SuperOz

Seriously,

The main thing that I'm personally getting tired of debating is this inferred or presumed or assumed notion that we know that Statesman is happy in the afterlife, that he was happy to go, that he happily died, and that he happily decided he wasn't going to fight the bad guy because he hasn't the heroic willpower to do so and that his powers didn't define him, it was his choice to use them as a hero.

Argh!

No. What we see is what we see. We get the clues that say he died with a smile on his face. We get the inference, not the fact he's chosen to die happily rather than fight (and when the suggestion is made 'he can't fight back because he's just a mortal', what does that make those of us who choose to play as mortals? Or Manticore? Utterly incapable then? Kind of defeats the story....), and most importantly of all, as I have said in a few posts now, he's the Avatar of Zeus. Not an Incarnate, not just one of the most powerful supers on the planet, but a living breathing representation of a god.

And because he has his powers stolen, he somehow loses the attributes that let him manifest as such to begin with? You know, the iron resoluteness of Zeus, the unforgiving wrath, the unshakeable belief in his own self?

After a certain point, I get annoyed with the equation that says because he loses his powers, he loses his character traits too. The direct correlation is made implicit here that he really isn't that great without his powers. He can't resist, he can't try and take back what's his. He has no means (despite this very clearly defined connection to the Well and being the most powerful Incarnate outside of Recluse) to try and reclaim his powers because the story says because.

Sam, I'm happy to put up the exception here to allow this story-wise, because it would be unquestionably dangerous, it would be a one-time deal (Marcus Cole and his power would not be given up willingly), and it would make for a hell of a great story. 'To rescue a god!' Now would that make me feel epicly heroic and stand on the same equal footing as the most powerful NPC in the game? Damn right it would.

Now I'm sorry for sounding a little angry in this post, but I am willing to be reasonable. I am willing to accept a good story reason for just about anything, but for cripes' sake! How long do we, the players and audience for this story, have to keep filling in the blanks and making excuses and/or rationales for what happened when it was the job of the story to do so in the first place?

Is it really that much to ask as a paying subscriber?


And just to vent, some Craig Ferguson swearing. Tootsifruit! Whatsacommnago! Smorgasboard! Crikeydingo!


.....and scene.



S.

Quasadu....

Is that the ritual that responds to your powers by saying 'Because'?

Why won't my powers work? Because.

Why won't my empathy work? Because.

I could kinda go on, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel at that point....



S.

Leave it to us players to find the inevitable loophole in the story.

As a reader and a player, I never found Statesman's 'giving up' and going to die as credible. Does he just go into so much shock that he finds himself in a 'better place' and chooses dying over fighting for his life? Doesn't that rather betray the very values his daughter, his granddaughter, his wife and his closest contemporary recognise in him?

Instead, you get the 'but there are others who can fight the fight for you' bit which conveniently misses the point that beyond Recluse, Statesman has no equal. And oh yeah, he's an Avatar of freakin' Zeus. This is all just going to be accepted with no sense of righteous fury?

All I had to do was put myself in Statesman's shoes for a few seconds. If that had happened to me (ie I was too boneheaded to not recognise the Obvious Trap(tm) and ignore the fact Wade's been playing a master plan game which just might include taking him down), there is no way I would willingly enter the afterlife. By giving up, I'm betraying the very principles which I claim to fight for. Protecting the innocent. Upholding the law. Representing justice.

If the rationale is that Statesman was so tired of his life he just wanted to give up, then we the players didn't see it until the moment of his death.

I can happily throw down the gauntlet to Doctor Aeon to justify in a solidly consistent way how he thinks this works as a story, because we as players can and should be expected to get the gist of it from what we play.

And frankly Doc, it doesn't cut the mustard.

Just like I'd challenge him to answer why going to the Underworld, making a reasonable argument to Statesman and letting him reclaim the power that is his (Wade only stole the power, he doesn't own it) would fail beyond 'oh, he doesn't want to be'.

I swear, every time a reasonable response to the story events come up, the more embittered I am that we got a sub-standard story instead of this heavy-handed fan-fiction.



S.

Visually the helmet is a spot on representation of what's in the comic. As for being oversized, I'm not gonna knock any helmet where it protects my precious brains from being damaged.

I remember posting it when this movie came out, but the costume design is far closer to the early Dredd look by Ezquerra(sp?) than the more iconic 'big shoulderpads' look we associate with him now. I think all the highlights would just make me a target rather than anything else.

And in a city of four hundred million potential perps, I wouldn't be that anxious to get recognised too quickly.....




S.

Arctic,

It's never been about 'if we could do better'. If we could, we'd be doing the jobs ourselves at Paragon Studios. What everyone who has written negatively about is saying is that we like to be entertained as much as the next person, but for pity's sake don't dress something up to be one thing and then present it as something else.

Were you, like us, expecting something big to happen in the Statesman chapter of this story? How did you feel when he seemingly walked into an Obvious Trap(tm) and it was just...over? I felt cheated and also felt it was a short fast copout for the story, after all the hype given to it by the Devs. If you honestly got asked what was your standout memory of this story was, would be 'Statesman walked into a trap and got killed?' Doubtless someone would ask: 'Was it a big fight? Did he die like Superman did when he fought Doomsday?' And you would have to respond: 'No, he just...died.'

And as for 'thinking a bit about what my character might do in this situation', I must disagree. I don't mind being presented with a situation that gives me the illusion of free will; that is to say I won't mind the outcome of a story so much as I'm made to feel I had a chance to influence its' outcome. But if you take that away from me, such as trying to save Miss Liberty or her father to the point where you pointedly ensure that I have zero influence by writing the story so as to prevent any sense that I could influence the story, then I'm going to call hax. Do you really feel satisfied by a story where you don't even seem to get the chance to do anything? I dont. I may as well just be reading a comic at that point.

I'm not asking the writers to be sacked, but I am asking that they do better. Because if I can sit here as an armchair critic and pull the plot to pieces as well as provide alternatives (as many others can here, and have done so to responses much more well-recieved than the 'party line'), then that's pointing out rather glaringly the shortcomings of the quality of what we're getting.

I expect the developers and the writers of these stories to not only know the game's lore inside and out (that is their job) but also to provide quality content that I look forward to playing. But I, like any other paying customer, don't have to know what art is to know if I like it or not. These threads would have zero merit if the content stacked up and met the basic requirements of any entertainment medium. And that ultimately is the point.

The only reason this overanalysis exists is because the problems in the story are that glaringly obvious. The only thing I want pandered to me is better writing. That's it. I pay my money, I should expect that. I therefore have a right to say if I don't get that.



S.

I just wanted to add a link here. This to me is one of the greatest heroic deaths ever in comics with one of the most moving eulogies. Imagine if you can our CoH universe here in their places, and tell me what you think.

http://supergirlthemaidofmight.blogs...crisis-on.html


Edit: I just re-read the issue. I still cry.


S.

I thought I'd throw in another reply here which in part was influenced by a overnight trip I had to attend a concert of Doctor Who music done by Australian musicians and conducted and set up by the BBC.

The link seems random, but I was struck by how completely I accept a show like Doctor Who, whose seemingly random and implausible nature shouldn't make it a success, but it does.

And it does because we're invited to enjoy and participate in the conventions of itself. That is, the notion that the Doctor will always beat the monsters, the monsters can be any sort of alien, and nearly any type of story or convention is up for grabs to be adapted to the central concept of any story in any time in anywhere in space. It's seriously one of the most giddy fun sandboxes you can ever have fun in, because its own continuity is impossible to police.

This is where City of Heroes is falling down for me right now. Honestly, it seems like a game going through a mid-life crisis where a grimmer realism is taken to be the sexier and more stimulating alternative than the rest of the game's late-70's Silver Age origins, where there might be twists and turns, but the good guys win out in the end. Now obviously City of Villains seeks to turn that on its head, but the reason redside never has the bulk of play is the same reason supervillain comic books never last. Invariably, you're butting up against the very things that make a supervillain and if you scratch too hard, you may find there's not much under the surface in terms of motivation and 'day to day' existence. That's not a knock on villain players, it's just one of the more unfortunate consequences where you have heroes to oppose villains.

What I'm saying in a longer-winded way is that Paragon Studios can't have their cake and eat it too. They laid down the guidelines that Paragon City was Supertown circa the 1970s with old-style cars, four-color superheroes and superteams. I really don't care if Matt Miller and the team want to stretch their boundaries and proclaim that the arrival of the goatee universe (Praetoria) is license to do the 'descent into darkness' that they've promoted it as.

A lot of people (not just myself) have pointed out that the grimness of the stories from Praetoria, First Ward particularly and now the SSA's are better suited to a setting that is more the 90's than what the game was set up like. DC Comics knew how to do the 'descent into darkness' and still keep the Silver Age feel; Crisis on Infinite Earths was as much a love letter to an age the creative teams of the company had grown up on as much as it was bidding it farewell. Yes, people died, but they died as heroes. They didn't have to bicker and snipe and act like they were in high schools. They were people with extraordinary abilities in extraordinary situations who chose to fight (and die) for what they believed in.

If Statesman got even a tenth of the heart and dignity in which the Silver Age Supergirl's death got, it would've been hailed as a hallmark moment, instead of just being remembered for a relatively nice cutscene.

There is, frankly, a certain smugness and inability to recognise that this is a direction a lot of people do not like. I'm rarely this pointed, but I have seen Zwillinger and Doctor Aeon and Positron discussing the SSA's and the other things and cheerfully defending the writing as 'necessary' so that we can appreciate the light after the darkness.

I'm sorry, but putting our characters (and in turn us as players) into situations that are knowingly morally ambiguous at best and then also putting us into stories that confront our ability to suspend our disbelief (in a superhero setting) is neither necessary, an indicator of mature sophisticated writing, and above all, consistent with your setting.

There is going to come a point when the Coming Storm has come and gone (and let's be honest here, we know we're going to win unless the announcement of the game being shut down comes not long after) that the developers and us have to come to terms with the consequences of the writing decisions being made right now. I still feel it's a fundamental mistake to kill off the advertising mantle of an entire product, and will, regardless of whether that advertising continues. Just try and explain that to someone casually interested in the game why the guy in the ads isn't in the game. That simple.

I went through this phase as a reader; I read The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and watched the deconstruction of the superhero, and that was a good thing for comics because ultimately people came to understand what it was they loved about their comics and that it was okay to suspend your disbelief about these things.

It's why any statements about 'us being the new heroes' ring hollow to me. Sure, we all want to be the hero (playing one is surely as much the fulfillment of the power fantasy of being a supehero to begin with as anything else) but we still want heroes to look up to. Removing the spotlight off the NPC's and putting it on us will expose our flaws, our foibles to the greater public. Can anyone say that their characters every detail are ones they want everyone to know about?

I thought about that. We get on here and we type about what we think of the Phalanx's character traits and discuss them, argue about them. Now try putting that shoe on your character's foot. I personally am not quite that ready to fill those shoes.

If Paragon Studios make another superhero game that's more morally ambiguous, 'shades of grey' setting, great. I think MMO players are ready for it; Bioware's MMO on the 'redside' portion of the story I think is testament to that. I'm just not going to be surprised that trying to fit this game into that mold is one that won't work.



S.

I age my characters year for year by and large. I don't always do the birthday thing, but I do at least try and acknowledge some passage of time. Being perpetually at one age seems at odds to me with the experiences you have as that character.



S.

[QUOTE=Eva Destruction;4100616]He really isn't. Recent writing is full of blatant inconsistencies that could have been avoided with five minutes spent on ParagonWiki, and I don't think he's run a Malta mission ever.

Talking is a Free Action.

(I'm sorry)
[QUOTE]

Wow, really? That's not a good sign....I would've hired Michelle (Samuraiko) instead. She's practically a walking encyclopedia. And then hire on Arcanaville who knows the numbers better than they do.

Heh, I remember talking as a free action, I used to play Champions (oh, the irony) back in the day. Still doesn't make any sense.



S.

Do what David suggested in one of the actual voting threads: go with your initial gut-check reaction, because it'll be the most truthful reaction you'll have.


S.

To me, this is just emblematic of every other raiding system that's ever come along in a game where in order to do x, you must have y.

It also assumes a level of dedication to tricking out your characters and having builds that maximises success in Trials. This is no different to me than having stat-specific armor, particular stat-boosting traits and so on.

If the point here was to make these accessable to everyone, then they've failed. Players will of course put more or less time into whatever activity they like to do, and you'll of course get cliques who do things 'hardcore'.

But this divides the player community (small enough as it is, really) along lines that if the Trials were truly designed to be friendly to all (and frankly I've had enough of some named Devs saying 'it's just a slightly steeper learning curve' as a means of trying to smokescreen the tricks and mechanics that do not encourage newcomers to such things), that too has failed.

But there's a mandate either from Positron or marketing or both that this is a 'necessary' part of gameplay. I'll leave it to other posters to answer whether that is true or not, but for my part, I strongly disagree.


S.

I went B, because that shoulder ribbing is so emblematic of the period. Even with the stock-standard silver spacesuits (holy alliteration, Batman!), there were always touches like that along with the boots and gloves. I'm always thinking how you can mix and match and there's a lot to mix and match with here.


S.

I went C, because so many of the retro rifles had that ridiculous sight that did nothing in every old movie I ever saw.

My feeling however is we'll get the top two out of all the options. When have we ever seen just one option go through alone?


S.

You can't get more retro sci-fi than B.



S.

Blame Stan Lee.



S.

Apparently DC doesn't understand the concept of a graphic novel being self-contained. But good on Morrison for realizing yes, it is perfect as it was. You don't need to add to it, at all.

This is just DC seeing if they can sucker the fanboy audience.


S.

I did want to echo Lycantropus, Melancton (my brother in arms, I think! ) and others who have thanked you for this thread, Sam.

I think it's important that we as players speak up when we feel we're not getting quality product in whatever terms things are presented to us in. I'm sure we can all cite other games where perhaps things have been done (I'm pretty sure the infamous NGE from Galaxies can be used here) that not only were of poor quality but made basic assumptions about the playerbase that were not only inaccurate but also insulting to their intelligence.

If the Devs of this game aren't held to a level of accountability, then the more 'marketing ploy' stuff like this can be pushed through. There has been an awful amount of noise lately about how the team listens to us and takes our concerns seriously, but it took David Nakayama to stand up and actually involve us that made me believe that they did. Well, that and a 20-plus page thread on the Beta and Live forums....

If comic book companies can be held to task for the actions of their writers, then so can MMO's, as far as I'm concerned. I'm a paying and loyal customer, but I am not a stupid one. I ask to be treated as a player capable of understanding and appreciating good writing. I ask to be treated as someone who appreciated and understands the superhero genre.

But most importantly, I ask to be treated with respect. Foisting any story onto an audience where you imbalance the writing by deliberately making the characters around you visibly and demonstrably less capable than you know them to be is not respecting you, it's pandering to you. And pandering on the lowest common demoninator level.

I'm like Sam; the Freedom Phalanx as they're written now don't deserve my respect or admiration because their actions demonstrate it. They're not the premier superteam of Paragon City, they're not even a good second-tier team.

So where does that leave us as players and characters who want to emulate an ideal or a principle that comes from being a hero when the supposed top-tier team acts this way?

The argument that we are those role models is ludicrous. If anything, I am the one who is flawed and human and not of that tier. And the Phalanx has gone from having interesting flaws and personalities yet still capable heroes who would die for their city to overwrought, emo-ridden shadows of themselves.


S.