Samuel_Tow

Yes, but Positron used to be a great scientist AND a great super hero, that's the difference. This reminds me of Thor asking Tony Stark what he is without the suit, and the answer is something along the lines of "genius billionaire superstar playboy," which while absolutely true and devilishly smart to say, still doesn't make up for the fact that having to fall back on that means that the one other thing you were - a super hero - kind of failed spectacularly. And it did for the Phalanx. They lost two members and a got an innocent killed, they were completely ineffectual and easily defeated in every encounter and they got humiliated in front of the entire world. I believe you even have the option to point that out during the conference at the end of SSA1.7.

Having to fall back on what these people are aside from being super heroes is not a defence for them having failed as super heroes. It just means they didn't quit their day jobs. It is, at best, a consolation price. It's like the Avatar losing all her bending at the end of the Legend of Korra and idiot comic relief guy remarking "Yeah, but at least you mastered your airbending!" Yes, but she still failed miserably at everything she did. The Freedom Phalanx failed miserably at everything they did. Manticore got no less than two people killed, and a third by proxy, all because he sucked at being a super hero AND sucked at being a friend.

The Freedom Phalanx are not yet complete losers, but they have been put over so weakly that they're in danger of becoming that. They can fail and need to be bailed out only so many times before we start expecting it of them. How long will it be before someone gathers up the courage to tell Positron that he's a great scientist, so maybe he should stick to doing science and leave the hero business to the professionals, before he hurts himself or gets anyone killed. Because we have empirical evidence that that can happen and has happened.

What can't be divided is the helmet integrated into the shoulders. Any helmet you put on the head is going to move. Yes, even the Bubble Helmet. It's still locked to the head and moves relative to it. When the head bobs back, the helmet shifts back as well. Since the head will always move relative the the shoulders (that's the point of having a neck), any helmet matched to the head will also move relative to any bits mounted to the shoulders and chest. Moreover, shoulders are mounted mounted either to the arms to move as the biceps moves about, or to the soulders to follow their rotation. The Terran Marine armour, however, is mounted to the chest and stays rigid with movement.

What I want is a helmet mounted to the chest that the head turns inside while the helmet remains stationary. I don't know if that's even possible given how far our characters' heads can move, but that's what Black Scorpion has, and I want what Black Scorpion has. You can't "fake" that with shoulders, backpacks and chest pieces because those are all mounted separately and will disengage from each other as the body parts they're mounted to move about. I can see how shoulders would ALWAYS have to be articulated or arms will simply clip through them, and they're articulated on a Terran Marine's chest plate, as well. But again - look at a NASA astronaut suit and what you'll see is a suit that just has a very large bubble helmet with enough room for the astronaut's head to move around inside it, but that does not turn relative to the backpack which is mounted solid to the chest piece.

In fact, look at your typical atmospheric diving suit, which is what NASA astronauts would have worn if a space-faring version of those had been completed in time. What this thing is is one rigid frame that encompases all of the upper body and head, with arms sticking out of swivel joints on the side. That's what I want to have, and that can't be faked with shoulders and backpacks and chest pieces. Or if it can, we completely lack the pieces to do it from the ground up.

Mostly Large Robotic gloves and Enforcer. IDF pieces aren't "large" aside from the boots, Omega pieces can be large but only for Huge characters, Mecca Armour pieces are about normal size aside from the shoulders and boots and that's pretty much all I can think of. We do have a few sets of oversized shoulders, that's what I'm missing! Essentially, we have Medieval, Valkyrie, Vegeta and the new Olympian Guard shoulders... Oh, and the Mecca Armour boxes, as well.

Considering how frighteningly large our costume creator is, that's not a lot. I'm starting to feel bad to have so many characters run around in IDF boots just because the only alternative that's big - Enforcer - looks like my characters mistook the Combine Citadel for their boots in the morning twilight. And we didn't even get the big gloves IDF soldiers or even PPD Investigators wear. We got greatly reduced gloves, instead, and I don't get why.

I don't think this applies to PPD and IDF, though, since they're not divisible into pieces. They're all one solid piece that goes all around the neck. I'm honestly not sure why that's a problem, myself - BABs cited clipping - but I'd really love to have some of those. And that's what Integrated Shoulders are - a one-piece item that covered the chest, shoulders and back.

For instance, say I wanted to make a Terran Marine. That chest piece they wear is not divisible into separate components. You can take the shoulder pieces out, yes, but you're still left with a piece that fits all around the body. To a large extent, that's what Resistance, PPD and Olympian Guard do, but notice what else this does that those don't - it extends around the shoulders, up behind the head and then goes almost over the head entirely. That is, more or less, what Black Scorpion is wearing - essentially, Terminator Armour. THIS is what I want to have. In fact, I want this even more than I wanted the bubble helmet, and I wanted that a lot. When I say "integrated shoulders," I don't just mean shoulders, chest and back. I also want to see a variant that has the actual helmet integrated into the chest piece like it would be on an astronaut space suit, which is more or less what that Terran Marines are based on. You can't duplicate this with separate shoulder, chest, back and backpack options, at least not unless they're HUUUGE!

Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever used Jay's "funny" hairstyles for any of my characters. I'd really, REALLY appreciate more new hairstyles that don't seem out of place on real people, and the corn row is quite good, actually. I'm still looking for full long dreadlocks, myself, but I wouldn't want to be picky.

I think you're overthinking it, ironic as it is for me to be the one to say that. I don't mean to say the idea is bad - it's actually pretty clever and I don't dislike it in the slightest. I just think it makes things far more complicated than they need to be, and I just don't see the payoff of this complication being worth it. One might think that making the Well more basic would simplify its story, but that's not entirely true. Right now, the Well acts like a person. Most of us grow up around people, so we know how people behave and already come equipped with the apparatus to parse the behaviour of other people. Thus, a Well which acts like a person, nebulous as its motives may be, is "simpler" for us to deal with because we already have the tools needed to comprehend it built into our heads from real life. Posing the Well as an abstract concept governed by non-obvious rules and wrapping all of that up in a system of consciousness that would be alien to most people IS making things more complicated.

Generally speaking, the Well as a person is something I like, with the caveat that this nonsense of it being the one and only source of all powers needs to die a horrible, painful death. I would normally argue against it, but Ascendants provide an "out," and so long as an "out" exists, I'll always pick writing a an actor as a person vs. writing an actor as a thing. I may have spoken before about the difference between a character an a construct (character being a person first and a fictional entity second, construct being an idea that's forced into the shape of a character who acts like no-one actually acts), and the Well as an abstract representation of the sum of human potential, with intelligence driven by the complex interaction of human thoughts and emotions... Is a construct. It's an idea that's round-peg-in-a-square-hole hammered into the shape of a person that it really doesn't need to have.

Personally, I prefer to avoid constructs as much as possible unless there's a very compelling reason for it, and the only reason compelling enough here is "That's what we're stuck with, let's try to explain it." The Well as human potential would be an idea fit for a Well of the Furies which weren't sentient and wilful, not because you can't explain sentience or will, but because I feel the story works better if you don't have. Constructs are, by their very nature, plot devices. They exist to either bridge the gap between two plot points that the overall story structure just happened to leave too far apart, or otherwise to skip straight to the meta side of things and deliver a message from the author straight to the audience. In both cases, I simply find there are better ways to do it, if for no reason other than because whenever you expose your behind-the-scenes moves as an author, you take a big bite out of suspension of disbelief.

Again, what you say makes sense and would make for a logical story... But I still don't agree with it. Purely conceptually speaking, you can explain anything at all. You can explain how Miss Liberty swapped grandfathers overnight, you can explain where Keith Nancy found an army of invincible ninja, you can explain why Reichsman's swearing loyalty to the 5th Column or why Atlas died defending Independence Port from an alien armada (that's still in the game, by the way - IP Security Chief briefing clue). You can explain all of these, but I just don't feel like you should have to, because these should never have been in the game to be explained in the first place. Sometimes, you just have to avoid things you have to explain, and if you're put in the position of facing a done deal, just choose to roll with the simpler explanation and try to lead that to the outcome you want.

Basically, finding out at the end of my journey that the Well was just an abstract construct of human potential all along and all of my interactions with it were just the illusion of a very complex system mimicking real intelligence would be an anime ending. And I don't mean to say that anime is bad or that it always ends bad, just that anime has this tendency to invoke the same tropes in "big finales," usually involving a godchild, a person becoming God, unravelling the fabric of reality or exploding in a ball of bright light thus transcending to another level of existence or some such overwrought metaphysical twist of plot that's so outlandish it robs the story of any grounding it might have had before.

I find that with "godlike" powers, especially in a setting like City of Heroes where these can become commonplace, careful writing is paramount. It's all too easy to lose context of the person behind the powers by just riding the rollercoaster of abstraction too hard, but at the end of the day what brings it all back down to earth is the fact that... There are still real people at the roots of these concepts. To lose that is to lose your sense of orientation in the story. To this effect, I find that going too far and being too adamant about separating the Well of the Furies from EVERYTHING that could ground it in something people can "get" by making it a literal abstract representation would be a mistake, at least if that's going to represent the "ending."

I simply find that an evil intelligence behind great power that can be argued with and appealed to is more compelling than a morality-less, compassion-less, personality-less abstract intelligence. Again, I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I just don't think it would make for a better story with the writing team with have. I know for sure I couldn't make it work, at least.

That seems a lot like the Immaterium of Warhammer 40 000 fame. It's not a bad idea, per se - the Well of the Furies is sentient because it absorbed sentience from people and it is amoral/malicious because "monsters from the id," essentially. Again, I can't really argue that's a bad idea per se, but it still has one problem that even the current implementation has - it's Species-specific. Now, if most of your characters are human or, at the very least, mostly from the same species, that might not present a big problem, but it is a problem for me. My own characters tend to be inhuman and from a wide variety of different "species." Not only does that bring in a lot of different "Wells," each bound to a different species, but it brings a Well for every one character, which is a massive waste of storytelling resources, really.

If we were going with the idea that Well is nothing more than a power enhancer, then we really shouldn't have made it sentient and turned its gift of power into a Faustian deal. Now that it IS sentient, then, the only recourse is to simply supersede it with something even bigger that ISN'T sentient and malicious. So long as the Well remains sentient, then no dancing about exactly what it is will fix the fundamental problem that power granted is invasive on character concept when that's the only way to proceed.

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And yes, gods are Natural. Magic and the power of the Divine are different things. It's in the game's own lore.

I don't disagree with you at all, and that's how I'd write them if I were writing them. I'm just saying that we can't really go back to how the Phalanx was before, because we can't go back on what's become established as part of canon. The best we can do is work with what we have, and what we have is a Freedom Phalanx that has pretty much hit rock bottom.

Now, if I were in charge, I'd go in the direction you're suggesting. OK, they've taken a major hit, and that's tragic. But they're heroes. They didn't get where they are by taking defeat lying down. I could see them becoming complacent and out of shape and forgetting that it's a dangerous world out there, but a defeat like the Statesman's would have to be the wake-up call to bring the Phalanx back into shape. That's more or less a retread of the story I gave for Lord Recluse in my "Retaking the Rogue Isles" thread, but it's applicable here, as well. If I were writing this, I'd present the shockingly inept performance of the Phalanx during SSA1 as the Phalanx at their worst, divided by conflict and still operating with the belief that everything will take care of itself. SSA2, therefore, should be the Phalanx awake and returning to their former glory. There was actually a pretty good story like this towards the Terra season of the Teen Titans cartoon, and I wouldn't mind seeing that here.

However, it is as you say - our writers seem intent on burying the Freedom Phalanx, and I honestly couldn't tell you what this is supposed to accomplish but rob the game of one more interesting idea.

Only that's not the case on pretty much any point. "A power fantasy" is not someone kicking puppies and being a bully against the special kids. A power fantasy is the kind of power where we have great power with which to accomplish great deeds, and the sad reality is that in a fictional setting, there is no sense of objective "greatness." It can only ever come in comparison to somebody else. It can only ever come from context. In order for a game to present us with a sufficiently potent power fantasy, that game needs to have a static, or at the very least stable world by the framework of which we can draw context.

A story without context is a plane flying with no instruments flying in zero visibility - you can never really tell exactly where you're going or exactly where you are. You need some frame of reference, a static point in the world by which to get your bearings, and that's what the Freedom Phalanx were. They set the benchmark - you must be at least this great to exceed them. It is by their deeds and their status that we measured ourselves, and it is by exceeding them that we finally got to feel strong. This context is gone now. The strong are now weak and the goal posts have been moved. Yes, you can be greater than them now, but that greatness no longer means anything, and that's the problem.

The fact of the matter is what makes a good story is not "facts," it's "feel." The older story, especially when the Well came into the picture, really felt like it let me be great. It kept the old guard at their full power and still let me be greater than them. That meant something. That was an accomplishment. The game no longer feels the same. Beating the Phalanx no longer feels like an accomplishment because they no longer feel like worthy rivals. Beating them, now, has simply lost its meaning.

Consider this in DBZ terms. The Sayins are driven to seek out powerful opponents and defeat them expressly and specifically because they are powerful. When an old opponent proves to be too weak to challenge the heroes, that opponent is ignored for being irrelevant because beating him no longer has meaning. Piccolo was once the premier bad guy, but towards even the Freeza Saga he just can't hang with the others because he's been left behind. Matching his power is no longer seen as the benchmark because virtually everyone who matters is still stronger than he is. He is no longer a worthy opponent, so really... The only thing you can do with him at that point is either kill him off and take him out of the show or turn him good and have him join the group of friends who stand on the sideline being amazed at how strong the REAL heroes have become, and Piccolo receives the second treatment.

What I'm saying is you need the game to set a high standard for us to beat in order for it to be a power fantasy. There's a reason ganking greys doesn't feel all that fulfilling.

No, he didn't. The only reason the Statesman was a "stale" character is because no-one ever did anything with him. Do you know who else is a stale character? Positron, because no-one did anything with HIM, either. Should we kill him, too? Do you know who else is stale? The Hamidon of Primal Earth. When's the last time anything happened with him? Pretty much the only bit of personality he has is the Terra Conspiracy from eight years ago.

The Statesman didn't have to die because his death accomplished nothing. It was clear from SSA1 that the Freedom Phalanx were unrecoverable losers even without his death, what with Manticore getting Alexis AND his wife killed and the FF getting their ***** handed to them on multiple occasions. Just killing him is the lazy way out because it's simpler to do, yet it accomplishes nothing. Writing an actual story for him that would both capitalise on the Statesman's status as an Incarnate yet bring some more humanity and believability in his character was the hard path, and it's a path that was off to a wonderful start with Ramiel's arc. But, no, that's too hard to write, plus we're trying to get rid of Jack Emmert, so let's just kill him. Who cares about artistic integrity?

One of the primary driving forces behind the popularity of comic books as a "thing" is writers' ability to create fantastic characters who wield amazing super powers and yet at the same time make them believable as people would... If not relate to, then at least "get." Clark Kent is a man brought up on traditional American values and who puts truth and justice first, given powers great enough to murder all of his enemies but given a conscience that would not allow him to do this. Without a decent personality, Superman is just an overpowered brick that's not interesting to read about, but it's the interaction between the super powers and the real person behind them that gives the character depth and makes him interesting to explore.

Much could have happened with the Statesman to downplay his position as the game's premier hero, and I'd have shot for psychology before all else. He's a man who has been put in charge of the whole world, but if the Web of Arachnos is to be believed, he never asked for this responsibility, and it's a burden that weighs heavily on him. It's natural for a man who's been fighting crime for 100 years to start doubting himself, doubting if evil can ever really be defeated, if there's any point in fighting a battle that can never be won for all times. Is it better to break the wall and kill the people who threaten the city and put an end to their reign of terror once and for all, or would that defile everything he stands for?

"The Statesman" is a propaganda ideal built around the man as an icon of an entire generation, so OF COURSE he's unattainable. No ideal can ever truly be achieved. But by exploring the man behind the mask, this impossibly idealised icon can be brought down to Earth, put into perspective and henceforth serve as inspiration for others to reach that level of honour. Ask almost any person the modern world would consider hero, and most of them will be modest enough to tell you they just did the right thing, or just did their jobs, or they didn't see any other choice. The truth of the matter is that the men of myth and legend are, in reality, not nearly as different from all of us as legends might suggest and reaching them isn't so far out of the realm of possibilities.

We could have had the touching, emotional story of a great man showing that, behind the cape and the mask, there really is just a man, and that any who put their heart to it can be just as great. We could have had an inspirational story to move a whole new generation of heroes and serve as a wake-up call to the jaded old guys for whom "heroism" has become a burden. We could have had something meaningful... Or, **** it, let's just kill the guy. Shock deaths are better than well-told stories. Who even reads the text anyway, right?

Not really beyond the scope and not really all that impossible, to be honest. Despite surface appearances, villains and heroes are not in that dissimilar a situation, nor are their writing limitations that different. The genre is "about" bad losing because almost every story is told from the perspective of good, thus that's what people ultimately want to happen. This is where the distinction between "good vs. evil" and "face vs. heel" comes to play, because a face doesn't have to be good nor a heel evil. The face is simply someone you cheer and the heel someone you boo, and it's not that difficult to make a story where the audience wants to cheer the villain and boo the hero.

I, myself, have seen a number of these stories, and they usually follow the "Scooby Doo" formula of some insufferable jackass of a little brat foiling the plans of a really cool, calculating villain without really "earning" it. These are the kinds of movies that really make me want to cheer for the bad guy because... Well, he put in the effort, he had the plans, and the good guy just fell over backwards into a solution. That's just... Wrong!

There's nothing wrong with villains winning, you just have to pick the wins you give them very carefully. When I was told that if I failed The Path of the Dark story arc, the Brickstown would be overrun with War Wolves, my reaction was "Oh, that's not so bad, then. I light fighting War Wolves." Obviously, things aren't as simple as that, but this is exactly the kind of victory you can give to a villain and not have the story suffer that much.

When it comes to player villains, I find "satisfaction" to be the greatest reward. Sure, my conceptual villains have their own motivations to do evil, but I as a player play villains in order to get the satisfaction screwing the rules and doing what I want anyway. As such, I'm happiest when the villain game rewards my pride, my pettiness and my greed. I want to put people over, I want to slap the Scrappy, I want to be praised as the top dog, I want to have this stuff that I don't need but I still want because someone else has it.

No, you can't let villains change the status quo by killing a major hero or destroying the world, but nor can you let heroes win by taking out a major villain and ridding the world of crime. And you really don't have to focus on letting villains be the most vile, repugnant monsters that a sick player can imagine any more so than you want to focus on letting heroes be the most horribly campy blowhard of a "I do it because it's right!" super hero parody. That's just not what makes either good.

I don't know, I find SSA2.1 to be considerably better than SSA1. Yes, they're hurting, but that ship has sailed by now. SSA1 dragged the Phalanx through the mud. Where we go from here can't really be anywhere BUT this direction, lest we go back and ret-con all of the previous storyline. The Freedom Phalanx are, at this point, a lost cause and I feel we should look for other heroes to fill the mantle of the established veteran heroes. Perhaps the Vindicators, perhaps BABs and his old team... Perhaps the Civic Squad?

My point is that while what you're complaining about is valid, that ship has sailed. The best we can do now is try to work from there and hopefully give the FF back some of their former dignity, but that'll take at least a full storyline to happen, and you're only on part one of a full storyline. I suggest seeing where they go with this.

I thought that was already the case? I may simply remember wrong.

I do agree with your suggesting, though. It's a good, smart way of solving the problem without breaking too much canon, even if it still leaves the Well as a malevolent entity. It does kind of throw a monkey wrench into the whole "the Well can control you," though. I admit that's one good solution, but I also recognise that Ascendants are another perfectly good solution, and that one has the benefit of not actually rewriting existing fiction. Yes, it's bad fiction, but I've always been a fan of salvaging bad fiction through expanding upon it and turning it into good fiction. Yes, the idea of the Well is terrible as the end-all be-all of powers, but that same idea can be very good as a stepping stone to something bigger.

Besides, aren't Ascendants pretty much exactly what you describe? Or should we wait to actually see them in-game first before we start guessing?

I didn't know that, but that's kind of not what I mean. Even if Lamashtu is a real deity taken into City of Heroes, that's still a made-up entity in City of Heroes canon because the way she's worked into the story ties into the broader City of Heroes universe. She has been established and explored (a little), and is thus something I wouldn't mind using. I would NOT, however, want to mess with Zeus or Tartarus any more than we already are unless I have actual in-game canon to draw on for them. I HATE having to refer to out-of-game non-canon sources of information in order to reference a name-drop in this game. Basically, if it's not on ParagonWiki and I have to go to Wikipedia instead, it's not part of the game.

For instance, take a look at Croatoa. Yes, the Tuatha de Dannan and Fir Bolg of Croatoa fame are actually based on historical or mythological (I'm not quite sure) sources from the real world, but I don't have to know the first thing about either because the game itself sets up all the background for both factions that I need to know. Is it true to the source material? Um... Maybe? Like I said, I don't know the first thing about those guys and I don't have to, because what we have here is NOT a name-drop for the real-world concepts. They are, instead, established fictional characters in the game's own universe, and that's pretty much enough.

Sure, I'd personally prefer that we don't go ahead and introduce our own City of Heroes version of the Greek pantheon of gods because, again, I'd rather use original IP, but if we ARE going to be using those gods, then that will have to happen.

It might help to establish that, then. All I have to go on for situational awareness in the post you quoted is "so far," which to me reads "up to this point in the story," which includes all of SSA1 and SSA2.1 and 2.2. And honestly, aside from the SSAs, there really isn't much of a depiction of the Freedom Phalanx at all to begin with. There are cameos, such as in Positron's Granddaughter in A Hero's Epic, but they really don't have much of a direct stake in any stories aside from the SSAs, and it's there that the Freedom Phalanx's depiction is... Not one worthy of respect and admiration.

And once the characters are no longer worthy of respect and admiration, then surpassing them stops being an achievement. You have to remember that "respect" isn't a measure of relative power. There is such a thing as respect among equals, even respect for an inferior man who has shown remarkable qualities. That's where the player's relationship with the Freedom Phalanx should have been - in a position of mutual respect. Where it is is in a position of having to take care of people who can't seem to do anything right. It's hard to respect people like that. In fact, I kind of feel bad for them. At this point, it feels like the Freedom Phalanx should just stop trying to play grown-ups and let mommy and daddy go save the world, before they hurt themselves. And that's... Not a position of respect, lemme' put it that way.

If the Freedom Phalanx are ever to be taken seriously again, they NEED to demonstrate what made them respected heroes in the first place. Right now, I'd settle for not getting beaten up into a greasy spot every time I'm not around to keep the scary boogymen away. That would be a good start.

And that's a problem. A big one. I've always had a problem with the concept of "Epic ATs" not because they're "not epic enough" but rather because they fundamentally undermine the reason I play this game - the ability to put my own imagination into a medium that will make it visual. I used to play the game by just making a decent costume and going for it, and as a result I made my only break back in September-December 2004, because I simply burned out and didn't think I wanted anything more to do with the game. That's when I moved to a more story-driven approach to the game and started really making my own characters with my own stories.

That's why I always hoped Incarnates as a "better" AT wouldn't happen - because I didn't want someone else's fiction determining what my character was. That's also why I find our current version, for as flawed as the concept of the sentient Well may be, to be far superior. Even for as specific as it is, it's still FAAAR more generic than being an avatar of some religeon's god. This is tantamount to the game constantly forcing you to be an Arachnos lackey, and it's an approach I'll never get. I have yet to see a game with any sort of customization where tying the player character directly to the story has improved it. Kingdom of Amalur is one of my favourite recent RPGs, and for as much as I love the story, the *** falls off of that one in the last 15 minutes when the major revalations of who my character was before losing her memory start dropping and... They're pretty damn stupid. The guesses I had at the time were ten times more important.

This may be selfish to say, but that's fine by me. I never wanted "incarnation." Far as I'm concerned, they should have scrapped the whole angle when Jack left and let us gain power in some other, non-unimaginative way. Because honestly, I can think of few less imaginative ways to gain power than for it to literally be granted to me by an established god. At least be creative and go with fictional gods like Tielekku, Hequat or Lamashtu or, hell, even Lughebu. But honestly, the LAST thing I want is to be the avatar of Jehovah, not only because that brings real religion into the game, but also because I prefer to use original ideas wherever possible.

Like I said, though - as long as we're stuck with "Incarnation" and we NEED to tie a story to it, let's at least try to make it as inclusive as possible. And what's more inclusive than eventually finding out that there is no answer - your fate are your, the past is irrelevant and you're free to chart your own path. Maybe you're awesome, maybe you found an artefact, maybe it just sort of happened. Nobody knows, so you're free to make up whatever you want. ANY story regarding our characters should end on that note: "We may never know."

I forget who said it, but having backstory for something isn't necessarily superior to having no backstory. Now that we know the backstory of, say, Darth Vader, does that really make him more compelling as a character? Because it didn't to me. My guesses were, again, a lot more dignified. And that's always going to be true - unless you have an idea so great as to blow EVERYONE away, people's guesses and theories will always appeal to them more than the truth. It's human nature.

Generally, it's around the time when you get your friend, his daughter and your own wife killed, attack a hero who's trying to help you, fail repeatedly to accomplish anything at all and nearly get the world destroyed that you start resembling a chump, however. There "failure is part of the game" and there's "Woody Allen's Z becomes a war hero because everyone better than him died." I get that super heroes sometimes need help, but super heroes also sometimes succeed at some things, and I've yet to see that from the Freedom Phalanx. At least SSA2 hasn't KILLED any of them so far, but you never know.

Of course I don't honour it. It's a stupid idea. The Origin of Powers can go die in car fire. I'm not trying to defend the idea of the Well of the Furies, so much as I'm trying to explain what I think the writers are going for, and it comes down to pedantic semantics. What "is" magic cannot be defined, but it's been made very clear to us that what "isn't" magic is the Well of the Furies. This does bring up a good point, however - are there other things which look like magic but really aren't?

As I said, I still see "the power of the divine" to be Natural. We are simply left to accept that these creatures are not human and this type of power is natural to their species, while magic itself is somehow unnatural, something that has to be consciously done, as opposed to something inherent. The can of worms this opens is exactly why I ask for origins to be loose enough as to permit multiple different interpretations.

However, to reverse-engineer what the Well was supposed to be, I don't think it was intended to HAVE an origin. Let's say I spent the last week banging my head on a cow and I accept the Origin of Powers reasoning that "power" is somehow just an expression of one's true nature. If that were the truth, then the Well of the Furies doesn't offer power of any one origin, so much as it just boosts what's already in our own origin. A smart person becomes smarter, a sorcerer's magic becomes stronger, a mutant's mutations become more and more beneficial. That sort of thing. An Incarnate you is still you, just more powerful in the vein you were already powerful in.

Except the design of the actual Incarnate powers... Doesn't really reflect this. Rather than boost what we already do, Incarnate powers just out-and-out grant us someone else's powers in the same vein as Patron Pools grant us weapons on loan from Arachnos. This is never as blatant as with the Lore power, where we get Well reflections of entities already infused with power from the Well, or at the very least that's how the slot was when it came out. If I'm borrowing the Well's minions, then that's not an extension of my own power, it's outright borrowing someone else's power. And if I'm borrowing someone else's power, then the Origin of that someone starts becoming relevant. You can't claim the Well has no origin, because that only works if the Well has no direct power. Even if it cannot use its power directly, by developing brand new abilities, I am, in essence, using the Well's power, and that demands an origin.

As far as I'm concerned, the Well should never have been a "thing." You're completely right in that you can't make Origins not mean anything and yet still mean something at the same time. Trying to base a story on the meaning of a meaningless thing is an oxymoron. Yes, you can explain it away with ******** circular logic like I did above, but that's not a solution, it's just trading priority between a circle of problems. Any writer worth his salt should have seen the massive can of worms a story like this poses and run for the hills, because this is one of those plot cul-de-sacs that you're just better off not going into.

The entire history of City of Heroes from 2004 onward has been one objective lesson that the LESS you do to explain how and why player characters work, the better off you are. I get that Incarnates were the big selling point and a storyline was needed specifically surrounding that concept. I'd have scrapped the idea from the get go, but let's say we're stuck with it. How do you solve the problem of telling a story about something that is, by its very nature, undefinable? Well... Simply make a story where you try to define it and fail. Let's exercise our brains for a while and hypothesise.

Mender Ramiel has seen the future. He knows I will one day become a "mighty and terrible Incarnate" and have the power to stop the Coming Storm. Ramiel does not know why, since my future self thought it would be funny if he didn't mention that. So Ramiel doesn't know and I don't know, but... Maybe the Statesman (I'm still living in the past) or Recluse would know. They're Incarnates and my future self mentioned something about Incarnates, so... How did they get their powers? From a well that's gone now, so that's a no-go. Huh. OK, what else? Well, Hero One is pretty strong, what's his story? Oh, Excalibur. OK, that's a bust. Well, let's go where Statesman and Recluse found the Well and see if I won't find it. Nope, but... What's this? A note and a... Shard of some kind? Oh, the letter writer knows! And this Shard, it's having an effect! Oh, wait, I can feel it! I know I can do better! Wow, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up to me. Now I have to learn everything all over again.

I also need to find the Letter Writer. He clearly knows how to become my future Incarnate self, right? Well, I meet the Letter Writer and it turns out... He didn't really know, either. I just showed up to him and handed him the Shard and told him some cryptic warnings. Well, that's a bust. But, hey, there's this huge war going on, so I better go participate in it. It'll be good practice, plus the world needs saving, right? What do you mean I'm a villain? Go away, the world needs saving!

So I keep fighting and gaining power, and I keep looking for people who can help me explain these powers. The answer is always the same - nobody knows why I'm developing these powers and they can't help me. So what, ultimately, is the source of my power? Well, turns out my future "mighty and terrible Incarnate didn't know either," he sort of stumbled upon this stuff by accident and thought to speed the process up by shunting it back to the past, hoping the second go-around would help me find out. Ah, well, guess the key was inside me all along.

OK, it's not as "specific" a storyline and it is, ultimately, a waste of time, but isn't that half of what super heroes on a mission go through anyway? Samurai Jack spends all of his time looking for a time machine and he never seems to be able to use one, but that doesn't make his adventures any less interesting. So why not go with that?

To me, this just seems like awkward group dynamics. Anyone who's seen me post over the years will know I'm not exactly the most sociable guy out there, so maybe my viewpoint is biassed, but it just seems odd to me that Penny would become "part of the team" so quickly. Yeah, they still bicker with her and everyone is still adjusting, but these guys have been "adjusting" to each other's antics for years and they're not done. What I'm saying is that Penny acts like she feels "at home" and the Freedom Phalanx act like she's "part of the family." Maybe I'm just jaded... But that shouldn't happen this fast. Let me explain:

When a new person enters an established group, that person will upset the dynamic. The old group will have a hard time working around this person and often question if inviting him or her was the right choice. At this point, that's still a new member and the notion that this was a mistake is still very real. Most people won't say it, many won't even realise it, but almost universally this sort of thing passes through people's minds. And from the new member, the feeling will remain that they're a guest, that they're not entitled to making demands or leaning on fellow team members. There will a feeling of "me vs. them" because they're all friends, they've known each other for ages and they'll stick out for each other instinctively, but will they stick out for me against each other? That's the big question.

It takes time for a new member to feel at home and it takes time for home to accept a new member. And this time should not happen off-screen.

Personally, what stops me is it's Twitter. I have nothing against people who use them, but I have neither a Facebook account nor a Twitter account, I'm not interested in creating one and I'm not interested in dealing with the hassle of a "contest." This is where my idea for VIPs being truly very important people is to save those of us who ARE VIP the bother of jumping through hoops, standing in line and entering into popularity contests. I know VIP here is just a gimmick designation, but think about it - isn't that exactly what a VIP typically pays extra for? The better service? Skipping the lines and the bother? Not being bothered with promotional drives? I'm I'm already a customer and already paying a subscription I don't need to pay, wouldn't it stand to reason that I'd get to skip the Marketing nonsense and go straight to spending my money?

I'm just confused, I guess. Why IS Marketing marketing the game to me? Aren't I subscribed to it already? What else could I POSSIBLY get from being aware of their Twitter and Facebook promotions? I'd get it if I were a new player or if I were on the fence about subscribing, but I'm ALREADY subscribing. The Wisps aura was intended to get people to use the NCsoft Launcher, and it worked for me. I saw the aura, I wanted to have it, I went with the Launcher. But exactly what is this aura intended to make me do? Wait in line?

Far as I'm concerned, make all "promotion only" items available to VIPs as part of the service, or otherwise make them VIP-only once purchased. You want the items while they're still exclusive? Be a VIP, because that's what gets you the exclusive stuff. Am I that far off target here?

City of Heroes tends to use non-standard terminology. For instance, "the power of the divine" is canonically entirely separate from "magic." I'm not sure if it even has an origin, but if it did, I'd suspect it would be Natural.

As such, I don't think the word "cosmic" here parses as "from the cosmos" literally, so much as something closer to the power of the divine - a "higher" power that exists outside the framework of the origins system.

What Venture has been doing for the last, god... Six years? Has been presenting the power of the Well as "magical" based on the fact that it doesn't fit any of the other origins and that it behaves like magic, in the sense that "there are no rules, a wizard did it." That might be magical in the same sense falling into a vat of chemicals and mutating would make the source of your power mutation, but just as in City of Heroes that would instead be Science, so the power of the well may act like magic, but isn't Magic in origin. "Magic" actually has a very narrow meaning in this game, rather than the "anything we can't explain" meaning that it tends to have in colloquial English. I don't think even "the power of the supernatural" is necessarily Magic.

I actually recall a funny exchange between Venture and myself back when I still read his posts. I insisted ghosts were Natural as that's just what naturally happens when a person dies. He responded that "there's nothing natural about ghosts," which he said to mean that they're supernatural so they're magic. What I took out of it is that... No, ghosts AREN'T natural, since souls are supposed to move on into the afterlife, thus if a ghost exists, something UNnatural happened, thus why a different origin is needed. Once that's taken into account, Magic is indeed the only thing that makes sense.

Basically what I'm saying is that just because something looks like magic and acts like magic and we can't explain it, it doesn't mean that it's Magic and thus changing the Origin of your character. Neither the divine nor the supernatural nor souls no the afterlife are strictly Magic because "Magic" isn't just "anything that doesn't fit into any of the others."

That's one reason I love Crey so much, by the way - I didn't make up that idea, that's straight out of stuff they've done in Paragon City. Even if we ignore "Crey Cola" that has mind control drugs in it, there's a Tip mission with Crey introducing chemicals into the sewers that would make people more favourable towards Crey. Of course, these have the nasty side effect of turning people into Snakes, but that's baby steps. Give them a few more months and they'll have ironed out their subtle mind control water additive.

I love Crey because they're pretty much smack-dab in the middle between hard science and mad science, taking on truly insane plots (a computer operating system that steals your secrets and controls your mind) yet doing so with a frighting success rate and usually being discovered only AFTER they've done it. They clone people, they steal super powers, they replace people, they send assassin's to kill the CEOs or rival firms, and they get away with it. That's the beauty of Crey Industries - they can commit all of these crimes and not just get away with murder, but still have people believe in them and like them and buy their products. These days you have a fast food chain president say something ***-backwards and you have people condemning their whole business, yet Crey MURDER PEOPLE and they're still one of the most popular companies in the US.

Honestly, if any business could buy an island and take full control of it, it would be Crey. And considering how much they've fallen through the cracks of late, I'd say they really need a push to stay relevant.

Yeah, I did what I could to keep within existing gameplay just so that the changes would be more realistic. As we've seen with my absurd take on Recluse trumping the Incarnate game, there are ideas for brand new storylines, but I think the field is a bit too open without strict regulations since without any, anything goes. It's fun to come up with new stories for old villain groups, I admit, but by sticking to changing as little as possible that would take development time to alter, I've given myself pretty rigid limitations to direct my storyline changes. It makes things more controlled.

But I, too, would like to see more stories in the Isles that have to do with some of our familiar faces. For as much as I like Ruben and Hammond, their stories really have nothing to do with anything. I'd rather have stories that tie into larger fiction and end up spawning fiction of their own that can be tied together by subsequent stories.