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Kanos posted:Pretty much. WHFB Chaos isn't boring, Archaon is boring. There are tons of fun and flavorful Chaos characters - you don't need a huge compelling backstory or ~interesting motivations~ to be cool in Warhammer, you need bombast and fun character traits. Grimgor is almost literally Greenskin Archaon - the biggest baddest dude who punches all the other dudes and fights all the time to prove he's the biggest baddest dude - but Grimgor is beloved because Grimgor has a lot of personality. Grimgor is just +1 Orcs. It works because orcs as a faction have a lot of personality. Archaon is just +1 Chaos Undivided. It doesn't work because undivided has no personality. It is the gods that flavor something beyond fantasy evil robots.
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May 27, 2020 23:44
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Do they ever put any emphasis on Archaon's Imperial past beyond it being the reason he hates Sigmar? Like the asspull of him winning, despite it being an excuse to create a new, more copyright friendly setting aside, might be easier to swallow if it was explained because he's intimately familiar with the structural weaknesses of the Empire. Also, his generic world destroying angst might be more compelling if it was put in contrast to other Chaos champions and demons. My understanding is that everyone is not so secretly terrified of the Gods, and probably fucks up in a bid not to displease them. Whereas Archaon doesn't give a drat and does what he wants, multi-layered strategies included. All that being said, that's pretty hard to express in a game like Total War, so generic doomsday villain it is. Also the easier explanation is still the most valid, Chaos Undivided is boring and the individual gods are fun.
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May 27, 2020 23:47
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I mean, people hate Abaddon too but he ends up being cool in his own right in the Horus Heresy and the books about him they eventually wrote. But that's because it's neat to see him successfully corral all the misfit chaos factions, so there needs to be more than just him. They do more with undivided in general there though- like the Night Lords, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion, etc all have their own flavour where Archy has none.
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May 27, 2020 23:52
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:I mean, people hate Abaddon too but he ends up being cool in his own right in the Horus Heresy and the books about him they eventually wrote. But that's because it's neat to see him successfully corral all the misfit chaos factions, so there needs to be more than just him. I know this is a game meant to sell miniatures to "children," but what motivates Abaddon? Archaon at least has the twisted logic of a broken zealot, Abaddon...doesn't seem to like Chaos much either, but for no real discernible reason.
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May 27, 2020 23:54
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Aurubin posted:I know this is a game meant to sell miniatures to "children," but what motivates Abaddon? Archaon at least has the twisted logic of a broken zealot, Abaddon...doesn't seem to like Chaos much either, but for no real discernible reason. DADDYYYYYYYYYY Horus sucks exactly as much as Archaon because they are basically the same character
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May 27, 2020 23:58
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Aurubin posted:I know this is a game meant to sell miniatures to "children," but what motivates Abaddon? Archaon at least has the twisted logic of a broken zealot, Abaddon...doesn't seem to like Chaos much either, but for no real discernible reason. None. I don't even think that he's loyal to Horus. Just pointless anger. Which makes Kharn the Betrayer the best chaos character, because there are IRL accounts of commanders executing cowardly subordinates. Really, he is just a exaggeration of that desire to kill so much so that who he kills is irrelevant. He would rather his men die trying to kill the enemy than have them live peacefully. Which is strangely super believable.
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May 28, 2020 00:00
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Aurubin posted:Also, his generic world destroying angst might be more compelling if it was put in contrast to other Chaos champions and demons. Well we're probably getting Be'lakor as a LL in game 3, and he's a more interesting Chaos Undivided character. Basically a Daemon Prince who tried to challenge the Chaos Gods, so for his hubris he was given the "honour" of guiding new Everchosens. His character is looking at Archaon and going "Wait I have to serve this rear end in a top hat?"
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May 28, 2020 00:01
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Although his past gives the inkling of traits to work with nothing is done with them. He was raised by a Sigmarite, learned that he was Norscan, despaired so hard about falling to Chaos he hit himself with self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost comically scant and stilted. Then again I always find a crisis of faith to be odd character motivation in a setting where that faith leads to tangible, wide-spread power. It'd be a pretty cool and unique viewpoint if Archaon lost faith in Sigmar and turned to Chaos because he found out about the origins of the world and the Old Ones, also toss him a hard counter philosophy and a rivalry tie to the Lizardmen. It's kinda weird how nobody seems to be aware, at all, of the stuff the Lizardmen will roar at everyone they fight. Chaos would be the one faction with guys at the top who can be told the direct divine truth because their bosses are well aware of it. palms emblem of slaanesh behind back Here's a fresh idea, what if Archaon was a cute girl? 
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May 28, 2020 00:01
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Randarkman posted:. I recall that Archaon's backstory is that he was a Half Norscan Sigmarite Priest Whose own order tried to kill him, telling him the reason is that a prophecy says he might be the next Everchosen. Archaon does not get why he is being singled out, and after going on a little quest gets to Altdorf to interrogate the Grand Theogonist. Who tells him that they were not sure he was the future Everchosen. The Prophecy just says that it will be half norscan priest of the Empire, so they were just planning on killing all half norscan priests. However they were now certain it was him and could call the other murders off, because the prophecy said that the Future Everchosen would come to Altdorf and ask him about this stuff.
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May 28, 2020 00:02
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MonsterEnvy posted:I recall that Archaon's backstory is that he was a Half Norscan Sigmarite Priest Whose own order tried to kill him, telling him the reason is that a prophecy says he might be the next Everchosen. Archaon does not get why he is being singled out, and after going on a little quest gets to Altdorf to interrogate the Grand Theogonist. Who tells him that they were not sure he was the future Everchosen. The Prophecy just says that it will be half norscan priest of the Empire, so they were just planning on killing all half norscan priests. However they were now certain it was him and could call the other murders off, because the prophecy said that the Future Everchosen would come to Altdorf and ask him about this stuff. Ah, that's more interesting. Is that in a book? The wiki glosses over it so fast it makes him look like an idiot. Warhammer Wiki posted:But once his true heritage and destiny was revealed to him, Diederick Kastner despaired and looked for salvation, travelling many miles towards the heart of his faith.
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May 28, 2020 00:03
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Blooming Brilliant posted:Well we're probably getting Be'lakor as a LL in game 3, and he's a more interesting Chaos Undivided character. In general Be'lakor's curse of 'YOU WILL NEVER ACTUALLY BE THE MAIN CHARACTER OF ANYTHING' and his constant, failed attempts to become a main character are one of the better divine punishments in hams.
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May 28, 2020 00:05
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Doomykins posted:Ah, that's more interesting. Is that in a book? The wiki glosses over it so fast it makes him look like an idiot. Yeah its in a two book series they wrote to flesh him out a few years ago. The books gets really stupid and generally set up a bunch of things that could have been interesting but play out in the dumbest possible ways.
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May 28, 2020 00:06
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Scrub-Niggurath posted:If we’re pulling out the obscure lesser chaos gods then I invoke Necoho the god of atheism and disbelief in religion and deities wait what that's brilliant 
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May 28, 2020 00:06
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huh, my game seems to have crashed so hard its uninstalled itself from my system. That's a new one.
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May 28, 2020 00:08
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Doomykins posted:Although his past gives the inkling of traits to work with nothing is done with them. He was raised by a Sigmarite, learned that he was Norscan, despaired so hard about falling to Chaos he hit himself with self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost comically scant and stilted. Then again I always find a crisis of faith to be odd character motivation in a setting where that faith leads to tangible, wide-spread power. It'd be a pretty cool and unique viewpoint if Archaon lost faith in Sigmar and turned to Chaos because he found out about the origins of the world and the Old Ones, also toss him a hard counter philosophy and a rivalry tie to the Lizardmen. It's kinda weird how nobody seems to be aware, at all, of the stuff the Lizardmen will roar at everyone they fight. Chaos would be the one faction with guys at the top who can be told the direct divine truth because their bosses are well aware of it. Archaon would be a lot more interesting if he was extremely excited about the whole end times thing as he read about it as a kid once and thought he would give it a try to see if he could do it right.
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May 28, 2020 00:08
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I also can't remember what lore snippet this was from, but I think it was also implied Tzeentch Just As Planned Archaon into finding out about his hertiage/destiny and going down the path of Chaos. It's implied if Tzeentch didn't interfere, Archaon would have been the person to finally banish Chaos from the world. Anyway it doesn't help Archaon just talking from the games alone, that he has to share spotlight with Wulfrick and Throgg, far more interesting and cool Chaos Undivided champions. Something I think CA agrees with given you can make either of them the Everchosen in-game 
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May 28, 2020 00:09
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Doomykins posted:Here's a fresh idea, what if Archaon was a cute girl? I want this, not only because cute girls are nice, but because having another cool female LL is needed. And a small girl who is super hype about the end times sounds hilariously good.
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May 28, 2020 00:11
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Archaon also had some "12 labors of Hercules" type poo poo to become the Everchosen but I don't remember much about that
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May 28, 2020 00:12
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Hunt11 posted:Archaon would be a lot more interesting if he was extremely excited about the whole end times thing as he read about it as a kid once and thought he would give it a try to see if he could do it right. I'd be really on board with an excitable idiot who just wants to befriend horrible people and monsters because they think the mediocrity of normal life stinks or something. Anything but Generic Angry. I wonder why Archaon and Abaddon are both so no-fun about Chaos Undivided? Maybe it is a writing standard from GW, that you need a straight man character so all the monsters and rat men and orcs and vampires look better in comparison.
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May 28, 2020 00:13
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Doomykins posted:Although his past gives the inkling of traits to work with nothing is done with them. He was raised by a Sigmarite, learned that he was Norscan, despaired so hard about falling to Chaos he hit himself with self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost comically scant and stilted. Then again I always find a crisis of faith to be odd character motivation in a setting where that faith leads to tangible, wide-spread power. It'd be a pretty cool and unique viewpoint if Archaon lost faith in Sigmar and turned to Chaos because he found out about the origins of the world and the Old Ones, also toss him a hard counter philosophy and a rivalry tie to the Lizardmen. It's kinda weird how nobody seems to be aware, at all, of the stuff the Lizardmen will roar at everyone they fight. Chaos would be the one faction with guys at the top who can be told the direct divine truth because their bosses are well aware of it. Having skimmed through his story now it's kind of weird how this thing is only really used in the backstory to turn Archy from Sigmar to Chaos. It seems to sort of stop being something in his story after that then he just goes north and gathers toys and solves riddles for the Chaos Gods, being the bestest at all their tests. Maybe you could have had something a bit interesting or entertaining by just taking that self-fulfilling prophecy bit and running with it to a ridiculous degree. He's been at the receiving end of self-fulfilling prophecies for so long that he eventually just completely gave in to its whims and kind of ends up being the living embodiment of fate or whatever, and he kind of "creates fate" with his actions or whatever on a metaphysical level. Might even theme in a bit with Chaos I guess if you accept that Chaos is fated to destroy the Warhammer world (though I think Nagash was actually the one to do it in the End Times?), though that might fit in better with Tzeentch in particular than Chaos in general. Anyway, something at least.
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May 28, 2020 00:15
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Right, so the latest version of my mod is now up! The aforementioned changes are now live! I will apologise in advance for dropping a pretty big update a day after launch of the mod, it might mess with your saves and/or skillpoints and/or units. Throgg also gained a new skill that gives him Terror and more uses out of his Vomit Attack, this will reset any points you may have added into his unique skills at the top. Sorry! Have some pictures:     If you find anything odd just mention it here, the goonfite discord, or just write on the mods page. Gejnor fucked around with this message at 00:20 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 28, 2020 00:16
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Neuronyx posted:I want this, not only because cute girls are nice, but because having another cool female LL is needed. And a small girl who is super hype about the end times sounds hilariously good. What about a grown rear end woman who is hype about the End Times?  quote:Valkia the Bloody, known also as the Gorequeen, the Valkyrie, the Bringer of Glory, and the Sword-Maiden of the Blood God is a dread Daemon Princess of Khorne. She is charged by her god to bear the worthy warriors of Norsca, and beyond, who die honourable deaths in battle to fight on in Khorne's hall for all eternity. Once a fell warrior-queen of the Norscan clan known as the Schwarzvolf, Valkia rose in the Blood God's esteem by leading her warriors to vanquish tribes dedicated to the other Chaos Gods, and by slaying any who questioned her right to rule.
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May 28, 2020 00:17
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Gejnor posted:If you find anything odd just mention it here, the goonfite discord, or just write on the mods page. hey that reminds me, the goonfite discord invite in the OP is long out of date
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May 28, 2020 00:23
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Cease to Hope posted:hey that reminds me, the goonfite discord invite in the OP is long out of date Yeah they expire in a day so thats not so odd!
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May 28, 2020 00:26
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Gejnor posted:Yeah they expire in a day so thats not so odd! I mean, you can make invites that don't expire after 24 hours, lol
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May 28, 2020 00:26
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Cease to Hope posted:I mean, you can make invites that don't expire after 24 hours, lol You can? lol, i had no idea. Uhm, im not the discord owner though, do you need to get in or do you just want a new permanent-ish link? If its the former: https://discord.gg/egZJZ9 if is the latter, i'll try and bug the discord owner for it!
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May 28, 2020 00:31
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Doomykins posted:Although his past gives the inkling of traits to work with nothing is done with them. He was raised by a Sigmarite, learned that he was Norscan, despaired so hard about falling to Chaos he hit himself with self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost comically scant and stilted. Then again I always find a crisis of faith to be odd character motivation in a setting where that faith leads to tangible, wide-spread power. It'd be a pretty cool and unique viewpoint if Archaon lost faith in Sigmar and turned to Chaos because he found out about the origins of the world and the Old Ones, also toss him a hard counter philosophy and a rivalry tie to the Lizardmen. It's kinda weird how nobody seems to be aware, at all, of the stuff the Lizardmen will roar at everyone they fight. Chaos would be the one faction with guys at the top who can be told the direct divine truth because their bosses are well aware of it. Wulfrik digging the pecs on Siggy. Me too, pal
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May 28, 2020 00:31
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AnEdgelord posted:What about a grown rear end woman who is hype about the End Times? If this lady shows up - which I really hope happens! - it needs to be as a Norscan character, not a Chaos mook. Our northern buddies could use another couple dudes to fill out the roster, the other being Surtha Ek.
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May 28, 2020 00:41
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Neuronyx posted:I want this, not only because cute girls are nice, but because having another cool female LL is needed. And a small girl who is super hype about the end times sounds hilariously good. I want more on the good guy factions. There's Fae Enchantress and Alarielle, though they are just healers. We got Repansse at least as an asskicker, and she's cool. Khalida sitting there at true neutral. Most of the lady LL's are evil though, Morathi, Hellebron, Isabella, Neferatta and Valkia are almost certainly coming. Sisters of Twilight, Elspeth von Drakken, and Katrarin are there in the wings for good guy ladies, but I'd really love just like...Tyrion or Imrik but a lady. (just because I play HE the most sue me)
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May 28, 2020 00:41
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Eimi posted:I want more on the good guy factions. There's Fae Enchantress and Alarielle, though they are just healers. We got Repansse at least as an asskicker, and she's cool. Khalida sitting there at true neutral. Most of the lady LL's are evil though, Morathi, Hellebron, Isabella, Neferatta and Valkia are almost certainly coming. Sucks that the elven militaries aren't gender-neutral.
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May 28, 2020 00:44
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Isabella is not evil how dare u
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May 28, 2020 00:45
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We're also pretty conspicuously missing Ariel for the Wood Elves.
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May 28, 2020 00:48
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Sucks that the elven militaries aren't gender-neutral. Yeah, it's sadly part of their engine and how they create the soldier variants, but elven units should be gender neutral drat it!  It's literally the reason I fell in love with the Asur!
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May 28, 2020 00:48
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I hope they get that figured out for WH3. Not having mixed gender units is a weird omission. Like flagellants and peasant mobs. Women never lose their temper in the WH universe apparently. At least you can use fantasy chauvinism to wave away the regular military forces, even though you shouldn't have to.
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May 28, 2020 01:01
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Mr.Unique-Name posted:Archaeon beat up the other champions and proved his worth to the gods and received all of their blessings, didn't he? It wasn't just "okay the chosen one is here we're all following him." Part of the issue is that Archaon was released way back in 1998 for 5th edition in the Champions of Chaos army supplement, where sure he had some lore (about the same amount as a number of the other introduced champions), but he was just one among many - if the one currently striving for the Everchosen title. He was also not really a huge entity in Storm of Chaos in 2004 - he was leading the invasion sure, but there really wasn't much more new fluff about him other than that he'd gained all the proofs required for the position. Storm of Chaos is also where the "Grimgor beats Archaon" stuff originally came from. To explain Storm of Chaos, it was basically done as a huge player event of the new invasion where all the races were divided into two factions where people would submit the results of their battle reports online to determine how far it had progressed... and you're probably seeing the issue with this method of storytelling where they wanted something to happen(you can take a guess how well the reporting section was proofed for false reports). This was back in 2001, and Chaos was not really the easiest faction to play, as they rely so much on melee, but the troops everyone wants to take are so expensive - basically it was doable to build a good army, but it's the faction by far the most vulnerable to loading up on expensive lord/troop options and then getting shitstomped by artillery. To add onto this, Orc players got pissy they'd been lumped into the disorder faction and horribly tilted the results from their end as well. So instead of a player-driven storyline where the tide devastated some of the northern reaches before getting turned back(because "ending our setting" wasn't remotely in the cards at THAT time), with the extent of the destruction contingent on the players, it was "the lorewise huge Chaos horde proceeds to have issues getting past the first, mostly unprepared, town." The GW moderators tried slowly pushing it along so there was at least something, which ALSO led to people getting pissy, before basically just throwing up their hands and having "Grimgor sucker punches him out of nowhere and the invasion's over, go home." This is fine as a meme, which it was at the time and for a long time thereafter, because fluffwise in the leadup Grimgor had only managed to stalemate against the second-in-command (who Archaon had beaten handily in a challenge), so Grimgor "winning" against their boss by dirty tactics was cool - it certainly works for an Orc mindset. The problem is that if you look around at a lot of the people seriously commenting about the balancing and fluff of characters in-game recently, "Chaos boy was beaten in a straight-up fight, how dare they make Grimgor so weak" is much closer to what they seriously believe. Anyways, as a character he was basically a background entity (aside from some, not much, army book fluff) again until the leadup to Endtimes began... nearly 10 years later. So if you're keeping track, you're at ~15 years of not terribly firmly-characterized looming background menace, over which time you've gotten who knows how many lore writers tweaking the setting as a whole, multiple of whom added some detail or another to their backstory that didn't necessarily fit great with older stuff. You also ran into Black Library's writer's pool now writing far more books, and them being more about the the events happening NOW rather than the older character-driven ones that were be rather more flexible with timeline (seriously, the William King G&F novels never had a predefined timeline, and some of them don't remotely fit in the Endtimes leadup even given a few decades passing). So you've got a mostly vague background menace that's passed through multiple writing teams (many of whom weren't very good) over 15 years, with bits and pieces of backstory basically being added at a whim by various people over that timeframe. And the most thorough characterization was done at the end of this, by probably the worst writing team of the lot (given just how godawful Endtimes was in general, in basically ANY of the plots), so him being a pretty poor character isn't really a surprise.
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May 28, 2020 01:01
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Zore posted:We're also pretty conspicuously missing Ariel for the Wood Elves. Okay, but she would be another life-magic-ish female character with strong ties to the land and trees. Alarielle and Fay already blend together, it would be hard to distinguish her. I'd rather have the Sisters of Twilight
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May 28, 2020 01:06
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You understate how much of a shitstorm Storm of Chaos was. GW had run events like this before, notably the Battle for Armageddon in warhammer 40k, where the Orks and Imperial Guard players battled in the third war of Armageddon. The issue GW didn't realize they were facing was that a battle for a meaningless planet between two races the players generally like? You'll get a legitimate push/pull and real competition. The battle of "The people who want to destroy the whole setting" and "Those who'd very much like to not see it destroyed" is going to lead to Order getting their poo poo together and misreporting because... who the gently caress wants to see their setting destroyed. They also tried really, really, REALLY hard to make Archaon seem cool. they took him all the way to Middenheim, and forbid Empire players from bringing Karl Franz because "He hadn't gotten to the battle yet" from ALTDORF. So yeah, Storm of Chaos was a shitshow, and then GW showed us what their "Unfucked" Storm of Chaos was, and it was The End Times, and guess what? It's loving terrible.
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May 28, 2020 01:08
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The only good End Times plot was Nagash's return, the stuff with the Glottkin was fine but mostly filler, it wasn't until they released book 3 with the elves that people smelled a rat It also helps that when the Nagash book was released people didn't know that The End Times was going to end the setting in its entirety rather than just a big story event that led into a new edition of WHFB with some factions consolidated Plus the Nagash book is the one that gave us Settra's famous line that he said in response to Nagash's offer of power in exchange for servitude SETTRA DOES NOT SERVE, HE RULES
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May 28, 2020 01:11
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That's the thing though, there were over 10 years between the events and I'm pretty sure a fairly large amount of the staff had been replaced or moved on by that point. Given the Storm of Chaos campaign map, I feel fairly safe stating that there WAS no plan to destroy the setting at the time, just have some amount of lore changes to the upper reaches. Endtimes very much strikes me as "fans who'd gotten a job at their favorite company, and now wanted to push the storyline they wanted." Probably combined with some order from on high to reboot the setting to make it more "popular".
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May 28, 2020 01:14
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yeah the idea that, if Storm of Chaos ended with a Chaos victory, GW would blow up the setting and release Age of Sigmar over a decade early is patently ridiculous
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May 28, 2020 01:15
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