Okay, let's sort this out once and for all. Lore: What do we do about it?

These two notions are precisely where I feel the City of Heroes lore has been failing and failing hard pretty much since CoV came out. Once upon a time, it used to be a story about THE CITY which simply allowed us to exist in it and follow it as we chose. Then someone decided that it had to be a story about US, and in one fell swoop overwrote a year and a half of description-writing tradition where WE would write our own stories for ourselves. Because we could. I didn't need to be told what I wanted, I didn't need to be told how I felt, I didn't need to have my dreams and aspirations written for me. What I needed was a setting within which to create my own characters and explore their backstories as I saw them. What I didn't need is to have creative control over my characters taken away from me to save me from myself.

Ironik is right - you very much CAN write a good, compelling, interesting story taking place in a rich, diverse, immersive world without actually trying to write the fine details for the player playing through it. Give us an interesting setting and send us through interesting events, but let US write our part in them and our response to them. I don't need a movie-going experience when I play this game, because I go to the movies to find ideas, but I play THIS game to make those ideas come to life. At the end of the day, what I create is far more important to me than anything the canon talks about, but there's no reason I cannot enjoy BOTH. So please - give me the opportunity to do that.

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.