Is the currently published back story adequate?

^ This

Why can my Robotics MM simply not make new robots that happen to look like the Lore pets, and have similar levels of power, all without an undying connection to the Puddle of Annoyance?

'Because the Devs say so!' I hear some scream.
Would they be saying that if the Devs made it public order for all Heroes to HAVE to wear red and white only, and all villains HAD to wear black and greys? And Brutes HAD to wear traffic cones on their heads because they said so, so it must be right!!

Being told 'The thing you know as the 'Well of Furies' is your Earths manifestation of the source of all power' I can deal with. Lots of comic book worlds have that, no big deal. It's just a catchall term for 'This Universe has superpowers'.

Being told 'You cannot do x, y or z without effectively selling your soul to something that is certifiablly batpoop insane and empowering some guy who, hey, WANTS TO CONQUER YOUR WORLD LOLS!' is something that makes me simply ignore such terribad writing and do things my own way.

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.

You say that like nearly every forum poster wouldn't already happily lay aside all differences for the duration of the Destruction of the Golden Monster TF/SF...

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.

Sebastian Frost tells you, "Go ahead. Have a snort of 'Dyne. As long as you take it in small doses, you'll build up a tolerance and you won't turn into a mentally deficient Jolly Green Giant. It worked for me. Trust me."

What do you do?

I don't actually have a problem with Incarnation. I always kind of liked that idea, the way it was originally presented. The Well of the Furies I'm not so keen about, but as has been pointed out, it's akin to the Speed Force. If the Speed Force started walking and talking through him, though, I have to think that Barry Allen's first thought would be "How do I get this thing out of me?" In fact, I want to know what Statesman's reaction was to that little episode, because if it was me in his shoes, I'd be feeling pretty <insert moderation-safe epithet for emphasis> violated. Maybe enough to go to my buddy Positron and tell him "You gotta help me get rid of this thing."

And honestly - I think that you may be putting too much faith in game mechanics when you say "Well, there's no other way to reach this level of power in the game so it MUST be safe." You are putting a whole lot of faith in something based on metagame considerations. You're basically saying "Well, the devs never did follow through on that whole business about making Hamidon Enhancements alter the genetic structure of the users, so I believe that there will be no negative consequences of attaching my character's consciousness to the consciousness of an unimaginable cosmic entity that wants to subjugate the Multiverse."

That doesn't really seem like such a safe bet to me, especially when the battle with the Coming Storm finally comes (though I suspect that battle will only ever happen on the day the servers are closed and the game is shut down).

My biggest problem with the whole business is that it's turning into a rehash of _A Spell for Chameleon_. I wonder what would happen if someone walked up to the Well and said "I release you"?

And don't forget the happy business of the Reactor Respecs. Read the badges you get awarded for doing a Respec and then think about Peter Parker sprouting four extra arms...

The Devs have many potential aces up their sleeve.

I am, yes. Because while I find the notion of pissing off a HUGE number of their players somewhat amusing (in a schadenfreude-y, "let me stand over here and watch and eat popcorn" kind of way), I wouldn't actually want to see it happen. And all I have invested in the Incarnate system is four characters and maybe forty hours of my time; Paragon Studios and NCsoft (and their shareholders) have considerably more on the line, and are not likely to pull such a stunt for teh lulz.

I'm still relatively sad that we're not ever likely to see the 'other' EATs they hinted at long ago. Playing a character with my Coralax costume code just isn't as satisfying as playing a Coralax EAT.

Honestly, I agree with all that and I'm sure that NCSoft/Paragon Studios are always going to make decisions based on keeping people paying rather than pissing them off and alienating them.

I do think that there could be a creative way to write a story that's the tack of the Vahzilok plague or any similar story where your character is negatively impacted temporarily and then finds a way out.

Either that or they need to just need to explain why Lady Grey is such an authority on ways to cheat the "Well" out of its power and become a kind of cosmic parasite attached to its backside.

Well, maybe those budding incarnates out there would prefer to think of themselves as remoras going along for a free ride at the expense of the Well, though parasite or symbiote appears to more accurately describe the relationship.

I did not do Ramiel's arc at all for quite a while for a variety of reasons having to do with disliking the writing and the implications. Then I saw a comment in a gaming mag article, or perhaps the Wiki, to the effect that Hero 1 had gotten his Uber Powers via Excalibur, "thus demonstrating that there was a path to such powers other than through the Well of Furies." Okay, if I could have the Uber Powers without having to be an Incarnate, then sign me up. So I got the Alpha slot on about 5 of my dozen-odd 50s, and I skipped some of the expository dialogue since I did not like its thesis and I was "actually" going the non-Well route.

Then I believe I happened to actually read what Lady Grey was saying, and I recall, it is to the effect that "oh yeah, there are people like Hero 1 who never officially contacted the Well, but it was actually the Well, baby. No matter how you did it, if you have any of the slots, you are the Well's; game, set and match." See, had they left the door open, I would not have to suppress my gag reflex about it all, but the Devs made sure that El Door was slammed in El Face. Then Lady Grey went on about, as you say, how to NOT have the Well control you, etc., but yeah, uh huh, kthxbai.

I am still here and still playing, but only one of my heroes has equipped the Alpha slot. Having to learn several new currencies and enhancements was not too appealing to me, but doable. Making the lore so wretched is the final turn-off, so I am taking a pass for now, and will see how things shake out later.

I have the impression, reading between the lines that it doesn't release us, so much as it 'goes to sleep' and leave us becoming the incarnates we were meant to become.

Statesman took the 'fast path' by following the myths surrounding it, and thereby gaining the powers of Zeus. Just as Hero-1 accepted the myth of his people and taking on the power of Excalibur and taking on its power, regardless to his tie to the well or not.

We are not as constrained. We know what it really is, and are taking the 'slow' path to making what we are at our core, an incarnate of ourselves, for good or for ill. I have the feeling the Omega slot will be about facing down the Well itself and putting it back into its slumber, removing its influence from our development once and for all. However, by that time we will probably be about as godlike as a game should make us based on alpha slotting, up.

My fear is that we start getting pigeonenholed into a conflict that takes us beyond being comic book heroes and villians, and putting us into a setting that requires us to be something... else, that the lore itself propogates, making us puppets to the storyline, rather than to some code of morality that we define for ourselves or our characters.

In this respect I defer to Superman from the comic books, and the direction they may take him. Once we achieve his [current] level of power, are we to become embroiled into some storyline not of our making? Our heroes and villains taken out of their player invented backgrounds to play in some arena that until now only laid its eyes upon Kheldan and Arachnos characters?

...But I digress.

As much as I embroil my characters into the events of the game as a thought-experiment of my choosing, and often put my own 'spin' into how they perceive the events around them, taking their play into something I could never see them in as a 'bait and switch' would be.. undesireable. I present what I wrote as a possible 'out' when the time comes, and hope they choose creativity over control when its all said and done.

Worked for Good Omens and it can work here. or should.

Err on the side of the player.

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.

What indeed?

"Godlike Power" is already a very odd conceit when many of my heroes can already shoot lightning bolts, fire and ice from their hands and cause instant thunderclouds, ice storms and tornadoes.

I am likewise baffled trying to figure out the usefulness of the "Nope, it was really the Well" approach. The open-ended origin template was great, because your origin story could be whatever you wanted. Now it turns out that the spider that bit you had actually first taken a drink from the Well of Furies... what?? That power ring and the green battery? Really takes its power from the Well... huh?? There is no need to provide the over-arching rationale, nor to wedge it into the game.

Once could come back and say, "Well, new powers are obtained through the "trainer" mechanism within the game, so we had to provide a trainer and a rationale." Okay, how about this: a man named Mender Rufus steps out of a phone booth and says he is from the future, and there is a plot to prevent you from becoming the fabled hero are destined to become. He will stay in the background, but he will make sure that you are in the right place at the right time to (do whatever it turns out you did to become more powerful: work all night at the lab, encounter the mystical being with the artifact, get hit by the gamma rays, whatever.) Voila. Open-ended and up to you. Mender Ramiel starts out very similarly to this anyway, but your rendezvous is with the Insane Sentient P-O'd Well of Furies. Huh? Oh, yes it is, pal.

Oh, and by the way, Statesman is a Well sockpuppet on demand. He forgot the First Rule of visiting a foreign locality: "Don't Drink The Water."

This is not good writing. Fire up the Troy Hickman signal.

This actually is a good question, and one we really, really shouldn't be finding ourselves asking: Where does meta-human end and godlike begin? In normal epics, the line where humans can do no more and you start needing magic and supernatural powers is usually when people end and gods begin, but this doesn't really apply to a setting where all of our actors are already godlike to begin with. This really isn't a question that has a good answer, so the mere act of posing it seems like it should have been an easy mistake to avoid. When you want the audience to ignore the man behind the curtain, you don't draw attention to the man behind the curtain and explain all the ways in which he is the Wizard of Oz.

Epics, I think, were the right way to go. You're progressing through your own storyline all fine and dandy and then all of a sudden - BANG! You have brand new powers. Where did they come from? How did that happen? Well, you got more powerful and you naturally developed more powers. Or maybe you didn't. Maybe YOU have a better idea of where they come from. The point is, the game only told us that we HAD these powers, it didn't try to tell us WHY we had them. That's what the Character Description is for, no? I quite literally see no benefit in the slightest to having our Incarnate progression explained, or indeed given a specific name at all.

That's actually pretty close to how I'd have gone, as well. Say one day you level up to 50, go back to your favourite trainer, earn your last three slots, but what's this? The trainer says: "Well, that's all I know to teach you. I'm pretty sure that's the limit of power one can have." Well that can't be. So you go asking all of the trainers and they all say the same thing: "That's as high as you go." So you sit and think to yourself... That's not right. I know I can do more than this. Then a time traveller taps you on the shoulder and says "Yes, you can. I've seen you do it, in the future. I know how to surpass your limits, because you told me. Let's go do that now!" So he starts telling you to do these seemingly unrelated things, like fight invaders or fight Roman soldiers or prove that you're a true hero. You're not sure how these things help, and neither is he, actually, but that's what you did to learn how to surpass your limits in his time, so if you do all of these things now, surely you'll get as strong as you were in his timeline.

Yeah, it's similar to what Mender Ramiel's story constitutes, but without the Well of the Furies, without the mind control and the moral ambiguity and the evil omniscient entity and, most importantly, without the game giving you an overt explanation of WHY you have the powers you do.

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 think you have a fine point about Epic Pool Powers--- that was the way to go. Powers show up and you explain them.

Once heroes go beyond "Level 50," I think the Devs felt they needed a "rationale" as well as the "trainer mechanism" to award the powers and slot them up, since previously the in-game lore had said "50 is it." Our "Mender Rufus" plot device leaves the rationale up to the player, and avoids what we dislike about Ye Olde Welle. Problem solved!

So when do we get a check??

It may not have a good (universal) answer, but at least for my characters, I can tell you quite definitely which ones have godlike power (or the potential and/or desire to gain same) and those who are "merely" super-beings. The first set are doing the Incarnate stuff; the rest are not.

To me, there's a clear difference between someone who got her Science Powers in a lab accident, or an ex-Sky Raider, and a Superman-expy, an alternate version of the (Psychic) Clockwork King, or the embodiment of an entire city district (a small god, to be sure, but a god just the same).

I don't really see things quite this way, and that's not to argue so much as to explain. To me, it really isn't a question of where you got your powers from, but what potential those powers have. I've often written fiction regarding experiments with infinite energy, the tapping of godlike power, "ancient" technology and so forth. Woman Man - the hero bitten by a radioactive woman - could easily end up being just a second-rate hero with limited powers, or through some quirk of physics and chemistry, he could end up tapping into quite literally unlimited power and evolution. I see it more as a question of how far I want to take a character as opposed to what they were made to be.

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.