Post-Oblivaeon Sadness

So...with everything received from the Kickstarter, with a new few games testing out the new heroes, and a few Oblivaeon games under my belt.  There are still heroes to learn and new challenges to tackle.  I have this deep, deep sense of sadness.  This was it...this is the last new official Sentinels content we are going to get (Earth-Prime will be a nice addition as long as it's 100% compatiable but it's not the same...it's M&M's world not Sentinels),  however at this time there are no new Heroes, no new Villians, no new Enviroments. This saddens me...(yes I have Cauldron stuff as well...it's good..and welcome...but it's not Sentinels...and I already own it) there are heroic Archetypes we haven't seen for the game,  there are Villians that have yet to be revealed and fought!  

Yes, the RPG is coming, and it gives me a new outlet to explore the universe I have fallen in love with.  I am happy, and on cloud nine with the new releases...but also very sad that this was it.  I hope with some distance GtG might want to revisit the game by bringing us new things.  I understand where GTG is coming from, wanting to move on, not getting stale or old, going out on top.  However as odd as this might sound I have come to enjoy this game as much at my 32 year love affair with D&D, and seeing it come to an "end"...well it's been a great ride. My friends and I have plenty of things to keep us playing this Game for the foreseeable future.

So yeah...sorry I just wanted to lament a little...I figured this is a good place to do so. 

At least in the more immediate future supporting Sentinels of Earth Prime when it’s released will give more heroes, villains, and locations.  I was glad to get into playtesitng for what is the last SotM expansion and have some input into those heroes. 

More heroes is always good heroes, but yeah, I have felt a bit of this myself over the past few days. :C

Same feeling, fam.  

If there's ever a Sentinels 2e, I do hope that the team decides to include some of the villains that start coming forward through the rpg.  I'm all for an 'advance' of the timeline...

Same here.  Prime War is a spinoff, with alternate reality versions of the characters we know and love (even the Mist Storm ones are perversions that are hard to love).  I have no emotional attachment to Daybreak, the new face of the Sentinel Comics Universe.  Plus both games likely take more of a time commitment than I'm likely to be able to provide.

It also hurts that the final expansion doesn't contain a scenario I'm likely to play again, at least not in physical form.  It was fun to do once but also disappointing in that respect.

And then there's the podcast.  I enjoy C&A's banter but it's not enough to build a whole show on.  The episode topics are rapidly getting hit-or-miss for me; I can see myself unsubscribing in the not-too-distant future.

Apparently the Mutants and Masterminds setting is also pretty solid, and I have high confidence that Christopher will do a good job on the mechanics (he's gotten better over time, although he has a twisted idea about complexity now), but yeah, it's hard to get excited about Sentinels anymore.

There's a not-so-small part of me that wants the RPG and Prime War to tank so badly that C&A decide they have to go back to what works, and return to the card game.  They said it wasn't an impossibility.

I get wanting SotM content to continue but that’s an extremely harsh reaction.   

I'm excited about the possibility of a new base set with updated/upgraded art! :-D That would be awesome!

Now, before I say anything, I want to be clear. You are allowed to have your opinion about the Letters Page, the RPG team of Daybreak, and your disappointment over the card game ending. All of those are valid opinions that you can have factually drawn together and stand a good counterpoint to help things possibly improve. 
 
However, that's not why I'm responding to you. No, I'm responding to you because I vehemently hate the toxic, uninformed, and downright bitter tone you take towards anything that C&A are creating to expand the Sentinels universe beyond new card decks for the Sentinels of the Multiverse game. 
 
Your stance on Daybreak is perfectly fine, but somehow extending that into "I hope the RPG fails" when there has barely been anything seen for the RPG beyond two starter adventures that stand just as much as playtesting as they do storylines is just childish. Beyond your opinion, you have no clue if RPG will work or not, but you've already drawn your conclusion that it can't possibly work because you dislike it and thus they need to go back to the card game. Instead, perhaps await something more substantial to draw a conclusion from.
 
And now, your opinion on Prime War, near as I can tell, is based entirely off of two things that barely represent it as an actual game. You have enough detest for it that you wish for it to fail on principle, when all that I can confirm you possibly knowing is the surrounding lore of the game and the fact it is 'based off of Sentinel Tactics'. Having actually played the thing at GenCon among other places and not just throwing out an uninformed opinion, I can tell you that the thing takes about as much time as a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse, is fast paced and fun, adn something I want to succeed because it does the cell-based, tactics fighting well. 
 
Finally, the fact you feel they should 'go back to what works' rather than actually attempt to diversify their own product in ways that can show more than the cards do just makes you come across like an old man proclaiming how things were 'better in his day' and how we should go back to those days rather than attempt to innovate. If it fails and they have to go back to the card game, so be it. But I'm not going to be pessimistically hoping for that to occur just because I prefer one method of exploring this universe over another

slow clap

Part of me thinks it's really super duper awesome that SotM has a finite narrative scope. While I love the ongoing creative work and world building of, say, Magic: The Gathering, it's also a you-can-never-fully-keep-up-with-it-on-a-finite-budget kind of situation, and there's no end goal as such. SotM has a story to tell, and it tells it through a cool game, and when the story is over, that's it. The game is complete, and I was there to see it happen. In the days of "you know a show is good because it got cancelled before its story finished", that's pretty sweet.

And another part of me totally agrees with the post-OblivAeon lamentation. That's it. The game is complete. The last chapter has finished, the book has closed, and whether the multiverse was destroyed or restored, it's still the end of the Multiverse. There will be other stories, told in other ways, but this one is no more. Its passing is a loss, and a somewhat bitter one.

 

Huh, y'know, I think there's even a word for how it feels: bittersweet.

EDIT: All memes aside, I feel no sadness about the end of the Multiverse.  I doubt I will purchase Prime War (unless they can get the bit-flippers down at Handelabra to port it, in which case shut up and take my money), and although I like the idea of the RPG, it’s not really my style.  As others have said, kudos to GtG for making a game that was meant to end.  There aren’t enough real endings in the world- too many interruptions, and too many overstayed welcomes.  And to MindWanderer, and any others who feel a sense of lamentation at the completion of this game... it’s not over.  The story may have ended, but the game has not.  I have mentioned before that this game has the most active homebrew community I’ve ever seen.  If you think you’ve done everything there is to do in Sentinels... you’re wrong.  Even if you’d prefer to stay away from the H-word entirely (an opinion I suggest you reconsider), there’s still Earth-Prime and goodness knows how many other spin-offs yet to come.  I personally can’t wait for the day when the course of Sentinels comes full ironic circle, with a licensed spin-off from a major publisher.

I understand that you’re afraid of losing a good thing.  But fear leads to butthurt, and butthurt leads to Palpatine memes.  And butthurt about Palpatine memes leads to Anakin memes.

huh not the reaction I was expecting from Mindwander...

Before people get too upset over the comment above, I’d like to share that I think this isn’t really meant to wish ill on these other endeavours, just to note how strongly MindWanderer would love to see more of SotM. 

 

I don’t!

I did. A few years back. Eventually accepted it.

I’m a little leery of when the lack of new decks to play might lead to loss of interest, but I’m not 100% certain I’ll ever get there. When the digital version was new and only had the core decks, I discovered a deeper appreciation of those decks, as I returned to them. I think I have a long way to go with most of the heroes to really grok them in fullness. I’ve started playing the digital game on random and it’s bracing, being forced to not only think more deeply about some heroes I don’t know as well, but also think about how to get some heroes to work well together. I’ve got a long way to go for some of these decks. Like, I have a particular way I usually play Argent Adept, but I’m quite sure there’s a lot more I could do with him. Likewise with Scholar. And despite many plays, I have very little sense of how to play Guise or Setback. Even Sky-Scraper remains an enigma to me.I just get the sense that there’s a lot more I could be doing with the links and judicious movement between sizes.

Perhaps it’s easy to feel this way, with eleven new hero decks waiting for me to explore and I’ll be singing a different tune in a few years, but I really have accepted the end of SotM and gotten over that sadness, so I think even if the lack of new decks eventually leads me to be bored with the game, it will merely be a bummer, not desolation.

On a tangent, our gaming group noted recently that what SotM really needs more of, from a replayability standpoint, is some more villains. We may start taking on the Vengeance format games more often just to get that variety. I also am less likely to object these days when Russ pulls out his home-brewed villain from our D&D campaign. Russ, can you maybe make some homebrewed villains who aren’t so danged difficult?

No I’m sorry, having witnessed my own tussles with MindWanderer, his tussles with other people on these forums, things people have said to me privately, his commentary on Reddit at times, and watched MigrantP even have to sometimes step in in convos with him on Discord, this is kind of the last straw as far as I’m concerned and he’s gotten exactly the right amount of irateness from people.

I have to agree with Jeysie and Taffyman here, as far as the comment is concerned. Telling creators that you're not interested in their ideas and plans to the point you hope they'll fail so they'll start making more of what you want puts so much stress on creators that (supposedly) you care for and are a fan of. All I can think about is the lady from Stephen King's Misery that kidnaps her favorite author and forces him to write his books the way she wants him to. Has anyone here been kidnapped, of course not. But it is telling Christopher and Adam that their new ideas are so bad that they should make what a fan wants instead, and if it takes the failure of their other products, so be it.

I'll chime in on the actual topic of this thread as well by agreeing that I find it bittersweet. It is a fantastic game, and a fantastic story, and so there's a part of me that want's to see more. But at the same time, I don't want them to change what they want to do just for me, and I can't wait to see what other types of stories they want to tell with this as an incredibly well made foundation to build on. 

Hey, I didn't say I wanted their new endeavors to fail.  I said there's a part of me that does.  And I won't apologize for that.  I know I love SotM.  I know I want more of it.  I also know that, even if the RPG is great, I probably won't get any use out of it, since it has a greater time commitment and my friends aren't terribly interested. I may buy Prime War, but it probably won't become my go-to game like SotM was for some of the same reasons Sentinel Tactics didn't (setup and play time, primarily).  I have every reason to believe both products will be be fairly popular.

I wish GtG all success.  They've been a hard-working, community focused company.  I support Christopher, Adam, Paul, Craig, and everyone else in whatever they choose to do.  Christopher and Adam have done a good job and they deserve to branch out if that's what they want.  But like any game company's stuff, I'll buy it if it's good and I think I would play it.  But for me, personally and selfishly, I would find more value in additional SotM content.  I'll buy all of that they choose to make, for sure.  That's all.

All I know is the despair mounts every time they reveal a new potential variant on the Letters Page, when they're not making more variants.

Why aren't they making more variants? :( There's so much material!

I think it would be fun to have more team villains with mini-nemeses that mention the 11 new heroes. Playing with them in team mode feels a bit easier than it should be due to that.

[quote=MindWanderer wrote:

There's a not-so-small part of me that wants the RPG and Prime War to tank so badly that C&A decide they have to go back to what works, and return to the card game. They said it wasn't an impossibility.

[/quote] Yeah, that sure as hell sounds like you want them to fail. And the thing is, it's like grains of sand. No one thing you've done over the years is enough to be bad, but it all piles up. To add to the stories here of people who have experienced your negativity, I've sat there on Reddit and watched you argue with the people who created the RPG system that they were doing it wrong.

I get trying to save face, but take credit where credit is due. You are a consistently negative voice in the community that has had to be talked to multiple times. At some point, you’ve got to consider that the lowest common denominator is you.