Incarnate Proliferation Ideas
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-04-09 10:50 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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A Lore expansion into ANYTHING else would be quite nice, yes, and that includes demons. Seriously, the Lore pets have to be the worst. It's Arachnos Patron summons all over again, and I know we all loved those.
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Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
But you do agree that a Lore expansion of demon pets would be quite nice, right?
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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.
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I just want a doppleganger Lore pet. Your own essence using same your onw powerset. Just using doppleganger tech.
I think next 3 Judgements should be:
Psychic AoE (for mentalist, Fortunatas, etc...)
Energy cannon (also fits for tech based characters)
Physic-temblor massive ground punch (fits for both earth elementals and physic characters with no energy blasts).
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I dunno, I actually feel establishing the lore of your universe is necessary when you have so many participating and interlocking characters (the NPCs, not us) and when I'm creating characters, it's kind of fun actually making a character that actually fits. No, you don't have to slide in like a good, obedient little puzzle piece, but taking the story and going with it can be just as creatively intense as writing up your own lore and universe for your characters to exist in.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And then there's that. I almost cried when I read bAss' post on how the Well is the source of all power, because if I were to actually accept that (I'm still in stubborn denial), it would mean the utter defilement of every single character I have, and such a colossal destruction of anything even resembling story in this game that I would be forced to throw my hands in the air and just give up. On the spot.
This is an unbelievably bad idea and a horrible example of god-mode writing in an environment where player choice and design used to reign supreme. "Player choice" is why a lot of us are here. Hell, the one thing which convinced me to give City of Heroes a try was that among all the screenshots I saw of the game, I could never find two even similar characters. This rewriting of our characters needs to stop. So, yeah, I'm more than willing to just ignore the "well was the source of my power to begin with" angle and just pretend the powers I'm getting from the Trials were mine to begin with. The problem isn't that I can't accept weird god with weird powers, but more so that the writers have written themselves into a corner that they appear either unable or unwilling to work themselves out of. |
That said, I've actually started lvling up a character that will focus on the incarnate content (and she's supposedly the strongest force of nature among my wardrobe of characters so it makes sense that she be one of those new-fangled incarnates) and, from my interpretation so far, while the well is the source of the universe's powers, is that power the well's itself? Running the Vincent Ross arc, it seems like the well just kind of redistributes power, taking the essence of a god, using it to create a monster and then granting that monster to someone it deems worthy? But did the well create the god essence in the first place?
I guess if you don't like the idea of the well distributing you god powers, you could always have your character create this new power themselves and just explain why your character is just *now* gaining it during the incarnate content. That you're faced with escalating challenge could be the well's way of opening that path of power rather than outright giving it to you.
I think one of the main reasons why Star Wars failed was because George Lucas had people like Yoda and Darth Sideous both using the Force, and shoe-horning every single Jedi and Sith into using a single cosmic power source for their abilities, regardless of their appearance or charcter or morality.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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But I actually like the Force.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I think one of the main reasons why Star Wars failed was because George Lucas had people like Yoda and Darth Sideous both using the Force, and shoe-horning every single Jedi and Sith into using a single cosmic power source for their abilities, regardless of their appearance or charcter or morality.
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I just don't like Lucas' writing. I haven't read any of the EU books or anything but I do read some fan stuff and fan-made characters (I've had 1 PnP campaign with a Star Wars theme and loved it but not everyone in the group had as much fun with it as me
) and you can make some fun stuff when you write with the lore......until you say the word Midichlorians.
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This is really one of those "to each their own" subjects. Some people like bouncing off established lore and extending their own story from that, and there's nothing wrong with that. I respect it. I, however, am not among those people. To me, using someone else's established fiction both feels like plagiarism and feels like it demeans me as a writer for being unable to come up with fiction of my own that's just as good while being uniquely my own. I want characters that I can be proud of and that I can show off to people even if they aren't familiar with City of Heroes. Characters I came up with on my own.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
I dunno, I actually feel establishing the lore of your universe is necessary when you have so many participating and interlocking characters (the NPCs, not us) and when I'm creating characters, it's kind of fun actually making a character that actually fits. No, you don't have to slide in like a good, obedient little puzzle piece, but taking the story and going with it can be just as creatively intense as writing up your own lore and universe for your characters to exist in.
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This is, to a large extent, my own undoing. I've said it many times before, but I approach City of Heroes less like a player and more like a writer. I appreciate the open, accommodating setting and the "anything goes" attitude. This gives me a welcoming environment which fosters creativity without saddling it with backstory continuity. Yes, there are a few things one must still be aware of, such as what year it is and what things happened in the past (not a good idea to set up a football match in the middle of the first Rikti War, say), but most of those can still be sidestepped shuffling events around or, worse come to worst, by translocating your character off-world and only Initiating his City story from the moment he starts fighting crime in Paragon City, with all backstory taking place "somewhere else."
This is why I balk whenever the game's writing presumes to tell me what integral parts of my characters should be, and then mandates this presumption via hardwired story.
In fact, here's a good practical example: Do you remember that part in Automatic Villainy where it seems like your character is actually a Nemesis Automaton with fake memories and malfunctioning emotional chips while the real you is rotting in a Nemesis Army brig? For just one moment, I got a tad concerned when I ran this one, but immediately reassured myself that Cryptic (at the time) would not write such a personally invasive storyline. And, sure enough, it turns out that you were the real you all along and the whole thing was a Nemesis plot to draw you into an ambush with fake capture reports, doctored video files and lies from Nemesis soldiers.
Now imagine for a second that it had turned out the whole thing was true and your character from that point onward was a Nemesis automaton, and the entire story henceforth built off that assumption. Just imagine how colossal of an interference against concept and backstory this would be. Suddenly, none of what you wrote for your character mattered, because what you were playing was no longer your character.
This, to me, is what "Origin of Powers meets the Well of the Furies" is to me.
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| I guess if you don't like the idea of the well distributing you god powers, you could always have your character create this new power themselves and just explain why your character is just *now* gaining it during the incarnate content. That you're faced with escalating challenge could be the well's way of opening that path of power rather than outright giving it to you. |
Hence, the point of this thread, I assume - sometimes the Incarnate powers work for us to pretend they were really ours all along, sometimes they don't. So, it would be nice to either have more of them, or have more customization options for the ones we have. Bright darkness, better colour choices for ice, the ability to shoot them out of guns, a physical Judgement and so forth. There are options, and I honestly do hope they add to the list at some point.
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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.
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But the thing, is we've *always* been restricted in certain ways: Your origin is a *gameplay element* as well as a lore element. These two things aren't separate, but they imapact a few things in the game.
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At first I was opposed to this idea since everyone can get arachnos pets anyway from the patron power pools, but then I imagined my crab spider surrounded by TEN spiderbots and I got all warm and fuzzy inside.
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Originally Posted by Arilou
Arachnos Lore group, obviously.
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CoT lore plz. 
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There's a fundemental difference between a world like City of's and one like Star Wars.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I think one of the main reasons why Star Wars failed was because George Lucas had people like Yoda and Darth Sideous both using the Force, and shoe-horning every single Jedi and Sith into using a single cosmic power source for their abilities, regardless of their appearance or charcter or morality.
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Start Wars was not intended to have other people come up with whatever the heck they want, so a magician in Star Wars would feel stupidly out of place.
Besides of which, Star Wars has been failing because George Lucas claims the force is because of microbes in people's blood INSTEAD of a mystical, psionic force.
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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.
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Well... No and no. Origin has always been a mostly cosmetic element, and up to a certain point in time, was just about a purely cosmetic one. The only place it still matters these days is what buff you get for which veteran power, but you can still pick which you get. You don't get stronger powers for being Mutation and you don't get more powers for being Natural as you used to back in pre-Beta.|
Originally Posted by Arilou
But the thing, is we've *always* been restricted in certain ways: Your origin is a *gameplay element* as well as a lore element. These two things aren't separate, but they imapact a few things in the game.
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As far as Origin being a "lore" element? Only in the Origins of Power storyline, and I can say with absolute certainty that this is the most universally reviled piece of writing in the entire game. And I'm counting things like the Shadow Shard TFs, the old Positron TF, the Bastion TF, the To Save a Thousand Worlds arc, the old Hero's Hero arc. There's a lot of crappy writing to choose from, and yet this one is the one I've never, ever seen anyone actually like. The best praise I've seen for that storyline is that it's not HORRIBLE (it is) and that you can sort of ignore it if you squint really hard because it doesn't come into play anywhere.
So it hasn't "always" been like this. It's been getting like this for some time, and I've dreaded every step along the way, because this is hands-down bad writing, and a great shame on the game as a whole.
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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.
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It's kind of hard to empathize with someone thats shooting themselves in the foot.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
This is, to a large extent, my own undoing.
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That said, what you're posting about just boils down to 'more work'. It'd be great if stuff just happened and plopped on our laps...Proliferation served to me on a platter, pole-arm weapon sets trimmed and presented neatly and with awesome animations, my own personal version of Scythe melee for Stalkers, etc...and I wouldn't be opposed to those things added. But until you get it, it's less painful to just...not 'undo' yourself >_>
Either that or simply put on your 'I'm not listening' cap and leave the whole 'Boo! Screw you, well!' to the people that just love to make a spectacle of themselves.
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Without coming out and saying it in the OP, yes, this is where I was leaning. Lore (and not the power), RP, and character concept wise, there are some excellent choices of incarnate abilities in our current pool.... for some characters. Of the sixtyish I currently have (yikes, I don't even want to think about how long and how much #$@%@ trials I'll have to do), thematically, only about ten have perfect fits to the current powers. Some additional twenty have a few powers here and there that match up with some of the concepts behind the new slots... but that leaves the other half in a conceptual hole.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Hence, the point of this thread, I assume - sometimes the Incarnate powers work for us to pretend they were really ours all along, sometimes they don't. So, it would be nice to either have more of them, or have more customization options for the ones we have. Bright darkness, better colour choices for ice, the ability to shoot them out of guns, a physical Judgement and so forth. There are options, and I honestly do hope they add to the list at some point.
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Since we do have powerset proliferation, I figure at some point we'll also have incarnate proliferation... I just wanted to get the discussion going.
...plus, I'd like a polearm powerset, but that's not what the thread's about ;-)
Lore addition:
I'd like the dancing swords (like you see in Apex).
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The three Proliferations I most want to see for Judgement:
1: An Earth shattering Ground Punch or a Hurricane Force Wind generating Hand Clap like the Hulk uses.
2: A Sonic Scream like Black Bolt from the Inhumans uses, or the Lions Roar from Kung Fu Hustle.
3: Compatible Weapon Animations for Battle Axe, Blades, Archery, Dual Pistols & Assault Rifle.
(At the same time this is done I hope an option for a huge gun is added as a weapon customization alternative to the standard Frankengun (similar to the one below))
After the Devs finish Proliferations, I would like them to make an Orbital Laser like one of these.
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This raises an important question though. If a Mastermind has a doppleganger Lore pet can he control the pet's pets?
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Originally Posted by Angelxman81
I just want a doppleganger Lore pet. Your own essence using same your onw powerset. Just using doppleganger tech.
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I tend to take the third option: Not bother until there's something in there I care about enough to put myself through the process of acquisition. People keep beating me over the head with the "It's still a work in progress!" line, and I intend to take them up on it - I'll bother with it when it's done. Rather, IF it's ever done. I'm still waiting for powerset proliferation and power customization to be "done," and I'm starting to get a tad impatient about those.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
Either that or simply put on your 'I'm not listening' cap and leave the whole 'Boo! Screw you, well!' to the people that just love to make a spectacle of themselves.
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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.
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That Nova Fist even hurt Super Ratz, my Will Tanker geez man, who doesn't want that power.
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Originally Posted by Zyphoid
I want a super pbaoe like Marauder's nova fist.
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Here's an interesting thought experiment. I'm going to list all my 50s going down character select and we can see how many of them have concepts that will benefit from one of the existing Incarnate powers.
Samuel Tow, level 50 Kat/SR/Body Scrapper. None of the Judgement powers really fit either being super fast or having a sword.
Crash McGuire, level 50 SS/Inv/Energy Brute. None of the Hudgement powers really fit a super strong body with no "projectable" powers.
Ezikiel Bane, level 50 Stone/Stone/Respec Brute. An Earth Judgement power does not exist.
Xandra Jay, level 50 Energy/Energy/Fighting Brute. The Ionic Judgement is more electricity than pure energy, so I'm disinclined.
Nathaniel Hawking, level 50 Mercs/Traps/Leadership Brute. I could probably explain some of the Judgement powers as gadgets, but for lack of weapon-based Judgements, I'm disinclined.
Xanta, level 50 Sword/Inv/Respec Scrapper. For lack of a Judgement power based either on a weapon or on strength of arm or leg, I'm disinclined.
Brutticus, level 50 Axe/Shield/Energy Brute. Same as above, as she is a similar concept.
Alexander Cromwell, level 50 Axe/Will/Respec Brute. I could conceivably respec him into an Electric Epic and give him the Ionic Judgement, under the pretext that it's actually nannites acting as though they were electricity.
Kia Blackwell, level 50 Sword/Shield/Body Scrapper. I could probably give her a more fancy Judgement power, as she uses a magical shield, but it'd be a stretch and unprecedented.
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All of this is to say that I look forward to some more Judgement powers or more customization for them, because as it stands right now, I have very few 50s that I'm motivated to put through the rat race.
*edit*
They're fewer than I thought. After deleting the Rook, Inna and Grimwall, I took a large chunk out of my 50s roster. I keep calling them "12," but they aren't that many any longer.
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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.
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I've had an idea for that with Judgement powers. It works better, I think, for melee weapons like broadswords, katanas, dual blades, war mace, battle axe, etc. My idea was a Judgement attack where you it shows you tossing your weapon of choice, or a phantom copy of it, up in the air and a big pile of those weapons rains down on the target area. Kind of like Rain of Arrows, but with battle axes. The problem is this idea doesn't really work well with other powers, really. :-/|
Originally Posted by Blood_Beret
I'd prefer just some alternate animations that work with weapons. AR, DP, Katana, BroadSword, Mace, Axe, etc
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I'd also like to see some more magical style Lore powers. Not so much, say, Thorns, but maybe being able to summon, say... Tuatha or something.
As for the debate over origins and the Well and all... I see the origin of powers as more how something very fundamental was altered in how physics and reality works in the City of Heroes universe. Many of the things superhumans do are flatly impossible... but they do it anyways. The origin isn't where you're drawing power from, but how somehow, someone tore off the big "No Funny Business" tag from reality and suddenly everything got a whole lot weirder. Cosmic rays used to make you die horribly; now they give you superpowers. Aliens started to show up (the sheer number of baby aliens with super strength and invunerability sent to Earth from dying worlds makes me feel like Earth is the back alley dumpster of the universe :P). Magic started to creep out of the shadows. Etc. A lot of this stuff was around before, but very rare and tended to keep out of the spotlight. That's been my take on it.
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I'd be happy with a power which sent "shadow clones" of me in all direction to slash at all opponents around. I can explain this away on characters who can't clone themselves as my character simply being so fast it seems like he's in all places at once.|
Originally Posted by Doc_Reverend
I've had an idea for that with Judgement powers. It works better, I think, for melee weapons like broadswords, katanas, dual blades, war mace, battle axe, etc. My idea was a Judgement attack where you it shows you tossing your weapon of choice, or a phantom copy of it, up in the air and a big pile of those weapons rains down on the target area. Kind of like Rain of Arrows, but with battle axes. The problem is this idea doesn't really work well with other powers, really. :-/
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Originally Posted by Doc_Reverend
As for the debate over origins and the Well and all... I see the origin of powers as more how something very fundamental was altered in how physics and reality works in the City of Heroes universe. Many of the things superhumans do are flatly impossible... but they do it anyways. The origin isn't where you're drawing power from, but how somehow, someone tore off the big "No Funny Business" tag from reality and suddenly everything got a whole lot weirder. Cosmic rays used to make you die horribly; now they give you superpowers. Aliens started to show up (the sheer number of baby aliens with super strength and invunerability sent to Earth from dying worlds makes me feel like Earth is the back alley dumpster of the universe :P). Magic started to creep out of the shadows. Etc. A lot of this stuff was around before, but very rare and tended to keep out of the spotlight. That's been my take on it.
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Additionally, this becomes a huge blow against those of us who do prefer "No funny business!" stories. I hate how cartoony, zany, Adam West Batman the game is becoming. Run some of the older content and look at the original interpretation of the Freakshow, for instance - they're not funny, they're not cute, they're not adorable. They're cold-blooded killers who like to torture their victims and have no respect for innocent people. They are a menace, not something to laugh at.
Even the Praetorians, goatee evil counterparts that they were, were still more serious back in the day. Now they spend their days being quirky and making Fusion/Faultline in-jokes that weren't funny to begin with.
It's like I'm watching the Batman movies: The first one was classic, the second one was pretty dark, the third one was pretty colourful and the fourth one was Batman and Robin. I'm still waiting for our own Dark Knight to give the game some more gravitas and grounding, and make it feel like a somewhat realistic world again, rather than a Saturday morning cartoon.
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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.
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By "No Funny Business" I mean the way we pretty much all break several laws of physics. Heck, Superstrength breaks a major one every time it's used. In the real world, even if you were capable of exerting enough force to lift twenty tons, you could never lift a car or a bus. You lift an object, you would go through it because you're concentrating a massive amount of weight on exactly two small points. The car would break in half around you, or you would simply tear it apart trying to lift it.
This does not happen in comic books.
You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
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Whenever I write a story, I try to not include such things even for the sake of the rule of cool, just because they bug me. But I mean that in a larger sense - I prefer stories written in such a way that makes sense, at least in regard to their own internal logic, not the garbage we've been getting recently about bad guys stealing "the item" so that they could enact "the plot" with nary a second of explanation as to what we're actually talking about. Remember my rant about exactly WHAT it was that Roy Cooling was looking for? That's what I mean. We need to focus more on the narrative part of the story, not always solely on the fantastic part. That's how you make a good story with fantastic elements.|
Originally Posted by Doc_Reverend
By "No Funny Business" I mean the way we pretty much all break several laws of physics. Heck, Superstrength breaks a major one every time it's used. In the real world, even if you were capable of exerting enough force to lift twenty tons, you could never lift a car or a bus. You lift an object, you would go through it because you're concentrating a massive amount of weight on exactly two small points. The car would break in half around you, or you would simply tear it apart trying to lift it.
This does not happen in comic books. |
Additionally, there's no need to explain each and every player character in the game's own narrative. Some of us go to great lengths to displace the origin of our characters from those of the game's setting. I've gone back in time, forward in time, to other planets, to other dimensions, to other planes of existence and so on and so forth.
I could see how a person on Earth COULD have gotten powers from the opening of Pandora's Box. I cannot see how a person from seven billion years onto the past of another planet in another dimension could have gotten powers from that. And I'd rather not hear plausible explanations as to how that's possible. It's NOT possible. That's why I put said character so far off the map.
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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.
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... You're the same Samuel Tow who asks for ridiculously big weapons along side me, right?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Whenever I write a story, I try to not include such things even for the sake of the rule of cool, just because they bug me. But I mean that in a larger sense - I prefer stories written in such a way that makes sense, at least in regard to their own internal logic
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Additionally, there's no need to explain each and every player character in the game's own narrative. Some of us go to great lengths to displace the origin of our characters from those of the game's setting. I've gone back in time, forward in time, to other planets, to other dimensions, to other planes of existence and so on and so forth.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I could see how a person on Earth COULD have gotten powers from the opening of Pandora's Box. I cannot see how a person from seven billion years onto the past of another planet in another dimension could have gotten powers from that. And I'd rather not hear plausible explanations as to how that's possible. It's NOT possible. That's why I put said character so far off the map.
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Why there was such a seal on humanity's potential though is another mystery. Possibly something... Nefarious!
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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.
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