Issue 20 info is up!

Hmn......that could work, actually. Having an incredibly powerful personal force field that kicks in (a la Halo: Reach's Armour Lock) and then nukes everything around him...hah, that would actually suit Alpha's style quite well... "You think you've got me? Guess again, punk!"

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

It's a question of priorities. Are the missions a means to tell the story, or is the story just a vehicle for the missions? It used to be the former, and the missions weren't used very well. Now it's the latter and the overall game's story suffers for it. How is your clone in any way relevant after you've completed the arc? What questions does this arc answer? What questions does it lead to? In that sense it isn't engaging, because there isn't much there to engage with. You finish it, and it's done.
Well they do make more sense in hindsight, with that "Tyrant is sharing the power of the Well with his goons" thing. Malta being there still doesn't though, and neither do the Rikti in Apex. Aside from that, it's a pretty concise "fight off the invasion" TF. It is well-designed as such. It's just nothing more than that.

There's nothing wrong with it per se, but if that's all there is you end up with a pretty shallow game world.

The ITF is time travel, and going there inevitably leads to trouble. If you're going to go there anyway, you need to decide how you're going to handle time travel, and by tying it to the flashback system, then including the implication that you can alter the future by altering the past, while showing that you can't, it makes a mess.

But why do they have to have an arc about cloning the main character at all? That's what I'm saying. The only thing you get out of it is the reveal that Protean is alive (so what? Is he going to show up again?) and that Burkholder has defected to the 5th.

There's quite a bit of that going on with the complaints about the Incarnate sytem

Did you *read* either one of those two clone arcs? Both Protean and Ajax are mentioned because whoever is our mysterious benefactor is recruiting, and he/she recruits both Ajax and Protean. Which, you know, was the point of the arc. No your clone (which, you know, isn't your clone at all) dies, so you won't be seeing your good double again. And in the villain arc they leave it open. Just because they haven't used it *yet* doesn't mean they won't at all.

On the ITF and the whole time travel issue - they seem to be doing what's usually done with time travel - waving off the more difficult implications because they're extremely difficult to tell well. Why do we want to go back to Cim? Well, we like fighting guys in Togas and swords. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with fighting the 5th column, who by the way ARE trying to change the time stream. So we're actually there to *stop* the time stream from changing in a huge way.

I'm, frankly, not entirely clear on what you want out of the writing. This isn't shakespeare where we're trying to engage in what it means to be human, or whatever. This is super powered people punching each other in the face as hard as they can while spouting things like "Might does not equal right!". While punching each other in the face. This isn't high story telling and it doesn't have to be. The only thing we're trying to do in Apex and Tin Mage is stop an invasion. When you get right down to it, LGTF, STF, Kahn, Barracuda, Positron, Synapse, Sister P and really all of them are pretty much "Stop badguys from doing bad things) with the first four I mentioned explicitly being invasions that we have to stop.
I know you have issues with Kahn and Barracuda, but do you with the others? And, yeah, I've read the earlier story arcs. I wasn't impressed with them. They might have been interesting and innovative when it first began, but the storylines are poor at best. There's pretty much nothing going on through most of them, and yes, when it comes to stories, presentation is important.

Just because you don't like the current stories does not make them badly written. There are always two things that I will say about a movie or a book - I liked/did not like the book, and I thought the book had bad/good writing. You might very well like the old storylines, but they're not good writing. The new stuff, even if some of it have plot holes, are much better and more solid from a pure writing stand point. I also happen to like them. You don't. They're not mutually exclusive. I love the Scorpion King, but as a movie it's a steaming pile of trash (which, you know, is probably why I love it :P)

You know, golden girl, I'm actually interested to hear how you feel on this. especially the fact that the Well is being established as not nice in the least and your characters is being forced to play dance monkey for it.
How do you feel about Golden You and the Incarnate system and its story line.

Also, for those who wanted a video, here it is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKWZm...layer_embedded

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.

Bit uninspired by the Fire, Ice and Neg Energy ones. Neat but...not earth shattering.

Ion, however.....yes. That's what I'm using on Alpha Open a portal, channel energy from the moon-side station, boom. I like.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Considering that they're already color customizable, adding in new animations should be rather simple as well as the code is already there from scratch.