PAX EAST coh live panel feed

Admittedly, that was supposed to only be a preview of it.

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.

For starters, that's in fact evidence that they were working on i19 and more. It wasn't ready and they even told us why.

How does that make level 1-20 Tyrant a cuddly little bunny and Incanrate Tyrant the most evil man in the multiverse?

And the fact that it's wasn't ready - and still in development - shows that it was not made in the same development that produced Going Rogue, as it was released after Going Rogue.

I'm fairly certain that the above is not an optimal translation of "Bring a stealth member."

The Incarnate system is more complex than the 1-20 GR content, so the 1-20 stuff would have been ready faster than the Alpha slot.
And I'm still not seeing any evidence that GR is somehow different from the meta-story that we were shown as early as the GR trailer

No, people just insisted on seeing it that way despite being told repeatedly that the story was actually just another generic evil empire.

What cookies?

Yup, that would be awesome. I kind of expected that to happen in some story lines. It's definitely logical for it to happen. I'm still waiting for it to happen on Fringe. ;P

There isn't any. Even Positron went on record as saying that all of the "new" Praetorian Content was written explicitly to keep the old Praetorian Content / Lore intact.

The only "official" ret-con of the Praetorian content is that Dominatrix does not "service" her grandfather "in all capacities"...

It shows nothing of the sort.

Powers people worked on both, and went back and forth as their tasks were completed. Art team did the same.

How many people do you think work at Paragon, anyway?

They had a system that could have been released with GR. They tested it in the same Betas as GR, but it wasn't working like they wanted, so Positron decided to pull it back and rework it. That in no way implies the Incarnate system and Going Rogue weren't meant to synchronize around a common story.


Any more "facts" you want to go find that support your theory, or would you rather look at the evidence first and then come up with a conclusion?

This is a necessarily limited view on it actually.

Whether you think it succeeded or not, 1 - 20 is Praetoria from street level - we're looking at the microcosm of the world. What neighborhoods are doing, what the PPD mean in every day life. What being a part of Powers Division means in every day life. What are the threats that are fought off in every day life - the Destroyers, the Syndicate, rogue clocks etc. From the resistance's point of view it's what kind of targets that a subversive group end up doing.

The ramp up in power that our characters engage in from 1 - 50 isn't just a ramp up in power - it's also a ramp up in scope that the stories are telling. One of the things that have always interested me about the journey from 35 - 50 is that the stories get much broader in scope. You go from helping stop a bomb plot and a soldier in Levantera's arc, to trying to stop the whole Rikti War in Dark Watchers.

From 1 - 20 it make sense to have small focused stories - in Praetoria as a Responsibility Loyalist, I go from fighting the syndicate and stopping a bomb plot in Nova, to tracking Cutter Cain in Imperial (I haven't gotten beyond this yet, will soon). Everything after that gets far broader in scope because it's necessary.

One of the tragedies of war is the generalizations that come from seeing an entire people as the enemy (and I know it's not the only tragedy and in some ways it's a minor one, but whatever - bear with me). Look at how Americans justified treating Japanese Americans in WWII. Look what we did to Vietnamese non-combatants in that war. Look how we treat Arab Americans after 9-11. Look how they see us. When you consider yourself at war you frequently don't stop and look for small moral intricacies because you're far too busy fighting for your life. That's how some of these war crimes happen. In a comic and a game about super heroes, telling stories about war crimes is...well, not really all that fun and not really genre - or at least it's indicative of a sub-genre, but it's not really indicative of the genre as a whole.

They're not telling a story about how we Primals see Praetorians because they already did that from 1 - 20. They're telling an invasion story and that makes sense right now. What I would like to see is an expansion of the Praetorian/Primal storyline from 20 - 40 so that we can get a good idea of how the refugees from Praetoria see themselves in Primal Earth and how Primal earth sees them. Do villains resent Praetorian Redsiders because they're snatching up all the contracts and crowding the market? Do Primal Heroes distrust Praetorian ones because of where they're from? But that's not the story they're going to tell when, from the very beginning of I18 we knew Tyrant was going to invade Primal Earth (I mean look at how the trailer ends!, and not only that look at how the 1 - 20 arcs end - with Tyrant trying to jump start a war!).

The question was never "Is Tyrant a good man?", and anyone who ever thought it was wasn't reading the flavor text. The question has always been "Is he a necessary evil considering the threat we face on a daily basis from the DE?" from the Praetorian side. It becomes really hard to morally justify the seer program, but it becomes an interesting side question about whether the seer program is necessary when you look at what might happen if it fails. But that's not a question that should be asked or answered in the middle of an invasion by the side that's being invaded because the answer is invariably going to be "I don't give a @#%^, let's beat the stuffing out of these $%#%ers."

Whether or not you wanted another invasion storyline is something else entirely. With all this being said though - and I wasn't uber excited to have yet another group invading - Apex and Tin Mage probably tells the invasion in the most compelling way I've seen in this game. The text flashing across the screen in the first mission in Apex about something that just smashed down in Blythe Square from space was one of the coolest bits of text I've seen in this game. And for all the coolness of the LGTF, it never had that kind of immediate-this-is-getting-serious feeling.

So in answer to your question - Praetoria doesn't suddenly become a simple place just because that's not the story they're telling right now - all that stuff still exists and the world is still complex - we're just at war with them.

I got to "start" and stopped.

No, it was and is a simple place to begin with.

People insisted on reading into it. That can't be helped, but it doesn't mean there was any meat on the bone in the first place.

Hence what I said that it was a necessarily simple reading of it. We're dealing with a macro story right now - an invasion - at level 50.

The other stuff is told and, I sincerely hope, will continue to be told at lower levels. But the war will be the war.

Yes, but you're also belittling them. They don't not matter, because when you're in a world where if Cole goes down you might be seeing a reinvasion of the DE. It's not a question of "Are the thought police okay?" it's a question of "Do we have to suffer the thought police because if Cole goes down he is the last and only line of real defense against certain existential threats." That's interesting. What's also interesting is the responsibility storyline - what Cutter Cain does is truly horrible, but if you play the Warden storyline he's doing it for the greater good. In fact, in that storyline he's a heroic figure. So how do you come to terms with that? He can't be both can he? Or can he?

That's the interesting bit of the Praetoria storyline. The Crusader and Power arcs are at strange extremes, but the Warden and Responsibility are extremely naunced compared to the legacy redside/blueside content.

They system worked fine. People just wanted something to do with their newfound power, so they system was pulled until they had time to create content to go with it.

And really, does anyone need a bunch of story arcs to establish that not everybody in Praetoria is grrr rargh take over the Multiverse evil? I would think that would be obvious. It's also completely irrelevant to the Incarnate storyline, since we're right back to fighting the same evil goatee Freedom Phalanx who kidnapped Statesman way way back in i1.

If he was fit to lead he wouldn't need thought police. If he was the only line of defense against Hamidon he should be going out and fighting Hamidon. When he's too busy building up an army to invade us instead of fight Hamidon, keeping the people in the dark about this "so as not to provoke panic" is not so much a choice made for the greater good, it's a choice made to preserve the status quo, even knowing full well it's corrupt. It's forced and it feels very much forced, like many of the "moral choice" missions do.

He is seen a hero though. The people in the know can ask those questions. Powers division can start the figure out that he's not the hero that everyone sees him as (or he is equal parts savior and corrupt ruler). The moral choices about Praetoria aren't the ones that engage with Cole at all, but rather ask the questions about what's okay to stop his regime.

Is it okay to take down the seer network? Okay, probably yes. Is it okay to cut on Seers (and not just one but multiple) and experiment on them until your method is perfected? Is Cutter Cain a hero or a serial killer (or is he both?)? Is it okay to subvert the clockwork? Okay, maybe. Is it okay to make pacts with the Destroyers and blow up hospitals all in the name of Freedom? No. But is it okay to associate with them and use them to accomplish your goals? Maybe? Those are the questions that are asked from 1 - 20.

Those are also the questions that you and Venture, and those who agree with you, seem to be ignoring. Maybe they're not convincing to you or to Venture. But they are to me. And they seem to be to a fair number of people on here.

As I said to Venture, the complexity is both less deep than some people on here seem to believe (seriously, I don't know how you could justify most of what Cole does), and more complex than its detractors see it as (the moral questions that are most interesting don't have to do with Cole at all, but are rather something that comes up - should a resistance be responsible? Is it possible to be a proponent of law and order in Praetoria and not fall victim to the system's excesses?

EDIT:
Also, I never did say that Cole is fit to lead.

They are the same exact people. Anyone who says they are not is inexplicably self delusional.

That's one thing that bothers me. We leave Praetoria where there's Resistance, Syndicate, PPD, TEST, Etc.
But when we return during the Maria Jenkins and Tina arcs, Praetoria only has IDF, things never seen in public before, no regular law enforcement, no sign of the Syndicate, and all Resistance members have a 'mind wash' aura that suggest they're already under Tilman's influence (possibly confirmed with the upcoming trial), and only the faintest signs of the Carnival of Light.
What happened?
It almost seems like there's nothing left to fight for in Praetoria for the leaving Praetorian.

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.