Bored with the whole Praetoria schtick

No. He doesn't. This is the point. He is an evil twin, he will always be an evil twin, he will never be anything but an evil twin. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Whatever problems the 1-20 content has*, they're not Cole. Much like Statesman in Paragon City, Cole is fine while you don't have to deal with him much. It's when he becomes the leader of a big invasion that dominates the entire storyline that Cole falls flat as a person of interest.

*I think the 1-20 content is great the first time around but subsequent playings show the limitations of a system where all roads have to lead to Rome. Any one of the paths on its own is great; future revelations that none of it really matters (esp. the 'undercover' stuff) takes away a bit of the shine.

Well, you're free to tell whatever story you want, to be honest, but there's a limit to what you can expect the devs to cater to. Virtually every one of my "villains" has been more of a "flawed hero" since CoV came out, but virtually none of the content fit that concept. I just took inspiration from what they provided and wrote my own variation to it to fit my characters' motives.

As for gameplay.... hmm.... well, you could always join a team fighting against Cole, wait for them to get engaged with the enemy, and then run around pulling "reinforcements" in :P

Seriously, though. There's nothing to stop you from playing through the content and seeing how the story plays out, then imagine how your character would have handled it differently. It'll make a much better story, regardless. If I were to tell the story of one of my character's takedown of a Kronos Titan, it wouldn't be constantly kicking at its shin, even though thats the way the gameplay represents it. They might have climbed up on it, reached under chunks of armor that other heroes had displaced, and pulled at whatever wiring they can grab. Granted, its a little more challenging if you want to pretend to be on the Titan's side.

I'm always amazed that so many people saw some glimmer of goodness in Praetoria and the Loyalist position. It's frightens me to my bones because it made me realize how dictators come to power.

Just now?

When GR was first announced, a few people were falling over themselves to claim that a dictatorship mightn't be that bad - they even tried suggesting that mass-murder, slavery, torture and brainwashing might be needed "for the greater good" - although with the Incarnate system, the stiff-armers have almost all crawled back under their rocks

Before Going Rogue, I used to wonder (seriously, I've spent real time considering the question) how dictators so easily hold their grips on people. I see now it was a failure of empathy. I did not realize how strongly some folks feel about safety and security, as illusory as security is in a police state.

Haven't you ever seen that creepy sub-section of the Star Wars fanbase that genuinely supports the "ideals" of the Empire?

I thought they were just RP weirdos!


But you know, when they start putting up statutes of themselves while still alive that's when you know you have a problem.

Most people have an uncanny ability to put their fingers in their ears and go "lalalalala I can't hear you." People are stupid. The whole Praetoria storyline only serves to drive that point home again and again. The Warden path isn't about trying to wake people up so they'll see the truth, it's trying to convince them to see your truth.

It's interesting but I find the Warden path to be almost immoral because they don't go far enough to take down Praetorian society. I think GG or Venture said it best, "Tyrant's mustache-twirl factor is over 9000."

Need to bomb more hospitals if you want to do it right.

Darn Straight!

Be patient

Heh, have you taken a look at the world around you lately? That's pretty much the reason why Tyrant's evilness is so ham fisted: If it weren't, the part of human nature that would be revealed in a "dark-but-some-claim-is-grey" Praetoria would make too many people uncomfortable.

Ignorance is bliss I guess, or just that Paragon thought it was not a can of worms they wanted to wrestle with.

See this scares me just as much as the hardcore "Dictatorships can be good" position. There's a line between rebellion and terrorism, and sometimes that's a fine line, but it's kind of like the Supreme Court's position on pornography and art - you know it when you see it. Bombing hospitals does nothing to support your position, it only spreads and causes terror - and make the opposition look really good in the public's eyes when they come down hard. The key is to keep moral superiority while actually hurting the opposing side. For me, it's the major difference between focusing on military targets and civilian ones.

I think I would have no problem that the bombing of the USS Cole was an act of war (EDIT: To be clear, I have a problem with the bombing, but I think it's an act of war not terror because the targets were military), but 9/11 was nothing more than an act of terrorism, even if they were carried out by the same morally bankrupt group for the same reasons.

Oh. Things should be quite convenient for you then, when this happens. Two birds, one stone and all that.

When the other side enslaves children to be thought police and turns them over to a psychic vampire who will eventually consume their consciousness, it take a long time before you lose moral superiority.

Except that I'm not grading on a sliding scale. Bombing a hospital is bombing a hospital. just because someone that you're against is nuking civilians doesn't make what you're doing any better. It's one of the things I hate about moral relativism - yeah, what you're doing might not be "as bad" but that doesn't make it good.

He isn't from this reality, and he is definitely alien. Of course, if they add Incarnate content with Rularuu he'll probably turn out to be another alternate Marcus Cole or something equally stupid.... No wait. I can't think of a stupider lazier cop-out than that.

They need to really stop explaining everything and start creating things that truly defy explanation. Crap like the Praetorians suddenly becoming a zillion million times more powerful requires explanation, we got one and it's stupid. Rularuu needs tantalizing hints. He doesn't need any explanations for how he suddenly gets more powerful either, we've pretty much been told that he's not at full power right now. He's fragmented and probably still reeling from being sealed off in the Shard. When we fought Ruladak he was still weak, and when we fought Lanaru he was/is crazy. The lore has already established that we've only seen a fraction of Rularuu's true power, so there's no need to make some crap up to justify making him an Incarnate-level threat.

Wait, I get that you don't like Praetorian content, but why is being empowered by the well stupid?

Take that to its logical extreme. It's evil to lie right? So if the Resistance has to lie about their membership in the resistance so that the resistance is able to operate and eventually take down Cole, then their lies make the whole enterprise illegitimate? Morality isn't a black or white issue. Real people have to make choices that don't fit neatly into someone's subjective buckets.

Bombing a hospital is wrong. Well what if its Mother Mayhem's hospital? Our heroes attacked that during the Praetorian arc. The existence of innocents in war zone is a given. Certainly you should try to minimize the harm to the populace, but you're going to be confronted with the fact that to accomplish your goals you're going to put innocents to death and sometimes intentionally. Because to get back to my example, Mother Mayhem is a high value enough target that she gots to go even if we take out some of her innocent victims with her.

Haven't you heard? The way to minimize civilian casualties is to call them "collateral damage." Doubleplusgood!