Gods or Superheroes?

So before going to sleep last night i was doing my usual day dreaming [or is it night dreaming?] and i got thinking about this game and my characters and how far they've come over the years.

For quite a while we were seen as purely superheroes, beings with superpowers to save the world [or destroy it] and protect the innocent. However as time has gone on and more and more gods have been introduced to us, it has gotten me thinking that we are possibly turning into gods ourselves.

As generations go on, the people call us by different names. For example the cimerorans would call superheroes and the nictus gods, however in our time we are called superheroes now because the powers that were rare and not seen before back then are pretty common these days.
So my point being is are we actually turning into gods ourselves with these incarnate powers or are we simply evolving with the words to give some purpose to them?

A fully incarnated character now [as we saw ourselves in the initiation arc] would be seen as a god in our time, but by the time the whole system is released will it be so common that people will refer to it as the norm and thus back to superheroes?

Define 'god'

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I find that the game progresses through the levels from "person with powers" to "metahuman" to "super hero" to "godlike." Depending on where we are in character progression, we're one of these things. It's actually when we DON'T conform to this that I have a problem.

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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.

At least to me I do not feel as tho any character is a "god" or close to it. Granted they have neat new tricks to add to their power pools but as for what we had in the first mender mission where saw our future selves? Not even close. I have stopped hoping any of my heroes/villains ever become cosmic beings like Silver Surfer or Mr. Mxyzptlk because it will take the challenge out of any older content.

Tying the Incarnate system to trials completely killed the immersion for me that my character was in any way special and was on the way to becoming a god of any type. I thought the initial arc did a good job of portraying that, but the design decision to make raids the meat and potatoes of the Incarnate system disabused me of that notion quickly. Jumping around with 15-23 others with essentially the same "god-like" powers takes away any pretense of uniqueness that a "god" status should portray. The implementation of Incarnate power was done wrong in my opinion. The first arc was good, but it should be an individual journey in order to maintain the illusion that your character has been specially chosen by that stupid well. The reason as to why the well has suddenly gone against its previous inclinations and awarded visibly dozens of new heroes with its powers is at best tacked-on and trite. Why would there be dozens and dozens of gods?

So while the words say we're becoming gods, the actions say we're heroes (or villains, in my case) with a few extra powers.

When someone asks you if you're a God, you say Yes!

The game as a whole is approaching "god-like" power, since (thanks to Incarnate powers) our characters can now do a little of everything. And unlike a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, the Incarnate power numbers are very impressive.

That said, I have only one character who will be progressing through all the Incarnate powers, taking and using a T3 or T4 of every ability, because he is my one "phenomenally cosmically powered" being. With the rest, I have self-imposed restrictions on them that they will not break simply because it would clash with their story. Not every comic book character will contend with the biggest threats, and mine are no different. They may take on the minions of the big threats, but not necessarily the head honcho.

To me, God means Creator of a world. It could be the Creator as in the Scripture, or a scientist who spawned a Big Bang. It is a title, not something that require the power equal to x average humans.

I usually consider a low level character as a human who developed rare talents, and higher levels as a superhero/supervillain. Origins matter of course, for instance a low level science origin is a supreme being who haven't mastered her powers yet. A low level magic is one who is his early years in witchcraft studies.
Incarnates are incarnates. This means that in addition to "normal" super powers, they have more than one lifetime to develop their talents/powers, which of course matters.

If your character concept is "god" then you're a god. Thor's a god, and he still teams up with a guy with a bow and arrow.

I'm not going to start complaining about how misleading the Ramiel Arc is until all my Incarnate slots are unlocked, all my abilities of choice are at t4, and I still can't solo BAF and Lambda.

The only difference is what your fans think...
(And actually, that is what EU Damz focused on, hehe.... but we're all somewhat ignoring that!).

Personally, I'm waiting for this whole incarnate thing to play out more before I can really get the right idea for what an incarnate character is or isn't.
So far... it's just been some upwards adjustment for Electric-Knight's powers, but nothing that has set him that far above anything he already was. Once I see how more of the slots and powers play out, I'll see if only super super super cosmic-level characters will be getting them or not!

I'm not thrilled with the presentation so far, but we'll see what the new Dark Astoria brings... things may get much more fun and interesting for me!

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Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf When someone asks you if you're a God, you say Yes!

And this was the winning reply, of course.

Gods Don't Form Leagues

Let's face it, most gods don't need to be on teams with 23 other gods to feel, well, "godlike". Gods are usually solo badasses, and as Incarnates we feel this way when playing the normal content, but not so much in the iTrials, which exist solely to give Incarnates an appropriate sandbox in which to "play god." Oh the irony.

As others have said, it will be interesting to see if the new DA content will restore the sense of our characters being the stars of their own comic books, rather than being just indistinct soldiers in a platoon heading out to fight the war against Praetoria.

In Praise of Roleplaying

On a side note, I want to mention an interesting RP scene I saw being played out on Virtue a couple of weeks back. I was in the RWZ and a handful of characters, of all levels, were sitting in that "briefing room" and talking about the Battalion and all sorts of connected game lore. In fine RP fashion they made it feel real and immediate, like they were preparing for an important strike somewhere. They may have been doing this just to kill time, or to add their own context to an upcoming door mission, or who knows what, but it was really fun to sit and watch from the sidelines. I mean, it felt more real than anything going on in the iTrails.

The sad part about all this is that the game doesn't provide any means for players to go out and address the storyline in their own way. A team can't go out to another dimension and try to learn more about The Battalion. They can't go and cut the head off Arachnos as a pre-war precaution by leading a massive strike against the Rogue Isles. Or whatever. Instead we are left with only doing the missions pre-written for us and merely pretending to deal with the thousand other important things conntected in some way to The Coming Storm.

MMOs may be pretty fun today, but we've only barely scratched the surface of what could be done with this game format if truly creative minds got to work on exploiting the notion of "virtual world" for all it's worth.

I think as always those RPers lacking enough imagination are QQing for naught.

You dont have to run incarnate trials to gain mats. I have several characters who over the last few months have enjoyed the slow steady WST route to aquire notices to convert into threads and then into any mats I may need.

Ive only infact run incarnate trials with 2 characters, niether of which went into them until afte thier lvls shifts where +3 for it. I wasnt going in a burden to the team.

On the subject of Inc Powers and status. I dont have my mortal men learning them beyond a few minor perks. Or using pyro judgment as a super bomb from my batman time for those super powered big guy situations.

However among my Lore based RP characters( virtue forever) my oldest is the last of my first year characters and original main. His name is T'Keron Valmaz and he is the lord of demonkind fused in an unholy union through cosmic mishap with a mortal man of extra ordinary magical ability.

As a katana Super Reflex his power combo is not optimal, but that didnt keep me from enjoying him and pushing to 50 during the era when that was quite an achievment in itself for many builds.

I also recall that brief joy that was Perma ELude shortly after I made 39, and how it let me withstand the power of the crystal titan in eden even as my allies fell when our luck and ambrosia where stretched thin after a party wipe in our first rush.

Then came ED and then even after the rise of IOs it was hard to make his build feel as potent as say a dark SR or dark regen or kat regen. I spent alot of time tweaking and reworking his build over the years, trying to keep true to concept while finding a real measure of stand alone baddassery that would make all that time worthwhile.

Incarnate powers came and gave me the final peice of the puzzle I needed. As a weapon primary using powers like the heal pool for heal self was counter productive to fill the lack of self healing SR had. Body mastery gave me my energy recovery, but it was the power of rebirth that finally gave my character a well rounded defense set up on par with many more modern sets like WP.

On top of that Spiritual ALpha to add further to his extreme global recharge theme, his Elude is nearly Perma again.( well under 40 seconds, i can live with that down time)

When he stepped into Incarnate trials I found myself quickly eager to test him, to rise above the others. In lam I found that opportunity when I found I could often clear all the turrets while the team cleared the street and courtyard.

Hearing people ask " what happened to the turrets?" was always satisfying.

TO be blunt I find alot of people currently persuing incarnate power, or already wielding it, often are not the most effective players of thier characters, and seem to be heavily dependant on having all the incarnate powers to max tier to feel even alittle viable.

Personally if your looking for solid content to feel your new powers while still testing you by an older standard look to the shadow shard.

I find TFs run there even at level, can stress test many players to the point of rethinking thier builds even with incarnate powers buffing them up. Ruls and Storm els are not push over mobs and if your build can tear into them your definatly pushing cosmic class power. If they shred into you, no shame in that. better then you have fallen to them by the hundreds when they first came through years ago.