Level 53 and weaker than a Hellion

Um, well... too bad for your argument that it's not a retcon.

Something speaks to us

Of my hundreds of characters, the only ones that will Incarnate are the ones for whom it makes sense. Same deal as the Patron arcs.

Cole Killed Recluse if I recall right, and Nemesis is a no-body.

Accordning to the devs, Praetorian Nemesis died as "a happy old clock-maker" and never became a Villain, and Tyrant murdered Praetorian Stefan Richter at the Well of the Furies, and absorbed the power of Tartarus as well as Zeus - which would explain why he seems to have his dictatorship set up like a version of Arachnos, but with cleaner streets

I want to quote this out of context because this is exactly where I am. Yes, we get it. You're very good at the Mission Architect. But while you're out having fun tying the powers system in a knot, I'm essentially sitting idly by, waiting for you to finish so I can get back to actually playing the game. The newer a piece of content is, the less there seems to be to actually do in it. Dialogue vectors, complex triggered ambushes, five-minute missions and more and more... When do I get to kill stuff? I didn't log in to watch a movie written down in text, you know. Especially when none of it is actually interactive.

Gimmicks are only good when they're used sparingly. When they're overused, the missions begin to feel cluttered and clunky and they take bloody ages to make. I'd rather have a story arc made of simple "defeat boss" and "click glowie" objectives over just one mission with a trigger script complex enough to get lost in. However "good" that mission might be, it's still just one mission.

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 game already provides a few of those in the 1-50 level range.

Servant as in "Slave."

The Devs were very thorough, too. I read in a Wiki commentary that Hero 1 had gotten his Incarnate abilities via the Lady of the Lake and the article concluded that the Well was "a" way to Incarnate abilities, not "the" way. The Devs then carefully made sure that the Lore was that ALL superpowers, not just all Incarnate abilities, were actually given by the Well, no exceptions. As that Noted Philosopher, Sigourney Weaver, opined in "Galaxy Quest": "Well, screw THAT!"

/Devs

What??

/Devs

What is worrisome is that the Devs do not seem to understand that the appeal of CoH is in playing beings with free moral choice who have superpowers they use to defeat the opposition. The Well as it is being presented effectively removes the free moral choice aspect RETROACTIVELY. They appear to think that if you get to beat up guys in a cool way, that fixes all problems with the Lore. They are greatly mistaken.

I'm not sue where you're getting this servant/slave thing from, when the game carefully spells out that the slow path to Incarnate power is the way to stay free from the Well's control - we're stealing its power - Tyrant's the one being given it in exchange for his free will.

You're so angry. I like that about you.

Remember the first Spider-man movie? There the Green Goblin is on his glider, taunting Spider-man on the bridge when a bunch of civilians start pelting GG with tire-irons and various other debris. He just shrugs that off and ignores it.

Such hokum, when anyone knows Osborn would REALLY have firebombed that crowd into shrieking, stop-drop-and-rolling cinders for even daring to address him. As I recall Dr Octopus was pretty bad about that too: for a mundane to even address Ock was to take one's life into one's hands. The Adam Troy Castro Spider-man novels were GREAT in portraying how labile these villains could be.

I have a big problem with how "nice" this genre is sometimes. I can tell you none of my villains especially have the slightest problem with seeing Liberty laying dead under the Atlas statue as States mourns.... in fact that's good for a giggle or three.

"Yeah, we killed her. And now.... we're here for YOU."

I've never had an issue with the Well being the source of all power. It's making it sentient that changes the dynamic for the worse.

Which wiki page or whatever mentions that all super powers were because of the Well? I want to take a look at it, never seen something that said that. Is this mentioned in game?

Complete the Incarnate trials up to at least TPN and then talk to Prometheus. He's a font of knowledge.

Basically, every sentient species has their own Well, and that's where their super powers come from. The Battalion has theirs, and they've got a habit of going around and killing other races' Wells and claiming their power for their own. Kheldians had/have their own Well too, but ours apparently still gives them power for living on Earth and doing Incarnate trials for an unexplained reason.

So, under this lore, the Lady of the Lake is just another 'agent' of the Well. Hero 1's sword is just like the MacGuffin we get from Trapdoor in Ramiel's arc that unlocks our Incarnate potential.

Prometheus alludes that the Wells are merely conduits to some greater force, a supreme being perhaps? But he doesn't go into it further.


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MoM, I can't disagree with you there. BAF, Lambda, and Keyes? (Not to mention Apex and Tin Mage?) My apologies, but those really don't come across as any more final a victory than the last half dozen times we stomped those bozos at the request of our Peregrine Island contacts. No cutscene or lavender text box from Prometheus telling us that we have succeeded in besting one of our world's mortal foes once and for all. Marauder falls, Marauder fades from view, Marauder (presumably) shows up in the med-porter on the far side of Neutropolis, and colors the air blue with non "Rated T For Teen" language expressing how very disappointed he is with this turn of events, Marauder gets an email from Cole expressing how HE is disappointed with Marauder's failure. The war goes on.

Anti-Matter during the very beginning of the KIR openly states that Neuron has been dealt with decisively (Tin Mage)

Battle Maiden was incapcitated during Apex and was driven away.

In MoM, we see Metronome is using Seige's body as his own, so unless Siege has a back-up? He's gone.

Nightstar is likely also (at least for the time being) permanently incapacitated.

Marauder is the only one who feasibly might still be kicking, but given he was beat on by a league full of Incarnate it's doubtful he'll be fit for duty anytime soon.

Prometheus states outright that "It's regretable, but you will have to eliminate Keyes." However, I believe speaking to him later states that Antimatter isn't dead, though again, given the beating he took? He's down and out.

TPN takes care of Maelstrom.

MoM puts Malaise and Praetor Tilman out, with the latter no longer even having a BODY anymore.

This leaves Praetor Duncan and Praetor Sinclair as the only things between us and Emperor Cole.

Alas, from Anti-Matter's own story arc, we can guess that his definition of "dealt with" with respect to Neuron involves embarrasment, humiliation, and demotion. If he's dead, he isn't suffering.

So was my original team to try that fight. A half dozen times in the course of an hour, before we got it right.

Quite a few, according to Maria Jenkins. "Siege used to have a body that was similar to Citadel's, but he long since abandond it once the new model Clockwork bodies came online. Now he hops from shell to shell for whatever he feels is appropriate for the job at hand. " He's an infomorph now, an artificial intelligence independent of any hardware platform. Lets be thankful for whatever controls are still in place that keep him form pulling an Agent Smith, and uploading himself to *every* clockwork on Praetorian Earth.

And if he's up, we know that Nightstar is up.

I can only hope. From the launch of Going Rogue, the writing has failed to portray him as an adequate foe for our characters. Beginning from when we kicked his lame Blaster-wannabe backside off the top of Neuron's tower, through all the tip missions where he's tried to appear as an agent provocateur. Mostly, he's been a loud-mouthed jerk.

No arguments here.

Ninjas and masochists and robots, oh my! But as I suggested in my earlier post, I can't count most of the Praetorian Guard as being any more out of the fight than Arbiter Sands was after his sub-pen defeat in the Faultline arc. Three mouse clicks and a zoning cutscene later, and he was back, up, and fighting.

This is pretty much the exact opposite of my thinking. Currently the Well's primary value to me is in it's ability to be ignored. Anything that makes it more recognizable as "The Source of power" is a negative. If it wants to be sentient, go ahead, just be sentient over there in the corner where I don't have to hear it.

Thankfully the trials and incarnate system give me a healthy freedom to do such. Currently the trials just "look" like parts of the Praetorian war, which I don't have a problem with, and the incarnate system just feels like a hybrid of enhancement slotting and the inventions system. I think when the time comes that trials involve us entering the Well's collective consciousness or somesuch, I'll probably just throw my hands up in disgust and take a break from my post-fifty character(s), if not the game.

The well being the source of all power jarrs me out of the character creation process. It does this so much that I barely feel like giving my characters legitimate backstories and identities and power concepts, that is, if I forget to completely ignore it(the well) in all it's forms.

In many games that have less open-ended character creation, the kind that pre-determine my character's abilities and backstory (or don't give me one) or have less-involved visual customization, I tend to just make a "Premmy", just a basic, simple concept, cowboy, samurai, robot, whatever fits into the game in the vaguest sense. Simple identity, good guy or bad guy And often, just "whatever I want to play at the time" because most of the "Creation" aspect of the process is done by the game's creators. Even if I like the setting, story, e.t.c. , I just can't get into the idea of "Creating" a character for it. I don't feel like I'm creating very much when what I do amounts to a coat of paint on someone else's car.

City of Heroes always felt much more open ended than any other game out there. Ninja-Pirate-Magic-Robot-Super Soldier is a thing you can do easily. I can waste lots of time creating that. The early parts of the game are great for that. The idea that this magical thingamabob being put in because someone just really needed to explain EVE-RY-THING sucks because it's more or less taking away much of my job. At what point am I no longer making the car, but just painting it? The Point at which where my character came from is laid out on their end, not mine.
No it's not, you know why? because all that stuff you said? that's supposed to be my job as the creator of the character. That's supposed to be relevant to my little bio box where I explain why my techno mage's Spell Programs work, what planet my alien comes from, and why my Fishman exists. The guy next to me with the powered armor? and that zombie chick? that's their jobs too.
It's darkness powersets and "The Netherworld" writ large across all ATs and powersets

Taking away the little FBSA cards was nice, framing the tutorial as "You are in town on your own business" is too. Going too far with the Well just dashes that all to hell.

Instead of the CoH world being just a fantastical place where all kinds of crazy stuff is possible in all kinds of ways, and everyone's idea can co-exist without the world collapsing somehow, there's just one, big giant midichlorian futzing things up. Why think much harder than
"This is Pointy Premmy, my Spines/Regen scrapper"
"So who is he?"
"A Spines/Regen Scrapper, duh......"
"Where do his powers come from?"
"What?"
"His powers"
"Huh? dude, I just heard spines was fun"

The more I think about it the more it feels like the Devs are Jossing what amounts to Fanfiction never intended to be relevant to the actual gameworld. Even as an RPer, I never expect my ideas for how my character's powers work to be taken seriously by anyone else but me and maybe the small crew I might run with. It's not a threat to the coherence of the game world because it's just my little fun I have off to the side of the game. When I'm not thinking like an RPer it becomes even less significant. Why did it need to be addressed anyway? If you're the type to think about that, you should have the freedom to come up with your own cosmology. If not, then it's not a problem for you. So why the well at all? Because it's a common misconception that a "Verse" is essential to super-hero storytelling. And It really isn't. Our current big two 'Verses came about more or less after big money-grabbing crossovers either as a justification for the continuation of said crossovers, or just organically. Next to none of the "Iconic" super heroes we know and love were necessarily designed to fit into a large shared universe at their inception. They mostly existed in their own worlds. Super-hero stories have always been deeply character-driven and MMOS deeply world-driven so It's one of those things you have to parse out at your discretion.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

These are two sides of the same coin. One without the other would not be such a problem. Let's examine.

The Well is sentient, but is not the all-powerful source of all super abilities. It is A source, and just one which happens to be convenient. It's malicious, facetious and probably evil, but hey - the source of OUR powers is greater, so we can take the Well for a ride, benefit from it and then double-cross it in a fashion not dissimilar to what happens with Protean at the end of the red-side clone arc.

If my super power is that I'm smart and I make gadgets, then I will eventually outsmart the Well and design a gadget to beat it. If my power is magic, I'll eventually develop a spell to defeat the well. If my power is brute strength, then I'll eventually find what I need to break to kill it.

If the Well is NOT the source of all power, then it can be defeated and its power taken. Whether or not this happens on-screen or in the actual game's narrative, it COULD happen, and I could therefore do it. Moreover, I can do it with MY OWN power, and hang the gains from the Well on my belt like a trophy, proving that, in the end, Sam is strongest there is.

Alternately, the Well is the source of all super abilities, but it is not sentient. It is simply the personification of the abstract natural phenomenon of abnormal power. Magic, technology and good breeding still exist irrespective of the well, but its power is inspiration. It inspires us to develop our own powers, it inspires us to create, to think and to invent, it inspires us to train our bodies and exercise our mutant powers, it inspires us to delve into the ancient lore and comprehend the old texts, it inspires us to be better.

But it does not MAKE up better. At no point does the Well give us any actual power. All of it is our own power, all of it is our own doing, all of it is our own achievement. Thus, the Well is a source, but not the source of power directly. It is the source of inspiration through which beings make themselves all-powerful.

The thing is still a powerful force, so it could grant some measure of esoteric power, but it should never be greater than what we already possessed on our own. That's why it needs people - because it isn't "super" on its own. Instead, it has the ability to inspire others to be super. The Well, then, becomes a tool for learning, training and motivation, and that leaves character progression consistent with our own designs.

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.

Probably through buying it in the Paragon Market.


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Personally I'd welcome a chance to retcon the incarnate dogs breakfast to specifically exclude the well of the malcontents because it's such a horribly written, broken story.

Let's not kid ourselves: This is the content we get for paying to be a VIP and it's some of the worst in the entire game. It's broken, it makes vast assumptions about our self-created characters and forces them down a path they many not wish to go.

To me this is the Devs saying "We know what you want and you're damned well going to like it, because we know best."

Yet most of this VIP End Game Content isn't more challenging, it's just made tougher by cheat mechanics and poor design and it's really not even very interesting. It's poor quality crud thrown at us with some shinys as an ultimate reward. Worse, it's not even interesting. There's no meat to any of the trials except the UG, just short sharp gimmicks that entirely consists of "rush here, do X, rush there, do Y, wait in the hospital for 20 seconds, rush there, wait in the hospital..."

GR failed to deliver, and Freedom is failing even more IMO.

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