Do the Devs remember Hero Corps?

Because most days I don't. They're supposed to be a mercenary group of heroes for hire. Outside of one contact in Atlas Park, one plaque, the NPCs who let you adjust your difficulty in Paragon City, and that one aggravating low-level mission to introduce you to said NPCs, they're nowhere to be found.

I'd like to see more of these guys. I would've expected Going Rogue to feature them some*; heroing for cash seems like an attractive proposition for Vigilantes who like fighting crime but don't have the moral character to be a Hero and do it for free.

*had I remembered they exist

There is a contact on the Hospital steps in Steel Canyon too. I think she has an exploration badge under her feet just like the guy in AP. I've only ever gotten her once and I think she sent me on some Clockwork missions.

Additional Hero Corp contacts on both sides of the pond for Vigilantes and Rogues would be awesome.

Did you know the Hero Corp emblem isn't one of the Chest Details awarded with the 30 month veteran reward? This is in spite of the fact that several of the ones that ARE never seem to show up anywhere else in the game. Seriously, can someone name a spot in the game outside of that vet reward where you'll see the Freedom Phalanx, Vindicator, or Circle of Thorns emblem?

Hero Corps does not employ any of the player characters unless they just prefer to roleplay that connection.

Most of the currently available lore concerning Hero Corp is available here.

Freedom Corps is/was Statesman's answer to Hero Corp (we don't really know what Miss Liberty's involvement is/was) - Besides training, they offer emergency response and aid functions, and they are altruistic. They do not charge the city for any of their services.

Hero Corp is built on the idea that capitalism ensures quality and loyalty. For instance, where Statesman ended up declaring himself and the Freedom Phalanx to be above politics and thus beholden to no government, Hero Corp guarantees loyalty to whoever pays them. They see this as a superior situation than relying, essentially, on free-lancers who work based on their own whims.

From a certain standpoint, Hero Corp is trying to be the IBM/Microsoft of the Hero world while Freedom Corps is (or was, until Ms. Liberty got a hold of it) the Open Source/Free Software Foundation.

Hero Corp is shady - It's heavily implied, though never stated outright, that the reason they get so much super-crime to fight in the cities that hire them is that they create the need themselves.

There's a reason that Hero Corp handles the "difficulty slider". What they are doing is feeding information/misinformation to the media to make you look stronger or weaker, thus attracting more or less difficult foes to come looking for you.

It would be interesting to see Hero Corp introduced into the game's storyline but it would be difficult to do it right without ultimately painting them as semi-villainous, I think. That may be the reason they've never been more involved. The devs are silent on the matter.

I would like to see Hero Corps fleshed out more within the context of the morality system, a la some of the praetorian arcs. It would be cool to join Hero Corps and decide to play (for example) as a super being just doing it for the money vs. routing out corruption from the inside. This story thread could run through parts of the low/mid/high levels with TFs at important points in the story. Tip missions could start us off on the, "Just what is up with Hero Corps these days?" story!

Here's what Wiki has to say about them. There's also a history badge.

The problem with Hero Corp, IMO, is that if they truly are "here to help" and their rep for causing an increase in super-powered crime is truly a bad rap (meaning that they simply attract super villains by dint of their reputation and not because those villains are being hired to give their heroes someone to fight) then they really aren't all that interesting.

You don't even have to believe in the "grey" areas of Justice in order to believe that your work/effort is worth getting paid for. Wyvern being an example - Ostensibly, they are a private super-powered security firm ala Longbow and nobody seems to have a problem with that. (And on the subject of "interesting", it's the dark side of Wyvern, the hidden vigilante justice shadow ops side, that makes them interesting. If they were truly what they claim to be on their public face, they'd be boring.)

Maybe it's the idea of heroes being paid on the public dime when there's so much free help available already. The average person puts more trust in someone who's motives are "pure" than in someone who's doing it for a paycheck.

It's interesting because if you read through some of the fan faction that exists for the game, you often find that the writers imagine the heroes of their stories are being supported in some fashion by the city; whether it's living quarters, a stipend or an outright salary. It implies that it's not the public support that makes the difference. It's the attitude behind the person's motivations.

That's more or less what the text of the history plaques depict, as well.

So, if Hero Corp was really just a "grey" employer, then they'd be hard to make into an interesting story, I think. Even Praetoria wasn't really "grey" in the end. It's just hard to generate drama if there's no conflict.

I disagree that Hero Corps expressly need a shady side to be interesting. The dichotomy between Freedom Corps and Hero Corps is enough of an ethical clash to warrant interest in itself. While Freedom Corps are pretty much openly said to give support to licensed heroes, that's support strictly targeted at covering the expenses of their super hero work. It's not support aimed at enriching the heroes. Hero Corps, by contrast, pay their heroes with no provisions made as to what the hero will do with the money he receives, and indeed whether that hero actually needs any support at all. In essence, Freedom Corps support their heroes, but Hero Corps make their heroes rich.

Of course, that's mostly moot, since the Hero Corps history on the site just about spells it out that there's something illegal going on in Hero Corps. Crey connections are put down and people in power armour mentioned, and indeed the Hero Corps representatives tend to have their own hierarchy and membership, thus acting a lot like the Paragon Protectors. I'm really not sure what that illicit connection is, but it's pretty firmly there.

Unfortunately, the writers of late seem to have started treating Crey like some kind of goatee evil organisation that threatens to take over the world on national television, completely ignoring the fact that Crey are supposed to have a very convincing legitimate business front. As such, introducing them as an apparently legitimate and useful asset to heroes early on doesn't seem to make sense. I mean, doesn't everyone know they're eeevil? This means that there isn't much that can be done with Hero Corps until and unless Crey can be seen in a more covert light.

That said, I'd very much like to see Hero Corps show up as a sequence of story arcs that start out perfectly legit, but then slowly devolve into questionable ethics and then questionable legality until finally they go the way of the Crey Corporation - mostly gutted of executive staff and limping along under threat of investigation and weight of debt. That would be pretty interesting, if it can be done.

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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.

I think you've got it completely wrong Sam. It sounds more like Hero Corps was formed with the principle of genuinely wanting to help people, and Crey destroyed their headquarters then offered to underwrite them to get them in the Countess's pocket.

Just because they could be in Crey's pocket doesn't mean they're up to all the bad stuff that Crey is into. It could just be that they think Crey is just a company like the rest of the world (apparently) does (some of the time). Crey's involvement in any dirty dealings that may or may not exist is probably just limited to the fact that they bankroll Hero Corps and so it's unlikely to investigate any criminal dealings of theirs.

My take is basically Vanden's. Yes, the Countess tried to set herself up as the Hero Corp's savior and we learn later that Crey is no good, but that doesn't mean that elements within Hero Corp aren't altruistic. And even if they ARE rotten by association, we shouldn't really know this in the lower levels. I'd think in the sub-30 game there would be a few potential stories that could be told.

You know, I had viewed the whole Crey connection as some kind of publicity stunt designed to curry favor with the press or to influence public opinion in some fashion.

Hero Corp is an international company. Paragon City is just one potential client out of many actual clients that Hero Corp has. Prior to the war, they were making good enough bank to employ Luminary the First, and to successfully convince multiple governments of the benefits of hiring them. Paragon City was more like an advertising coup - Hero Corp being the company that brought order and prosperity to the chaotic and uncontrolled City of Heroes.

The loss of their headquarters would be a blow to the company but I don't see them ending up in the pocket of the Countess as a result. If it was Crey Tanks that razed the building the first time then I figured that it was because her real goal was to "polarized the city, with many seeing Hero Corps as a magnet for danger and controversy and others saying that the city’s existing heroes were afraid of competition."

I see it as the Paragon Protector program being in a fledgling state at this point in time and what the Countess really wanted was to prepare people to accept the idea of a Crey-sponsored meta-human organization. If they got Hero Corp in their pocket, it was originally intended to be as a source of raw material for the Paragon Protectors program; something Hero Corp was not cognizant of. The Rikti War both ended the partnership and gave Crey a more lucrative and reliable source of raw material for the project.