Samuel_Tow

You can quit to the desktop, but your character remains logging out. You can restart the client and then try to log in, which will actually insta-log-out your character and override the countdown, but you would need to be able to start your NCsoft Launcher, have it connect, start City of Heroes, have that connect and then have it load AND THEN quickly type in your password, all in under 30 seconds for it to be any form of a benefit. Even if your machine can do all this in 30 seconds, I'd wager a bet it's not going to gain you more than a handful of seconds.

By contrast, logging out straight to the log in screen means you can type in your password and insta-log-out your character within the span of 5-10 seconds, which is significantly faster.

Remember - every time a character of yours is logged in when you try to connect, that character will be taken offline IMMEDIATELY irrespective of what it is doing or where it is.

But most of the time, it stays on the horizon, and it only shows up very rarely for a very brief time so that the heroes and villains of that specific comic book universe can have a crossover event, before things settle back down to normal again.

Like I said - if we view Trials as that one crossover event where our enemies cheat and they're just cosmically powerful... Yeah, that works. Granted, it needs better presentation, but IF it had better presentation, it could work. The problem is that this only actually works in a system where this is the exception to a more benevolent, uplifting narrative, and you can't have that in a raid grind scenario. Yes, we're getting Solo Incarnate content NOW, but the fact that us asking for that caused the development team's monocles to collectively pop off their cheeks with amazement tells me that this wasn't really intended to happen. They genuinely intended for the system to be all soul-crushing raids as the baseline and HARDER raids as the exception.

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In a broader sense, though - and this feeds back to what abilities we should have - I disagree that Incarnates need to prove anything, and I disagree with this on a very fundamental level. Gods and demigods should not have to "prove" anything to anyone. They have proven themselves by wresting control of the power of the well from its grasp without its direct consent (remember - the Well is gone at the end of Ramiel's arc). We have nothing left to "prove" or "earn." We are entitled to this power, and it is precisely this sense of authority and entitlement that sets god apart from ordinary people, at least in terms of respect. An ordinary person has to prove himself before he can receive divine assistance. A god is entitled to this assistance by right of status.

To my eyes, godhood should come first and foremost with unparalleled prestige, and this is perhaps where the main disconnect between us happens. Incarnates should not be underdogs. Ever. Irrespective of how much power the well has given them, Incarnates should be entitled to respect and awe just by virtue of being Incarnate. Hell, most Incarnates should be entitled to respect just for having gotten to the pinnacle of power before reality-warping comes into play. At level 50, our heroes and villains should be famous, respected and feared people. They should have earned a place in the hall of fame and they SHOULD feel entitled to the good stuff. Becoming a god just takes these expectations up to 11.

Yes, it's arrogant. Yes, it's egocentric. Yes, it's demanding. That's the whole POINT. Normal people have to abide by the rules of society because they are judged by their deeds and their words, but gods are judged by their status. Gods deserve that kind of self-entitlement, something I just don't get from anywhere else in the game. Gods are the people who can claim "What I say goes!" and it goes whether the god is right or wrong. Prometheus is a complete dick, but he's entitled to be, both because there's nothing we can do about it and because he is a god. We don't mess with them. Not until we get to their level, and when we do, others can no longer mess with us.

I see some approach the game with humble acceptance, and for most of it that's fine. Not for godhood. Not for Incarnates. Level 50 is where proving ourselves ends and reaping the benefits of having proved ourselves begins. One central aspect that I would expect gods, demigods, Incarnates or whatever you want to call them to share is prestige, authority and self-indulgence. No, it may not be entirely fair, but when I'm a god, I get what I want whether it's fair or not. How I act decides whether I'm a good god or a bad god, but in either case, I am not limited.

People have often called me greedy, spoiled and lazy when it comes to certain aspects of this game, and I've always tried to defend myself. Not in this case. When it comes to gods, I WANT to be greedy, spoiled and lazy, because as a god, I should be entitled to it. I may not make use of it, but I should be entitled to it. The 1-50 game is fine as it is, but when we become gods, we need to transcend the treadmill of continuously proving ourselves to everyone and their grandma. We HAVE proven ourselves. Now it's time to act on that authority. No more people giving us orders, no more people squashing us flat, no more reason to feel humble. Humble is when you're level 5 fighting Vahzilok in the sewers. This should have no place in the repertoire of a god.

Anything a god wants or does should stem from the belief that he is entitled to have it and entitled to do it. The game should not argue with us on this, it should instead foster this feeling.

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Mind you, I know I'll be accused of wanting a boring game, and that's not the point. There's always more to accomplish and more power to chase after, but this can still be done in a functioning game with the right presentation. I don't need to play the game with cheat codes to feel like a god. I need to play a game which caters to my ego to feel like one.

Wow, outdated PvP insults AND a broad slander against the entire community. I hadn't seen something quite this bad before.

Because there's really no point in it. There is no point in adding progression past the level cap if that progression is just going to parrot progression from level 1 proper. If I'm level 50(+1) fighting level 50(+1) Infected and still being treated as a helpless rookie, then why did I bother getting here? We've done this, we've seen this, we were the rookies. The point of expanding our limitations isn't just so we can retrace our steps and be busted down to rookie, albeit a very powerful one, all over again. The point is to present us with something that we didn't have before, and what we didn't have before was the authority to act like gods and the status of being the strongest. Anything less than that is a missed opportunity.

As I said - you may present it as progression, but progression is not down to numbers, or shouldn't be, at any rate. Progression is about presentation. I shouldn't have to stop and read a list of reasons for why I'm better to know that I am. Progression is something that should be visible and tangible, something that should be obvious. Before I was a god, I had my limitations. Now that I am, I'm so much better. There may still be much to do and many challenges to face, but these challenges shouldn't appear overwhelming and humiliating. That's not where the path to godhood should be headed.

What you describe reminds me of the relationship between J and K of Men in Black fame. When Will Smith is first introduced, he's damn near the best cop on the force, but Tommy Lee Jones still treats him like a bumbling rookie and the audience, by extension, sees him as one. Even in Men in Black 2, when Will Smith has become an elite agent, when Tommy Lee Jones comes back, he still dominates him and effectively busts him down to rookie. That's progress in words only, but in terms of presentation, it's regression. Power does not matter numerically. Power only matters within context, and the context of Incarnate Trials is "you are weak, helpless peons before the might that is Praetoria."

As heroes, we started small and became big. As gods, we need to start big and become even bigger. The Incarnate storyline shouldn't be looking for excuses to bust us down to trainee. It should be looking for excuses to make us shine despite being new to godlike power. We have already progressed from underdog to champion once. Doing it again adds nothing. Progressing from champion to something so much more is where the real potential of this system lies.

My brain is a cauldron of eclectic memories that strike at the strangest times. Until I started the previous sentence, I didn't think I remembered, either

I'm reminded of the Spoony One's take on "no disqualification" wrestling matches. Sometimes you ask yourself questions. If there's no disqualification, why not bring a sword? Why not bring a stun gun? Bring a knife, bring a baseball bat, bring a shotgun. You can, because there are no disqualifications. But then you start to think... They'd never do that, because it would be stupid. Well, guess what? They just did it! Abyss is kidnapping audience members and torturing people backstage!

City of Heroes is a lot like that. When you stop to think about it, the whole game is kind of goofy. Bullets can't kill us, but baseball bats REALLY hurt. We can drop from a 150 storey building and walk it off or take a stroll in lava, but a guy with a sword is a giant threat. We shoot people for loitering in the street or for wearing gang colours. It's quite ridiculous, but we don't talk about it because it's easy to pretend. Well... They're thugs, plus their guns are probably crap and their baseball bats are really study. Or... We don't die from falling because that would suck.

We don't talk about these things because the storyline doesn't make it a point to highlight them. You don't get a story arc to stop a street gang from taking over the city with the newest, deadliest superweapon - the butterfly knife. You don't get story arcs to ask why civilians are immune to damage. That's just the game being the game, and the story pretends these things don't happen. You don't bring attention to these things, because it's embarrassing for everybody, both players and creators. We all know about the awkward concessions we make for playing a computer game, but you don't talk about that.

And you sure as hell don't put it as a central mechanic in your featured content! Yes, you can explain it, but the explanation is goofy. Yes, you can justify it, but the justification just points out how silly the whole premise is. This is getting to the point where Incarnates are one away from crossing over into self-referential parody. Like Tyrian, where the strongest ship was the carrot and the strongest weapon the hot dog gun. We're one step removed from ACTUALLY putting in a storyline to explain why citizens are invulnerable, immovable and all-powerful and possibly introduce an eleventh Incarnate slot: Pedestrian.

Do you realise how silly that is? Do you realise just how close we are to that?

That's what I wanna' do!

My mother always said that two wrongs don't make a right.

My point is that this is PRECISELY what I've been complaining about since City of Villains began. The last thing I want to see happen is for heroes to suffer the same fate. On the contrary, villains need more self-made villainy. Make better content for everybody, not worse content for all for the sake of parity.

Ah! Yes, I have and I do. Mostly, I play +0x2. I tried playing -1x3, but people insulted my intelligence so many times I gave up on it, plus back then I wanted to get Shard drops, too, and those don't drop off -1 enemies.

Now, does that mean I can't handle +1x2 or +0x3 or even more? Probably not. Hell, I up the difficulty to +0x3 when I team with my friends, just so we're not two people fighting my solo spawns, and occasionally I'll forget to change it back. Turns out, my Titan Weapons Brute can handle that with enough success, but I still went back to +0x2. Why? Well, when I fight harder fights, it causes me to get hurt more, slow down more, use more inspirations and die more, and I honestly find this disruptive. I prefer to have most of the game be a curb stomp with only the occasional special spawns providing the actual challenge. And the way this game's scripted fights work, upping your difficulty causes them to get a LOT harder. A x1 Achilles fight gives you 6 bosses and around 6-8 minions. A x2 Achilles fight gives you 6 bosses and around 20-30 minions, at least by my count.

That's not to say the game is always easy. My Titan Brute fell to Nosferatu, she fell to Brukholder, she fell once to Requiem/Vandal/Ming the Merciless, she quite a few times to Red Cap bosses, she fell a few times when ambushes stacked with regular fights, she fell a few times against the Cimeroran Traitors, and even when my enemies aren't that strong, she's fallen a few times just because I made a mistake. There are challenging fights all over the game, I just don't want EVERY fight to be challenging. This is depressing. I want most fights to be easy so that I can approach the actually challenging fights with confidence and enthusiasm, not with fear and trepidation.

Actually, I agree with this. The first SSA wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good. SSA2 was actually a lot of fun, at least from the hero-side of things. Sure, Tami and Tommy got played, but Numina wasn't reallyh a damsel in distress, plus she got away unharmed from it all, and the Rulu Shin were cool, if tragic bad guys.

SSA 3, on the other hand, just sickened me and ensured that I'm never going to play SSA 4, 5, 6 or 7, nor will I ever replayed SSA 1, 2 or 3. That's a shame, since SSA 1 and 2 were pretty cool, but SSA 3 ruined them for me. First Praetoria's world half empty, then First Ward's crapsack world, then the Atlas Park and Mercy Island war crimes, and now this. After this, I might as well go back to Silent Hill for a pleasant, uplifting vacation by comparison.

This is really the crux of it. I have no problem with my characters being weak and being overpowered by incredibly tough odds. In the beginning. We all have to start somewhere, and even if I were to claim that my character has the power to shape the universe to her will (which I have), I still have to start her off as a weakling and explain why that is. In the beginning, we're all street-level heroes who fight thugs and gangsters and whose reach doesn't go much beyond the neighbourhood. That's normal, good, in fact.

However, sooner or later, the game has to progress, it has to grow bigger and bolder and expand both our powers and our horizons. At some point, we can no longer be street level heroes who fight gangbangers and carjackers, because we grow powerful enough to take on the bigger world-wide foes, and eventually even cosmic foes. To match them, our powers have to grow, and eventually we need to grow to be on their levels. After a certain point, "I hit it with my axe" just doesn't cut it... Actually literally speaking. We end up having to explain why we're able to cut heavily armoured mechs, we need to explain why we're able to survive taking ballistic missiles to the face, we need to be able to explain how we can singularly best the greatest combatants of an entire dimension. We need to explain how we can defeat A GOD in single combat.

Mind you, I don't look down on street-level heroes. I don't see them as pathetic and quaint or a lower level of super hero progression. A tough cop who's taken up arms to stop the violent gang wars in his home town is very respectable, and his not being able to just shoot Cthulu in the face and save all of reality isn't something to be ashamed of. Everyone has his limitations, and the people who become famous for fighting street crime are usually surpassing their own limitations in the adventures they have.

Nevertheless, there is a totem pole of super power, and street level crime is towards the bottom of it. If you want your hero to be a street level fighter, then that's fine - lock him to that level and keep him there. I respect that. But once you move up the totem pole, you have to accept the escalation that comes with it. When you're fighting ancient gods, space aliens and armies of robots, this comes with certain prerequisites. You're expected to be able to take them, you're expected to be able to survive, you're expected to be able to perform on that level. And, really, the game doesn't let you not perform. To GET to that level, you have to have earned the power to BE at that level. To claim your Incarnate is a street-level fighter who only has his fists and his wits is to defy the basic structure of progression in this game.

When the Incarnate system first came out, many people said "Well, most of my characters won't become Incarnates. It doesn't make sense for them to be Incarnate." This I respect, because to these people, their character's in-story power level was more important than orange numbers on the screen, and they kept their characters to the power level they were supposed to have. That's just fine, and that IS an option. But once we have gone down the path of the Incarnate, we can no longer claim we just aren't, because that's missing the point of both the system and the storyline entirely.

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I'm reminded of the fight between Alucard and Luke Valentine. Luke fancies himself the strongest vampire in the world and challenges Alucard. He seems to be winning, until Alucard "gets serious," turns into something with a lot of eyes and shoots off both of Vincent's legs. Then comes the infamous few lines:

The moral of the story here is - know your limitations. If all you can do is fight street crime, then by all means - fight street crime. But if you're going to fight a god, then bring your A game. You don't go to fight in cosmic battles if you don't have the power to stand your ground.

I have nothing against people not wanting to be gods. The game permits it. But if you shoot for the top levels of power, you need to accept that this means you will HAVE the top levels of power.

I like your costume, but I LOVE your action shots! I kind of wanted to make some of mine, but never got around to it. With your inspiration, I just might Thank you for that. You've given me a new standard to shoot for.

*edit*
Sadly, the action shots will have to wait until I get access to the machine which has the skin on it. I don't have that on any of my home rigs as they're both Windows 7 x64, and because I actually play on them

I've made it kind of my mission to share that particular "alteration" every chance I have, just because it looks so much better when you see it than it does to describe it with words. Even David Nakayama was very set against the idea until I made the original mock-ups (convincing him is why I made them in the first place ) until he actually saw them. People always look at me weird when I say "muscular women," thinking it's something grotesque and abominable. When they actually see what I have in mind, I meet with approval more often than not.

And you're right about the waist. The original Xanta was made many years ago when I wasn't very comfortable with pushing the limits on the base models. I made her big, but not very, I made her chunky, but not very, and I gave her a big sword... But not very. It was actually the Science Pack that made her what she is today when I gave her a good two or three extra feet of height Nevertheless, I left her more or less skinny for her height because I didn't know better. Redoing her now with everything I've learned and with the confidence to defy public expectations, I think she's better for it. Mind you, I'm sure Xanta's new look is probably awkward to quite a few people who were OK with it before, but that's a price worth paying

I may be using incorrect terminology. I believe a "detonation" is defined as a reaction which produces a supersonic shockwave, which C4 does, but a camp fire does not. At least that's how Grant Imahara defined it.

The Mythbusters already tested it. You can set C4 on fire, stomp on it, drop a pot on it, drop an anvil on it and shoot it with a high-powered rifle, and it won't detonate. The only way Adam and Jamie found to detonate it was with a blasting cap. The stuff is safer than myth suggests.

Do you mean if I've fiddled with characters who have great power, but which comes with nasty side effects? I have. That's more or less what the original Samuel Tow was and is. He's always been my Mary Sue who can do practically anything, but usually doesn't do much of anything because of just that kind of limitation. His power comes from a difficult-to-explain alternate consciousness, a sort of violent base instinct, that vies for control of his mind, so every time he does anything super, he risks letting it take control. Essentially, he can do almost anything, and yet he usually can't afford to.

I find some of the most entertaining storywriting to be for characters who COULD totally break the story, and then coming up with legitimate reasons for why they can't afford to.

I see your point. Realistically speaking, if we see the Trials as one-offs, they're not that bad, especially if we assume our characters do other things the rest of the time. But the problem is that Matt Miller and his crew didn't do that. They didn't create a pool of content with raids as the exception. They created standard MMO raid grind. They made a system intentionally designed for repeated raiding. They shouldn't have designed such a system with content that, narratively, is only supposed to happen once.

While iRaids themselves may be forgiveable in a vacuum, the system that's wrapped around them simply robs them of it.

Precisely. You can write whatever weaknesses you want into your characters, but some content simply doesn't work for some characters. A street-level detective hero has no place trading punches giant war machines armed with chainguns and surviving rockets to the face.

This is doubly true when you've drunk from the Well and are now a god who, in a future reality, will be powerful enough to take on the whole of the Freedom Phalanx and not even break a sweat.

Yeah, it's about time people wised up.

WoW is famous for its power armour, I hear.

That's exactly what I mean, yes. There's room for "greater threats" that endanger even the gods themselves, but these should be exceedingly rare. If a god is to be threatened, this should come from his enemies using overwhelming numbers or otherwise cheating in a way that gives them power but comes with tragic consequences for them, as well.

In general, I want an Incarnate to feel like the raid boss, with the NPCs coming in a large group to take him down like the raid party. Again, this doesn't have to apply to just one player. A group of players could be threatened by enemy numbers, as well, if the enemies field enough "heavies." I'd sooner fight the whole damn Praetorian army like we do in one mission in Tin Mage than fight just one or two Praetorian god-modders.

Ugh, don't remind me of Tin Mage. Seeing level 54 Malta goons punching supposed Incarnates to death with their fists pissed me off like you wouldn't believe. And the Director himself isn't just out of place, he's also a hideously cheap fight. That's a very bad introduction to Incarnate-dom.

I have a counter-example, actually - the new Maria Jenkins ark. Now, I get that we were being allowed to fight all the Praetors before, but the way it's done now is so much more satisfying. What's keeping us from early victory isn't that our enemies are too strong, it's just that we keep missing the opportunity to save the Statesman. I'd get to a mission, take out all the Praetorian heavies and be essentially victorious, but it's still a loss because while I kicked ***, I didn't accomplish what I went there to do.

I really like the dialogue on the Praetorians, too. Marauder, especially. He fights with almost complete desperation. "Come on! Compute faster!" "No, I will NOT lose again!" "You win, but you're too late!" Honestly, right at this moment I can't think of a better way to put over the player strong and put a smile on my face walking out. Marauder is a bigshot. He's a meaningful fight. And yet the guy is obviously struggling. It shows me that I'm not just some wimp he expects to curb-stomp but I win by means of cheating with inspirations. It shows me that he's worried. A signature character is worried about fighting me, and if he sees enough danger in me to be worried, that's a compliment of the highest accord.

And that ain't even an Incarnate storyline! THIS is what Incarnates should be. This is how we should be treated - as the big guys, the big threats, the people even signature characters are wary of taking on, the people that, when we fight the big guys, they sweat bullets in the process.

Again, presentation. None of the Maria fights are easy. Marauder in particular is just evil when he uses Unstoppable. He kicked my *** when last I fought him, and damn near ran away with the victory. Functional ease isn't the problem. It's how we're presented as facing this threat, and whether it's with dignity or in disgrace that we face it.

I wouldn't call it lack of imagination in the slightest. Far from it - that's exactly where I was, and indeed still am for the most part. I've had the most difficult time accepting Arachnos Patron pools as a concept and have only recently started even contemplating Incarnate powers. You have a concept in mind, and you're sticking to it. Giving the character both the strengths AND the weaknesses that that concept calls for is just good writing. It may not necessarily be good PLAYING, but my impression has always been that playing doesn't really take that much imagination anyway. Your dime, your time.

For me, however, I see this as an opportunity to expand my horizons, and an opportunity I've not really faced in a very long time. I think Sam Tow himself is a pretty good example, as I pretty much every time I so much as touch the guy's concept, he seems to develop new powers and abilities just because I think it's cool. He started as a very fast guy with a powerful sword, then went on to be fast enough to dodge bullets, then went on to have a pair of custom guns, then he went on to have a momentum-cancelling device with which to make long jumps and survive huge falls, then I ret-conned his cloak into a sort of hard light holographic shield, then I gave him limited precognition, and I'm currently contemplating giving him an actual energy sword. Just 'cuz.

Personally, when I design my characters, I do so from a standpoint of profound respect and admiration for them, both hero and villain. I want these guys to be the stars of their own stories, I want these guys to be the movers and shakers of their own worlds, I want them to be one-man armies. That's kind of why I made them in the first place. In large part, my imagination has been shaped by what City of Heroes allows me to do, and for seven years City of Heroes kept my brain locked into classes and specialists, to the point where that's how I've actually started thinking. So here, finally, is an opportunity to expand on my imagination... And I kind of want to take it. Well, solo Incarnate progress permitting, but that's besides the point.

My point is that... For a lot of my characters, I can cite sources for their godlike powers offhand, just because the concepts I gave them are more or less already like that. For others, it's not as easy. Normally, I'd balk and insist that that's not what I envisioned the character as doing. Like you, I'd aim to limit what my characters can do. But I now find myself accepting that maybe these guys and gals could and indeed should be capable of more. I realise that I've built a fighter who worked well in hand-to-hand combat, but fell short when he had to face off against tanks and fighter jets, and now I have to come up with a reason for why he CAN fight them. How do you kick a jet when you're earth-bound? In this case, I'm not trying to shoehorn foreign abilities into existing characters so much as I want to expand existing characters into a brand new direction. To be honest... It's been a lot of fun so far

Well... To be honest, just making a character stronger but the same like he was seems like a waste to me. It'd be a good stat boost, but it could be so much more. And what's funny is I was one of the people advocating that Incarnates just make us better at what we already do, not try to reinvent ourselves, and yet here I am asking for how we should go about reinventing ourselves a year later. Let's just say I changed my mind.

But the point is, you don't have to expand your character by breaking concept. You don't have to introduce new plots to your character to make this work. Not unless your character is defined by what he can't do. As I mentioned with Sam before, mine rarely are. Almost without exception, I want to give them all tools to deal with all situations, including things like aerial combat, space exploration, time travel and so on. To me, the sky's the limit (figuratively speaking), and actually having the opportunity to expand sideways seems like a fun thing to do, at least as a mental exercise.

Personally, though, I feel that a specialist simply can't make for a good god, just because a god faces enemies of a VERY broad spectrum of abilities. When your enemies could literally be anything, you kind of have to be able to do everything. Plus, it's damn cool to be able to do that

I don't disagree with you, but I find this to be profoundly disappointing. Personally, the elitist VIP quality of life additions that trivialise most of the game's time sinks are exactly the kind of thing that would set an Incarnate apart. The ordinary folk have to walk to the shop to sell their goods, but my Incarnate can turn them into energy right on the spot, just as a random example. In this case, it's not cool because I'm "better," but rather it's cool because I remember when I faced the same limitation, and I know how cool it is to overcome it. An Incarnate who is essentially independent of the world around him and needs no help from anyone is a damn cool thing.

That said, I do believe a "quality of life" slot would be seen as a giant waste by most players. I kind of wish these things came with Incarnate slots as sort of a minor bonus. For instance, you get your Destiny slot and on top of the Destiny power you put in it, you get to shape people's destiny by being able to change their difficulty settings ala the Fateweavers. You don't have to invest in this, it's a perk of the slot. Or for the Judgement slot, in addition to your large-scale AoE, you can train people when they level up. The connection is tenuous, but it could be spun to make sense.

Basically, I feel that the "more incarnated" a character is, the more quality of life benefits he should posses. These don't have to be gamebreaking, so long as they free us up from our reliance on support from our world. Ideally, I want an Incarnate to be able to be dropped off on the dark side of the moon with no contact with Earth and still have full access to all amenities people in the heart of Paragon City can enjoy.

While I love the look and feel of the judgement powers and feel they were a long time coming... I keep thinking there are other ways to be amazing without necessarily shooting great balls of fire, if I may say that. For instance, take Ben 10's character by the name of Paradox. He was a scientist who experimented with time travel, got sucked into the "hub of time" and after an eternity of going insane, he "got bored," became sane again and learned how time works. Right now, he can travel to any point in time or space and knows everything that will happen in the entire timestream. He's not a combatant of any stature, but he's still awesome because he's able to chat with you, pop over to an alien planet in the neighbouring galaxy, check out what the big bad there is doing, then pop back and let you know within the span of 30 seconds. Every time a major plot point comes along, he shows up to warn it and every time a major event goes down, he's there to witness it.

Now, I get that this is a combat-centric game so naturally combat prowess is what'll be the most visually impressive, but consider the following abilities which a god might possess:

*The ability to train other players to the next level personally without them needing an NPC trainer.

*The ability to speak with contacts directly irrespective of the contact's relationship bar.

*The ability to access any vendor in the game from anywhere (except on an instance).

*The ability to alter people's costumes in the field.

*The ability to set up his own difficulty settings personally without needing a representative.

*The ability to have a base all of his own without rent or the need for "prestige," where he could store items and resurrect.

*The ability to create Inventions without the need for a crafting table, as well as the ability to create (soulbound) components for them out of his "influence."

*Special dialogue options in all dialogue trees, highlighting either great respect or supernatural knowledge.

*The ability to be immune from harm for a short period of time - a literal god mode.

And that's just off the top of my head.

I'm aware this is true for some of them, but is it true for ALL of them? Is so... I might try.

Sonic is probably the one thing in this game that I have the hardest time taking seriously, and I played Psychic Blast. Yelling at your enemies has simply always seemed irredeemably goofy to me, even when Blackbolt is doing it. In seven years, I've never had a character that made sense to yell at people. Now, if we could shoot sonics out of our hands like Spider-Man villain the Shocker, that I'd probably play. Or if, like the Council Sonic troops or the Goldbrickers, we could shoot our sonics out rifles or big guns. Yeah I'd play that. I'd have played that on day one. But shouting? Pass.

Also, if we're talking about sonics, doesn't that usually refer to ultrasound? As in, sound above the range of human hearing? Or are we just referring to just very loud sound within the audible range?

The paradigm that I wanted to address with the original post is actually part of what you're saying here. Should demigods be able to do something - i.e. one thing - that ordinary heroes and villains can't, or should said demigod instead be able to do lots of things that lots of different people can, but not at the same time? Looking at the selection of Incarnate powers that we have access to, it seems the powers team went with the latter. Rather than Scrappers becoming Scrappers++, they instead get the ability to blast, buff, debuff and summon pets, just as an idle example.

When I first saw the original design behind Incarnates, I was puzzled. How would I explain all my characters being able to do all these things? Xanta's powers are toughness and strength. How the XXX can she summon shadows? Well... The truth is that when we become Incarnates, I think we're supposed to grow into something more. Either we can submit to the story railroad and say we sprouted "I can't believe it's not magic!" powers, or we can say that our characters amassed a wide collection of artefacts, gadgets, spells, techniques or whatever, and they are thus now able to do so much more. HOW we got these powers is immaterial - we can always explain it. What matters is admitting that we DO have these powers.

To expand on my anecdote, Xanta's original design was just that - she's big, she's tough, she has a big sword. But when I started thinking big, I realised that JUST a big sword wasn't enough, so I ret-conned it into a magic sword that her adoptive father - the "mystic smith" - created for her. I then further expanded this to include magical armour, for the most part, so if I have to include summons and a reason why slashing with a sword causes people to catch on fire, then "magic artefacts" is what I'll use.

Like I said, explaining why we have these powers isn't the problem. It's making that first step and accepting that you now have these frankly abnormal powers that may really only make sense with a godlike character concept. But once I've accepted this, a question naturally rises: Just how deep does the rabbit hole go? Just how many different kinds of unusual powers should a demigod have? What kind of powers are we even talking?

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Consider the following mental exercise. Pick one of your characters, preferably one that's designed to be more or less of a "street crime" level of power. Now imagine what powers this person would have if he became a god. That's essentially what I'm asking.

When we create our Incarnates, we're not creating new gods out of whole cloth. We are promoting already existing characters whose designs may not always be easy to fit into the storyline.