Blood Red Arachnid

Never said they were my morals, or that they had to be my morals (which isn't contemporary Catholic American. Guess again). Regardless, culture works in the ways that it does. Even in states of complete anarchy where gangland rules take over, those gangs function upon the basis of support and mutual self-preservation, and from there can form a series of complex markings and rituals. But I digress: if we are talking about the superhero and supervillain world, taking the fundamentals of that system and then saying it is incorrect when juxtaposed to some society in the real world is outright paradoxical. Either we are talking about a world where people don rubber outfits and shoot lasers from their eyes, or we are not.

People do not believe that software piracy is wrong. If you ever ask them about it, they'll give a doctoral thesis to justify their actions as correct. It is a common psychological principle known as dissonance resolution; a mind dislikes its own contradictions, and so it works to resolve those contradictions through various methods. One of those methods is altering ideology around their actions, causing a mindset that always justifies actions after the fact This isn't just excuses; this is an entire perception shift to resolve personal conflict. They truly believe they have done no evil.


Altruism is almost always profitable in a real life setting because through cooperation and support it is easier to achieve goals than if you are by yourself. This is fundamental to trade, sustenance, technological development, and general societal growth. It is a necessary aspect of any group consisting of two ore more people. Even while growing up in the Ghetto of Sin City, where gangs would kill each other at a moments notice, something that can always be seen is the support of individuals within those groups. They fought to protect each other, they steal for each others' benefits, they taught each other for both personal and other's benefits, and they performed actions to earn the respect of others who would gladly give that respect if unsaid action deserved it. Even in our prisons it is an important facet of society. Even amongst animals and single-celled organisms, an altruistic system survives better than a non-altruistic system.

Expand this to the marcoverse, and social darwinism becomes applicable. Societies where individuals do not support each other have a habit of declining and dying. Hence, what happened to communism (a system where altruism is mandated and assumed as infrastructure instead of being a byproduct, to list one of the many problems). A more recent example is how wealth and corruption in the U.S. is causing worldwide economic collapse. A rule that can be applied to history (and biology and anthropology and sociology and psychology) is that people go with what works. When we look at all of the atrocities through time that aren't around anymore, you must never forget that they aren't around anymore. Slavory in the U.S. is abolished, women's rights are on the rise, minority rights are on the rise, the world as a whole is becoming richer, quality of life is improving greatly on a global scale, the world population is becoming more intelligent. The sum of the world as a whole is on the rise.

Now, if you want to make the case that your society is a negative pocket that is rotting away due to an inability to function, then that is acceptable. Of course, it is also possible that you are being overly cynical.


Ironic, I've also had a job teaching people. Anyway, the whole "trying to be good" is in respect to a cultures expectations. Even in the ghetto where I grew up, 99% of the time the gangs were just hanging out and talking smack, or fixing one of their guy's trucks or something like that. Also see dissonance resolution above.


It does not necessitate that the culture requires you to be good and idealistic. It is conformity vs. nonconformity in regards to expectations. Hell, the example I gave is about not being hit by a friggen bus; that is quite morally neutral. Now, to get on with the broadness of morality, various studies on cultures have shown that, despite all of their weirdness that is in each of them, there are a surprisingly large list of cultural universalities that are applicable to each society. There are quite a few of them, and these rules exist in societies that are completely isolated and have no contact with each other. Because this happens, it is a very safe assumption that these facets are inspired by factors that are universally present in humanity.

EDITFigured I'd include this: It is impossible for a culture to not be idealistic because not having ideals and being "real" is itself an ideal, much as to how valuing personal pursuance of goals is a moral)

It is impossible for someone to grow up embracing the morality of their environment and be the villain of that environment, because this would necessitate that the simple majority of people in that environment are villains, and thus by moral relativity are not villainous.

But alas, I am at a disadvantage here. Your whole case is dependent on some unknown culture where everyone is super-evil, and without access to this culture it is impossible for me to argue that you are incorrect about it. So long as you argue "No, I'm an exception", I cannot win unless I drag this exception onto an operating table or pull some BS moves. But regardless of this tangential discussion (City of heroes takes place in a fictional city in Rhode Island, U.S.A., not outhouse, East European Nation), I have my made point quite clearly regarding explanation via absence for villains, and how baseless heroes are acceptable since heroism is the default "normal" for society in general, exceptions extant or not. So I don't know what your problem is anymore.

No, it is not assuming that. The interesting thing about morals is that everyone seems to know about them, even when living in an area with low morals. You might be able to blame this on globalization, or the idea that people universally do not like to be hurt. But that is beside the point; every civilization has itself a set of cultural expectations that it expects others to behave in. These expectations are not all explicitly taught; many are inherited through frequent observation while growing up. This is done through the same pattern recognition that is used to associate behaviors with their respective meaning. With the general expectations set, people behave around these expectations, much as how they behave around the idea that the Earth's gravity not abruptly ceasing to function. To find someone who behaves different from these expectations is automatically deviant in that society.

The deviancy needs some excuse for its existence, whatever it may be. The deviancy within any culture is roughly equivalent to a mathematical operation producing a different result than what is normal; an illogical outcome in society. Though a series of near limitless factors culminating to the whole of any individual, there is some sort of significant alteration, whether clear or unapparent, that ultimately contributes to deviancy. Applying this to the comic book universe, the superhero is the logical outcome and villains the illogical because the comic book universe assumes that the everyman is not an evil man.

As to whether or not culture is absolutely arbitrary, I staunchly hold the position that no, it is not. Merely existing, any individual has a series of needs that are necessary to fulfill, and desires that want to be fulfilled. All actions taken therefore are ultimately done in respect to these needs and desires. Society progresses in a manner to maximize these needs and desires, causing culture to move in a particular direction. The greatest way to obtain nearly any goal is through cooperation and interaction with other people, and their function is dependent on their well being. Altruism is profitable to everyone in the long run, so it is encouraged.

These desires are not evenly weighed by every individual, however. This causes confusion in society, causing the word "irrational" to be thrown around when their actions are just operating by a different rationale. The rogue isles operate under a different rationale, and strangely one that is in a constant and aware contrast to other rationales. This contrast implies a dependency, and thus the rogue isles are closer to a subculture than a regular functioning one.

My actual position is that people are all objectively evil (even me), and the lack of good instruction causes these tendencies to not be curbed. But, regarding societal rules everyone is neutral until developed. It is then that they are either good or evil. The majority end up "good", or at least trying to be.

Some of the inspiration for the "villainous by absence" methodology comes from a few medical examples involving individuals who didn't experience the physical sensation of pain. They were scarred and injured because they lacked the pain to tell them not to preform some self-harming action. From chewing their own tongue off to burning their hands by grabbing hot light bulbs, what we deem as common sense is gone because that negative feedback we are so used to was absent. Likewise, one of the strongest factors causing one to conform to culture's rules is the consequences for when you don't conform. If you have parents that punish you, if you get socially ostracized, or if you've ever been nearly hit by a car, there is SOMETHING there to encourage you away from running out into the middle of the street randomly, and often for a logical reason like not becoming a stain on the concrete.

Agency is always present in the outcome of an individual, but agency is dependent on choices being realistic and present. To warp back on needs and desires again, there are many reasons why someone would deviate from the norm with no apparent explanation as to why. It could be a strong sense of pride, entitlement, individualism driving that person to refuse to conform by fulfilling these desires in lieu of comfort or acceptance. It could be a particular idea that, when heavily exaggerated beyond normal levels, creates a conflict with the other practices and ideals in that same society. It could be that a general discomfort due to a lack of fulfillment causes a disdain for the system which hasn't provided for that individual. So, if we assume that someone decides they aren't playing by an environments rules: then what? Do they play by another environments rules? If so, then why did they pick that environment? Do they play by their own rules? If so, why did they choose those rules as their own? For any answer to the previous, it is necessary that the choice be made possible by some shared information or some experience or some line of reasoning upon the system yet thoroughly contingent on that same system.

We aren't gods. Our agency, however apparent, is nonetheless heavily dependent on other things.

Some Korean MMOs have that kind of grind city, and it was a popular staple in my earlier MMOs. Since a lot of games use an exponential growth formula to determine what you need at the next level, the end-game can get pretty sick. In another game I play where 99 is the maximum level, level 93 is 50% of the way there. There's another skill that has a maximum level of 120, and getting to 99 is 1/8th the way there.

It is literally maddening how much dedication it requires.

I have the controller ATO proc slotted on another toon in their mass hold power. When the damage from that proc fires off, it does as much damage as their single target attacks, except to the whole group. It essentially changed the hold power into an AoE+Hold power.

It was those that I was referencing when I was talking about damage procs and the ATO set.

The buff lasts about 15 seconds. At least on on the regular ATO proc.


This is another concern I had, and one of the two reasons why I slotted this power into wormhole. Right now, my ST hold power is Gravity Distortion (Crush is kind of useless and redundant since the set has a impale for ST immobilize), and Gravity Distortion is franken-slotted with Hami-Os and IOs to increase it's damage, accuracy, recharge, hold duration, and endurance cost all at the same time. Because the ST hold is going to be a permanent part of the attack chain on everything that isn't fully immune to mez, it has to be able to do damage just as well as it can do holds.

The Dominator ATO set doesn't increase damage, so putting it into Gravity Distortion cuts the damage it does in half. I'll end up just firing it off over and over again to get the random damage boost to just break even with what I had in the first place. Of the non-damage focused mezz the set has, the only one that is "rapid fire" is Crushing Field, and that power is nearly useless. Crushing Field is an endurance hog that causes slow/immobilize, and ONLY slow/immobilize. Firing off any more than one is a waste of time in the majority of situations, and again I shouldn't have to hamper my damage output possibly for 15 seconds of 14% extra damage that, were it to stack 3 times, is equivalent to Aim in the set.

I really do hate when I build my toons around a core mechanic, and then the devs up and make it obsolete. However, until I22 goes live, AS from hide still outperforms most attacks the game has. In Kinetic Melee, for example, the attack with the highest DPA is Concentrated Strike, which is 1.20 (if I did the math right) Scale Damage Per Activation time (what I will call SDPA for short).

If AS is normalized to have the 3 second activation time and placate with 1.5 second time, then adjusting for arcanatime it would have a SDPA of 1.47. I'm not used to dealing with damage scales (values for which I cannot find the existence of anywhere in the game). I made a post about it awhile ago, and these are the numbers I am used to referencing. But for now, unless they have changed things, the SDPA of 2.21 is pretty much unheard of on stalkers. Though I haven't run the numbers on street justice yet (like dual blades, complicated system that I won't fully understand until I play it).

EDIT: I will really miss all my foes being under perpetual demoralize, too.

Though I think it grants stealth, the hidden status doesn't remove aggro or placate any targets. It is mostly for offensive purposes. And the critical hit does go away if you are hit before using a follow up attack (caltrops are a stalker's worst enemy!)