T_Immortalus

LMAO

Monthly time has no value anymore.
The $15 monthly payment for time no longer exists, thus it is not a valid point in favor of subscriptions. You can play the game completely free, even buy content and play that for free.

You really chose the wrong argument to make there.




Also, subscribers who stop subscribing lose everything that they don't spend their point allowance on, which they paid $15 for $5 worth of points, so they truly do come out behind premium members who were able to devote all $15 to points.



Given the same amount of money spent, premium members get 3 times as much as subscribers.
Despite the lack of the exclusive content, they still get a better deal by far.

No, the advantage to not subscribing is never having to pay twice(or again and again and again and again...) for any piece of content.

Seriously, any content that a subscription has available is either exclusive(and unnecessary and lost when sub lapses) and/or requires paying again and again and again forever and ever and ever just to keep.

The subscription guarantees that the content you get for a "cheap" $15 per month(really $10 with the point allowance) has actually cost you $30 the next month, $45 the next month, $60 the next month, $75 the next month, $90 the next month, $105 the next month, $120 the next month, and on, and on, and on, and on....

....until the total you have paid just o keep access to the subscription exclusive content is (15n) dollars. That is a lot of money.
Just 5 years of subscription is $900 just to maintain what you have.

All the while, you still need to buy many things that are "only in the cash shop" and not included with your subscription.
Sure, you can save your monthly allowance, but you'll have to pay more if it doesn't, and likely will never, cover it all, all while premium members can spend the extra $10 per month you spend on the same permanent content access that you have to buy as well.



Premium membership is clearly cheaper, thus a better deal, over the long term, despite the lack of the unnecessary(by design) exclusives.

1) Yes, they get a little bit more, but that little bit more is only temporary items or content that they lose when the sub lapses.

2) Premium members NEVER need to pay to "maintain" an account.
Only subscribers need to pay again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again....
....just to keep what they have.
Premium members get a better deal in that regard, clearly.

3) Yes, subscribers get exclusives, but they lose those exclusives when the sub lapses so they are essentially locked into 2 choices:
(A) Stop subscribing and lose access.
(B) Subscribe by paying again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again....forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever....
....until they choose option (A) instead.

Premium members get to keep everything, even things subscribers get or free that premium/free members need to purchase.
Premium gets a better deal again because they have no "cost of maintaining" recurring fee, especially when they hit the reward level unlocks for certain systems that would require a small monthly cost.




Obviously, your "absolutes" aren't "absolute" or support the premium membership being a better deal than subscribing, by far.

Actually, I've only subscribed, due to financial reasons and burnout from "got to get my money's worth"(due to mandatory payments for time that counts down whether I use it or not), for just shy of 36 months.

Invention access though, would be cheap compared to the full subscription if I actually wanted to pay more for that grind.
I'll be content waiting for the permanent unlock.


You are right though. The permanent unlock for premium members invalidates any incentive those systems could give for subscribing.
Subscriptions are no longer required for much.

They're still a cheaper 30 day price, or completely ignorable as you reach a permanent unlock point if you buy enough things you actually want and reach the right paragon rewards tier.


The only thing subscriptions get for the extra $10 monthly is the absolute exclusives that they have to keep subscribing(mimics a mandatory subscription, at least for that specific content) just to keep.
And, those exclusives are arguably unnecessary, unused or not worth it otherwise Premium membership would be clearly just an "unlimited trial" scam to get more subscriptions that pay more for content, "double dipping" into your wallet.

It's funny; the "double dipping cash shops" are why people hate F2P/optional subscription hybrids and here you people are arguing for "my right to pay a recurring fee for something I should be able to pay only once for".



By the way, content is not a service. The game lets people buy other content now without a "service fee" yet you still want to pay that fee for specific content?

The only services in the game are temporary purchases like character transfers, customer service and the server use itself.
We no longer have to pay for server use, except the VIP one.
We all still pay one time fees every time we use a character transfer and such.

We all deserve (and should get at least on something like a "per minute toll phone line" or "support for 30 days form the date of a purchase") customer support and shoudl have access to it.


That leaves us with only content being necessary to pay for, but, now that content can be sold in a one time permanently usable purchase, subscribing for content is looking a lot less necessary, a lot less valuable and a lot more like a bad idea.








I'm still not arguing for everything being given for free, just that everything should be in the cash shop without a necessary subscription for anything.

Then, the subscription should be "monthly access to everything you haven't already purchased", which relies on the cash shop purchasing being clearly more expensive in the short term but cheaper in the long term to give incentive for both financial models and even encourage "premium members" to "become VIP" for a month here and there to try things before they pay the higher permanent price.

That's a smarter and more profitable model, while giving customers more value and getting rid of the incentive for developers to "make it a longer grind so they have to subscribe longer" or "make it require a subscription to obtain and deactivate without the subscription so they get hooked and have to stay subscribed" like they're some "evil loan-shark".

But, my point was that VIPs are getting only slightly more than Premium at a clearly much greater cost because of the need to continue paying $15 every month to KEEP those exclusives.

True, but premium have access to the exact same stuff for the exact same price, without a repeating subscription fee as well.

What is included with the subscription?
The base game is free.
The temporary items are all purchasable and usable by free and premium members, depending on reward level access to required systems for certain temporary items.

All subscribers get for an extra approximately $10 per month(since $5 of that goes directly to purchases just like premium members) is the exclusives while they have to keep paying the subscription fee to retain things like incarnate system access and use of incarnate slots.

The fact is....your $10 monthly only gets you an extra reward token per year(which inevitably has less value when you fill out the reward tree), exclusives you can't keep and temporary access to things that premium members can pay once for permanent access to.

You're paying $10 per month extra, compared to the finite non-repeatable payments premium members make, just for obviously small benefits in the grand view of the game and a grindy incarnate system that makes players seem less powerful against the AVs they used to fight on those peregrine island arcs with much less people and still not more powerful than the Statesman NPC one on one.




It's just factually more value to stop paying the forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever....subscription fee for few benefits and, instead, pay once for the content you want and usually have to purchase extra beyond the subscription anyway(like Beam Rifle and Street Justice and Titan Weapons while subs only get Time Manipulation free, which they lose even that if their sub lapses and can't access the created Time toon until they purchase a permanent unlock of it).

You have to go by the exclusive and permanent benefits as everything else is temporary or purchasable by everyone else without the recurring fee.



I wouldn't even count customer support as an "exclusive feature" of a subscription when people should get customer support with every purchase(since they are paying customers) and the overall objective of game design is to make a working game that does not need support.

It may be a global character slot, but....oh look....a power set is global too. You can make as many new characters with a new power set as you want, all for $10.

Do I want as many characters with the new power set as I can make or do I want as many costume slots as characters I can make?


It is equal to the price of a power set in every way, but the value of the purchase is not the same because one is a whole new set of powers and possible character combinations while the other is just a single new costume slot per character.

YMMV.



Also to those who claim "your math is wrong" and "VIPs are not getting shafted, my math is definitely not wrong since I was just using things which are not subjectively valued, the monthly point allowance and subscription price and exclusive content, and it is only your opinion that VIPs are getting the better deal because that is all you have known and the model you want to continue supporting against "evil F2P".

You're blissfully ignorant of, and even fighting against, possibly/probably better financial models for the game just because "I'm used to a subscription and I'm going to stick with it and I want everyone else to be forced to stay with a mandatory subscription too".



Maybe you are right in that VIPs get a good deal so far apparently, but I guarantee it will look worse down the road if they find the cash shop profitable and "profits are king" when it comes to business.

The goal of a company is to make money. They will do so at the expense of the customer, while either providing the customer good value in exchange or providing them less than good value if they can get away with it.


For example, how many of you would argue that the incarnate slot grind and new incarnate merit purchase grind are "fun"?
They're obviously the most obvious "carrot on a stick" I have seen in almost any game.

Grind is not fun, it's there to slow you down. "Challenge" can be fun; "easy" can be fun; but, "grind" is never fun hence why we call it "grind".

We're all paying for grind. Grind, with a mandatory or optional subscription, draws out the time we use the game and thus the time we pay for so that we end up paying more, which is the purpose of grind.



MMO companies think we won't play a game past a few months without a really long leveling grind and then endgame grind.
Originally, CoH had only a relatively short endgame grind and yet we stayed. FPS games have pretty much no grind and even the things that would qualify as gridn there are not thought of as grind because they're so fun and don't ram numbers down your throat, just waves of dynamic enemies.

We pay for fun, but MMO companies give us more grind than fun.


So given the truth of the game's past development and constant goals of making money and retaining players, they will be adding much more to the store than your allowance can ever purchase to try to keep you playing the game forever and the exclusives in the subscription are there to try to keep you subscribing in addition to making cash shop purchases above and beyond your monthly allowance.

Yes, it is opinion how much the subscription benefits are worth, but I still believe you people have not given that enough thought. You just automatically "renew sub" without ever considering that you may end up with an expensive deal.


My opinion?
The exclusives of the subscription are either things everyone should have access to(at least through one time purchases in the cash shop and things like customer support at least through email), items both subscribers and non-subscribers have to pay for OR just more grind that really doesn't make the game more fun enough to justify the recurring cost forever.

1) Is it really fun to have 16-24 people having trouble with ONE AV when we used to, and still do, only need 8 to take own incarnate Statesman?!?

2) Is it really fun to grind out for weeks, per character, just to make that character slightly more powerful with the new incarnate slots beyond the alpha?
Where is the taste of the power we got on the alpha unlock arc when we experienced our future power with "Limitless Radial FREEM"?

3) Is the IO system necessary? The devs say "no, it is not". It's definitely another long grind for the more powerful stuff that actually make s the invention system worth it, not to mention it is a huge INF sink.



Honestly, I'm happy to unsubscribe and pay piecemeal without all the grind that subscribers "are privileged to have".
I want fun, but the grind and lackluster rewards compared to time and effort needed really make the incarnate and IO systems a pain and not fun, especially when we'll eventually likely need 40 incarnate players to take down Emperor Cole and need to do some gimmick or we won't be able to(like a hamidon raid where you need a lot of people and need to take out the mitochondria spawns around him to defeat him).

I am not looking forward to playing "just one small cog in a huge war machine" in the final battle against Cole.

Weren't we supposed to end up more powerful than the signature characters yet we still need help for non-incarnate AVs and GMs on most characters and incarnate content AVs(even non-incarnate AVs in incarnate trials) require an even larger team of full incarnates?!?


The incarnate system is, apparently, making us less powerful in relation to the endgame content.
That is not fun, but it is also a symptom of traditional MMO design where you start out weak and have to grind just to reach "barely satisfactory" and end up int he endgame "even weaker than level one" against the big bad guys.



Where did "being a superhero" go?
Where did "Superman and his equally matched archenemy Doomsday" type of action and epic combat go?








Anyway after my tangential rant, I do think subscribing is not worth it and will be worth even less later on, specifically because the VIP exclusives(as the only true difference between VIP and Premium since both pay) are just not fun compared to the base game features which make me feel more heroic(like the Positron TF part 1 with the shadow duplicate fight that is absolutely epic with "8 hero players versus 8 archvillain NPCs" - actually only boss rank or EB, but an even match for the players - which is the best designed fight in the entire game).

I bet a lot of subscribers will see later on how little the subscription really gets you above what premium get, that premium can't already get for the same price, all while premium doesn't have to pay an ever increasing total amount paid just to keep things they already paid for.

I'm probably pretty accurate given the probability of human greed and the objective of any company being "to make as much money as possible".

Sure, it has not come to pass yet but just watch it happen someday if you don't make it known that you won't be suckered into it.

Ok, so you get 3 boosters for free when they add about 12 in a year now.


It doesn't matter if you get the equivalent amount of content compared to the old way of doing things, you're still paying beyond the subscription when the subscription should include everything except the temporary items, as long as you continue to subscribe, or it becomes worth less and less and less until unsubscribing is the obvious best choice.



Also, I did not mention other exclusives like the extra 12 character slots per server that VIPs get because many people will not use them. I know I don't have that many characters and even delete ones I don't play for too long. I barely even have 12 slots filled on one server and the only server that I play on.

When you get right down to it, the only difference between the subscription and premium is the exclusive content access that can't be bought, the incarnate system and other little things, and the monthly point allowance.
Essentially, you're paying forever just to access the incarnate system and get $5 back in points.

I'm just going with the most obvious and simple interpretation here.
I don't really care about things that are actually available to both, either for free or with a one time purchase, because they either aren't always used to the fullest or are always tied to a "forever fee" subscription that guarantees the price continues to go up and up and up until you buy the content directly and stop subscribing.




Honestly and truly, people do not like paying recurring fees forever. This is the reason for the prevalence of prepaid phone plans and people wanting to own homes rather than rent forever.
People want to get the best deal and not pay forever.

I'm pretty sure the overall fear is that the free issues will contain less than previous issues, by far, due to the obvious "wait a second, we can put stuff in a cash shop now instead of having to provide a lot included with the mandatory subscription that we used to have" idea that NCSoft marketing will obviously have and the executives will like("more money, YAY!").

Also I may have added a little wrong, but, the boosters are being split into smaller chunks in the new cash shop to where getting a whole booster will be a minimum of more than 400 points.
You'll barely get one booster worth for that 400 points.

They certainly would not be reducing the cost from $10 boosters down to less than $5 when people paid the $10 often and they can get away with making the total cost higher by selling each piece at a small price, that adds up to more.




And then, they will obviously be adding a LOT of stuff to the store as fast as they can.

Sure, you can save your point allowance, but good luck paying for even 10% of what you want from the store as they keep adding and adding and adding more points worth of stuff than you could ever save up enough points for.



The worries about "VIPs getting a raw deal" is the fact that almost every benefit to the subscription is absolutely temporary, aside from the $5 worth of points and one paragon reward token.

It really is paying $15 for essentially $5 worth of points because you can't keep ANYTHING else unless you continue subscribing forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever....
....with no lapse at all in your subscription.


Those who do not subscribe certainly miss out on specific subscription only things, but they end up with a far better deal, guaranteed, which only gets better with time.

That is why F2P has such appeal instead of a mandatory subscription. The price doesn't go up and up and up forever.




Edit:
It's not about "free"; it is about how much you get for what you "pay".

VIPs pay and they have to continue to pay so the end cost of what they have increases and increases and increases and increases and on and on and on....until they stop subscribing.
Premium members pay and whatever they buy is a finite price now and forever that they do not need to pay again.

Premium members obviously get the better deal, since the only thing VIPs get over them is the exclusives that require a $15(essentially $10 because of the $5 of points) monthly fee forever and ever and ever.

Premium membership and all the benefits they can get, except the VIP exclusives, is essentially $10 per month cheaper. It's $10 cheaper the first month, $20 cheaper the next, $30 cheaper the next, $40 cheaper the next, $50 cheaper the next....and they get to keep everything they can access and don't need the exclusives, often don't want them either.

1) Power corrupts because humans let it corrupt themselves. There are some who do not seek power for gain and thus we have heroes.

How can you have superheroes with such power who are heroes and not corrupt?

That rather disproves the adage, which is why it is an "adage" and not a "universal law"(which even universal laws like the law of gravity change to fit new scientific discoveries).


2) "I am sure, he believed he did so with good intentions. However, his actions were those that would benefit him"

Of course, anything that benefits the people also benefits him with fame and respect and even power that they give him to do more good for them.

They did elect him their defender and Emperor, after the Hamidon Wars in fact.


The fact that he does things with good intentions which are morally questionable(such as the death penalty for a murderer) puts him clearly in the vigilante middle of the good-evil spectrum.
He is not considered a vigilante because what he does is legally sanctioned by the people of his world. They consider him a hero that "does what is necessary for the good of the people".


Yes, he is a villain because he is becoming a little less benevolent and a whole bunch more extreme in his treatment of those who are not under his rule, but he's still int he moral gray enough that we can empathize with him, especially given the incursions from Primal Earth that really do offer proof that "they are dangerous to Praetoria" to fuel his war effort.



He's not good or evil, but a morally gray human as any average real human is with all the inherent weaknesses of mentality that humans have.
Despite all his power, he is still a human that can be wrong. He will be forced to accept it by the players(hero ones) someday and either change for the better, abdicate the throne to a better ruler(hero player) or die and be replaced(if he doesn't redeem himself or a villain player defeats him).

Oh, I agree.

There is constant fear of....Hamidon evolving to trump the fences, somehow the DE getting inside, Syndicate killing the people for money, Resistance killing innocent people to make a point that the people will never hear because they never get the word out, corrupt officials(like corrupt businessmen in the Syndicate), being abducted for psychic energy to feed Mother "Mind Mooch" Mayhem, Neuron's experiments and any other little threats I missed along with a fear that Cole may not be as powerful or benevolent as the people hope.

That's a pretty scary place, but they do have Cole and his organization at least mostly protecting them.


Then....you have the threats from Primal Earth....villains coming through individually whenever they want to cause mayhem, Arachnos putting a lot of effort into destroying Praetoria, Longbow being Vigilante idiots attacking the protectors of the people and the people themselves and enemies from other universes that could decide "ooh, a new target".


But, the people are willing, mostly, to follow Cole and like the way Praetoria is, or at least was before Mother Mayhem and Cole started apparently going extremist.
You can't keep a government going without the support of the people, and not drugged up people because that makes them incompetent and incapable of defending the government from a Resistance of undrugged people.



Praetoria is a place where terrifying things have happened and can still happen. They're doing their best to make it the best they can, while some subvert it from the inside or from the Resistance outside.




The main choice of Praetoria for the players is:
"Do I serve the people or myself? What will I do to serve them or myself? Kill Emperor Cole?"

1) Weren't they working against Praetoria, not just finding the truth?

(What about "classified information" in real life? That gets you a traitor's punishment too. Praetoria doesn't seem any more evil than real life in most ways, other than the blatant ones on both sides.)

2) Who is Wardog? Is he in the Crusaders line of Resistance?
You absolutely trust everything that he says or somebody else close to him says as truth while not extending the same trust to Emperor Cole?

If you take anything "with a grain of salt" then you must take everything "with a grain of salt" to be objective and get the truth or you are just biased and probably as wrong as light coming from a black hole.




I don't trust any character in Praetoria to give me the full honest truth, so I go with what I see.

What I see is the Resistance being more power hungry and tending to do more evil than all Loyalist lines, by a little bit at least. I also see valid reasons behind Cole's actions, though he does overreact which makes him the villain(but still morally gray).

I just won't write it off as "goatee mirror universe" with "goatee Statesman" and "angel Calvin Scott"(with proof that Calvin Scott is not an angel).

No, the true mindless robots do that and do the manual labor to let humans be free to think and make art and scientific advances.

If anything, they only rewrite the minds of those who prove they can't be trusted to not be evil(Syndicate for example) and they don't think should be killed or Mother Mayhem's slavery(which does need to be stopped).

The drugged water/Enriche actually is just like some sort of anti-depressant, not absolute mind control. It makes people feel better about their lives, not make them different people.

Everything else is just your unfounded assumptions as it is not in the story, yet.



People are free to do an awful lot in Praetoria, so long as it doesn't endanger others, even so far as a rather "interesting" little room Bobcat has in Studio 55.








Edit:
It seems Praetoria is meant to be for students of philosophy or other deep thinkers considering how many people here just jump to "he's evil, yep and I don't care what eh does, he's evil" without any real proof, just "they say he's a villain, he's pure evil"(even if they meant he's barely a villain, as in the moral gray leaning toward villain), while the others, like myself, start bringing up actual arguments to prove that he's not black and white, even if he is still on the villain side mainly.

How is he any different than real governments?
Even the most "democratic" governments out there are a bunch of buddies doing what they want more than what the people need or want.

Honestly, Cole may be evil, likely more of a moral gray, but he doesn't seem that much beyond real life people.

And the judge/jury who sentences a murderer to death, as well as the executioner, all feel as though they "have blood on their hands", but that does not make what they did evil when justice was served.

The context matters a lot.

Exactly, and that is the point.

We're supposed to see how his system, his Praetoria, is quite possibly a dream to be reached for, but it has been twisted by individuals exploiting it and Cole's own increasing apathy and apparent insanity.

That's why I choose the Loyalist side but loyal to the people and Cole's original public goal and against Cole who is no longer following his own stated noble goals.


Cole is certainly leaning towards villain with his actions, but his motivations and goals push him back towards hero enough to bring him almost back to the balance between good and evil.
There is still time and room and reason(younger Cole was better, more idealistic) to redeem him, but he will inevitably need to be brought down if he doesn't change or in order to make him change.

Longbow does a lot of illegal things. They're truly vigilantes and even invaded the Rogue Isles without UN sanction, even against UN commands.

It's another example of how Primal Earth maybe is more evil than Praetoria with all the evil that is allowed to flourish.

Sure, Cole took too extreme a position with the war and he's not as good as he should be, given his goals, but replace him with a better person or group of people and fix his system back to the intended utopia without the seer slave program and corrupt individuals and it would easily be much better than Primal earth.


Honestly, I think the old writing for Paragon City is to blame.
The old stories don't have much, if anything, about how corrupt the PPD and politicians and other world leaders are or how easily heroes can and do fall to being vigilantes or all out villains.

It makes it all too easy to paint Praetoria and Emperor Cole as "absolute evil" when Paragon City, with all its evil groups and individuals and inadequate legal system running rampant, is portrayed as "absolute good" all too often.

No, Cole is using those means "to protect humanity".

I agree; he is starting to apparently go too far and has allowed others to go much too far(Mother Mayhem, who does not have a goal she is doing "necessary evil"/"justice" for, she's just addicted to psychic energy and attention).

Cole did start out just like Statesman, being a vigilante in the eyes of the people, to protect people. He did what he had to do to stop humanity from being wiped out by the Devouring Earth or themselves due to nuclear retaliation against the Devouring Earth.



What choice would you have him make?

past Cole: "I must protect the people, but they are killing themselves with nuclear weapons....what must I do?"

current Cole: "I must protect the people, but I can't keep the dimensional walls shut from Primal Earth and other universes....what must I do to ensure the safety of my people?"

(yes, Primal Earth went to Praetoria and stole things, like the maelstrom device, and attacked, like Nemesis, all while Cole was perfectly satisfied with securing only his own world from interior threats to the people)

current Cole: "I must stop them from threatening my people, but I do not wish to obliterate them(which is within his power likely).....how do I do that?....I know. I will eliminate those that have the power and desire to oppose me while letting those who submit live safer and better lives under my rule."


Really, the war with Primal Earth is extreme and wrong only in that he jumped to a conclusion that need not be.
He is out to eliminate all opposition without even giving them the chance to change and "ask him for help".

It could very well have turned out exactly as he is planning and implementing with the war, but he didn't even give voluntary peace a chance.

In fact, the war probably would have happened since people will fight for the status quo even if it is completely wrong and evil and painful to them.


Do soldiers choose to fight and risk death with an enemy that is so far away and not threatening them directly because they want to? Or, do they do it because they are ordered to?



All wars are wrong and evil as they are always started by someone who chooses violence over other options, either one side that believes the other would never change if they told them to or one side that says "come and try to change me, I will accept nothing less than death" as some crazy person.

Sane and smart people do not fight and are the reason there is peace other than that brought under military conquest.



Emperor Cole is in the moral gray because he has good reason for even the war with Primal Earth but he has chosen the extreme and wrong way to protect his people.

Yes, Cole's scale is, and has been, tipping toward evil, but he is not "definitely evil" yet nor beyond redemption.
His system of government, if adhered to as intended by the people administering it, is certainly not evil, not any more evil than our own real world laws. His system has just been twisted by those such as Mother Mayhem and her slave program.

(It would be interesting to see if the seer program could be removed and replaced with a system that doesn't involve self-aware and fallible people or machines that could choose evil or do it by mistake or by willing human psychics who retain their autonomy. Would the system be evil if those who were in it actually chose it or were just machines and worked only like empaths, sensing fear and violent emotions instead of "I hate Cole" thoughts?)


Honestly, I have a hard time seeing the whole of Praetoria as remotely evil, and Cole himself as anything but gray and leaning evil, though Mother Mayhem and her slavery seer program is obviously evil and needs to be ended.

Maybe this is true, but the people will live and the species will continue, with opportunities to gain influence and power within the organization, under Cole's vision.
Hamidon just wants to end the species.


Life or death?
Tyranny or nothingness?


I guess it's more of a question of "do you believe in a better life after death or the absolute tyranny of nothingness after death?".

They fight back, inevitably doing "evil", or die as the other side wishes.

No war is "good", and both sides have to agree to the rules of the "Geneva Conventions".


All the Geneva Conventions do is provide a set of guidelines that they hope both sides of a war will follow.
Humans can choose not to follow the conventions, but they must then win the war or suffer the consequences of not following those rules.


Essentially, the Geneva Conventions is just any old ordinary "don't hurt people" set of laws.

People can choose to ignore them, win the war and strike down that set of laws.

The only time they matter is when the side that adheres, by choice, to them wins the war.




Good and evil are choices. You can't prevent evil without doing some other evil, that is perhaps lesser or justified such as death penalties for murder.



Do you choose "the lesser of two evils" when that is the best option you can possibly choose, or do you choose to submit to absolute evil?

In Praetoria: "do we die to the Hamidon or nuclear weapons used against the Hamidon or other governments that fight for land and resources that are now questionably claimed or other enterprising conquerors.......or do we choose a leader we know has been our staunch defender to keep us safe now and forever?"

It's not that unbelievable that they would choose and support emperor Marcus Cole so willingly when our own real history has shown people all too willing, with logic to back it up often, to support obviously less noble humans.



This is why Praetoria is completely morally gray. It has good and it has many evils, but some of those evils are just and necessary, even if others need to be stopped.

Where do the scales lay in Praetoria? Good? Evil? Balanced? Close to balanced?

1) You use extreme disregard of scientific fact as a metaphor for the "stupidity of believing actions are 'not so bad'".
Seriously, human behavior is as malleable as the wind. Emperor Cole is not "absolute evil" when Lord Recluse obviously is supposed to be that and does it better.

There is a balancing scale for Cole. He does some evil and some heroic things, putting him at the balance point between the two and generally tipping more towards evil every day, but not absolutely evil yet.



2) War is bad, always.
Is there ever a "good war"?

Human history is full of "heroes" doing things that are sad and bad and evil, when viewed in a vacuum, but make them heroes in the eyes of others.

You want to cite real life as an example of "absolute evils are easy to spot and Cole is absolute evil"? You failed at that before you even finished the thought because perception is what matters and such things as "necessary evils" exist(such as imprisoning criminals which would be evil to somebody who did not deserve it).

Just look at the debate over the death penalty for murder.
There are people who believe the death penalty is immoral and wrong no matter how heinous the crime or how likely it is for the killer to kill again and despite the fact that they gave their victim(s) the death penalty when their victims did not deserve it.

This is the same problem in Primal Earth, where criminals are arrested and free again very quickly committing the same crimes and more.



I would rather live with necessary evils, like the death penalty for murder crimes, than in a world of "absolute good" that allows people to be absolutely evil without consequence.



So go ahead, believe that Emperor Cole is absolutely doing everything just because he wants to, like the Joker just a crazy psycho, but I'm smarter than that and see his reasons and the alternatives as just bad enough to put him in the moral gray area.

After all, how do you stop war? You either submit to being conquered and oppressed or you "war right back".


The simple inevitable truth is "when given a choice, some humans will choose evil".
You'll never get people to stop killing and creating wars so you need to have laws and punishments to deter and prevent evil and punish those who do evil.





That is why Cole is the most believable, "real", character in all of City of Heroes and resides firmly in the moral gray area.
He embodies our real human desire for justice, peace and safety, a desire that we would give almost anything for as many people say.



"Is it better to die free than live in tyranny?"
You may say "it's is better to die", but nobody ever even considers actually dying, except when they believe in a better "afterlife" or put the lives of others above their own and believe it will make things better.

When you fear death, and rightly so, then living in tyranny is logically preferable to death.
It's even more preferable when that tyranny is so supposedly comfortable as Praetoria, with robots doing every manual task for you and absolute safety from outside forces.




Yes, Cole has done and allowed evil to happen, but are those evils worse than all the other probable evils without him?

Would you free all murderers and eliminate all anti-murder laws just because "it's inhumane to imprison or kill someone"?



"si vis pacem, para bellum"
"If you want peace, prepare for war."
I learned that from "The Punisher" and this very game's Midnight Squad entry arc.

There is always a balance between good an evil that needs to be maintained. That balance is justice.






Edit:
It all comes back to the Golden Rule...."treat others as you wish to be treated".

The Golden Rule was never "don't give a murderer the death penalty"; it was always "don't murder unless you want to get the death penalty".
Even that rule is only a deterrent and punishment idea that people can choose to accept or ignore and face the consequences.

I find it fitting that gold is such a prevalent color in Praetoria where they apparently make the "Golden Rule" as absolute a law as possible.

I was referring to the story arcs, not the obvious "we die if we don't fight these mindless robots and heartless AVs" fights.

The Praetorian story arcs, and eventual final showdown with Emperor Cole likely as well, are meant to test our moral compass and force hard choices.
That is why the one poster well above felt the Praetorian moral choices and story were contrived, because it's supposed to be a "back against the wall" situation all the time.

The shades of gray are not in his status as hero or villain, they are in his motivations, reasoning and alternatives to what he chose.

Would the world be worse without him?
Would other actions be worse?
Would other actions or the world be better?

"Do his results justify the means he uses?"

I actually think he did what he did for 2 reasons.

1) He definitely wanted to eliminate any current plans Duray had and thoughts of more unapproved actions.

2) He killed Duray to tell the clones "this is what Duray did and he died for it, don't disobey again or you will too" as a warning.