Would Anyone Play a Longbow/PPD AT?

In the setting of a game based on comic books? Yes.

Fortunately the historical Imhotep was nothing like his movie counterpart.

Some disembodied narrator can tell me all they want. The day I let a comic book or a video game dictate what is and is not "heroic" is the day I lobotomize myself with a power drill.
Nerva, St. Martial, Grandville, all those mission maps that represent hidden bases they have all over the Rogue Isles.

What Arachnos does has nothing to do with what Longbow does. Arachnos show up in Paragon City, but we recognize that these incursions are illegal.

So now you know why I think and feel the way I do? I dislike the way they are written. I dislike what they represent, both at launch and now.

They don't have exclusive Rikti-fighting rights. If all Longbow was doing was fighting Rikti nobody would care, but when they're interfering with Vanguard, they overstep their bounds. The Vanguard is a UN-sanctioned organization. Where does Longbow get their authority from again? Do they have authority to interfere with an officially sanctioned group doing what they were put together to do?

I didn't say they were bad guys. I said they were self-righteous hypocrites. Wyvern is worse than them, but at least they're honest about it, which makes me loathe them less.

Places in the Rogue Isles where Longbow can be found in squad level numbers on the world map

1) Mercy Island
2) Saint Martial
3) Grandville

So yeah... more than just Nerva actually. Now if you want to go mission by mission and see where they have secret underwater bases, or where they are all up in some evil doer's buisness within the confines of the Isles.. well that will be all of them. They are NOT confined to Nerva.

Actually, that's the day you start writing your own comic books and making your own video games. Until then, you're playing by canon set up by Rick Dakan, Jack Emmert and the writers that succeeded them. You can twist things all you want, that doesn't give you the authority to redact game fiction and retag existing factions.

We're never told where those underwated bases actually are, and I don't see them on the map. Since the game never makes it a point to explain, I don't believe we can draw conclusions on them one way or the other. I've never seen Longbow on St. Martial or Grandville (yes, seriously) but I do remember the ones on Mercy Island. Hmm... I'll have to look into this. Seems I overlooked those. Per chance, would you know what their idle dialogue is?

Longbow's presence in Nerva is legal, that's all I was saying.

Feel free to dislike them all you want. I don't like them, either. But you're projecting your hatred onto their actual writing and warping canon to reflect it.

Where does Freedom Corps get its authority? Where does Hero Corps get its authority? Where does the Midnight Squad get its authority? If you start trying to get down into the nitty-gritty of high-level beurocracy, we'll be here all day.

As far as Longbow "interfering" with Vanguard, the only time that actually counts as interference is the instance when Miss Liberty calls for Vanguard to be disbanded, and you'll note Gaussian agrees with her. And with good reason - Vanguard have spawned a faction of extremely dangerous rogues who threaten to tear up the fabric of the universe. If I suddenly caught soldiers of a faction trying to blow up the world, I'd call for that faction to cease and desist all activity, as well. It's the sane thing to do. True, there is an explanation to this, but you'll note Gaussian doesn't want to just broadcast the existence of the Rogues if he can help it.

About the only instance of "take my ball and go home" actually comes from Levantera, who despite written to be reserved is clearly and intentionally written to be a *****, apologies for the choice of phrase. I've been trying to avoid saying it from the start, but that's what it comes down to. It's Levantera that has a problem with Longbow, more specifically WMD, and it's WMD that has a problem with Vanguard. The rest of Longbow, namely Lt. Sefu Tendaji, not only have zero problems of tolerance, but are written to represent the futility of these kinds of inter-faction tensions. Tugging on the heart strings is basically the only reason he exists

So, you didn't say they were bad guys, just that they were bad guys? How does that work?

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 does give me the authority to make my own moral decisions. Just because the game world "flags" them heroic doesn't make them so. At that point we're trying to force everything back into a black-and-white mold that this game has moved beyond. It has to, as soon as you start telling players they can create their own heroes and offer Dark Anything and demon horns as options

Longbow are non-hostile to heroes and hostile to villains. That is all the "tags" mean.

"Attack Longbow base in Mercy Island" and such....hmm, I wonder where the Longbow base is? Yeah yeah, I know there are limits to the instance system, but if they wanted to make it clear that the base was in international waters I could just as easily hop a flyer in Grandville to get there.

Or if they were actually concerned about properly portraying Longbow as an organization that respects international law their bases would all be in the Nerva area.

The Longbow in Grandville are on the beaches and on the grassy area around the Fab, usually battling Arachnos. The ones in St Martial are up in the Dockworker area. From what I recall they are handing out pamphlets on workers rights or something...which wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't brought Ballistas with them.

No, but once hero masterminds become possible, I would dearly love to be able to re-skin a mercs mastermind's minions as PPD or Longbow. (Or Hero Corp, frankly.)

You could play a Longbow Warden now if they'd just unlock the uniform pattern for the tights, and the hat.

Maybe I should cross-post this to the "All Things Art" thread, but is there any good reason why we don't get the Longbow and Hero Corp tights patterns with the 30-month veteran reward?

I just meant to say to look at how the narrative treats them. Outside of the select few incredibly obvious spies like Lt. Demitrovich, Longbow are actually treated like straight-up good guys. Even WMD is treated as the grump with a heart of hold, which is something the story reveals when looked at as a whole. Miss Liberty may or may not be represented as a pain in the ***, but I attribute that more to the flanderisation that the Top Cow comics gave all of the Freedom Phalanx and the Vindicators than to actual moral alignment. If you go by the comic books, every hero is unlikable, and I don't really know why that turned out like this. Then again, after the Pocket D issue, I don't think many people could keep taking them seriously.

I still feel that the tone in Troy Hickman's Smoke and Mirrors is where the comic books should have been at, but they kept sliding into this bizarre Twilight Zone of over-exaggerated personalities, like I'm watching The Life and Times of Juniper Lee. Or possibly The Simpsons.

That's actually a legitimate question. To go to underwater Longbow bases, we usually board the various submarines anchored around the Isles, but we're never told where they go. I've always wondered where these bases are supposed to be. I don't think the location of the submarine has any bearing on the location of the base it leads to simply because we take boats, subs, helicopters an even trucks from all around the Rogue Isles to get to Paragon City, so clearly the source of transport isn't necessarily tied to the destination.

I assume their bases are around Agincourt because that's where their submarine pens are, but I don't really know. For all know, they could be off into the Atlantic or inside Paragon City Harbur. Not that there's any real way for the game to show us, but I AM curious.

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.

To some degree at least, this is because the Devs can't release content to just one side anymore, so any new faction that the player can align with has to be willing to work with villains at least a bit. Can you imagine the uproar if the RWZ, Ourobouros, and Cimerora where limited to Heroes only? That would be at least 5 task forces and several plot lines that only one side would get. So, the morally grey effect is necessary.

. . .And this is a personal opinion but I find the PPD -MUCH- harder than Longbow, so I'm glad that the PPD are much more rare.

I'm curious to how the Longbow are a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites.

That said. No. As already said Longbow/PPD are already easy to make in game as is. You can't copy their costumes 100% but close enough, and there's enough PPD themed registered heroes running around now, I don't see why the need for a PPD AT.

I'd rather see more generic ATs that allowed people to have more concepts made...

Ranged/Defense
Melee/Buff-Debuff

Those are the ATs we're missing outside of a choose your power AT, which I figure is even less likely to happen.

I think you're a bit mistaken on some of that story.

It's not that the Longbow take potshot at random superpowered citizens. It's that in game, your toon is a KNOWN WANTED VILLAIN.

Sense alot of people don't like that fact or have a concept that doesn't go along with the "YOU'RE AN EVIL DESTINED ONE", they instead say "Longbow are evil"

No. Longbow don't go after citizens. They don't go after citizens with superpowers. They go after known villains.

Are the over used? Yes. But as a whole, they're good people. Even if they have some jerks in higher ranks (what organization doesn't?) and/or secret sects within the organization (my main is a product of a secret sect in Longbow...and the reason I made it a sect within Longbow over Longbow as a whole, was because Longbow as a whole isn't evil murderers).

As for the PPD, some of that was tech issues, and explained away as getting their butts kicked. Now...they're fighting back as they should.

THough I do wish they would ditch the longbow in the STF. Here these heroes are. Standing on the boat, when they could go a few feet and shoot Recluse

Pretty much this. Longbow only looks bad because the playerbase insists on painting them as such - they're no worse than the players, and in effect exercise more restraint in a lot of cases. Plus there's just a lot of plain ignorance - no police since Longbow came around? What about the PPD? Or, in fact, the small matter of regular police being assigned to regular crime rather than fighting against super villains?

But, eh. The person most vehement in her dislike of the characters is also an AR/Fire 'Hero', so I have a feeling the irony was lost from post one.

On that note, Longbow's introduction to the early hero zones was used as evidence for why they're arrogant before, but the same Issue that introduced Longbow also introduced PPD officers into those areas. Before, "even the weakest villains were super-powered and too strong for normal police to handle," so police only acted as hostages, running civilians or the kind of clothes racks that hang around outside Hazard Zones. The introduction of Longbow in Atlas Park also saw the introduction of actual, working, effective PPD officers into the streets of Atlas Park, Galaxy City and Kings Row.

No longer the scrawny, useless cops that just hand out missions and run around waving their hands, these dudes kick some serious *** and take on the Skulls, the Hellions, the Lost and even the Clockwork and hold their ground well. Sure, you'll see a few instances of two cops shining a flashlight into an upstairs apartment, playing voyeur while Skulls are banging the seven bells out of a car lock trying to carjack (or trying to break into the PD), but that's just wonky spawning.

Not just a known villain, a convicted criminal who starts off the game breaking out of jail. It's unfortunate the story is so railroading, but really - no villain has the right to complain about being persecuted when he BROKE OUT OF JAIL to begin with.

A couple of points on that:

Firstly, many players, myself among them, have been asking for villain-exclusive content for several years now. We've gotten some here and there, and while it's been good for the most part, I dare say villain-side is due for a villain-only large-scale addition. Possibly a new zone (a non-Arachnos island) possibly just new contacts with more missions, arcs and SFs, something of that nature. Yes, I realise hero players will complain (don't they always?) but I honestly believe that City of Villains NEEDS a massive content infusion, because there's just so little to do in it as compared to hero-side. Removing the concept of unlockable contacts might not be a bad idea, too.

Secondly, this kind of ambiguity produces provably mediocre content as it has to cater to just too many different concepts, ending up not really catering to any one very well. We need separate heroic and villainous content because those just end up being more fun, more engaging and written with more freedom.

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.

I don't know about hypocrite, but their dialog in the Isles isn't all that heroic (and a bit too black and white, when it's not goofy - see also "Evil isn't cool!") Plus look at how they end up treating Vanguard. "We're taking your turf." What happened to "innocent until proven guilty?" Naked power grab by Libs there.

Really I expect them to turn around and start attacking heroes half the time.

I'd just like to say that (1) I pretty much agree with this interpretation of Longbow, but (2) I'm one of the few who does. I've actually had players tell me Longbow is worse than the 5th Column. Sheesh. Personally, I find Vanguard much more troubling than Longbow, for reasons that I won't bother to go into here.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Longbow is horrendously overused, precisely because of what BrandX states. They're stand-ins for "a super-powered good guy," used whenever a player villain would be facing a unique hero, if this were a comic book or single-player game rather than an MMO. Technical problems and developer time prevent creation of a unique faction every time a villain has to fight a crimefighter. The problem, of course, is that Longbow aren't unique. They don't even look very interesting. Nor are they particularly fun to fight. For those reasons, I don't think they'd be particularly fun to play.

The PPD have some nice costumes and far more interesting powers, but with the exceptions of their lieutenant and boss-level robots, seen only at high levels, nothing they have can't be duplicated or improved upon through the player costume creator and power sets.

So, I guess my answer would be, "No." That said, I end up playing nearly everything put into the game, so if the devs did it against my recommendation, I might still end up playing such an AT.

We have Ranged/Defense with the VEATs, but that is concept-limited.

How does "not as shiny pure good as they try to portray themselves" translate to "evil?"

In any case, hanging around waiting for a villain to wander by is a VERY liberal interpretation of the "superheroes are allowed to pursue supervillains across international boundaries" law. Never mind that VEATs are not Zig escapees. Nor are the numerous NPCs that Longbow are also hostile to.

Hey, it's not like I claim to have some lofty ideal for my AR/Fire "Hero," nor did I ever say she was a pure hero in the first place. She's going to end up as a Vigilante most likely.

villains don't run taskforces "it's true".

See my Guides and Tutorials

I always figured they were investigating a murder rather than playing voyeur.

To be fair Sam, I think the ones who complain are just the ones who play one side exclusively. Those who play both side shouldn't be complaining at all imo. And if they are, I want to know why.

No. VEATS are instead just that...Arachnos. Again more in game mechanics making people look at the Longbow worse than they really are.

In game mechanics that have Arachnos only attacking other Arachnos of the same fraction, because it can't (or maybe they could and the devs just wont let it happen) tell the difference.

Or maybe I just haven't seen the missions where Crab soldiers are attacking other Crab soldiers.

I've seen the Wolf Spider Division of Arachnos attacking the Widow Division of Arachnos in a mission, but I've never seen a Wolf Spider attack one of their own, outside of the player character who is one of their own.