean I enjoyed their negativity.

I didn't see it played out in RWZ, but greatly enjoyed Arcanaville's "The Immortal Game" and very glad she posted it in full here, since I'd missed reading the final installment(s).
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Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #54 on: December 06, 2012, 06:38:59 PM »
Ditto just about everything you wrote here, Perfidus.  I found those final weeks on the official forums to be hell.  (I'd never read or contribited much to them prior to the Sunset notice.)  Most of what the doomies had to say I simply had to skip after a while.  Perhaps some were "unicorns" seeking attention, but I'd give others of them benefit of the doubt as their particular way of coming to terms with our collective loss--which does not mean I enjoyed their negativity.

I didn't see it played out in RWZ, but greatly enjoyed Arcanaville's "The Immortal Game" and very glad she posted it in full here, since I'd missed reading the final installment(s).

FYI, I also posted the story parts and information about the event in a thread on Titan that was originally in the Sunset forum section; that thread is here: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,6325.0.html

I tried to get the word out on both the official forums and here, because I knew many people had stopped reading the official forums by then.  Still, I was a bit hesitant to do a mass marketing campaign for the event through other channels, because I wasn't 100% certain we could all pull it off, and there was the distinct possibility that we'd get stopped somehow before then or the Beta server itself could have gone down with no one to restart it.

Pinnacle Blue

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #55 on: December 06, 2012, 07:28:23 PM »
I knew I forgot something.  Arcana, that was some damn good fiction.  Thank you for sharing it with us.
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Felderburg

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #56 on: December 06, 2012, 09:04:57 PM »
Is there a video of the event somewhere? I couldn't make it  :'(
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Atlantea

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #57 on: December 06, 2012, 11:03:57 PM »
Samuraiko was there filming! And I know a couple of others were demorecording as well. I'm certain something will come of those efforts!


Arcana

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #58 on: December 07, 2012, 04:12:47 AM »
Someone asked about the alternate ending.  I'm getting confused over what I posted where, but I don't think I posted the alternate ending on Titan, only on the official forums.  If I posted it here, I can't find it now.

The ending in the final posted version is the one I liked the best, but there was a slightly alternate extended ending scripted that I decided not to go with.  It went something like this (I never fully wrote it up).

Part Eight would have been called "Time's End" and a very short Part Nine called epilogue would have had the actual end of the story.  In that part, the end comes, and the Incarnates and humanity, the Battalion and Hamidon and the biosphere of Earth, the Dream Doctor and Prometheus are gone, and Silos is left on a barren Earth.  And instead of a sunset he watches a sunrise.  And after the sun is high in the sky, he looks around and takes stock.  And then Silos reaches down and shovels a bit of dirt into his hand and sprinkles it back down to the ground.  All around him, patches of green begin to spring up.  Silos then sets his time armor for one billion years into the future, and in a flash he's gone.

I spent a long time deciding which ending was best for the story.  I'm still torn now, although I believe the way the story ended was the best period at the end of the sentence.  The alternate ending above is the more "cinematic" ending.  Of all the decisions I made in crafting the story, this one was the hardest by far.

houtex

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Re: The Immortal Game: The Last City of Heroes story
« Reply #59 on: December 07, 2012, 04:13:52 AM »
Just finished reading it, finally.

Well Done!  I especially liked the part incorporating our taking out the Hamidons as part of the story. :)

Good stuff.  Thanks so much!