Samuel_Tow

As I understand it, Masterminds pay more endurance for buffs of the same effect, their debuffs are less effective, some of their powers are on a longer recharge (Dark Servant is 8 minutes 20 seconds) and all of their AoE debuffs, patches and fields are smaller. In general, they do offer a substantial amount of support, but it's still vastly inferior to a true support AT.

I was joking More I mean that all kinds of players play City of Heroes, and I expect to run into at least one or two Chinese people, so I want my name to be non-stupid for their benefit. I've seen enough faux-Russian to simply not want to do that to anybody else.

Thank you, Freem! If I have your ear, I actually have a few questions and suggestions:

First of all, if mashing characters together, is it appropriate to split a character's name in three parts and, for instance, write my example name as Shao Shen Shi? Having slept on "Shao Shenshi" has made me realise I made exactly the same kind of mistake that I did with "Yamikane no Rikimaru," which was to produce a name that was meaningful but not something I actually liked on merit of sound and aesthetic.

I want to call this character "Shen" as the name with which he is addressed most often, which would be his given name. Not Shenshi, not Shen Shi, just Shen. The problem, as I understand it, is that if this does act like a generation name, then addressing someone by that is confusing since it can apply to any one of his immediate family. I don't want to flip the name around as it then has him named after a historical figure, which I understand is frowned upon.

I think I might just take you up on your offer and just offer you a sound I'm going for. In this case, I think I've found what I liked - a name which relies on the aliteration of the "sh" sound. I don't know how a genuine Chinese person would pronounce those, but they way they sound in English spelling, you have this VERY heavy, repeating "sh" sound in the whole of "Shao Shenshi," and that's the sound I want to go for.

Would you, however, advise me to go with a simpler name if I want the character to be referred to as just "Shao" by his friends and enemies? Would dropping a character and going with simply Shao Shen be appropriate for a name? I could do that. It would be simpler and give me the given name I want... I think.

As far as meaning goes, I'm actually not that concerned with finding the perfect meaning for the name, so long as it's not something stupid, like "Master Pink Unicorn" or some such. I'm also going to try an avoid including any Traditional Chinese symbols into City of Heroes, both because I have NO knowledge of the language whatsoever and because adding Chinese keyboard layouts causes my Microsoft Language Bar to get stuck in them permanently. I know City of Heroes supports Unicode and will display them just fine, but I can't actually type or read them, and I have a policy of not including text I can't replicate or translate So as long as the name doesn't have some silly alternate meaning, I should be happy with it.

Basically, I want someone you can address as "Shen" and possibly with the family name of "Shao." If we can add in more characters for the person's full name in his bio, that would be even better, but I want a name above his head that a Chinese person would look at and go "Hello, Shen."

And again - I'm honestly shooting in the dark here, as I know practically nothing about the subject matter.

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On a somewhat unrelated topic and purely out of curiosity, can someone tell me what Chun-Li's name... Is? Does it mean anything, which part of it is what name, is it missing a surname, etc.? This isn't important, it's just something that's bothered me since I was about 5 years old watching people play old arcade games

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Overall, I have a costume for the guy all set, I have powersets for him so all I need is a name and he can be made.

That's going straight into my bookmarks. Thanks!

I'd like to try to be as original as possible as my first option and possibly build one from scratch if someone can contribute a better grasp of what names can be used in which circumstances. Failing that, yeah, I'll probably rip someone off. It can actually be even simpler than that, though - I can do with just a couple of random, gender-appropriate Chinese characters (romanised such) to mash together for a name. I already suspect "Shen" would be appropriate for a man, since I've seen it used that way before.

That's actually not a bad idea. I can work to come up with a full name, but not weight down the character name with it, and instead stick it in the description. This I like. Unlike with "Yamikaze no Rikimaru," my last made-up name, this one doesn't NEED to be long and confusing to type out. I don't think Chinese names have ever been very long to say, as a point of fact. So, yes, I can stick to just personal name for above the old guy's head and a full name in his description. Thank you

Ideally, I'd love for that to happen. Unfortunately, I don't really know any Chinese people personally (at least none that I'm aware are Chinese), but I AM hoping that one will eventually come buy and lend a hand. But it is exactly this complexity which keeps me from trying to make one up on my own, since I've no idea what I'll end up with. The stupid stereotype of Ching Chang Chung from BoneTown has me scarred for life. If I use a foreign name, I want to make sure I'm not embarrassing myself and insulting the people of that culture.

Mender Ramiel came back from farther into the future expressly because your future super-Incarnate self broke the laws of nature to send him back, and that's in his own words. Also, if Mender Silos lied, then so did the Letter Writer when he described Lazarus. According to the letter found at Requiem's final stand, Lazarus has a shared temporal consciousness and routinely sends copies of himself past their tether to see what lies beyond the void or veil or whatever abstract word was used there that I can't quite remember.

The entire purpose of Ouroboros coming to our time is to recruit people who can operate in our own past. Yes, we can consider that, to quote Gregory House, "everybody lies," but a story where all the exposition is a lie just isn't a very good story to follow and it makes the reveals all incomprehensible and not very good.

There's a reason for it - Lazarus says that he is from the 76th century, "roughly 5600 years in your future" and is already at the end of his tether. He dares go back another couple of years, maybe, but not much before. Aeon is at least in his 30s, possibly his 40s, and it's hard to imagine a person whose origin in time is so far ahead that he can't travel back to the time of his own birth, unless he somehow lived for 5600 years, which even in comic book logic is not something to throw around willy-nilly.

In fact, all of the Menders are from the far future. That's why they recruit you - because "of all the Menders, you have the greatest access, because you're a native of THIS time." Now, granted, all of this comes from Lazarus and we can claim he's just lying through his teeth, but again - that sort of storytelling is just bad. Yes, you can have characters who lie about events in a story, but if you use their narrative as a vehicle for exposition, you don't get to contradict them entirely. The most you can do before I start calling a story a waste of my time is have the truth be ALMOST like the exposition tells me, but different in one crucial detail, and that detail can't be the origins of all named Menders. Not unless we want to call the whole of Ouroboros a hoax.

Having written more than a few stories "on the fly" with only a vague idea of what follows from one chapter to the next, let alone five or ten chapters in, I could definitely see this as a possibility. I'm not saying the writing suggests this, but it IS actually very consistent with a good writer making up reveals as he goes along. After all, the most cryptic, complex and obscure of secrets are the ones to which even the author of the story does not know the answer.

And that's not a bad thing, to be honest. So long as it makes sense in the end (fingers crossed!), then that would actually make for a nice approach to it.

I expected you to adore alliteration, honestly

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I've renamed I think only a single character so far. He was my old attempt at a meaningful Japanese name (a mistake I shall not repeat) whom I made from research into Japanese names but with no real knowledge of the language(s) or the customs, and ended up with a botch that read like something completely else. With much help from the forums, he is now "Yamikaze no Rikimaru," and I honestly don't remember what that means. It's "Rikimaru of the <something> wind," but what that something is... I've forgotten. Either blood, or red or some such, I think. I should have a Japanese-to-English dictionary link somewhere lying about.

But, yeah, aside from that one goof, I stick by my names... Unless I reroll. I've reroll-changed at least one name - "Velcro Kitty" became "Kim Navar" because I couldn't think of a good reason for a serious character to have that name that wasn't stupid. The new one isn't precisely better as such, but it's easier to justify.

The thing is, if magic is how the Letter Writer is travelling through time, then someone dropped the ball HARD on setting this up, since at no point in the game does unambiguous magic travel through time. We see magic travel across dimensions in the shape of the Oranbegan "tower to the heavens," but not across time. The only time travellers aside from Ourobors that I know of are Arachnons, and they're using a "Stargate."

If the Midnighters' did have access to time travel in some way, then the game should have set this up. I'm not saying it's not possible, just that it would be completely out of left field and not very good storytelling. This is more of a meta argument, but still.

Here's a question I didn't want to ask - WHY are the Midnighters sending us to Cimerora? I know Montague Castanella's writing is some of the worst, most confusing, least professional in the game and it's very possible I just misunderstood, but I was under the impression that they have a Crystal which goes to Cimerora. Period. The Letter Writer specifically gave them the crystal so that they could go to Cimerora and provide enough temporal interference to hide his own movements from Ouroboros. If they could just wave a wand at the thing and instead go check out what killed the dinosaurs, that might put a kink in his plan.

Of course, Montague is said to be aware of changes to the timeline as they happen, but just what the devil this means is anyone's guess since pretty much everything about the Midnighters that isn't Mercedes Sheldon is a right mess of bad writing and leaps of logic.

I kind of expected that essentially the "Darryn Wayde" argument would pop up at some point - the former Midnighter who is no longer a Midnighter. I can't really claim one way or the other, but what reason would the Dream Doctor have to leave the Midnight Club? I don't remember much of his story, but I recall him being forgotten, so if he still exists, why not get touch with them and ask for their help. Maybe even get Montague's help in seeing changes in the timeline. Why go around recruiting Protean and fake Ajax? If it does end up being the Dream Doctor, it will be kind of out of left field.

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I guess in any good mystery, we really shouldn't have a good guess as to who the mystery person will end up being, and even better when it's the one we didn't think to question. But to bring up a character who was never in the game to begin with just seems like an *** pull, if you'll pardon my English. Yes, it might make sense for the Letter Writer to be the Dream Doctor if we think about it hard enough. It might also make sense for him to be mayor Spanky Rabinowitz and I'm sure we can make a case for that, as well. But if the person is not well established, then the reveal just stumbles into "And the killer is... Wait, who's that?"

You don't get progress on your World Wide Red story arc while helping another player finish his Horrors of War story arc. You don't get progress towards your paper/scanner contact in a zone you're too high or too low for just because you're helping someone run paper/scanner arcs there. You certainly don't get paper progress for the brokers/detectives of your own level range. You don't get scanner progress in Founders' Falls for running scanner missions in Brickstown. You don't earn Incarnate Threads unless you're on an Incarnate Trial.

Asking to gain Vigilante points by taking part in non-vigilante missions is like me asking that I should get progress towards Market badges because I'm on the same team as someone shopping at the Market. If you want Vigilante progress, team with Vigilantes. You act like no-one in the whole game is a vigilante and you can never run Vigilante tips, which is provably false as I continuously see calls for Vigilante teams over the few global channels I'm in.

This is not true in the slightest. First of all, you cannot swap sides "easily." It takes four days to swap sides in one direction and four more days to swap sides in another direction, and every time you change alignment you lose all of your Alignment Merits. There are no "short term advantages" to the Alignment System any more than there are any short term advantages to the Incarnate system. If you farm for Merits, you're in it for weeks. If you swap alignment, you lose everything you've gained.

This is false on its face. There's nothing "random" or "limited" about being able to travel to the Rogue Isles and team with the opposite faction when calls for teams go over global channels or when people you know log in on the wrong side. This is a tremendous advantage that you're bordering on a straw man argument in the vehemence with which you deny it. It's a simple point of fact - if there were no benefits to staying a pure hero or a pure villain, no-one ever would. There ain't a concept in the world which can cause most people to choose to be a hero when they can be a hero AND team with their friends. You may be the exception, but the system needs to apply to the whole of the population.

If by "AE" you mean the Architect, then no - both sides can't team in it. You need to travel to the specific Architect building that the mission was started in. Beyond that, you have the War Zone, where you have all of four story arcs, and Cimerora, where you have all of one TF. And both of those are level 35 and up. Suppose I'm playing my newly-created level 1 Mastermind in Mercy Island and a friend of mine logs in with his level 25 hero. How do we team? Do I abandon what I really wanted to do and play a character I didn't want to play in the first place or does he drop what he's doing and kowtow to my whims? Or do we go to the Rikti War Zone so we can stare at each other? No, if he's a Vigilante, he can come play my missions, or he can snag paper missions and we can play that.

As well, teaming with the other side's archetypes or powersets hasn't been a boon since 2006. I don't play with other people to see their powersets. I play with other people because I want to play with other people. And if it's possible for me to play what I want and for them to play what they want and for us to still team anyway, this is a significant advantage that you cannot just brush aside.



You're not being punished. You're being given an advantage you clearly don't care about. Heroes and Villains get Merits, Rogues and Vigilantes have access to the entire game. You may disagree with the precise point of balance, but you cannot claim that such balance doesn't need to exist. Because it does.

Furthermore, you're not being punished with Vigilante progress. Simply play with other Vigilantes and your problem will solve itself. Or play non-alignment content. If it's not about Alignment Merits like you keep insisting, then what's the problem?

OK, I'm man enough to admit it - I laughed at that one. Thank you

It's exactly this kind of assumptions about a character's true nature that makes it practically impossible for the Letter Writer to be us. Easy examples: Slime Girl is a construct of sentient slime that has no internal organs or a reproductive system. She's an amorphous mass of jelly. 13 is a robot. It does not have a reproductive system and does not age. Bodyshop is a mass of sentient cancerous tissue given intelligence through a cybernetic helmet. It has no organs at all, and any clump cut off from it has no intelligence. The Herald of Light is a ghost who possesses a suit of medieval armour. He cannot reproduce.

The game permits and supports a staggering array of characters of all types of concepts and backgrounds. To try and assume what our characters are made from (and worse, assume they're human) would be a rookie mistake that I don't expect a veteran development team of seven years to commit. I keep hoping that they've learned their lesson from the HORRIBLE Origin of Powers storyline and aren't inclined to just up and say "Hey, you sentient slab of granite! In the future, you married Mount Rushmore and had yourself a little of pebbles!" I mean, I'd laugh my *** off if they did (and promptly crucify the writers), but it's absurd to thing that, since when we DO meet the Letter Writer... What will he look like? Wouldn't the son of an evil scoop of ice cream be an evil scoop of ice cream, too?

*edit*
FFS... I should not have said that, because I suddenly found use for Ice Armour and Ice Melee... Curse my random brain!

I considered this, but ultimately discarded the theory for one vital reason: The Dream Doctor has nothing to do with time travel, whereas the Letter Writer is pretty much all about time travel. The Dream Doctor is a Midnighter, or was one, anyway, and we know that the Midnight Club had no capacity for time travel until the Letter Writer gave them the crystal of ice and flame, and even then that can only go to Cimerora.

Also, I went about trying to figure out if this could be a Midnighter, and I don't believe it is as the writer refers to the Midnight Club as "them" and not "us." It's not conclusive evidence, obviously, but he just doesn't sound like he's from the Midnight Club.

When it comes to ego, I actually think Professor Echo is a good example of how Dr. Aeon of the future actually becomes more sane as the world dies around him, and he turns into not just a Machiavellian strategist, but a genuine good guy, ultimately sacrificing himself to save his future. We've also seen that a long life seems to have done good for Nemesis, as well.

I always pictured both Aion and Nemesis as Vandal Savage in that one particular story where Superman gets sent to the future to find the whole world dead, save for Savage, who has spent thousands of years regretting his actions and realising the error of his ways and wishing to punish himself for what he's done. Ultimately, Savage helps Superman build a time machine to send him back and prevent his own evil deed.

I think this applies to both men who have seen the eventual doom their actions will bring, which has both made them sane and infused them with conscience. It's just speculation, of course, but I don't think it's a bad idea.

I don't mind the recoil. I mind that it makes the beam shoot out of the side of the gun.