What abilities should demigods have?

So the normal Incarnate system then?

Pretty much, but with more flowing hair and followers.

So This guy:


Crossed with the UNLIMITED POWAH! of this guy:


Edit: Man James Earl Jones is just downright freaking SCARY in that picture...jeez...no wonder the villain in the new Conan movie looks like a wilted wallflower compared to him, James Earl Jones looks like he's about to brutally kill everyone on set.

Unlimited power? His apprentice killed him by tossing him down a drainpipe. If that's unlimited power, he can keep it.

I used to fiddle with my back feet music for a black onyx. My entire room absorbed every echo. The music was . . . thud like. The music was . . . thud like. I usually played such things as rough-neck and thug. Opaque melodies that would bug most people. Music from the other side of the fence.

He had unlimited evil lightning bolt powers, but obviously not unlimited fly/hover powers.

That's a pretty good writeup, actually. Some of those powers are inherently godly and a bit out of place (precognition), but for the most part, these seem like the kinds of abilities I'd give to a person who fought his way into god-like powers without being a literal god.

If I had to define the status of a "self-made god" with a single word, that would be "prestige." These are the people whom the story should treat with reverence and who should always come off like badasses whether they win or lose. Beating an Incarnate shouldn't be a curb-stomp battle, like Marauder just stomping his foot and *poof* 20 of them get squashed flat. Even when an Incarnate loses, it should be a big deal and a great source of pride for whoever defeated him.

A big thing that I DON'T want to see is Incarnates being treated as cannon fodder. There's no point in earning the power of the gods if your enemies earned it ten times over and they still squash you like a bug. That's not godlike power. That's god damn suck. At least once in this game, I want the narrative to stop trying to invent threats that are so much bigger than us and let us be the biggest, baddest, most awesome thing around. There are ways to challenge the gods without being stronger than them in single combat.

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.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

That's actually exactly the opposite of what I want to see. In my eyes, a serious Incarnate should be by far the strongest thing around, and his or her enemies should have to team up against the Incarnate, look for forbidden, very dangerous weapons and conspire to draw the Incarnate into insidious traps.

I my eyes, inventing new enemies to make our Incarnates humble is as bad as - if not worse than - getting defeated by a rock. At least with the rock, some explanation is given as to why we're normally stronger than this. With a super giant monster, no explanation is given. We simply suck compared to our enemies. It's the game telling us that no matter how strong we are, the NPCs will always be stronger. As far as I'm concerned, the point of giving us the power of the gods is to make us STRONGER than the NPCs, at least in terms of storyline.

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.

You presented your own rebuttal to this quote in one of your earlier posts, where you said their strength/gimmicks was due to the sheer number of players involved in the trial. If Marauder (for example) didn't have powers like Nova Fist, or couldn't withstand more than a couple of hits, the players would say that he was too weak and was an unworthy opponent for a league-sized task. (Personally, I don't think Marauder in particular should require a league to defeat anyway, and I think you would agree with me there, but that is off-topic.)

I was defending my earlier suggested approach (maintaining archetype-specific strengths) with this in mind. With the current Incarnate content, there really is nothing special about being in an Incarnate simply because, despite having attained more personal power, that power is diluted by up to 23 other people with the same powers fighting seemingly-ordinary enemies that are somehow strong enough to stand up against that type of force. It is counter-intuitive: Our characters get stronger in their own right, but need more people to handle the content designed for that level of strength. Had the Devs kept some specificity to archetypes in tact with these powers, characters may still feel like they did something better than anyone else, while still needing the league to overcome the obstacles in the trials.

I hope Issue 22 brings a different approach. I would love if they took to heart the last sentence I quoted above, but the current powers do not allow for that. They are based around increasing our own power/resilience, or decreasing our opponent's. We are much more likely to see enemies of increased strength, much the same way as we do on the trials. However, the mere fact that we will be able to tackle them as a single powerful being will do wonders towards making us feel like Incarnates.

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 you are asking for, they've already done.

The Praetorian zone invasions that the Devs did had numerous (as in many more than 10) War Walkers, armies of IDF, and pretty much all those AVs (the whole group of Praetors themselves, then copies, then more copies of those copies).

It took a lot more than just 20 player characters to manage all of that, both incarnate and non. Well over twice that amount. Something that huge was a zone event for a reason.

The iTrials are targeted strikes, not one big all-out assault. Statesman doesn't have that power, Hell Emperor Cole doesn't even have that much power and he's backed by the Well. What makes you think we do, when we've just gotten halfway done with the iPowers?

I really, really like the idea of having at least one slot in the Incarnate tree that increases the specialization and differentiation between ATs. Genesis would make sense, as it could be referring to "how you started before you were an Incarnate"

Especially if it boosted caps a bit.

My ideas would be something like this:

Tanker Core: increases Resistance cap by 1 to 4 percent, minor resist/DEF buff
Tanker Radial: increases HP cap, minor HP buff

Brute Core: Increased Damage Cap, minor increase to Fury generation
Brute Radial: Increased HP Cap, minor HP buff

Scrapper Core: Increased Damage Cap
Scrapper Radial: Increased Critical chances

Defender Core: Increased buff strength (similar to Power Boost but lower)
Defender Radial: Minor team buff auras with zero endurance cost

Blaster Core: Increased Damage Cap, range buff
Blaster Radial: Increased Defiance Buffs

Controller Core: Increased control duration / increased chance for Overpower
Controller Radial: Boosted Containment damage

Dominator Core: Increased control duration
Dominator Radial: Increased damage cap and damage buff while in Domination

Corruptor Core: Increased Scourge damage
Corruptor Radial: Increased buff / debuff strength

Stalker Core: Increased Damage cap
Stalker Radial: Self buff (Heal, +DEF, +Resist, +Dmg) for a few seconds after entering Hidden status. (makes Placate an improved tool for self-protection and setting up attacks)

Mastermind Core: Increased Supremacy aura
Mastermind Radial: Increased cap to pet damage

First of all, that's an event. I hardly feel those count. The end of the original Beta included an event where a single Rikti AV held off 50 or so heroes, if I'm not mistaken.

Secondly, what you're saying is simply not true. "Something that big" is what Incarnates should be able to take on. That's the point of having the power of the gods. There's no point in having the power of the gods if your enemies have the power of the gods, too. The point of godlike power is the ascension above ordinary powers, and that doesn't happen if you give everyone else the same powers. You've increased the numbers, but no-one's power has budged relative to each other.

Finally, there is much leeway for a middle ground. While it's easy to come up with an excuse for why 24 people would need to fight a single instance of Anti-Matter, that doesn't change the fact that this is both humiliating and not what godlike power should enable us to do. It shouldn't take a zillion heroes to take on 16 Praetorian signature characters, because those Praetorian signature characters shouldn't personally have the power of the gods. It's not necessary, save for the need to have raid bosses which we don't need to have for raids to work. The War Walkers shouldn't be these unstoppable monsters. The Goliaths, maybe, but not the ordinary ones. The "Praetors" shouldn't be one-man armies. WE should be the one-man armies and they the people who need an actual, literal army to oppose us.

The whole balance is skewed in the wrong direction. It's not the NPCs who should be strong and we who should band together in armies to oppose them. The reverse should be true - WE should be the strong ones and they the people who need to band together to defeat us.

Nothing makes me think we do. I think we SHOULD. That's my point.

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.

Because this is a game, and they have to prolong stories. If they were to do something like this, we would only be left with our confrontation with Cole upon completion. Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if that happened because I am, frankly, ready to move on from Praetoria. As a business, though, the studio needs to prolong their story lines to keep people coming back to see what happens next.

Yes, it totally makes sense. Yes, I would love to grab a league and confront the Praetors as a group because they would not need to have gimmicks implemented. But for the reasons I listed above, I just do not see that happening.

To be fair, this is standard for a superhero universe. The X-Men, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Justice League, they are all interesting to the majority of readers because one member brings something to the table other than that of their respective teammates (at least not all of them). Yes, powers overlap here and there, and many of them accomplish the same things with different tools (Superman is bulletproof, Flash is fast enough to dodge bullets, Wonder Woman deflects them with her bracers, etc.).

Weaknesses are essential to any video game or story. Without them, the main character could defeat anything that got in their way until there was nothing left to confront them, at which point they become uninteresting and, in the case of video games (or comic books for that matter), unprofitable. Even if one is content to merely be a god among men in a universe where they cannot be challenged, that does not hold true for the majority of the population who would, upon reaching such a height, become bored. Granted, in this game, one can always roll a new character when they get bored, but in rolling a new character, you are creating something that will most likely have at least slightly different strengths and weaknesses than the previous one, which just emphasizes my first point: dealing with a new obstacles is enthralling.

Your examples are sound. Indeed, I feel that the encounter with Hro'Dtohz is as grand as any Incarnate Trial battle, more so in some cases. I did not mean to imply that the "one super-powered bad guy" was the only thing worthy of Incarnate power. Indeed, fighting off entire armies alone is equally as worthy.

And here is the crux. What you just described is a single player game. It is also the reason we have the ability to choose our difficulty: so that you can build your character to be able to go into a mission, alone, and be outnumbered by enemies that are above your level. I have no doubt that Issue 22 will bring some options for Incarnates to do this as well. But in an MMO, where the ability to socialize with a community is a big chunk of the allure, exclusively creating single-character encounters goes against the business model.

Well, yes, I went out of my way to put pretty much all of Praetoria's eggs in the same basket... But honestly, that's what I would see as requiring a league of two dozen Incarnates. Yes, that would end the story with a massive bang, but nothing short of that should require this many demigods to accomplish. The rest could (and should) be smaller tasks that require fewer people. To avoid having "one big bad" who outclasses all, these tasks can instead pit us against the enemy's forces.

Example time again: Suppose our goal is not to find the tallest bad guy in the lot and punch him in the face. Suppose our goal is to take over a facility and assert control over it. This would mean fighting its entire security force, breaking down its hard fortifications, circumventing its security installations and, all told, waging war in its courtyard. You don't need to have signature characters who appear strong enough to take over a world on their own to head the charge. That doesn't mean you can't have them, but have them be there as "minibosses," where the real trouble is that there's a frikkin' army in the way, not that there's an authority equals asskicking head of command that's stronger than his entire army combined.

I just feel that as godlike Incarnates, we should spend more time fighting armies and less time being the underdogs.

This is standard for standard super heroes, yes. I just feel that Incarnates should expressly NOT be standard heroes. City of Heroes is one of the few games out there that really gives me a sense of "journey." We start off as fairly underpowered heroes matching wits with gangbangers an hobos, we rise in power to where we lock swords with paramilitary organisations and private armies and we end up saving entire worlds by ourselves. The next step, really, has to be almost literal godhood where we ARE the top dogs without weaknesses where we transcend our lives as mere brutes solving problems by punching people in the face and start dictating the results of large-scale conflicts single-handedly. This more or less has to happen or the next step is not a step at all, but merely a trot in place.

The crux of my argument is that when we ascend into godhood, we shouldn't just become numerically more powerful. The scope of our adventures should change, as well. Like how the prince from Katamari Damaci pulls back farther and farther away from his ball as it becomes bigger, going up from rolling up thumb tacks and dice to rolling up cars and people to rolling up buildings to continents to entire planets, so our perspective and the scope of our adventures need to pull back and approach conflicts on a much broader, larger scale. And doing commando raids on Praetorian installations and being beaten down by rocks thrown by civilians just doesn't have the scope I have in mind.

I see nothing wrong with that. Realistically speaking, there are only two ways a hero's career could end - death or boredom. Either the hero gets killed in the line of duty, or the hero becomes so strong that he either retires or is left with no more lands to conquer, so to speak. I get that ultimate power is boring, and yet at the same time, "boring" is my ultimate goal. I want to bring my characters to a level where I could comfortably walk away from them, knowing that they've done all they could and had all the adventures they'll ever need. And if I ever need them, all I have to do is yell "RAMIREZ!" really loud and they'll come back to kick *** some more, then stop a fan and disappear once again.

I get that MMOs don't like to admit they have an "end," but I've always preferred a story that ends because it reached its ending than a story which ends because I got sick of endless sequels, remakes and never-ending ruined ending episodes. I'd rather reach an end and declare a hero "complete" (provided I can still play him regardless) than to be mired in an endless time sink grind that drives me away because I lose patience with it. Yes, true godlike status is boring, but it's also a good finish for a hero's career. I really don't want to worry about what happens at the end of my hero's career. I want to enjoy the journey to that eventual end, and being an unstoppable badass is a good bit of fun towards the end.

That's not necessarily a single player experience, though. At the very least, it doesn't have to apply to only a single player. Imagine that several characters come together and start telling stories. One has defeated entire armies, another has toppled empires, another still has saved thousands of worlds and another still has never been defeated. Just as they're talking, an impossibly numerous alien race invades the world. Alone, none of the aliens are a match for even one of the heroes. All of them together are just bad news for the aliens. It's not an easy fight just because there are millions of 'em, and each character is eager to show off in front of the others. In this example, the aliens are still a pressing threat, but not because their commander is a god so much as because there are millions of them and our heroes must stop them before their world is overrun.

I actually have an even better example from the recent Space Marine game. Multiple times, the badass machismo of the Ultramarines shines through. "The Orks have infested this structure thoroughly, but we can still clear them out!" "If we had a week, perhaps." or "We are Space Marines! Orks are no trouble!" "By the time we are finished, they will have killed everyone on this planet. We cannot let that happen!" At every step, care is taken to demonstrate that it is neither the power of the Space Marines nor their proficiency that is letting them down, but rather they will fail because the enemy is too numerous and there is too little time. Give them a week and they will win any war, but they simply do not have a week.

My qualm is almost entirely one of storytelling and encounter design, honestly. I prefer ego trip storylines that put me against odds which would be impossible for a normal person, but which I soundly defeat with flying colours. And when I am to lose as part of the story, I lose not because I failed but simply because no amount of godlike power could have allowed me to achieve that goal within the time given. I faced overwhelming odds, I was caught in the wrong place to help, I was delayed. This, really, is what separates the gods from the men. A man you can fight and defeat. The best you can hope to do to a god is delay him until he's too late to undo what you have done.

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.

Well said, Praetor Tow! Those puny weaklings should know better than to face the awesome might of the just lords of Paragon City! How dare they attempt to attack us! We'll show them the error of their ways!

Over the top response aside, we're already more powerful than 90% of the game. You can already play a god. Go wipe out half of the Council army and almost all of their inner circle of super-powered commanders on your lunch break. Go beat up aspects of a being that devours dimensions for his breakfast because a man in a lab coat asked you to and you have nothing better to do that day.

But as for the iTrials? You're in Godhood 101. You are at level 1 as far as the Endgame goes. You've bested all the threats in Primal Earth, but Praetoria and the Well is the bigger fish that swam on up. The Hero has to overcome in the face of adversity, that's the point of the 'superhero' story.

I don't doubt we'll get more things like what you've suggested as our characters get even stronger, but right now? We just started accessing this power and are only somewhat better than we were at level 50. Once we get around to the Omega slot? I can easily see what you're talking about come up in-game.

And you don't see how that's a tangled difficulty and progression curve? We go from level 1 to level 50 growing ever stronger, then all of a sudden past level 50 we drop back to remedial school. A well-structured path of progression shouldn't blindside toss me as fodder for the Word effect just to show me that, yes, the game can always cheat and humiliate me. There shouldn't BE a godhood remedial school at all.

My general point is that we're done with the trials and tribulations and being pathetic back when we were at a genuine level one. We don't need to be made humble, we don't need to be shocked awake and we don't need to be shown that no matter how much we've grown, we still suck. From a narrative standpoint, by level 50 we should be done with the "rookie ****."

I'm well aware of how you can spin it to make sense. What I'm saying is that I'm not looking for a justification for this. I just don't want it to happen. There are few things more depressing to watch than taking what is an otherwise competent, accomplished authority figure and dumping him into a field he hasn't the faintest idea what to do with. I know Michael Jordon is a great basketball player, but I DO NOT want to watch the mane play baseball. "Godhood" is not the perfect opportunity for our characters to be kicked back to level 1, comparatively speaking.

I guess that's my big problem with the Incarnate system. It should have been an opportunity for us to reach even greater heights, and instead the development team seem to have taken that opportunity to reset the game and flush us back down to bumbling rookie status. This is not what should happen at the pinnacle of one's powers.

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.

The paradigm that I wanted to address with the original post is actually part of what you're saying here. Should demigods be able to do something - i.e. one thing - that ordinary heroes and villains can't, or should said demigod instead be able to do lots of things that lots of different people can, but not at the same time? Looking at the selection of Incarnate powers that we have access to, it seems the powers team went with the latter. Rather than Scrappers becoming Scrappers++, they instead get the ability to blast, buff, debuff and summon pets, just as an idle example.

When I first saw the original design behind Incarnates, I was puzzled. How would I explain all my characters being able to do all these things? Xanta's powers are toughness and strength. How the XXX can she summon shadows? Well... The truth is that when we become Incarnates, I think we're supposed to grow into something more. Either we can submit to the story railroad and say we sprouted "I can't believe it's not magic!" powers, or we can say that our characters amassed a wide collection of artefacts, gadgets, spells, techniques or whatever, and they are thus now able to do so much more. HOW we got these powers is immaterial - we can always explain it. What matters is admitting that we DO have these powers.

To expand on my anecdote, Xanta's original design was just that - she's big, she's tough, she has a big sword. But when I started thinking big, I realised that JUST a big sword wasn't enough, so I ret-conned it into a magic sword that her adoptive father - the "mystic smith" - created for her. I then further expanded this to include magical armour, for the most part, so if I have to include summons and a reason why slashing with a sword causes people to catch on fire, then "magic artefacts" is what I'll use.

Like I said, explaining why we have these powers isn't the problem. It's making that first step and accepting that you now have these frankly abnormal powers that may really only make sense with a godlike character concept. But once I've accepted this, a question naturally rises: Just how deep does the rabbit hole go? Just how many different kinds of unusual powers should a demigod have? What kind of powers are we even talking?

---

Consider the following mental exercise. Pick one of your characters, preferably one that's designed to be more or less of a "street crime" level of power. Now imagine what powers this person would have if he became a god. That's essentially what I'm asking.

When we create our Incarnates, we're not creating new gods out of whole cloth. We are promoting already existing characters whose designs may not always be easy to fit into the storyline.

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.

Yes.

Demigods should generally be good at lots of things, but with just that, you're still simply a mortal with a broad skill set. There should be something, at least one thing, they can do that says "I wield divine power." Unfortunately, for lots of characters this wouldn't be a combat ability. Superhuman wisdom or foresight, for example.

In the context of us as players, I think the Judgement slot captures this the best. An eighty-foot-wide fireball that drops enemies by the dozen really says ULTIMATE COSMIC POWER, at least to me. The other slots are mechanically great, and most of them have more impact on your character's performance, but Judgement is the "I am an Incarnate" power, in my mind.

Overall, do the Incarnate powers we have capture the essence of being a demigod? Yes and no. Alpha, Interface, and the level shifts make us "good at everything", and the activated powers are all things that non-Incarnates can't do, so that's good. And like I said, I think Judgement is cool and thematic, but Destiny and Lore are a bit... odd. Conjuring ghosts and force fields aren't the first things I'd choose when giving my characters godlike powers.

While I love the look and feel of the judgement powers and feel they were a long time coming... I keep thinking there are other ways to be amazing without necessarily shooting great balls of fire, if I may say that. For instance, take Ben 10's character by the name of Paradox. He was a scientist who experimented with time travel, got sucked into the "hub of time" and after an eternity of going insane, he "got bored," became sane again and learned how time works. Right now, he can travel to any point in time or space and knows everything that will happen in the entire timestream. He's not a combatant of any stature, but he's still awesome because he's able to chat with you, pop over to an alien planet in the neighbouring galaxy, check out what the big bad there is doing, then pop back and let you know within the span of 30 seconds. Every time a major plot point comes along, he shows up to warn it and every time a major event goes down, he's there to witness it.

Now, I get that this is a combat-centric game so naturally combat prowess is what'll be the most visually impressive, but consider the following abilities which a god might possess:

*The ability to train other players to the next level personally without them needing an NPC trainer.

*The ability to speak with contacts directly irrespective of the contact's relationship bar.

*The ability to access any vendor in the game from anywhere (except on an instance).

*The ability to alter people's costumes in the field.

*The ability to set up his own difficulty settings personally without needing a representative.

*The ability to have a base all of his own without rent or the need for "prestige," where he could store items and resurrect.

*The ability to create Inventions without the need for a crafting table, as well as the ability to create (soulbound) components for them out of his "influence."

*Special dialogue options in all dialogue trees, highlighting either great respect or supernatural knowledge.

*The ability to be immune from harm for a short period of time - a literal god mode.

And that's just off the top of my head.

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.