Who *don't* you want to die?

I remember the old Faultline arcs when you have to rescue Fusionette all time, and she was going kamikaze attacking every mob. Such a blapper, her

I think they all should die and be replaced with new cool looking characters, with more spotlight, cool new TFs, awesome costumes and newest powersets.

I don't really want any of the main characters to die. I am not the kind of person that craves this sort of disruption to keep the game fresh.

That said, there are characters I care less about, and so would care less if they died.

I don't want Statesman to die. I don't like the character, and that's OK. That I dislike him is not a good reason to kill him off. I consider him iconic for this game in a way no other character could replace. It would bug me.

I actually like Back Alley Brawler's character. He's the only one that strikes me as "cool". He doesn't do much, because he was supposed to be retired. Killing the retired hero seems kind of cheap. See the complaints about what happens in SSA #3. (Spoiler averted.)

Sadly, none of the other characters have much depth to me. I don't know who they are, or why they might be cool or uncool. The next closest ones with any perceived depth are Sister Psyche and Manticore, and despite that I do know some things about them, I don't feel I know who they are, just what their history is. Nonetheless, I have some slight sense of attachment to them because they got married in-game.

Everyone else? If they died, I'd sort of shrug, unfortunately.

I would've said 'me', but Zombie Man beat me to it.

Oh, why not. Me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by G_Savior never really understood why people hate fusionette, while flamebeaux is delibrately made to be annoying as hell

Fusionette comes with multiple rescue missions and an Operative Jenkins AI. She's not exactly striking a blow for squishy heroes.

Flambeaux, between her tip missions and the Twinshot arc, actually comes out more developed. I kinda feel sad for her in a way.

I had fun telling Dr. Aeon, in person, that *I* wanted to be the one to KILL STATESMAN. Even if I'm not the one to fire the killing shot, or make the killing blow, I want to be the one who makes the decision that results in Statesman going bye-bye dead-dead. Yes, I'll freely admit that I have an Out Of Game reason for wanting to Kill Statesman (repeatedly) ... but that I also have an In Game reason for killing Statesman.

1. It puts Emperor Cole "on notice" that he's not as Invincible as he might like to believe.

2. It pushes Lord Recluse into the foreground in ways that he might not otherwise choose or be comfortable with.

3. Power abhors a vacuum. With Statesman gone, the Well of the Furies "needs" to find a new outlet for all that power it had invested in Statesman. Well right now there are tens of THOUSANDS of new Incarnate heroes and villains contending for the power(s) of the Primal Well. That means that with Statesman gone/out of the way, it is up to THE PLAYERS to step forward and fill his ... um ... boots.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

I didn't quite get down on my knees to beg them not to kill Positron, but it was pretty close. I gave John Hegner my best wide-eyed, hands on heart, sentimental pleading. He just laughed at me.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

The following program either sneakily saves him or absurdly damns him:

The Glory of Statesman Loyalty Program

Everyone but Statesman. That character annoys the hell out of me.

I can't see it being BaBs. Yes, the Dev who used the name is no longer there. Yes, Galaxy City is a raging inferno of rubble-aliens.

But he's the sole black guy. I think that actually saves him.

But let's take a look at the others.

Citadel - Okay, how do you kill a robot? Sheer amounts of damage, just like anyone else. The difference is, he can easily have a backup of his entire program sitting somewhere waiting for a new body to be built. So killing him would fulfull the requirements, but it's kind of pointless.

Numina - She's already dead. Sorta. While they could lay the ghost to rest/banish her/absorb her into a mystic doodad to power it... it doesn't have the same effect.

Miss Liberty - Yes, because she's not in Kick the Puppy territory already. Pass. (Side note: What's Lord Recluse's reaction going to be to the end of part 3? That was his niece.....)

Positron or Synapse - Honestly, I've seen so little use out of these two that it would be barely noticeable (for me, at least) if one of them bought it. Positron has already technically died once in the comics, and been brought back, and who knows if Synapse was ever legally dead when Crey was experimenting on him? Frankly, due to their lack of overall use, it wouldn't be compelling if either one died.

Manticore - While it would be odd for the guy with no powers (yes, yes, I know, Teleport Arrow... you know what I mean) to die, I could see him sacrificing himself for the others, especially his wife. But I could just as easily see him living. He's effectively the Batman AND Green Arrow of CoH, so he's prepared as hell for everything.

Statesman - His death would be major, at least as far as in-game reactions would go. Yes, so would any of the others, but Statesman is the man, as far as heroes go. He's the biggest, baddest one of the surviving eight. So honestly, I see him being the one to die.

Frankly, though, as long as they don't kill BaBs, I'll be cool with it.

Not Back Ally Brawler.

Not Statesman.

Any one of the rest would be fine.

1) Citadel, because I like the personality I have imagined for him.

2) Back Alley Brawler. This one's more complex. Unlike most players, I don't much care for the character. First, I contend, contrary to what my forumites claim, that he has no more (or less) personality than any other signature hero. The combination of aging, "I'm gettin' too old for this" senior crimefighter and infallible, Samuel-L.-Jackson-style street-level bad***ness that the forums attribute to him is primarily something created by the minds of forumites. Second, I just plain despise that kind of practical experience, has-seen-everything, never-makes-a-mistake, "hip" hero. Third, he has an ugly and jumbled costume design, particularly for a character players have annointed "the realistic, street-clothes hero." (I'm not sure that was the intention with him, but if it is, he deserves better and more interesting street clothes.)

Fourth and most importantly, for better or worse, BAB is "the black superhero." If he's killed off, we'll get two types of feedback, both of which I find irritating and neither of which I consider fair. First, we'll get endless posts of tvtropes links about how "the black guy always dies first" and about how predictable the whole thing was. I despise this kind of jaded, adolescent fun-killing. Second, we'll get a more nuanced but equally unfair set of posts claiming that he was killed off because he was black and that by killing him, the devs are contributing to wicked cultural phenomena. We've already seen things along these lines; when an incredibly minor character was killed off in a recent story arc, we had posts flinging around tvtropes/internet-ism abbreviations for "they killed a female character," arguments that it was wrong to kill a female character, and arguments that by doing so, Paragon Studios was wicked and sexist. It'll only be worse if killing off a character whose death could be occasion for outrage is the capper of a months-long story.

Fifth, maybe there's a writer on the dev staff who can make BAB more interesting than the character players have imagined him to be, and it'd be interesting to see what could be done with him. There are a lot of directions that character in particular could go, far more so than many of the signature characters, partly because he doesn't have a lot of in-game development.

(As an aside, the forums' attitude toward even the best of the in-game writing has gotten so hostile lately that it'll be a firestorm of hatred around here regardless of who dies. Having it be BAB will only make it worse.)

3) Sister Psyche, for similar reasons to BAB. She's the character I most despise, portrayed in every metagame depiction I've seen of her (comics, novel) as a tempermental, pompous, emotionally explosive jerk, yet we're still supposed to feel sympathetic to her for some reason. Still, for the same reasons that killing BAB would be troublesome, killing her would be problematic (though I don't think CoH would receive negative out-of-game-community press for killing her, as I think it might for killing BAB).

All of that said, I'd say there's about a 90% chance that the character killed will be Citadel (since the devs don't seem to have any particular interest in him) or Back Alley Brawler (since he appears in the smallest amount of content of any of the Surviving Eight and because his trainer-zone has been removed.) Assuming it's one of those two, I'd give it about a 70% chance of BAB and a 30% chance of Citadel.

If it's Citadel, I hope Back Ally Brawler gets a level 25-30 TF.

I dunno didn't the devs say it took some effort to rewrite things to work the character out of the game? I know I keep revisiting this point but it really does provide a fairly solid bit of evidence. BAB has no Task force and no significant missions, just a few villainside. Taking him out of the gameworld just means one less extra trainer, whereas most of the other signature heroes take considerably more effort to off.

While from a story/character perspective I don't want it to be BaB, I would not miss the version of him that appears in the story arcs villain side. Until we got the iTrial version of Antimatter, he was what I considered a ridiculous mishmash of over-the top powers. He's an EM+SS/Invul AV, but oh so much more. His Total Focus, Energy Transfer and Hurl are all AoEs. His Handclap doesn't just do damage, it does as much damage as his Foot Stomp. He made what was then his Praetorean version look like a total chump.