I don't think I got anything added, but here is an amusing post I made back in early 2007 about the things I wanted to see. I am not even sure if any developers ever saw this, as the forum used to scroll a LOT faster back then...
Hero Space - A Tale of Mediocrity
The Cast:
Bob1 : Bob Emmert
Bob2 : Bob Miller
Harold Harrison : Mediocrity Man (Level 50 Broad Sword/Regeneration Scrapper)
Bob1: The next batter looks like a Harold Harrison.
Bob2: Uh huh.
*In walks a man wearing a grey t-shirt with a large M on it, a pair of faded and stained jeans and a green baseball cap. He smells of engine oil and axel grease and scowls at the two seated men before sitting down*
Bob1: Oh, there you are, we were just talking about you. You must be Harold Harrison, also known as Mediocrity Man. I'm Bob Emmert and this is my associate Bob Miller.
Harold: Well hi Bob... Bob. You can call me Harold... that Mediocrity crap is just my little inside joke that I inflicted on the press.
Bob1: Ok Harold, why don't you grab a seat here. You see, what we're actually trying to do here is we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day in Paragon. So, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day for Mediocrity... for you I mean, Harold.
Harold: Yeah. Well, I generally don't show up for any hero work anymore, mostly because there isn't any for me to do. Sometimes I'll come in for a few hours, but I sneak in the back way through Galaxy City, so that I don't have to deal with the cesspool that is Atlas Park. I'll deal with the occassional Police Scanner mission in Peregrine, and then I just kind of space out for a few hours. After that...
Bob2: Eh heh... space out?
Harold: Yeah, I'll stare at the Search window for a few hours, hoping someone will pick me up for one of their Safeguard missions. Those are one of the few things I haven't been through yet. I'd say, in a given week, I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual heroics.
Bob1: Harold, would you be a good sport and indulge us and just... tell us a little more?
Harold: Oh yeah, let me tell you something about DPS Reports. Ohhh. You see Bob, I may walk softly, but I carry a pretty big and lethal stick.
*Harold stands up, pulls out a large, bloody Broadsword, and drops it on the table in front of the Bobs.*
Harold: Now, with this puppy, I can kill any villain that dares to show his face in our city.
Bob2: Wait, Kill? What about the hospital teleporter... don't the villains you arrest get sent to the hospital where they are patched up before being taken into custody?
Harold: Well Bob, I'm sure that might happen for one of them heroes that can freeze a man, knock him out with some girly Mace, or just drain the consciousness right out of em. But not with a sword Bob. You ever seen a man patched up that could say he done been Disemboweled during his arrest?
Bob2: Well, no... can't say that I have Harold.
Harold: Right, and have you ever seen a man suffer a non-fatal wound from a Headsplitter attack?
Bob1: I, uh... I think I see your point there Harold. Does this bother you much in the course of your heroic role? What if you could customize your powers... carry a club or a baseball bat?
Harold: Me? Nah... most of these guys got it comin anyhow, and there are a few that the docs can save. Them's the ones that maybe only lose a limb or needs sewn up a bit afterwards. Puts all that robotic limb research to good use. Besides, I'm not really a hero Bob.
Bob2: What? But it says here you're fully registered.
Harold: Oh sure... what else is a guy with a heightened healing capacity supposed to do once he's found out? 'Specially if he's found out while trying to get his final pay back from the Skulls who stole it from him.
Bob1: Your... did you say, pay?
Harold: Sure, you see Bob... I'm a middle-aged man that drives a truck for a living, well I used to. I used to work down in Kings Row where I live. Then all the business started going corrupt, and before you know it, my job's the next casualty of the rising criminal element. I stop off at one of those check cashing joints with my final paycheck and as I leave, them Skulls ambush and rob me. I ain't no mutant or science project gone wrong and I certainly can't afford any high tech gizmos on my salary. So I go grab my father's sword and call up all the training he gave me as a kid and track them Skulls down in some warehouse.
Bob2: Says here you arrested the whole gang.
Harold: Yep, to the last lackey. But no pay... apparently they used that money to buy drugs from some Hellions or Trolls or somesuch. So I start following the money. Pretty soon I'm battling dress-wearing mages in caves, robots in laboratories, undead in the sewers. Heck they've even sent me across through magical and alien portals, telling me some deal or other was struck and my money had crossed dimensional boundaries. Never did find that cash, and the ex-wife is still nagging me for payments. Not that any of that matters now... it's ancient history. I might as well be in retirement now.
Bob1: Retirement?
Harold: You see Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob2: Don't care?
Harold: It's a problem of motivation, alright. Now if I work my [censored] off and arrest a few extra villains, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation?
Bob1: But, you're a hero.
Harold: A man's gotta eat Bob. A man's gotta pay rent, even if it's on some crappy apartment in Kings Row with a roof inhabited by robots run amok or power crazed mages. Now, if I was really in it for money, I'd retire to that Firebase Zulu spot.
Bob2: The Shadow Shard?
Harold: Sure Bob, you see, along the way in my heroing, I lifted some plans for one of them jet pack gizmos. I'm certain I could make a fortune selling those things to all the heroes like me that only got runnin' and jumpin' as a way to get around.
Bob1: But no one goes there.
Harold: I bet they would if I were selling jetpacks Bob. And if that didn't work, I'd open an Enhancement store 'round the corner from my apartment... right up by the train station in Kings Row.
Bob2: Enhancement store?
Harold: You bet Bob! You have any idea how many times I hear some poor young hero askin' where the store is in Kings Row? I know the place is a slum... I grew up there and still live there, but there ain't no reason someone like me with the means can't smarten the place up a bit. And here's something else Bob, I have sixty-six different contacts right now.
Bob1: I be your pardon... sixty-six contacts...
Harold: Sixty-six Bob, and that's not even all the possibles. So that means, when I wanna find a mission to do, or a person to help, I gotta scroll through a sixty-six item list to find one.
Bob2: Well, aren't the most recent ones in the list the ones you use most?
Harold: No Bob. You see, I took a break from heroing a few months back, and I missed some updates to the contact system. So the top of my list is populated with Detectives and Warzone operatives that won't even give me the time of day. Now, if the list was divided up by zone with additional lists by level, it'd be easy to find someone and my response time would probably double. That'd save a lot of lives Bob.
Bob1: Yeah... yeah I think you're right Harold.
Harold: Then there's the question of missions. There's a lot of people out there that need my help Bob. But the better I am at arresting people, the fewer of them I can actually help. I get too experienced, too quick, and some of those contacts push me off to someone else, and the people that they deal with never get my help. That'll only make someone work just hard enough to complete a mission, Bob. I let some of them go, skip past others entirely, just to handle the guy behind the problem and make sure I don't miss any of those people in trouble. Now, if I could go back to those contacts, and do those missions, regardless of how experienced I was, I could help a lot more people Bob.
Bob2: Oh, you mean like a flashback to when you were less powerful?
Harold: Exactly Bob. All those Phalanx guys that hand out those Task Force missions will do that for me, so why won't anyone else? I mean, is there any reason I can't respond to a Police Scanner in any zone other than Peregrine? What else is there for a hero like me to do Bob?
Bob1: Would you bear with me just a second please.
Harold: Ok
Bob1: What if, and believe me, this is just a hypothetical. But what if you were offered some sort of continued progression system? Some kind of power enhancement, customization system through research or inventions. That do anything for you?
Harold: I dunno I guess. But there's still that problem of where I'm going to apply those upgrades Bob. I can't keep running circles in Peregrine forever.
Bob1: Well, I'm sure you've heard some of the rumors circulating around the hallways about how we're gonna be doing a little 'house cleaning' with some of the heroes.
Harold: Well Bob, you've gotta do what you've gotta do.
Bob2: We're gonna be gettin rid of these heroes here. Ah, first Mr. Jack Zodiac. What kind of name is that anyway... sounds like a serial killer. He's apparently so full of himself lately that when he does bother to take missions, he delegates them out to other heroes to do FOR him. We're demoting him to a low level contact in Perez Park. Besides, it'll be good to have a fire hero in place there if we ever want to really clean the place out. And ah, this one... Miss Informed. Apparently no one knows how she obtained a high security level. She spends all of her time lately helping other people rather than actually arresting villains, so her quotas have gone way down. We're setting her up as a contact in Talos, in a book store, where she'll give out missions related to books, television shows and old movies. I mean really, how much help can someone named Miss Informed really be? Hahaha
Harold: Yeah Bob, that's like expecting heroics from someone called Mediocrity Man.
Bob1: Well, ahem... there's a difference there. But we're gonna bring in some fresh heroes from overseas, probably India or Singapore, we'll have them deputized and at work with far less overhead than some of these veterans.
Bob2: It's the usual deal.
Bob1: Standard operating procedure.
Harold: Do they know this yet?
Bob1: No... hahaha... no, of course not. We find it's always better to retire people on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week. And the last thing we need is some hero going rogue in a fit of rage and levelling a government building somewhere. Anyway, Harold what we would like to do is to put you into postion to have as many as four Longbow working right underneath you.
Bob2: This is a big promotion Harold.
Harold: So, you're gonna demote Jack and Miss, and you're gonna give me more responsibility?
*The Bobs smile and nod smugly*
Harold: Listen, I'm gonna go. It's been really nice talking to both of you guys.
Bob1: Absolutely. The pleasure's all on this side of the table, trust me.
Harold: Good luck with your Hero evaluations... I hope your datamining goes really well.
*Detective Lumbergh, from Peregrine Island, steps in front of Harold as he leaves*
Lumbergh: So... Mediocrity... what's happening...
*Harold scowls at him as he walks past and leaves the building*
Bridger and I will be there on mysterious alts to be determined at a later time.
