SSA Favoritism or "Dammnit writers, throw Heroes a bone!"

Have the Devs said that the villain characters running part 5 are going to be the ones to kill Statesman? Or are they going to just be there when it happens?

And frankly, I still have trouble buying Darrin Wade as the mastermind of this. (No, I haven't run the villain parts of the SSA.) I mean, okay, sure, his end goal of releasing Rularuu is very over-the-top villainy. He's a moron to expect any sort of reward out of it, mind you.

But his reasoning for doing all of this is to gain actual powers instead of just using artifacts? Bwuh? Possessing an artifact is actually listed as a possibility for Magic origin characters, but because he can't shoot lightning bolts from his hands without one, he's planned all of this?

It seems a little weak.

Mind you, if Darrin Wade survives the entire arc, I'm going to be surprised. Statesman dies? Fine. We knew going into this that "ONE WOULD DIE". But if the heroes don't get to drop Darrin, then at the very least, Lord Recluse needs to rip out his spine and show it to him. And there had better be a monologue before he does it.

This is kinda a quick response but this really seems to be a case of heroes being dealt what villains have had to deal with from the very beginning of this game. On top of that villains, as in player characters, yet again are really only here for the ride and have no stake in the entire SSA. This is Darrin's plan, this is all about him, the villain characters just seem to be along for the ride. Nothing we do really matters at all in the slightest.

It also seems that people are running these arcs with the OOC knowledge of everything is happening and pretending like their IC reactions are not being influenced by them. There is NO WAY your hero wouldn't think that Manticore, the guy who is a member of the most powerful group of heroes in the game world, could save her. You are acting like your character would know everything that the player knows and that is simply not the case. You are acting like the person during a horror movie who is screaming at the screen for the person to not go into the house.

My final point ties into the iTrials and their "bad writing." Yeah it IS bad writing, you know why? Because this is an MMO the structure of the MMO means that you have to accept at some level that in order for things to be challenging the story must suffer. YES civilians beating up incarnates in the TPN makes no sense but in order to tell THAT story it must suffer for through the fact that it is still a game and it must be made challenging to the players. Any game is the same way if you think about it, you always fighting more powerful enemies and in some case it is literally a pallet swap from an old enemy, think about how many different kinds of wolves there are in Final Fantasy games. It is the nature of gaming.

After reading a lot of responses in this thread (which makes me happy to have this discussion) it is true that I am likely overselling how much the Villains seem to pull ahead in these arcs compared to the Heroes. (I did state in my OP that I was probably a little biased)

As for the OOC vs. IC? The character I have been running the SSAs with is a 50+3 with a fair amount of experience under his belt. I can still see plenty of holes where my character I think SHOULD have seen some of the twists coming. Now this is retroactive of course, which leads to another interesting thought:

I stated that I believed the arcs were geared towards folks unfamiliar with the lore. What if the arcs were also geared towards level tiers? At level 20, my character (the aforementioned 50+3) wouldn't have known the connection between Darrin Wade and the Rulu-Shin, even though I as the player are already fully aware due to having leveled the character to 50+3.

This could also explain the rather glaring gaps in common sense and logical thinking.

Well you have to understand that the story is told in this game relative to your level, which is the entire idea of exemplaring down. At level 40 you don't know what your character would know IC at level 50. I am not saying that it is a good system of defending it but that is the mindset you have to approach the game with if you want the story to make any kind of sense.

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb. Nyah.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Issen Villains 3, Heroes 0.5 (I have to give the Heroes some credit for stopping the missiles, but WHY couldn't a separate group try to retrieve Alexis while that was happening?!)

Villains get to launch one, so heroes don't even get their 0.5.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Energon What good is ruling the world, when there is no world to rule?

Why go to the effort of saving the world when you know some chump hero will do it for you? And while they're busy doing that, you can steal their stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Issen And honestly, if what you said is the case? Then it's incredibly poor writing on the part of the devs. Who's going to care about the Arc on Blueside if they don't feel motivated to play it because the writing forces idiocy?

The same people who care about most of Praetoria, the Incarnate content, Roy Cooling....ok, nobody cares about Roy Cooling.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arbiter_Shade Well you have to understand that the story is told in this game relative to your level, which is the entire idea of exemplaring down. At level 40 you don't know what your character would know IC at level 50. I am not saying that it is a good system of defending it but that is the mindset you have to approach the game with if you want the story to make any kind of sense.

No, it isn't, not anymore. If it was, you wouldn't be able to experience a Rikti invasion until level 45. It's told in a confusing mish-mash of level-based chronology and real-time chronology that will only hurt your head if you try to make sense of it and therefore can only be a Nemesis plot.

Remember, folks, Statesman's death in this next WWD arc is NOT the end of the WWD plot. There are still two more "issues" to go.

I get the feeling the villains won't be very happy when it reaches its conclusion.

Speaking of Recluse, what if this is HIS plot? I mean it didn't really occur to me, because Recluse doing something seems strange, but Wade can't be the real mastermind on this. It does seem to run up his alley. Wants more power, is scared of the Well, but he could take the powers given to someone else by the Well to boost his own. Also, I'e wondered if the real issue with this arc is not that the Heroes are incompetent, but that the Villains ARE competent.

Instead of just jumping at the chance to steal State's powers, they let some lesser villain group use the other obelisk and find its fatal flaw, that the creator didn't even know about. They've used established character flaws of the heroes to their utmost advantage, like Manticore's pride, and the Dirge of Chaos to weaken Sis enough for Malaise to get into her mind. How common knowledge is Psyche-Aurora? Seems like that would be a detail that the Phalanx wouldn't spread, Sis hid it from everyone in the comics if I remember right. Instead of waiting for Manticore to show up and kill Alexis in front of him, they took what they need from her and just killed her, all while using Blitz as a distraction. This really is a pretty calculated attack, meant to make sure the heroes can't get their bearings.

villians win? I don't see how Recluse and his buddys were involoved in this one. If anything the rouges killed those ppl.

If anything I bet recluse get all buttmad with "I was supposed to kill Statman" syndrome and beat up whoever.