BrandX

Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel

Not exactly, GG.
See, this is what happens when you don't pay attention in Super Criminal Psychology 101.

As heroes, we are faced with countless threats of many different worlds. The common human villain is most likely prone to wanting to take over the world in some form or another, as the world is usually their native home.
But consider that Techbot Alpha is a robot, and breaking it down further, a highly advanced and sophisticated artificial intelligence, and is likely programmed only with 'logic' processors, meaning Techbot's outlook on both life and the world he was built on is viewed with a cold, clinical view.
Added to this is the fact that, if he has an orbital weapons platform, it's likely he possesses a possible backup system, allowing him to exist in other dimensions or in more distant space locations, there may even be a 'mother' copy that continually is producing Techbot Alpha A.I.s for backup.
This is where my insight to you, as a vigilante, helps set your 'curing the symptoms' hero mindset, helps.
To properly destroy Techbot Alpha, you'd need to find the master control programs which would allow all Techbot Alpha A.I.s to communicate and maintain their digital hivemind, then you must locate the 'queen' that would be producing the A.I.s and destroy that. We may need to completely reformat the Internet itself as well to ensure he cannot have sleep programs within the global communications network.

Originally Posted by Amerikatt

The 'Green Hornet' radio program actually predates the first appearance of 'Batman' in Detective Comics #27 by a few years. More properly, he belongs to the pulp-era masked vigilante set, like 'The Shadow'.

He was also depicted in an early 1940's movie serial, where Kato was portrayed by Keye Luke, who would later portray Master Po on the TV series 'Kung Fu' some three decades later.

For the last seven decades, he has been featured in several comic book series.

While I can accept a certain level of levity between Britt Reid/The Green Hornet and Kato, I cannot help but fear that Seth Rogaine simply will not 'get' the character and this movie will make 'Dumb and Dumber' look like a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Originally Posted by Lohenien

Way back when in like season two - a room full of fulcrum agents were killed by viewing the intersect while Chuck had to cover Casey and Sarah's eyes iirc .

Originally Posted by Eisregen_NA

I'm pretty sure I've even seen entire episodes where Spike did nothing but pine over Buffy. In a very unmanly way. I've no idea when exactly that was in continuity, mind you.

Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed

I'll throw in a 'Quantum Leap' into the reminds-me-of List.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

But I'm a hero - I always survive villainous schemes - it's the main dramatic requirement of being a hero

Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay

Originally Posted by SwellGuy

I did not know that. But I still think there would be younger guys to play the part.

However towards the NA to play NA stuff. I prefer men to play men and women to play women. "Roots" with the Africans played by latinos, Asians, and caucasians would be a bit silly as well. So I am going to dispute where you took your "logic" up to a point.

Remember I am a big Depp fan (I cannot wait to see The Tourist) but I don't need him in everything I see.

Originally Posted by SwellGuy

I am a big Johnny Depp fan but I am more than a bit unhappy and put off with him cast as Tonto.

I would think there are hundreds of qualified young Native American actors who could do a good job on it.

Originally Posted by Wavicle

It might encourage you.

For me I always felt that at some point it was inevitable I would be in melee. Those powers came in very handy at those times. It didn't necessarily mean I had to seek out such dangerous opportunities.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

That's more or less what I was going to say.

On the one hand, yeah, it's sad and all that hardened criminals and ruthless killers have to die sometimes. It's just as sad every time they kill innocent people, so it's not as clear-cut as people present it.

On the other hand, tip missions SOMEWHAT deal with this, but the problem with those is they try to be too specific in what defines heroes and what defines vigilantes. Sometimes vigilantes come off like no-nonsense heroes who just want to get the job done, sometimes they come off as stone cold killers, and sometimes they come off as complete ********.

That's actually why I have a problem with having this many moral positions - it starts to become specific and defining in a way that, in turn, becomes limiting. Right now, a vigilante is defined not just as a person who's prepared to kill, but also a person who's prepared to sacrifice the lives of innocents and doesn't care, a person who's willing to take on good guys for disagreeing with him, and a person who's willing to commit out-and-out crimes.

I, personally, was much happier when there were just good guys and bad guys without specifically defining what made which kind of good guy and what make which kind of bad guy. I don't see why faction swaps couldn't happen directly between hero and villain. If we needed a middle ground to accommodate Praetorians, then we should have had ONE middle ground that was right in the middle, not two middle grounds that were on either side of the line divide. Right now, we have these people who aren't really heroes, but they aren't really villains, only they're not rogues, who aren't really villains, but then they aren't really heroes, but they're still distinct from each other. And they're not Praetorians, either, who are themselves not like each other and it just makes a mess of factions and moralities and specifics that, to me, does more to harm than to help.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat

I'm eagerly waiting for the series with enough gumption to re-boot ITSELF in its first episode!

Originally Posted by Smersh

To the story, I say, "Good."

Creating a feminine ideal that is passive and waits for the perfect prince to come along is an idea I'm not particularly keen on selling to my daughter. Women are more than capable of solving problems on their own without the need to rely upon a male savior, thank you very much.

I know that some of the later 'princess' films have changed that process slightly, but the marketing of the merchandise certainly has not. (Nota bene: I have not seen the Princess and the Frog.) Mulan - good role model. Sleeping Beauty - Not so much. Cinderella? No. The Little Mermaid? You do not need to sacrifice the essentials of what makes you who you are in order to please a man who has no idea that you exist.

Take the Princess ideal and put it out of its misery. Little girls are already bombarded with messages that limit them enough as it is. (Walk into a toy store - it's like they've color coded all the toys. Girls know that its socially acceptable to play with it because its pink.) Throw it back to the bad old days, and lets get some better material out of Disney for little girls and boys.

Originally Posted by Wavicle

Unless I made an error I don't think I said Blaster secondaries are meant to keep them out of melee. They ARE however, largely designed to EITHER keep them out of melee OR to keep them alive once in melee long enough to kill stuff.

Look at MM again. TK Thrust keeps an enemy Out of melee. DP gives you survivability in return for having gone to melee. So does PS with it's stun. WoC confuses as well as doing damage.

Originally Posted by Scythus

I don't think anybody'll be walking after the sort of things we do to them.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

That's possible too - but it might be a bit risky and irresponsible to leave dangerous enemies for the police to take care of in case they woke up in between us leaving the the cops showing up

Originally Posted by Olantern

Sam is correct here, in my opinion. The "Longbow is the most evil of factions" is a player perception first and foremost. The player base has a number of odd perceptions like this, e.g., "Nemesis is a joke"; "Freaks are unrelievedly hilarious," etc., that have gradually filtered back into the game.

Originally Posted by Schismatrix

Is it in canon to fix cannons in CoH?

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Fine by me, really. I don't necessarily need my enemies to die, so much as I need my characters to be free to aim for head shots without feeling terrible about themselves, just as a random example.

And again - I don't restrict myself to JUST what the game represents physically or what's told in specific lore. The only time I'll restrict myself is if the game specifically CONTRADICTS what I want to claim, which it doesn't, for the most part. Yes, FrostFire comes back. Faceless Skull #124123332, on the other hand, doesn't. Or at least I don't think he does...

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

No, I actually DON'T remember. In fact, I don't remember this ever having been stated by anyone in power. This is, and has always been, a comic book INSPIRED game, but developer after developer has said that while they will take ideas from comic books, they will not limit themselves by the limitations of comic books. In other words, "just because it's not like that in comics" isn't a valid argument.

Furthermore, you're assuming American comic books released somewhere between 1950 and 1980. The 90s dork age of comic books, by contrast, saw PLENTY of killing super heroes, like our friend Pitt, the Young Blood and practically everything else Rob Leifeld ever made. And much as people try to deny it, Rob IS a part of American comic book continuity. And then we have comic books which aren't American. Grab almost any Japanese, Chinese or Korean manga, and you'll see that those cultures are far less squeamish about killing people. All of the animes I cited are made after mangas of the same name. Even when they deal with pure, divine, morally just heroes, those still end up taking the lives of their victims.

City of Heroes is also heavily inspired by pulp fiction, film noir and even sci-fi themes, including those concepts in there, as well. Sci-fi themes, however, also include steampunk, cyberpunk, dystopian future and other crapsack world concepts, which in turn include killing as a modus operandi. Furthermore still, a fair few themes seem inspired by Western movies, if not insetting then at least in spirit, and Western heroes like the Man With No Name were all about shooting the bad guys. Hell, the very point of the quickdraw contest is to KILL the other guy before he can KILL you. And even though TriGun plays with the concept of being a gunslinger who doesn't kill, it still displays the harsh reality of an outlaw setting. Characters transplanted from those settings would, in fact, fit right into City of Heroes.

But the most damning evidence that the setting does, in fact, support and promote the killing of bad guys is the fact that at least half the powers heroes get constitute either lethal weapons or deadly effects. Swords, guns, axes, hammers, fire, electricity, radiation, the list goes on. Yes, you CAN make up your own explanation why the ones your character uses aren't as lethal as they really ought to be, and that's fine. I have no problem. However, there really is no ground to claim that my character using the tools the environment provides as those tools are meant to be used does something the environment doesn't support. You don't give the player a gun and enemies to shoot, then claim he should have known he was never supposed to shoot them. Well, some games try to do that, but it's a big enough dick move that most developers know better.

And if that weren't enough, the game gives you no definition of what enemy defeats at your hands actually constitute. You "defeat" enemies, and the game says no more. What that means is up to you to decide. Up to me to decide for myself. If you opt to interpret that as "knocked out and teleported to jail" then that's fine. If I opt to interpret it as "shoot in the head and let corpse fade clean up," then I'm just as in my right. If someone else interprets it into "beat so bad he turns into coins," then... Wait, what?

All I'm saying is the setting supports this. If you want a "comic book only" game, there's already a game that's pretty much that, and pretty much that is the reason I'm not there now. Kill or arrest is down to player interpretation and really not something anyone is "right" about. I don't tell you you're wrong to play a perfect hero in a flawed world, so do me a solid and don't suggest I'm wrong for playing a ruthless hero in a perfect world.



And nothing I've said suggests this, either. Again, I'm not talking about homicidal murderers. I'm not talking about "kill EVERYONE" but more about "not refuse to kill ANYONE." I treat my heroes less like spandex-clad icons of goodness and chastity and more like soldiers in a war against crime and the forces of evil, to borrow a PowerPuff Girls quote. And, no, that doesn't constitute Vigilante, because the way Vigilantes are written in this game is as complete dicks who just want to mess with bad guys.

If I had, just as a random example, a guy who's determined to protect innocent people from criminals and other villains, and that guy sees a robber holding a hostage at gunpoint, my guy will shoot the robber in the head without a second thought. Why? Because he's a crack shot and because all other other options are considerably more dangerous to the hostage. I happen to dislike playing with people's live for the sole sake of not killing the bad guys and REALLY dislike your typical cop-out children's cartoons resort to to prevent this, such as having Wolverine do nothing but kick people in that 90s Fox cartoon.