Samuel_Tow

While we know that different types of magic do exist, "magic" as an all-inclusive field is still separate from divine power, at least as I've seen it described. While it's still possible that some of the gods did indeed have magical powers anyway, we know that at least Merulia - a literal god - was in fact alien in origin. The gods' powers are generally undefined, probably for the sake of avoiding needless details, but I actually suspect that they were somehow blessed with amazing powers by right of birth. If we knew their origins, we might be able to infer more.

The Circle of Thorns' society is based around magic, that much is true, but that's because they have no power other than that, and because they were given magic by Ermeeth, who learned it from Tielekku. They had no access to divine power to the best of my knowledge. The demons they summon are indeed magic, but that tells us nothing more than that the Demon Prince uses magic. It's quite possible that demons themselves aren't natural constructs, and are instead given form and function by magic. This does not exclude the possibility that the Demon Prince has other powers, such as immortality, the ability to access and survive on another plane of existence and so forth, all of which may not be necessarily magical.

From what I understand, magic started as a skill, rather than an ability, and was later transformed into an ability by imbuing people and objects with magic before they are even created.

To bring up a Dragonball Z example, of all things, this is the difference between someone who simply has a very high power level, and someone who has a high power level but is able to use techniques and skills to manipulate that power and condense it into blasts, shields and other manipulations of disproportionately high yield. That is, in fact, how a much weaker Piccolo defeats a much stronger Doctor Gero android.

You're inferring cause by observing effect here. Yes, Hero One developed magical powers after obtaining Excalibur, but there's nothing to say he didn't have magic powers beforehand. In a world where half the population are descendants of the Mu, your chances of catching someone with magic blood are fairly good even if you took a completely random person off the street.

The question here is if Excalibur, and the "Well" in general, GRANT powers, or otherwise ENHANCE powers. We're not far enough along the Incarnate storyline to tell, but it seems more likely that it doesn't give power, because it has no power of its own. The well, in essence, is not a power, but an enhancement. It takes who you are and makes you better at what you do, without necessarily defining what it is that you do.

So why did Statesman, Recluse, Reichsman and Imperious all get Zeus lighting? Again, Vincent Ross provides the answer: The Well recycles power. When one powerful entity has run its course and outlived its usefulness, it is reclaimed and recycled into something else. Merulia was recycled into the Leviathan, and it's possible that Zeus was crafted into a well when he ran his course. We don't know enough. Why get his powers? I honestly don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with overdosing on the well as Statesman and Recluse did - by taking on too much power, they took on Zeus, himself, something we as player characters try to avoid.

Coincidence should not imply causality. That's not to say this isn't a retcon, but more to say that just because we've only ever heard about the Well's magical influence, that it doesn't have non-magical influence, as well. After all, both Statesman and Recluse are defined as Incarnate, not Magic, and they have been defined as such since very much the beginning of City of Heroes. That's not to say they AREN'T magic, but more to say that we shouldn't discount that possibility. Again, "magic" is not just "anything which isn't science, technology, natural or mutation." Magic has a fairly strict definition.

Furthermore, a lot of the divine and supernatural gets lumped in with the magical, when that isn't always the case. Kheldians, for example, are essentially godlike aliens with godlike powers who, were we not given a concrete definition, people would describe as magical. But they're not. All we have to work with in terms of canon comes from historical tales, and people of the pre-20th century tended to describe anything they didn't understand as magic, including technological alien visitors, as Merulia stands to example. Finally, according to Ramiel, there are many other Incarnates and the Well has manifested many other times throughout time, space and dimensions. Just because the three or four we know of appear to be magical does not mean they all are.

If you must, consider this in the same vein as the War Wolves. They were magic at one point, then became Science with I3 and the Council takeover. Yes, it's a ret-con, but I'm more concerned whether it makes sense and whether it makes a good story. And I think it does.

"The Well" is not a well. That's at the core of Ramiel's arc. It's not any one thing, and to the best of my knowledge may not even have a specific physical form. It manifests as different things to different people at different times. To Hero One, it manifested as Excalibur. To Statesman and Recluse, it manifested as a well. Were the game not afraid of Christian theology, one could argue that to Charlemagne, it manifested as the Spear of Destiny. The well presents itself as many things that people can take from or carry with them, each representing a conduit.

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Again, I'm not saying that the well necessarily ISN'T magical, but merely that there are arguments to the contrary that one could use for character creation if one were so inclined. Most of them are even based on actual canon.

That's actually Marauder, AKA Praetor White, from one of the "Llama tested - Llama approved!" billboards that happens to be half-faded-out due to being just on the edge of the game's draw distance.

I'm sure it doesn't involve "the devil" as that term is used in language because the game generally shuns Christian mythology, preferring instead to use vague terms for compatible entities, such as the Prince of Demons or Rularuu the Ravager. I'm fairly certain that the power behind the Well is neither of those two.

Are we making a deal with a figurative devil? Sure, I'll buy that. Are we making a deal with THE devil? No, we are not, because he doesn't exist in the City of Heroes universe, and never will for reasons of out-of-game business sense.

When people are given more control over their characters, they will make them more like what they like. When this control is taken from them 40 levels later and they are forced to use the default design which both clashes with what they made and forces them to account for it, people will resort to words like "hideous," because that's what the prospect is in comparison to their ideal vision. That's not unnatural or unexpected, nor indeed a criticism. All that says is "I like what I made so much that it physically hurts me to have to go back to what you made."

You have a very broad definition of "magic," which appears to be "anything that's not otherwise defined." I disagree with that interpretation of the concept, considering City of Heroes already makes a CLEAR distinction between the power of the divine - which tends to be classed Natural - and magical ritual, spell, incantation and enchantment. This is the centrepiece of the story of Tielekku, and by also apparently the theme behind the story of the Well of the Furies, which we call that only because that's the image it took on when Statesman and Recluse drank from it.

You also assume that items like Excalibur are "magic," when there really is no clear evidence that they are, or indeed that they are supernatural in general. We see them do things we cannot expect, yes, but we cannot infer that they are "magical" in the definition of City of Heroes any more than we can infer that the Green Lantern ring is magical in nature simply because its effect looks like magic. "Unexplainable" is not a definition for magic.

As I understood the power of the Well to work was in granting both opportunity and inspiration. A Scientist blessed by the Well will simply be able to have ever better ideas and be ever more capable of following through with them. A mutant blessed by the power of the Well will be more likely to develop benevolent mutations which improve their powers, as opposed to developing cancer. Magic users, furthermore, will find themselves better able to cast their spells, channel their magic items, draw on their magic blood and so forth.

The well has no "power" in the literal sense of the word. The well cannot actually "do" anything. It needs us to act through our powers, ideally on its behalf. The true power of the Well is the power of the people who "drank" from it.

It's interesting how great the game looks in that video. I think it's because it's shot with digital vibrance set to double max

Still, that just goes to show how cool the Redding Rail Rifle is. I still wish that were available for Robotics.

No, that's the greatest measure of wisdom, and is indeed what defines the Statesman. The Statesman, in his approach to moderation and self-control, is actually combating the Well and both its influence and power. The well looks for power and the will to use it. It looks for people who want more power, and to them it gives more power, in the hope that they will lose themselves to the power and become its pawns.

It's true that this is exactly what we want to avoid, but it's also true that this is what attracts people to it. It's as close to a deal with the devil as it gets without actually involving the devil. The well doesn't need cautious, reserved individuals who only use power when absolutely necessary and generally don't expressly need it. It seeks out beings who both exhibit and crave more power for whatever reason.

The Well gives powers to those who seek power, that's what it comes down to.

And you don't see how that kneecaps the entire Incarnate system in the process? It may not be just for the NotW in concept, but RIGHT NOW, that's what it's primarily for. That's what they announced it as. It makes sense to keep it for this until a better method is introduced.

I remind you of the original bank robbery missions in City of Villains before the advent of Mayhem Missions. Yes, right now they show up as regular paper missions, but before Mayhems, that's what you got at the end of three/five paper missions. They didn't leave it uncapped with nothing at the end, they put in a placeholder that they treated like a placeholder.

The WTF was advertised as a placeholder for the I20 Incarnate Trials, but they're not treating it like such. They're treating it like an unrelated mechanic that just so happens to be where the Rare and Very Rare components are, but without giving any regard to this. Do you see now why I'm against putting in placeholders like this?

Basically, that's what it comes down to, both in terms of what's being asked and why it isn't working. It's also something I've been saying pretty much since January 2005, when I first got Samuel Tow to 50.

The late game has you do things that ARE NOT within the capabilities of just a highly trained normal person. Not without disregarding the bulk of the visuals. And, yes, the Kronos Titan is a large part of that, as is Hequat. When you take an Explosive Missile Swarm to the face, shrug that off and proceed to beat down a machine roughly the size of the Atlas statue by punching it with your fists repeatedly, you've given up all pretence of normalcy. I used to have "natural human" characters once upon a time. I got rid of them all when I saw what they were supposed to be doing later in the game.

If the question here is "who purposely does NOT progress past a certain point," then that wouldn't be me. I find it to be both a gigantic waste and a profound missing of the point if one were to choose to, say, never level past 25 so he could stay at the level of the Tsoo and the Family and fight street-level crime. I mean, yeah, you can, but you're missing on 3/4 of the game.

That assumes it was Tielekku who invented magic, and we have conflicting reports on that between War Witch and Virgil Tarikoss, who insist that Tielekku invented magic and taught it to the gods and that humans invented magic and Tielekku learned it from them.

Either way, "magic" is clearly defined as separate and unconnected to divine power, divine power being the gods' innate abilities. I assume that means things like flight, immortality, superior strength and whatever else they are described as having. That, once upon a time, would have been viewed as Natural, but has now been described as the power of the Well. Magic is a drastically different and separate concept, one to do with the manipulation and control of nature to bend it to one's will through the use of ritual and knowledge, as usable by both gods and humans alike.

I also don't think it's a safe assertion to draw a parallel between demons and magic outside of context. Demons in general are magical beings, assumed to be created by magic or using magic, but demonic power as a core power source itself is not magic. And that's not just semantics - if it comes down to eldritch godlike creatures, that goes to the well, the power of which apparently transcends origins, and magic in particular.

While that's true, one might have expected then to treat the WTF as THE way to get Incarnate content until they get another, better way. Even if it's just a placeholder, does it hurt to keep it to level cap TFs until I20?

While that's true, it ignores a fundamental point that Lady Grey makes - that Statesman, Recluse and Hero One were all "simple men" when they found the well and gained its power, and that what sets up the player character apart is that he or she is already almost at their level before taking on the power of the Well. This is what opens the door to both not being controlled and gaining even greater power.

The Well responds to "power" as said in the text, but this infers GREAT power, because what the well seeks is the strongest of all creatures irrespective of their morality. The well wouldn't and shouldn't be interested in menial tasks, and would most probably not be interested in self-imposed challenges, so much as acts of great power and progress. After all, what poses the danger of being taken over by the well for the Statesman is trying to increase his power beyond his already considerable limits. This, in turn, infers that where real power lies and where real danger lies, as well, is in surpassing your own limits, which isn't doable by imposing limiting rules.

The entire spirit of the Incarnate storyline is "be stronger so you can be even stronger." In this, it's practically Dragonball Z (part of why I like it so much), and for that to be restricted to a much lower level is like putting Goku against Mr. Satan - not much is accomplished, not much is proven, not much progress is made.

This is an obvious placeholder and a klude, but one would have at least expected them to run out of level cap content before they went down, at least until they implemented the "proper" way.

I still prefer the idea that someone sat down and wrote 100MB of text code and sent that through as a patch. That would be... Epic. Impossible to the point of absurdity, but epic nonetheless

Again - Info Kiosks! Remember those things that tell you who defeated the most of what in the zone and don't actually work? They're all over the place in City of Heroes, and there are a bunch of broken ones all over the Rogue Isles. I've always wanted to make the actually do something. Maybe even mark them on the map.

Unless you happen to be in:

The Shadow Shard
Terra Volta
Eden
Faultline
The Neutropolis or Nova Praetoria Underground, the Abandoned Sewers
...

So that explains why I don't see it in the CohUpdater. Well, I suppose the NCsoft Launcher is at least something, though I have to question how many people actually have that considering it's unnecessary and doesn't integrate City of Heroes to begin with.

Now, yes, they did mention they'll be integrating City of Heroes into the NCsoft Launcher. It just seems like they should have done that before they started putting important information into it. Really, all the CohLancher does when it runs is load an HTML web page in a Windows Explorer interface, from what I've seen. Put it in there, maybe? As a placeholder, at least?

Isn't that what she usually does?

Hey, I'm not saying you shouldn't. Hell, I'm not even saying it's a bad thing, just bizarre. At this point, the Incarnate system is incapable of affecting me, as I simply gave up all investment I could have had for it and I'm filing the whole thing under "Set Inventions" until things change. That's what I've been saying all along.

I hope it works out for you. I certainly don't want other people to be pissed off just because I don't like something. Who does that help? I just hope you can swallow a grain of salt large enough to dehydrate ten men if you plan to acknowledge the conceptual mess that prospect presents