Samuel_Tow

Sister Psyche killed Malaise? Wow, that actually does make me want to run the arc. That ******* has had it forever.

That said, here we are again asking "Who will die?" and getting an awkward answer. Who will die? Malaise! Yes! Wait, no... Hold on, let me check... OK, yes, he will die, but he doesn't count, either. That question is starting to sound incredibly hollow. It should, instead, be phrased as "Who among the following nine people will die: Statesman, Miss Liberty, Back Alley Brawler, Positron, Synapse, Sister Psyche, Bastion, Manticore, Numina. People not on the list who die in the process of the story are to be disregarded for the purposes of answering this question."

When learning about Project: Locke, Gordon Stacy said "I thought Dr. Vahzilok had the market cornered on this kind of mad science!" This got me to thinking... Yeah, he does, doesn't he? What happened to the guy? I mean, I know we defeat him in the 15-20 arc the Vahzilok Plague, but is that the end of him? Then I remembered an old suggestion I'd had - to have Dr. Vahz make a comeback in the 40s, complete with brand new engineered abominations. No longer slow, dumb, stitched-together corpses and instead fast, deadly, perfected killing machines like what you'd see from the tougher Resident Evil creatures.

But then it occurred to me that Dr. Vahzilok is just one plot which has potential, but goes just about nowhere and sort of ends, and there are so many others of them. I realise each new writer for this game seems to regard his or her predecessor's work with contempt, but I've said enough about this in other threads. Instead, let's see if we can't come up with a collection of old stories that never got told which probably really should.

*Blood of the Black Stream and the story behind Gadzul Oil. Obviously. That's the first thing anyone thinks of. Even without an Epic AT attached to it, that storyline would probably be worth telling.

*The Clockwork King. If he's supposed to "die" in the Synapse Task Force, who's powering the Clockwork who protect Penelope Yin, and who's the one who shows up for her in the Lady Grey Task Force? Clearly, the guy survives, but I want to know what happened to him in the intervening time.

*The Luddites. Who are these guys? Why do they dress like medieval peasants? Why do they hate technology? Why do they shave their heads? Why do they use swords and crossbows? They seem to hate Dr. Aeon because of his PTS, but how do they know about this?

*The Goldbrickers and King Midas. A long time ago, someone mentioned that the Golden Roller was so obviously King Midas inside his car and... Um, is he? I don't know. I've never seen King Midas and I've never heard a description of him. Why would he be hiding inside a car? And why does he know so much about technology? What IS the Goldbrickers' deal, anyway?

*Tub Chi. In Praetora, Tub Chi Tan is a co-leader of the Syndicate who respects honour and loyalty above all else, and that's a pretty cool story. But we've never seen Primal Earth's Tub Chi that the Tsoo and contacts keep talking about. What does he look like? What does he want? What kind of story can we tell about him?

*The Skulls and the Petrovic brothers. I may be misremembering, but I understood that the Petrovic brothers are the founders of the Skulls. I don't know if they show up anywhere, but I haven't seen them. I don't know why they decided to start a gang, I don't know if they had black magic powers before they did, I don't know how they found them, I don't know what they want... And considering the Skulls just sort of "stop," it might be a good story to tell.

*The Hellion Girlfriends from Hell. A while ago, I complained that these were just ugly unfunny gimmicks, but one of Twinshot's missions actually has a VERY cool twist on that: The Hellions don't know they're demons. We see the horns and the wings and the tail, but as far as the Hellions can tell, these are just perfectly normal hot chicks. They don't know these succubus demons are using them, they don't know their girlfriends are plotting to summon their demonic masters... They just don't know. And that's a very, very cool story that I really wish could be told proper, but it just isn't. Also... Who IS the leader of the Hellions? I know it can't be 3K Kelvin and I KNOW it can't be Duke Mordrogar.

*The Trolls, the Outcasts and the Warriors. Wasted potential is all I'll say. All of these gangs are so cool, but nothing much is ever made of them. Yeah, the Trolls and Outcasts get some spotlight in the Hollows, but Frostfire isn't the Outcasts leader, just their founder and not all that powerful, and Atta doesn't seem to be the Troll in overall control. And the Warriors have such potential, but they're turned into Iliad cosplayers. Who IS their leader? Odysseus? Heracles? I forget BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER! It almost never comes up. Mercedes Sheldon has a cool arc with them, but you can swap the Warrior names around and nothing will change. Oh, sure, it won't match the Iliad word for word, but the story itself won't change. All of these factions can do with so much more fleshing out and I'm sure there are plenty of stories to be told about them. The Trolls are dumb but violent, the Outcasts are cunning and always on the hunt for members and the Warriors are obsessed with honour and combat, plus they're powered by magical artefacts. There's room for story here.

*Dreck, Bile, Clamour and Upstart. Where are these guys? Dreck is supposed to be the leader of the Freakshow, but he shows up all of once, and in a mission that doesn't matter. He's supposed to be this opportunist who plays the Freaks for fools and uses them for his own ends by selling their services to Crey. And what of Bile the Technophile? How does a guy who hate technology accept drawing his strength from technology? There's room for a good story here. And what of Clamour? Yes, the Sister Psyche TF is about her, but she could show up again, especially in place of "Clamour Boi." And what of Upstart? He doesn't even exist anywhere in the game. There are only about two references to him being in jail in the whole game, and that's it. Dreck fears him. He sold him to the cops and wants to keep him in Jail. The Freakshow love him because he's supposed to be charismatic. Isn't that the perfect opportunity to start a civil war within the Freakshow?

*The Freakshow in general. At one point, the Freakshow were taken seriously. They were a crazy, frightening, unpredictable and extremely violent gang, something like your typical Raiders in your typical post-apocalyptic or cyberpunk dystopian future. They were insane, and thus their antics were somewhat funny in a cynical way, but they were still incredibly dangerous. They just don't seem to be relevant any more. If they aren't showing up just to be goofy and serve as a parody, they show up as "insert faction here" mercs for other people. And... Didn't they rebel against Dreck for selling their services for money once already? I'm sure Clamour's faction of anti-corporate militants might have something to say about that. I'd really like to see the Freakshow become relevant to the game once more.

*The Rikti Traditionalists. This was a great idea - the homicidal alien race we thought we were fighting turns out to be a peaceful, enlightened people cut off from home, fallen on hard times and consumed by a violent dictatorship. The fall of wisdom, if you will. Tragic, poetic and unexpected. But they never actually do anything. They show up once in Division: Line that's ostensibly about them, then once in Serpent Drummer's arc that's once more about them, but they don't really seem to have any effect on events following these. In fact... There ARE no events following these, just about. Gaussian's arc isn't about the Rikti and the Dark Watcher's arc is about Hro. But there really is no resolution to the Rikti on Earth, no trip to the Rikti homeworld... We don't even know how the Traditionalists helped us.

*Cimerora. Why did we go there again? I mean, I get that that's where the Well of the Furies is supposed to be, but we don't know that when we first go there. And what did stopping Requiem have to do with anything? I get that the Letter Writer knew about the well and gave the Midnighters the crystal in an effort to mask his removing of the well from Ouroboros by a torrent of heroes and villains, but I never got why heroes and villains wanted to go there in the first place. What does Montague have at stake in Cimerora?

*Croatoa. Again - what happened to this place? Will something come of it? Winter events, I guess, but will something MORE come of it? Almost every other place and storyline in City of Heroes ties into something more, but Croatoa just feels like I stepped into a whole other game for 10 levels then came back. Nothing from the rest of the city matters to Croatoa and nothing from Croatoa matters to the rest of the city.

*Bat-Zul. Yeah, him. Is he content to soak his plucked chicken butt in a lava hot tub for all eternity? What did he hope to achieve by animating the Clockwork around the PTS? What's the significance of the Cap Au Diable demons? Shouldn't that story either lead to something or at least be mentioned somewhere? Shouldn't Virgil go on to do something more than fail to trick still more villains?

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Of course, all of these are just me. That's what I remember off-hand. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you don't care, maybe you care about something else. So, let me know. Which old, abandoned storylines would you like to see picked up on? "The Shadow Shard" and "The Banished Pantheon" probably don't count since those are almost certainly already in the works, but if you want to discuss them, go for it. But aside from those, what other storylines would you like to see revisited?

The thread topic remains unresolved. I feel it's still relevant.

Hero Cops is one of the more interesting NPC factions in the game because it manages to walk the fine balance between morality and greed, yet still remain on the right side of the divide. Whether you like Hero Corps or not, their heroes for hire help protect the city, and that's nothing if not a good thing. An argument could be made about WHY these people protect the city and whether they can be trusted if someone else offered them more money, but this is a debate within the context of a working, helpful organisation.

Once upon a time, City of Heroes had subtlety and perhaps even philosophy in its writing. These days, it's all wars, gods, nuclear missiles and over-the-top shenanigans. I'd like to see some more of the old plot threads make a comeback and be explored in-depth.

I have a problem with Paragon Rewards being offered in the Paragon Market, but not for the reason you'd think. I have a problem with this because they swap currencies, and right now there is no way to trade between the two currencies. I'm talking about Paragon Points and Reward Points, as there's no real exchange between them.

The problem is that when I got Celestial Armour, I paid three reward points, but if I had to buy it with Paragon Points, the price will not match up, irrespective of what it actually costs. It creates a conundrum - do I value my Paragon Points more than my Reward Points?

Personally, if the Celestial set needs to be released in some way to all players and not just T9 VIPs, I'd say just open it up via Reward Points, but make it accessible to all tiers of players. Let it still cost three points, just let people who aren't T9 VIPs buy it. That way, it still costs Reward Points, it's still in the Paragon Rewards programme, and the people who didn't have status when this was released are given a shot at it.

Which weapon did you pick? That's always the big question

Also, could you try to crop your screenshot to show just the character instead of resizing it? When you size down a big screenshot, you end up with a very tiny person in the middle that's difficult to fully appreciate.

Not sure if serious.

I figured that as long as we're all doing it, I might as well snag a bunch of "action shots" of my own. Luckily, though a series of clever crops and resizes, I managed to get them all down to 800x600