Melancton

Captain, that could be a feasible angle. There are two versions of Statesman out there, and this certainly could have been the actions of Dill-Weed Strawman Statesman, who is an arrogant jerk. But even if that were the case, he did not seem arrogant as much as STUPID. As many folks have noted, Positron nearly had his powers stolen and Wade did everything but put a big red X and a sign up saying "TRAP! Statesman, please stand HERE!"

The writing was no help to your theory. It did not lay down the predicate that Statesman arrogantly felt his powers could resist any attack. He just looked like a idiot walking right into it.


DR, I would also hold out to you that this could have been a possibility, but the requisite predicates were not laid there, either, writing-wise.
Wade killed his daughter. He is going to make Wade "rot in prison until he dies." ZAAAAP, it's a trap! "Oh well, I may as well die." I don't think it works at all.

Ms. Liberty is out of control, the rest of the Freedom Phalanx has been assaulted, this guy is sucking Statesman's power right out of him and he just gives up? I know they tacked on the dead wife telling him to go ahead and die, but how many times have illusions cast by bad guys tried to get our heroes to do the wrong thing? For crying out loud, even the Wicked Witch showed up as Auntie Em to Dorothy in the hourglass--- this is STANDARD BAD GUY TRICKERY! But States takes it at face value and promptly dies without much of a struggle.

It just rings false, even for arrogant Dill-Weed Strawman Statesman, and it did not work for me at all.

I cannot help but think that as you played it, you were thinking of a dozen different ways you would have written the episode and scripted it differently had you been writing it yourself. This could have been Epic, but instead it was an Epic Fail. They wanted him dead, so he died, not in a courageous act of sacrifice or protection, but "like a chump" as it was said herein. What a waste.

And as I recall, he "just appeared" in Pocket D one day as a glitch--- a seagull, of all things, with "Null" where the NPC name would have been. So they adapted this odd programming bug into the bird that can fix your problems, which was a record-fast solution to the issue at hand.

HA! What would YOU know about good stories involving Statesman?!?





(It's a rhetorical question! If you were not around for the CoH comic Back in the Day, do yourself a favor and peruse Brotha Hickman's work) :

ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_04.pdf
ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_05.pdf
ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_06.pdf


Bummer about the lawnmower, though...

Null the Gull sits on a truck on the ground floor of the red side of Pocket D. He can make you automatically accept or reject Fortunes and some other buffs, so that you do not get asked every time. You can also change it to another way at any time, and even go back to having to manually accept the buff again if you want.

There are a lot of reasons to not want buffs, but Null the Gull makes it all a moot point regarding the manual accept. Talk to the bird and you are all set either way you want to go.

Well, in all fairness, I was too mesmerized by his hairdo to notice the "Hello! My Name is Nemesis" badge he may have been wearing.


And that was well played there, thanks.

It does illustrate the conundrum... who is telling the truth, if anyone, and how can you tell... without it being obvious because it is now Too Late?

You scored a LOL with that, Shadow.

You also made some very good points about retconning.

You may be on to a way of "solving" a good bit of the problematic Well lore here, JC, if that turns out to be the case as later events unfold. But it also highlights another important point:

There is often no way to tell who is lying, and who is not, within the game.

The Menders and the Letter Writer appear to take differing points of view. How does one resolve that? A LOT of emphasis is laid by many folks on the fact that "Mender Silos" is an anagram for Something Else--- but is that really a be-all-and-end-all clue? For crying out loud, Statesman is an anagram for "Satan Stem!"

Given that Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark betwixt the Menders and the Letter Writer, can we trust the word of others in different contexts? If the Well can seize you and make you talk, who is to say that Lady Grey (an anagram for "Gayly Red;" obviously a Commie!) is not possessed by the Well and telling us that "the slow path is perfectly safe, yeah, that's the ticket."

In other games, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted in processing information and formulating a plan of action. That usually isn't the case in CoH, although there have been a few times in which your contact gets a Little Wacky, and other times in which you are merrily sent off to a mission that turns out to be A Trap. Most of the time, I am required to take at face value some things that I would otherwise be fairly dubious about, just because the game mechanics require it.

Further, it also turns out that NPCs can actually "change sides," which raises the question as to just when what they have told you ceased to be reliable/the truth. And I also remember some hints being bandied about that a) Hamidon enhancements or b) exposure to the radiation in the Hero Respec Trial might turn out to have "side effects" (mwah ha ha), although thankfully, this was not pursued (and don't get any ideas now, Devs! )

So we shall see how all of this plays out with your theory and the Well, JC.

It isn't really either of those. I cannot say "armbandlolz" and wear it anyway. It is treating something as trivial that is not trivial at all.

There was another game long ago in which one of episodes offered great power, but you had to kneel at an altar and worship the deity there as God and receive the great power as a servant of that god. That was a deal-breaker for me as well, so I skipped it.

There was no necessity for the Devs to be as thoroughly ham-handed about this in the lore as they have been. They needlessly caused this problem for me, and that is my only complaint. I have no problem with players that are going the Incarnate route; as I have said before, that does not make them "such-and-suches" that they would do that, etc. It is entirely personal.

In general, I agree that one should just ignore the lore that is problematic.

For me, there came a point at which even retconning in my head was getting trumped by the increasing intrusion of the Devs with the Insane Sentient Well. Statesman turned out to be an "incarnate" of Zeus, blah blah. Well, "gods" and all that have been a comic staple for a long time, and this was a hand-wave-to-the-weird-stuff sort of Zeus. "Incarnation" means something quite specific, though, and the Devs then upped the ante by saying that you had to become an "Incarnate" before proceeding. As long as it was ME who got to choose just who was "incarnating" my hero, that still was not a deal-breaker, and there seemed to be some work-arounds suggested in the lore. But then the Devs went out of their way to close every possible loophole and make it Official Lore that you were being "incarnated" by the Insane Sentient Well who could take you over like a puppet whenever it chose... unless a single statement by a life-stealing gal who has not revealed her own origins can be taken at total face value, which is a pretty thin reed to lean on. The Well is "Incarnated" into you to the exclusion of all other possibilities.

For me, that took it into the realm of having to join an infamous party from history and officially wear an armband. I cannot hand-wave that armband the Devs are forcing on us away, so I am not proceeding.

When I logged on with a 50 with no Incarnate anything, there was a MOTD style announcement that all 50s would be treated as having unlocked the Alpha Slot, and badda bang, badda bing I could talk to the DA contact and do the arc. Could be a limited time offer, your mileage may vary, void where prohibited.

Tunnel Rat had some fine writing going for her; very well done. Blast Furnace's Tip Mission also seemed to touch a lot of players positively.
I note that some folks have even said they care about Fusionette.

Those folks and the others noted are quite vulnerable and the player is able to assist them. We are aware when we do that the stakes are very high for them, and our being able to help them stirs our empathy and helps create a bond. That is very tough to pull off with Statesman or any of the other signature characters, and indeed, it seems it has not happened.

That pretty much nails it, Sam. And that is before you ever layer on the notion that it is likely also Insane and/or Amoral/Evil.


Reminds me of when Odin and Thor came into contact with Zeus and Hercules. There was some *mumble mumble* about who was the leader of gods and all that and then it wasn't really an issue... "gods" became, in essence, just another sort of aliens.

Sort of like "The Force," prior to midichlorians and Jar-Jar Binks. But the way you described the concept actually works better than "The Force."

The Devs did not need to paint themselves into a corner, but they did. And in doing so, they officially painted all of our heroes into corners, and it poses all sorts of problems for many players. Officially, we all derive power from the Well. Everyone who has derived the Extra Special Power from the Well has come under its control, and can be controlled, puppet-like, whenever the Well so chooses. To paraphrase Eva Destruction, all the evidence we have to the contrary is a single assertion by some chick who won't tell us anything about herself, and whom, I might add, steals years from people's lives by touching them. "Sounds Legit" as the meme goes.

You can lay a great foundation for a story and still tell a bad story, but it is unlikely that a bad foundation will yield a great story.

Perhaps they were concerned that you would eat their Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaains if they persisted.

I agree, but would further qualify that as "Statesman from the comics authored by Troy Hickman," and the official backstory at the CoH website.

Well, Positron and other Devs have said that not only is he going to STAY dead, he is going to be removed completely from the game. Noble Savage, for example, confirmed that the new Statesman splash screen being seen in Beta was in the nature of a memorial. So you are going to get your wish, apparently.

And frankly, that just adds to the depressing aspect of it; the Devs are not just going to kill him--- they want him completely erased from the game, like one of Stalin's enemies. That is just sad.

If limited to the interactions one has in the CoH game proper, it is very tough to produce NPCs who have much positive depth. It is easy to convey that Crimson is a curt and rude guy. How does one convey other things within the constraints of the narrative medium available in-game? I think the Devs made a noble effort to convey, for example, Madeleine Casey's increasing mental instability, but was it all that compelling?

The problem is even more pronounced when working with the signature characters, who get limited to "X showed up and saved the day" announcements in-game. Positron, for example, has a fascinating backstory and a lot of potential to explore... but it does not happen. Statesman has the same problem, and even more pronounced.

Since all 50s in the Beta right now are treated as Incarnates, even if they are not, I have played through a number of the new Dark Astoria arcs. I have to say, the writing, the pacing and the use of "special effects" and setting have all been quite good thus far. The DA material, though, pretty much introduces all-new personnel thus far, and even the villains that I have run into that I recognize get some backstory added from our contacts, in case you have not played enought on redside to be familiar with them. It all seems to flow very well.

Meanwhile, the last two SSAs have been absolute train wrecks, especially in trying to depict the signature characters and their interactions with each other. Plot developments that are apparently necessary to the end result desired run the player over like a freight train. Well, I have laid out my criticisms of the SSAs elsewhere, but it goes to show you that advancing the characterizations of the signature characters is extremely tough to do within the game itself, and triply so to do in a positive manner.

Thus, there is no doubt in my mind that the "Smoke and Mirrors" arc in the comics is far superior to the arc in the game. The exposition can proceed in a more nuanced fashion and the opportunities to use dialogue to flesh out the characters is vast. (Let's face it, a large number of folks enjoy quoting from movies. When someone alludes to "that really cool sword fight," in a film, they will get some general agreement, but when someone says, "Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." then the emotional link is triggered and the knowing smiles break out.) The implications of the actions taken by the protagonists and their motivations for doing so can be presented so that the reader can absorb these facets as they proceed. In the game, these parts of the story get reduced to cutscenes and some in-game dialogue that is tough to follow when baddies are trying to off you. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the in-game arc, but the comic just blew me away.

So for the players of CoH that never read the official backstory, or the novels, or Troy Hickman's aforementioned three-issue arc in the comics(do yourself a favor, then ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_04.pdf ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_05.pdf ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_06.pdf then Statesman, and indeed, pretty much all the signature heroes in the game, are pretty much cardboard cutouts. There are some arcs in CoH that still manage, within the limits imposed, to be rather compelling, and indeed, produce an emotional reaction in many players. They do not involve the signature characters in my experience, and are typically tragic, and it is usually not feasible for the characters to carry forward, either because they are deceased, transformed, arrested or what have you. (As one wag put it, "You can't make 'Death of a Salesman' into a weekly TV show.") Good material regarding the signature characters on a continuing basis within the context of the game that positively advances their personalities will remain tough to do.

So farewell to the Statesman, at least the one that Troy Hickman brought to life. Alas, Marcus, we hardly knew ye.

Not taking the bait, GG. You argue this just to hear yourself argue. Fool me once and all that.

BRO, PLEASE

Thanks, TJ.

When I went looking for it in the Forums, under Development, it says "Character Copy Tool (Live to Training Room)"---which I had always known to be the Test Server... so I kept looking.

Devs, might you please re-label that to say just Character Copy Tool?

I thought I was the only one there. Whew!

It really could have been a new zone. It would have kept everyone liking the old DA happy.

I think it would have to do with wanting to "advance" the DA storyline, but even that could have been done via a new zone, ie, make the entrance to the new zone in the mausoleum where Adamastor hangs out or some such.

The other reason may be that the new graphics are so far advanced that the old DA would suffer too much by comparison.

It is a conundrum of sorts. The writing is, in many places, VERY problematic for me, and I have said so.

On the other hand, saying, "This is bad writing" is simple enough, but I really don't like to just be "complaining" and not offering some "constructive criticism" to address a preferred alternative. Suggesting a Freedom Phalanx contact, as you have, falls into that positive category.

I am harder-pressed to address how to correct the more strategic missteps I see being made in the plot and the writing. I don't like retcons, for example. When a "stealth retcon" of the Insane, Sentient Well of Furies being the source of all superpowers, period, showed up... how can that be fixed? Retcon the retcon? Short of having Bill and Ted or The Doctor head back in time and stop it, I dunno how to fix something that ought not to have been done in the first place in my view. Which leaves me in a posture of negative reaction to various things without being able to suggest a positive alternative, and that is frustrating.