Questions about the Roy Cooling arc (spoilers)

This doesn't answer the question of WHAT the "upgrade" constitutes, though. I know that, in writing, you don't always have to explain and describe every little detail, but when we spend the entirety of an arc chasing after an item, it shouldn't be too much to ask what the item actually is. Is it a machine? A chemical? Software? At this point, we may as well have spent our time looking for an infindibulator for all I know what it is.

Hmm... Well, this kind of works, but it raises a couple of extra questions. "The device" was stolen by Rogue PPD working with the Citizens for Mediporters community, presumably with the intention of making mediporters available to everyone. What reason do they have to delete backups and cripple a system they want to proliferate? Remember, only the very leader of the group is working with the Sky Raiders. As well, the time frame for the invasion is far, FAR too loose for this to be a race against time. I know no-one wants to be in danger of being killed if an invasion did, in fact, occur, but there is no evidence anyone believes it will happen any minute now. In fact, the only source of dramatic tension seems to be the fear of losing the device forever, which stops making sense once we recover it.

The problem is that the real tech ISN'T in danger. We don't give Malta the physical "device," but rather an electronic copy of its schematics. Electronic information is infinitely copyable, and the arc makes no mention of it being otherwise, so we do not, in fact, lose anything, making this dash to copy the device entirely pointless. As well, Roy saying "I don't know" is essentially a lampshade hanging which is not something to be used with such abandon.

But they announced the upgrade as an official fix and, when the device is returned to them, they applied that device to the system. This is not what a prototype is made for, despite what sci fi movies would have us believe. If they had made the original device as a prototype, its purpose would have been to test the system and eventually lead to a final, official product down the line which would be intended for actual use with all the cut corners of a prototype avoided and all the allowances for testing equipment removed. According to Roy, the device was ready to be used, which means it was a production device, and since they only seem to need one, there's no reason to copy it.

That doesn't seem to be the case. When holding Zanella for ransom, what Malta request is not the device, but rather its schematics. This request more or less ensures that Medicorp scientists retain the original device. Malta do not want Medicorp to not have the device, they want the device for themselves. If Malta wanted the device destroyed, they would have requested the physical device in the trade, as well as all copies made of it. One of the central plot holes in this arc is that the ransom demand does not rob Medicorp of the device, but the story treats it like it does.

And herein lies the problem - this makes Malta look like amateurs. The only reason I was too good was because I was fighting Sky Raiders and PPD rejects. Were I fighting Tactical Operatives, Sappers and Gunslingers, I'd have been rent to shreds and they'd have had their device. And this still doesn't explain why they couldn't have snuk a copy of it away before the thing was shipped abroad. Sinking a ship and pinning it on someone else is something I'd expect from the Cobra Commander, and a guy who tried to have his face engraved on the moon isn't exactly fit to be a clandestine conspiracy leader.

I disagree. The best way to keep people from knowing you're involved is to cover your tracks, which Malta professionals should be far better at than Sky Raiders and Family goons. When you deal with mercenaries, you have to expect that they'll be sloppy, that they'll talk when cornered, that they can turn on you if they're offered more money, that they'll take longer and so forth. And even if everything goes perfectly, you still leave behind a bunch of people who know you were involved but aren't under your employ. The best way to do things is the way Malta already does things: Send in a squad of commandos, have them in and out before anyone even realises they're even there and leave no traces behind. Think Hitman 47, Sam Fisher, Solid Snake and so forth.

This looks like an attempt to recapture that "Woah! Gunslinger!" moment from the Praetorian Penelope Yin arc where the Dark Watcher tells you about a Malta infiltrator into the Syndicate and, sure enough, you fight a gunslinger in a business suit. However, in that case the man is cut off from Malta because they don't seem to have dimension gates, so he's forced to rely on local forces, and you can therefore understand why he'd need to act through the Syndicate. Here, Malta are intentionally tying their hands behind their back, and all for the sake of less productive and reliable results.

Again, this makes Malta look like complete amateurs, on the level of robbers who drop their wallet at the scene of the crime. If you can claim you are anyone you want to be, to still use your real name is just dumb. And Malta are not dumb. They plan for emergencies and foresee eventualities. A full third of the forces of the World Wide Red programme, including not one but two Kronos Titans, are assigned to protect CIA head of China Relations Jack Fonzie, otherwise known as Director 17, even though Malta don't expect him to actually get in a situation where he might need this protection. They know there's a chance that they might fail and so make contingency plans, and then contingency plans for their contingency plans. The identifying character trait of Malta is their paranoia, and a paranoid fundamentalist would never use his real name, or anything at all that can be traced back to him. Malta using their real name is a COLOSSAL security liability that an organisation built on secrecy and conspiracy should be too smart to fall for.

I can see that, somewhat. But for this to work, we have to assume that Roy has information SAM doesn't, information he is intentionally keeping from them for whatever reason. If this were the case, then he wouldn't be as open and casual about the information with our low-level heroes who don't even have Omega level clearance yet. Instead, he chats about Malta's existence like it's common knowledge. And while I can see how he could mean that he's theorising about Malta's motivations, this comes within the context of a "let me tell you about Malta" conversation. He nonchalantly drops the Malta name and seems to know a lot about them, at least from the way he acts.

As for the other side of the answer: The Origin of Powers arc. The reason we can dismiss singular contacts' understandings there is because a point is made to show us that they could be wrong. Roy Cooling is not wrong, and I know he isn't because I have meta-game knowledge about Malta which confirms what he says. As such, his words cannot be dismissed, and must therefore be explained. How does he know this? Why does he act so casual about this knowledge? Who else knows? What does this mean for Malta's status as a modern-day Illuminati? What Roy does has a very negative effect on Malta's entire premise and everything that makes them interesting.

Well, nothing is ever stated as a fact, but Dr. Steffard strongly implies the connection. He talks about how you can never be dissociated from the mediport outside of travelling to another dimension, unless that dimension somehow had an exact copy of the mediport system, "but what are the chances of that?" It seems like a meta-story reference to Primal Earth's mediport system. In fact, all of Praetoria boils down to one giant collection of meta-story references of how things in Praetoria are different from those in Primal Earth, such as Paolo Parino mentioning Pia, Primal Earth's Seer Marino, for no real reason other than because we're expected to be familiar with her and so able to get the reference. That's why I read Dr. Steffard's explanation as legitimate, even though you have a point that it isn't "official."

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 Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Yeah, that's the bad thing about it. When I first played this arc, the horrible writing made me fuming mad, but I still had to admit that the unique maps were cool (especially the ship map), the complex encounters were well-done, and that elite boss Zeus Class Titan was a really good idea. That's really why I've given this arc so much thought. It's fun to play if I shut down my brain and just kill stuff, which is why I keep coming back to it, but that just means I keep coming back to the story and it makes me frown.

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.

Sam, I know it's a bad thing, and I agree with you that the arc could be even better, the most painful part is that it wouldn't even need a coding fix, just a few text rewrites and that would be it.
Also, just to get this off my chest: I HATED FIGHTING CAPTAIN CASTILLO. He felt very inappropriate to the tense mood of the final mission, the fact that he kept pausing the fight bugged me, and it was even worse that he was allowed to become blue targeted while he made the battlefield EXCLUSIVELY more lethal to my toon (I never noticed any enemies take damage from the fires). I didn't run it on my vigilante, but I think even my wind(kin)/sr scrapper would have just sent Castillo flying off the rig while he was babbling instead of go "oh gee, the villain is talking when i'm in a situation that leaves me pressed for time, I better let him finish his long winded speech."

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Oh, and then there's this. Yeah, that part pissed me off to no end. Usually when a hostile target turns blue, it's because I don't WANT to attack them any more on account of them being beaten and helpless. That's what blue targets signify - people I don't want to attack. The first time I thought he was beaten when he did that, but the second time it just infuriated me that the game essentially forbids me from attacking him while he monologues.

Castillo makes no sense to be on the Sky Raider rig to begin with, being that he's the regional commander of the Sky Raider forces in Faultline and the rig is over at Sharkhed Island something like 50 miles out to sea. He's also annoying, unfunny, ugly and not really appropriate for the serious mood in that last mission. Castillo makes sense in Faultline, and I have no doubt his appearance grew out of inspiration from how Doc Delilah talks about it. I can just picture a writer having fun with the Doc's dialogue and then going "Make me an NPC that fits that!" Hence the blond hair, the flames on the pants and so forth. He was a joke in Faultline because Doc Delilah made it work. He's a nuisance in the Roy Cooling arc, because its tone is very much more serious.

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.

Well, when it starts out he has no idea he's up against a vast conspiracy, he thinks he's dealing witha bunch of civilians who happened to get their hands on some tech they shouldn't. No reason to call in Statesman for that.

On the one hand, yes, the situation doesn't call for great power because it's assumed it's stolen either by civilians or by more conventional criminals thanks to circumstance. On the other hand, an item of this importance really should be handled by a powerful hero regardless of the task's difficulty, just because of how crucial the task is.

You don't send a squad of marines to pick up a package from the post office, but if you expect this package to be a suitcase nuke, you very much do send a squad of marines even for a task as simple as mail delivery. Just to be safe.

Now, of course, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with this if a point had been made of this fact, but no-one ever seems to question the wisdom of sending a lowly hero out to secure what's keeping every single hero out there alive.

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 cannot find the exact quote, but Dr. Steffard in the Precinct Five tutorial mentions that the medi-port technology could not possibly be based on alien (meaning Primal Earth technology) because Dr. Keyes is such a brilliant scientist!

Praetorian Loyalists being the liars that they are, I theorize that it was not Anti-Matter who gave the Praetorians the mediporter, but the Primal Earth scientist (or scientists) who first reverse-engineered the Rikti tech.

It's awesome - Castillo is an epic doofus

I always sorta RP that as my hero is tagging the fallen villains and the zig tp's them away. Everytime you visit a contact/store/etc, you can get more tags.

Ha! I love this idea It actually does make sense, since the first time I've ever been able to get a first-hand view of Praetoria was long after Anti-Matter and Neuron had made a sport of raiding Primal Earth, so it's not too far-fetched that they'd steal Primal Earth technology where it could benefit them. In fact, the very fist thing Anti-Matter did in his old arc was steal our portal technology (machines or schematics, I'm not sure) to boost his own portals, so they're clearly not above taking technology from other dimensions.

With this in mind, it makes sense that Primal Earth mediporters would have been reverse-engineered from Rikti technology and Praetorian Earth mediporters are in turn reverse-engineered from Primal Earth ones. A sort of conga line of industrial espionage, and something that actually has canon-established precedent. It doesn't get any more justified than this.

I hadn't actually thought of that particular problem, to be honest, but it IS something worth addressing. I'm not sure if the game actually tells us that defeated villains are teleported to the Zig or if that was a developer comment, or indeed if it hasn't been just player-made assertion, but the point remains that it raises some interesting questions in light of Roy Cooling's arc. More specifically:

If villains are indeed tagged to be teleported upon defeat, what exactly makes the system unsable for civilians? Why can't civilians be tagged?

If villains aren't tagged to be teleported upon defeat... Are we actually killing them? Like, in cold blood? Yikes!

See, before Roy had to open his mouth about the controversy, that was never an issue, but now that we know there's such a huge problem with providing people with emergency teleporters, then the question of how villains manage it becomes ever more pertinent, as does the question of whether they "manage it" at all.

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.

Basically, a bunch of rogue cops who were working with a group of citizens who want mediporters to be available to everybody stole the experimental new model that was going to keep Praetorians from shutting off heroes' porters. Malta hired the Sky Raiders to try getting the same thing, since they were interested in it, themselves. Wacky chaos ensued.

This was my one big problem with the arc. Some of my heroes are the bleeding heart type to go "But everybody should have a mediporter if we can make it work!" So "Well, everybody can't have a mediporter because, uh, because." is kind of a lame reason. I overall liked the arc, though. The burning building mission was a cool change of pace, the new maps were nice, and heroes finally get to feel the pain of facing PPD in the 20s (and as I recall, the rogue ones are lacking a few key annoying powers like Acid Mortar. Don't worry, we'll ease you into this.)

I always just kind of assumed this is what had happened. I don't remember exactly if it's canon that Positron helped reverse engineer our mediporters, but it would make sense if he was involved, and Anti-matter is just as smart, so there you go.

Because then you couldn't have any missions to save kidnapped civilians, since it wouldn't matter.

We are not. Many hero missions flat out state that we are to arrest them. Additionally, the dialogue for many hero missions flat out states that the villain is in the Zig. The fact is though, I just opened up on that villain with an automatic rifle. Then I froze him solid and set him on fire. Unless he is rushed to some kind of medical facility, he will die.

Playing through this arc, I came to the conclusion that the safety of super-powered criminals is more important than the safety of innocent civilians.

Bleeding heart nothing....ALL of my heroes are the type to go "well if everybody has a mediporter that would free up a lot of time heroes spend saving hapless citizens so we can go after the big boss instead." Which would pretty much render the vigilante options in half of the tip missions moot.

It reads like a comic book full of plot holes.
Well then by that token we shouldn't extend immortality to the guy who faceplants every other spawn. Resources are finite and he's overtaxing them. We should reserve them for a citizen who doesn't go out of their way to tax the system. Think about it, how many times to we place our heroes in unnecessary danger? Now think about how often most citizens, even if they're assured not to die, would do so.

You also get into the question of where to draw the line between Natural Origin Hero and non-powered citizen. A level 1 character isn't all that powerful. What's to stop everyone from registering as a hero just to get on the mediport network?

Especially since many of them are far more "superpowered" than a level 1 hero, especially the high-level PPD. The Paragon City Fire Department seems to consist of one guy, and he never actually goes into a burning building, so he's pretty safe.

And thus we have the ultimate wallbanger of the entire city of universe...

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

That's the kind of fridge logic that I always seem to miss. Yikes! Yeah, if villains get teleported to the Zig upon defeat, then we are putting such a stress on the system just by running missions that someone would need to nuke a city to exceed. Holy hell!

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 Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

you know, that is a good point. Outside of the word of someone from the animation department, I'm not sure it's ever been enforced that villains are medi-ported.
On a lighter note, I remembered reading an amusing city of Fanfic where, while villains do get medi-ported, the best medical treatment really does go only to the heroes (like the medipads) and the villains? Well... Read for yourself.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Well, if that's where it originated, then I can see what you mean. I respect BABs as a developer, but I still prefer the "they just fade away" concept, as it allows each person to pick their own method of dealing with villains and it doesn't raise so many questions, precisely because it's undefined.

I don't think there's anything in-game to claim either way, so I'll stick with "what happens is what you want to think happens."

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.

Somewhere in some dev's mind "we want more challenging end-game content" and "we like dynamic and interesting mission design" translates to "send wave after wave of enemies at us in every mission." Yes, a map full of enemies standing around waiting to be beaten up gets old. But so does wave after wave of enemies coming to you to get beaten up, when it's in every mission.