Redside Heroics

I'm not flamebaiting. I'm just verbally expressing my facepalm at your logic. I see your logic, I just don't agree that it's GOOD logic.

There's no such thing as Good or Bad logic. There is only Logic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic

Whether you accept my -explanation- as "Good enough" for you is different. But my logic is impeccable and irrefutable. I don't like playing the Villain, but I like playing in the zones and fighting against the interesting enemies, enjoy the music and style. so I play Heroes in the Isles and rewrite the mission text as I go along.

It's impossible to defeat this logic because it's a logical course following an opinion. Since my opinion "I don't like playing Villains" cannot be argued in one way or another we have only the logical path of determining what I do with my opinion. A) Ignore things I do like (atmosphere, powersets, archetypes, character concepts, zones, etc) B) Ignore things I don't like (the story) C) Play a Villain, which i don't like to do.

I choose option B. you believe I should choose option A or C. Option C, for me, is not an option. It's not enjoyable so I won't -play- a villain. Option A amounts to "Stay Heroside at all times" which cuts me off from the entire other side of the game. As I don't want to lose half the game (more or less) I am forced to choose option B, as it sacrifices the least of what I like (nothing) and leaves me with everything I do like.

There is no "Facepalm" to this. It's simple logic.

Facepalm, by the way, is more flamebait. It's a derogatory statement which infers your extreme disdain for my statement, regardless of how sound my logic is. Your only argument -against- my logic, thus far, has been "It's stupid", ultimately.

-Rachel-

A trainer doesn't become a trainer unless he actually knows this stuff, and all of the Surviving Eight are old grizzled bastards who, by this point, have worked with more heroes than you've even seen. And this is not an ad-hoc spin, it's the reality of the game. Everyone from 2004 onwards has been coming to these people asking for advice on how to train their magical gravity-bending or their technological fire blasting. Even if they didn't know, I can guarantee you that they know now.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That's not really how I see things, and I'll tell you why. A few years ago, I trained martial arts for some time (before I admitted to myself that I'll always be a sissy wimp), and this is exactly how my training progressed. My teacher would basically show me a move, and I'd spend weeks practicing that one move, then he'd show me another move, and we'd practice that and combine. I wasn't taught "martial arts" as a monolithic unit of skill and given all the abilities to train and improve simultaneously, simply because a lot of the more complicated moves required skills obtained from mastering the simpler moves, as well as strength and awareness built up through training.

I know how comic books treat these things, but I was never a fan of it, myself, because comic books pull powers out of the aether as desired. I'm much more sympathetic to the turn-based combat found in most fighting anime, where people come with specific moves prepared and train new moves up as they invent them. They make such thing as swinging your sword really hard into specific moves and even give them names. That's pretty much what Yoh Asakura's Selestial Slash is in the 4Kids dub of Shaman King. I like this, because I enjoy the ability to use your powers creatively, such as the difference between a concentrated fire blast vs. as spread out fireball, vs, a pinpoint fire sword.

Of course, if your character concept revolved around the character having "just a power" of some element of inclination, then I can certainly see this as problematic, but levels and trainers in general don't really strike me as problematic because of that.

Let me pose this question, then. If Spider-Man were on his way to save Mary Jane from being dropped off a bridge (again), how long do you think he would spend fighting the thousand muggers on the way there? In the comic books, there really aren't any, because criminals don't commit crime on-panel unless it's important to the plot. But suppose they did. Are you telling me that Spider-Man would spend, say, 10 hours landing in every alley and beating up every two-bit thug, fully knowing that his girldfriend could well be dropped to her death if he doesn't hurry? Even if he were given the standard hour and a half time limit, he'd STILL have to skip a few fights along the way.

This isn't a handwave. The setting just has more crime than any one hero could ever handle. Not liking the setting and how it's designed is one thing, and I can respect that. Hand-waving away the parts you don't like is perfectly fine. But the setting still makes sense within context.

There seems to be an unspoken rule in the city that someone else will handle it. This one I'm going to spin a little, because that's how I've always seen it:

A contact isn't going to give you a mission that's far below your level on the assumption that you have missions your level. A mission lower level than you can be handled by another, weaker hero, but that weaker hero can't really handle your missions, because he's just too week for it. As such, it makes sense to keep the strong heroes doing work that requires a strong hero and delegating the easier work to weaker heroes. That way, power is used most efficiently.

Granted, this IS a spin and less an explanation, but it sort of follows from how the setting is built. When you have a city with literally hundreds of thousands of heroes, sooner or later you just HAVE to impose some kind of order regarding who does what, to ensure that threats of all calibres are handled. It makes sense, in that if such a completely realistic situation existed, that situation might not be as rare as you'd think.

Err... I can't agree with that. Pick almost any sci-fi or, yes, even less realistic military movie and you'll instantly run into levels of clearance. Only the captain has clearance to send a distress call. Only the administrator has access to the confidential files. Only the general can get into the experimental generator room. Only the strongest warriors are allowed into the abandoned sacred tomb. This is not a gaming cliché. If anything, it's a fiction cliché that a lot of stories use to either invent a plot point or add some mystique to a place or character. Kind of like how Max Action, leader of the Civic Squad, has a history that's confidential, and presumably only accessible to top-ranking officials.

In City of Heroes, not everyone has (or had) permission to access hazard zones, and that makes sense. They're restricted areas full of serious dangers, and it makes sense to keep weaker heroes out of them. Hell, even Mass Effect employs the same tactic, allowing Shepard entrance to the quarantine zone on Omega while refusing the human woman access at the same time.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Well, if your stance is "Your argument is beneath me." then yeah, end of argument before it even began. If you're of the stance that "I'll do whatever I like no matter what the game says." then you are well free to do so and no-one can really say anything about it. But when you start ignoring everything you may as well just discount setting altogether and do whatever. And as you may have noticed, this isn't an argument to begin with.

You can make a hero villain-side. You can make a villain hero-side. You can make a father of the Statesman, a god of the old world, Neo in the Matrix, the grandfather of time and whatever else you please, and, really, why shouldn't you? But for those of us who DO try to stick to settings at least somewhat, there is an argument to be had as to the extent of what fits and what doesn't. Because trying to experience the stories kind of requires that you acknowledge the setting exists.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No offense, but you had an odd teacher. I've practiced several martial arts back in the days when I was in shape, and every school I ever went to (Barring one, when I think of it) taught us all the basic moves all at once, and then we practiced the various ways they could be combined ad infinitum.

I would consider it beyond bizarre to teach someone one block, or punch, or kick, or what-have-you, and make them work on that one thing for weeks. But then, I believe that a martial arts class should be primarily a self-defense lesson, and if I'm going to teach someone to defend themselves, I'm going to teach them all the basics on the first day, so they have a valid palette to work with if they get attacked on their way home from that very first lesson, as inexpert with those moves as they may be.

The only departure from this I ever experienced was studying Aikido, where we learned one control at a time, but even there we were taught the basic elements that are used to create a control from the very start.

On the subject of trainers in game... Honestly it bugs me. I'm not really a fan of developing my powers in a granular fashion in the first place, but it's kind of ridiculous to have to go to a trainer for it. My characters are unique snowflakes. There are NO other heroes in the world whose powers work the same way my heroes' powers work. There is simply no way anyone could teach them how to use them. Put them through their paces, make them practice, sure... But teach them a new trick? Not a chance.

I can't say I agree with you. Being shown a few tricks without the actual ability to use them serves very little better than knowing no tricks at all, and I can easily attest to that. A martial art is not so much about the tricks and techniques in terms of just knowing them, it's down to the skill, coordination and fitness to be able to use them against targets that don't cooperate.

Besides, a lot of the techniques I never got to learning were based on feel and experience much more so than just being told what to do, and I know that for a fact. There's no point in showing first-time losers all the advanced, complicated moves that stifle even seasoned practitioners, because they won't be able to do them anyway, but they'll still try, fail and end up getting themselves hurt.

As with any skill-based activity, the easiest way to ensure a person fails and quits is to overload them with examples on the very first lesson, and this I absolutely know for a fact. What you want is to give people a stable basis, a bit of confidence and the mindset that they know what they're doing so that they can build off that. These things are learned by feel, not by explanation, and just giving people a lot of tricks to remember just doesn't help.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Neither does Martial Arts in CoX. Dragon's Tail is the only good move you don't have by level 18.

A good, practical self-defence class, perhaps. But an actual long-standing martial art WILL have much more complicated techniques one can get to after enough training.

In my example, I studied Wing Tsun, which you can kind of see in semi-historic movie Yip Man, but not quite as it's been somewhat beefed up for Hollywood. The entire art is focused around not specific moves, of which is has a mere handful even among its elders, but around feel, anticipation and situational awareness. Sure, you have your basic stance, steps, the few basic punches, kicks and grapples, but that's about it. Everything else is honing those skills through repetition.

And when you practice and progress enough, you move on from just punching and kicking into the much more difficult and, to be honest, much more interesting technique of what's called "sticky hands." This sort of technique CANNOT be taught to a novice, because there isn't anything about it to explain. It's all entirely feel, coordination and experience. You don't can't be "told" how to do that. Even when you have the base and skillset to even have an idea of how it works, you still can't just go out and do it with just an explanation. Not to a trainer, and not to some random guy in the street. It's not "a move," it's a technique. It doesn't operate on knowing what to do, it operates purely on feel, specifically since Wing Tsun fighters are trained to not have to look at their hands when they do it.

I'm not talking about enrolling in some Tibetan monastery to study Kung Fu for the next 50 years, but not everything boils down to just pointing a finger to tell people where to punch.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It depends on the martial art you're talking about. A lot of people in the martial arts world consider all the kung-fus (Of which wing chun is one) to be overcomplicated and impractical. Even Bruce Lee felt that most of the traditional arts were too tradition-bound.

That aside (And granting that wing chun is actually one of the simpler kung-fus), you've just said exactly what I was already saying...
It's the handful of moves you teach on the first day. The practice of those moves, their combinations, and how to apply them is what takes years to master, not the blows themselves.

Well, to be fair, even ignoring the blatantly unrealistic nature of our Martial Arts, that's kind of how it goes. You learn the basic kicks that you're going to be using for the bulk of your career, and then slowly start learning ever more fancy ones. A stupid vertical kick, a fancy sweep kick and the gravity defying jump kick are basically over-the-top versions of what you'd be using the majority of the time. Doesn't it make sense to stick with Storm Kick and Thunder kick while you're still a novice and only move on to the fancier kicks later on?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

For offical info on Longbow's doings and such, check the Longbow Guardian's Info.

Most of their new requits don't survive; meaning they die. You could say that 'most don't last' meaning they just mediport out, but the way it's read makes it sound like they don't fight again after that, so they must have died, been crippled past the point of being able to fight, or retire from Longbow. That's a pretty big issue for a paramilitary force trying to get more people to join their ranks. One would think that Ms Liberty would make sure her rookie members would be better prepared for fighting super powered villains and/or Arachnos, but they're given little more than a uniform and a pistol.

For their less-than-Heroic means, look at the Longbow Flamethrower;

Now, flamethrowers are BANNED by the Geneva Convention. Note that. They're actively and knowingly breaking the Geneva Convention! Especially when you consider that NATO is arming Longbow. Thus, NATO must be doing their weapon building under the table to give Longbow their illegal weapons, or else the UN and/or US would be breathing down their necks. What's more is their info even says that they hide their napalm whenever the press is around because that's not exactly a heroic thing to do.

They're also quite willing to hire people to do all kinds of dirty work, work they can't be linked to if brought to the open; they help fund Wyvern, a 'hero' group that aims to kill villains rather than bring them to justice (and hire only people with a grudge against villains). They also hire Mindspider, a former government Hero that was let go due to too many 'disciplinary actions' and went Freelance.

This shows they're willing to get people to do the wrong thing for the right reason, as long as their hands don't have the blood on it they're clear of any wrongdoing (in a way similar to the aliens found in S. Andrew Swann's book Forests of the Night, the aliens were pacifists but in their own mind if they hired out violent people to further their own ends, then they were still adhering to being non-violent).

I really doubt Statesman, who holds the belief that a Hero should never, under any circumstance take the life of a villain, even if it's to save another Hero in immediate and mortal danger, would hire a contract killer to off Recluse, Reichman or Tyrant. Longbow (and probably Ms Liberty too) don't hold to that ideal, at least in part since they're willing to hire others to do it for them.

If we were talking about real life, it would make sense to not use the fancy things in a real fight period... Pretty much any of my teachers would laugh at you if you tried anything like them in a serious, potentially life and death situation.

But accepting that we have a ridiculously over the top and unrealistic martial art as our power set... No, it doesn't make sense. The moves you're actually going to use in a fight should be taught first thing. Maybe you don't get around to it all on the first day, but within the first week of training you should have all the basics that you're ever going to use in an actual fight. The rest is learning how to apply them, developing the subtler, less tangible skills.

In game terms, what I'd expect to see would be that you have all your actual moves within the first 3 or 4 levels of gameplay, and after that you just get better with them. They do more damage, hit more often, and apply their secondary effects more reliably, or more powerfully.

That's a more realistic representation of a person's progression.

Same should go for fire blast. You have the ability to create and project fire. Great, so you should be able to do all your moves within the first few levels, and progression should be about getting more powerful with them, not suddenly magically gaining new abilities.

No, that wasn't my stance.

I was responding more to Scythus on this one than you. I don't have any real problem with your viewpoint.

My point was: there are many ways you could create a character in the Rogue Isles that is technically a hero. Undercover agent trying to take down Arachnos from the inside. Vigilante who thinks heroes are too soft on criminals, using lethal force where another character would not. Android with a programming glitch, or who was reprogrammed by a villain. Someone who is out to take down a particular character who resides in the Rogue Isles.

My issue is with a blanket statement saying "You are in the Rogue Isles, therefore, being anything but a villain doesn't make sense", because it just flat out isn't true. I have experienced the storyline, and I saw places for different character types to fit within it.

Batman has been considered a villain by law enforcement at various points in his career. The Punisher is considered a villain even by other heroes most of the time. Deadpool is whatever he wants to be whenever he wants to be it. There are many character types that the goody two shoes Paragon City hero setting just doesn't fit. If you want to play an anti-hero the Rogue Isles is just a better fit for it.

And as far as the trainer debate goes: Just because you learned how to throw a fireball doesn't mean you know how to effectively use it in combat. I know how to fire a gun, but that doesn't mean I would be an effective member of a special forces team, because I have never been trained to use a gun in a combat situation. The trainers aren't teaching you how to throw a fireball, they're teaching you how to throw a fireball in combat. As far as they're concerned, a fireball is no different than a gun. Their job is to teach you how to use the tools at your disposal in a combat scenario.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Right, it's a tough job and people get killed. That doesn't seem to have stopped young men enlisting in the US armed forces in the past, or indeed in the US civic police forces, or in the fire department, or in mountain rescue. Heck, people who signed up for the Royal Air Force in WW1 had a life expectancy of no more than a week, and yet the British weren't represented as evil. Not at the time, anyway. I never questioned that their agents suffer heavy casualties. I've played villain-side and I know how many of them I've stabbed and shot. But that doesn't make them evil.

First of all, do we have any evidence that the Geneva convention is still being upheld in our version of the world, what after a war with inter-dimensional aliens, attempted genocide and a basically crippled world military? And again, isn't that stooping to technicalities? Flamethowers are banned by the Geneva convention, yet every other Blaster is toting a flamethrower around and no-one bats an eye. What's more, people made of fire shoot fire and set other people on fire and we praise them as puppy-petting heroes, and no-one bats an eye. But a Longbow agent pulls out a flamethrower and suddenly it's a serious crime? Note that the description says they hide the glamethrowers from the CAMERAS, not from weapons inspectors.

And, really, if the news cameras have no problem with Infernal setting people on fire, why do they have a problem with tight-wearing women setting people on fire? Surely a demon-summoning, people-burning beast of a man would catch a lot more flak than Longbow, and yet no-one ever bothers him.

OK, you didn't link to the guide you mentioned, so I'm going to have to ask for clarification on this one. I may or may not remember one instance of one Longbow benefactor in one missions (namely, the Hit List, which may actually have been a Legacy Chain representative), but beyond that, I more remember Longbow and Wyvern getting into fights, not helping each other. One mission, in particular, has you frame Wyvern in front of Longbow by forging shipping manifests, because "Longbow stick to the letter of the law," as per contact admission.

And what of hiring out people to do their dirty work? Outisde of Indigo and Crimson inexplicably being ret-conned into Longbow agents, despite their being a round much longer than Longbow has actually existed, what are we talking about? Ace McKnight, maybe? I don't think he was Longbow, and did he really do anything questionable? That Longbow guy who's selling Arachnos secrets to the black market? Isn't he the practical equivalent of Lt. Petrovich and Kristof Jaeger? And as far as Mindspider goes (and this is the first I hear of him), what did he actually do for Longbow?

Isn't that kind of a leap, considering I've not actually seen them do anything I'd class as bad? Again, maybe I'm missing something, but every time I've fought them, they're the good guys, saving people and beating back villains.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It's the other Radio mission, Find the location of the Wyvern Financier, when the Longbow Financer and Wyvern boss see you their dialog is

If this deal was something on the up-and-up, why would Longbow be so worried about being seen financing Wyvern?

Nothing says that Indigo and Crimson couldn't have joined Longbow recently; them being in Longbow isn't a retcon, from everything I've seen. They work with whomever they see fit if it'll get them the results they want.

I'm talking about them hiring Wyvern; they're the 'Hero' group that does their best to kill all the villains, something that Longbow seems to be against, considering they're always trying to arrest villains rather than kill them.


They *are* the good guys, but they're not above using means that are less than heroic. I'm not saying they're evil, but they certainly are a far cry from being paragons of heroism. They work to do the best for the innocent, but they're willing to push the limits, as evidenced by their hiding weapons from the media and hiring out vigilanties in secret.

Same reason they don't want to be seen wielding flamethrowers. Same reason Vanguard don't want everyone knowing a renegade faction tried to destroy all of reality. In a nutshell: PR ********.

Yeah, that's more a "feel" thing than a factual argument, but before the existence of Longbow, they seemed to be part of some shadowy intelligence organisation that primarily deals with the Malta Group, who seem to lose more and more of their "nobody knows they exist" mystique as the writers more and more forget they were supposed to have any. My only problem with Longbow is that they are being used to represent ALL heroes in the Rogue Isles. The Vindicators use them, the PPD use them, the Freedom Phalanx use them, Crimson and Indigo use them, they're just randomly present everywhere a default presence is not defined...

And I'm SICK of Longbow! We have Wyvern, we have the Legacy Chain, we have the PPD, we have OTHER HEROES to use instead of just Longbow. Associating Crimson and Indigo with them is just the cherry on top. We really need to see more hero groups in addition to Longbow.

Well, the whole point of the argument was that their slights don't really make it OK for heroic villains to slaughter them indiscriminately like they're just high-level skulls. And despite what I may or may not admit is questionable ethics, their morality still lies on the side of good, which makes their omni-presence in the Isles a narrative stumbling block to heroic villains that more or less HAVE to fight them in large numbers. The frikkin' things are everywhere!

*edit*
Note I said PR, not RP.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

No.

No. No. No.

I'm not going to accept that because a tech hero has been around since the 70's he can train every person in the whole game in every power regardless of source, method of application, or character's understanding. I'll tell you what. Let's find a Cop who's been around since the 70s. Now let's have him teach a class on being a Cop to all the Psychic Detectives, Forensic Analysts, K9 Trainers, and Computer Technicians. And he'll train them -all- in how to do their jobs in the way they are individually supposed to do it which he has never in his life done.

"Oh! But he's worked with dog units, computer techs, and psychic detectives!" That doesn't give him the insight into the field from the -inside- of the field. If a hundred people come to you and ask you questions you don't know the answer to you don't spontaneously come up with the right answer through some mystical "Trainer Fu".

Yes. i can understand "Oh. But it's Canon!" but Canon which makes no sense iin the greater view of reality is Canon which should be rewritten. So EVERY type of Character -EVER- can be trained by him, huh? I'll point you to the Issue 12 powerset proliferation text.

So now Brawler is training heroes in powers he's only ever seen used by Villains before. Yet he has no problem "Training" them right up. The system is a handwave in itself, attached to a time-extending device. Why would the devs care that you spent 5 minutes running to the trainer? Because you'll have to log off before you do the next mission in the arc and come back tomorrow and play again. This extends your play-time out by another day thus extending their money by another day.

Training someone to do something you've never in your life -done- is a stretch. Assuming that the same method will work for every possible hero with the same style of abilities and archetype is a further stretch. Assuming that Brawler mystically gets the ability to train people who've developed powers he's never worked with before? Further stretch.

Or do you consider even describing your powers as something they are not as a gamebreaking handwave? For example powerset customization for gravity or Ice control to become time-manipulation?

-Rachel-

*sigh*

I never asked you to accept anything. I can just as easily point out that it doesn't make sense that bullets do knockback and that arrows fly in a straight line, but it kind of does, doesn't it? How many people have you seen complain about it? How many people even notice? To my eyes, it's explanation enough that Back Alley Brawler has dealt with enough young heroes to know how to help them develop their own abilities. If you think of him drawing diagrams of thought patterns and waving around FMRI scans as a means to train up a psychic, then you're overthinking and overspecifying the concept. ANY part of this game can break if you set it as your objective can break it. We're allowed to do too much for it to be any other way.

But to refuse to believe that a veteran hero would know how to help other heroes unlock their own potential? Aside from dismissing Penny Peterson's entire existence, you're overlooking the simple fact that the trainers aren't devising techniques for you to learn. Those techniques are yours as soon as you pop up into the world, and ever trainer you visit can help you with the exact same. All you need is a trainer to help you realise them. They're your powers as learned by you. The trainer is only a guiding force, not a source of power and knowledge.

Really, why are you so determined to bring down trainers, when it's so much easier to shoot at things like Fateweavers and Hero Corps Field Analysts, or to attack the Trainers' ability to swap builds for you? Those DON'T make any sense whatsoever, yet even with the concentrated effort to prove the game doesn't make sense, no-one has yet mentioned them.

I have no problem with claiming your powers to be something they COULD be. Presenting energy as radiation or temporal force I can live with, so why not? But trying to present Ice as energy, when it clearly deals cold damage and scores extra hurt against fire-based enemies and less against ice-based enemies... It's ice. You can call it sand, tar, time or cookie dough, but it's ice. I don't buy it. You can change the look, but you can't change the graphics and, moreover, you can't change your damage type. When I get hit with it, it still says Frozen Shield in my buff bar, and I can clearly see you using a kaleidoscope Jack Frost.

The ONLY way I can deal with this is if people go the whole hog and explain ALL aspects of their powers, including why they do the damage type they do, why they have the effects they have and why they don't look like what they're supposed to. Again, energies are easy. No-one can really say what radiation is supposed to do, given how many different things radiation actually does in the game, so claiming that it does damage and stuns is a good way to ret-con Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee and even Energy Aura. But taking Dark Armour and Dark melee and colouring them a yellowish-brown is not enough to claim you're playing a sand character. You still need to explain why your sand draws its power from the Netherworld, because I'm pretty sure Nethergoat is all out of magical sand.

A decent explanation is required if you want to claim things are what they are clearly not. Just the bare claim is not enough.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

First off! You seem shocked that a person willing to rewrite the entire storyline of "Half" the game is willing to write off the existence of trainers. Think about that statement before you reply. It's okay. It doesn't make sense for most character concepts to need a trainer (not a specific one, mind you. any trainer will do. even War-Witch who wasn't a member of the surviving eight!) to use their powers. It's a concession made for the style of game being played. it's that simple. It's why the Zig is a revolving door. It's why Frostfire can be fought a dozen times a day in the same building even though he's been arrested.

It doesn't make sense in the continuity of a character. Ergo it has to be handwaved. Why does it -have- to be handwaved? Because Brickstown has been overrun by criminals who broke out of jail for the past five years. We're not talking about a jailbreak and the people who broke out were returned to prison or escaped into the populace. We're talking about a huge number of guys in jumpsuits who are -always- in the zone no matter how many times heroes arrest them. Day in and Day out. More prisoners on the streets than the prison complex could support or jail, unless it stretches beneath Raccoon Ci... err... Brickstown like an ant colony.

So that's a game-required handwave. So are trainers, to me. Because it doesn't make -sense- that a person who has never done any of these things himself and is, in fact, incapable of doing these things by quirk of birth, twist of fate, or whatever could possibly teach people things he couldn't ever -do-! Sure! you can point to school and teaching mathematics. But that's an entirely mental exercise. Sure! A soldier can learn from a legless drill sergeant how to run through an obstacle course. But that's a purely physical exercise that the drill sergeant -was- capable of, previously. Teach someone to do something you can't possibly understand from the first person perspective? Impossible. I can't teach someone how to create C4 because I've seen C4 used before, or to weigh out the right charges or amounts.

Without personal understanding of how things work it's impossible to teach someone else how it works.

Now if you want to argue how the Zig being a revolving door makes sense: Please! Do so! And do so in such a way that it doesn't disturb civilian life as it's been presented to us or in any way alter how the game world functions outside of superbeing (I.E. like a normal, modern, american city with people walking or driving to work on a daily basis)

-Rachel-

Edit: As for the "Cold Damage" argument. Let me slow your body down, molecule by molecule. Tell me. What happens to your temperature when atomic motion slows? Does it drop? Explained. Also the character in question doesn't -use- Jack Frost or even have the power. If and when she gets it she'll be RPing the NPC pet as non-existent. That any effects it creates are simply further effects on her own part.

Several missions explain that Crey experimentation is causing periodic security failures in the Zig, causing prisoners to escape over and over again. Why they haven't fixed that in the past six years, I can't say. But I do know that Arachos run Zig raids basically every day, causing even more prisoners to escape, and seemingly very few of them get taken over to the Isles. The rest just spill into the streets.

As for why it's not disrupting the people... I really can't say. They don't seem to be bothered about living in a city where aliens abduct, nazi recruit and evil wizards steal souls on every street corner, so what's a bunch of violent convicts on top of that all? Besides, we always seem to save them anyway.

Like I said - if you have a decent explanation for the powers, then I really have no qualms. If it makes sense, it makes sense, and I'd say your explanation makes sense.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.