The Well, Praetoria, and Incarnates; Problems with Writing?

Is that so? Because I specifically remember asking for more Praetorian zones myself.

Case in point,

You've just stumbled onto something that really ticks me off about City of Heroes storytelling - it treats us all as human. Sure, it tries to be coy about it and not say the word, but it treats us like creatures that are human in all but name. Dr. Graves' research claims that we are susceptible to mental control (um... Automaton?), when we are depowered we lose our ability to fly and go intangible, whereas my ghosts would lose the ability to become corporeal and interact with the physical world and so forth.

But I think the most funny instance I saw recently was in the Cape Mission in Hero 1's memorial. I entered the room with the capsule, and the Rikti Scout who has stolen the letter looked at this and exclaimed "Human: Too late!" Human... Really? Really... You look at THIS and you get the urge to call it human? Dude, that thing's more alien than you are... And YOU are a human, too!

I get that it's not easy to write a story arc for a "generic insert your name her and alignment here" character, but much of the old story arcs manage to do that just fine. In fact, I manage to do that just fine in real life. I know a fair number of people that I've met in City of Heroes, and for most of these, I know nothing but a global name. I don't know if the person is American, I don't know if the person is an adult or a child, I don't know if the person is a man or a woman, and I usually feel too awkward to just ask out of the blue, so I speak with these people in ways that simply avoid making me say things in which the information I don't have would be relevant. If I can do this in casual, real-time, off-the-cuffs conversation, then surely you can plan a story to avoid relying on variables ahead of time.

This is what pisses me off about Pandora's Box, the Origin of Powers and the Well of the Furies - they represent an enforced communal origin for no narrative benefit, with its only reason to exist being that it's somewhat more convenient to write if you have fewer variables to worry about. And it just hurts the game's overall story.

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.

Your selective reading puzzles me. If you read the top of this thread, the rock thread, and several others you'd be more than aware that I've suggested many and varied options for change, so calling me on unconstructive feedback is simply silly.

As for the Miller's hubris, there was a recent video posted here that I cannot find - otherwise I'd have linked it - but my take on that was exactly what I stated here and I recall there were several other posters with that view.

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

I was discussing something like this with a friend of mine last night - that putting words in our mouths. He was lamenting how his character, into whose personality, mannerisms and philosophy he's put a lot of work into, would never tell the dead to just shut up and get to the point. "You LISTEN to the dead." was I believe his exact quite. This brought up my own problem in getting Stardiver from the above post through the levels, as she out-and-out can't speak.

I've discussed this with a few other people and have come to the belief that "dialogue trees" would work much better if they described actions, as opposed to putting words in our mouths. For instance, a dialogue option that said simply "Threaten $target." would be far superior to a dialogue option that says "Do you have any idea the kind of pain I could inflict on you?" The former, while terse, is broad enough to where you can claim your character said anything you wanted, from brutish, guttural grunts to eloquent, elaborate threats to disgusting, sexual advances, and it's a one-size-fits-all solution. The latter, by contrast, is very specific to a selection of characters that may not fit every kind of character who's likely to threaten.

Now, obviously, choosing to play an entirely MUTE character who communicates entirely through emoticons like O_o and ^_^ and P_P and U_U and so forth is a step too far and occasionally I'm going to have to go through some dialogues just as a necessary evil, but the thing is... The old Launch arcs kind of sort of work for a character who doesn't speak, because they don't make my characters speak. Contacts seem to infer you communicated some kind of information, but the game never depicts you doing this. It's the equivalent of clicking Use on Barney and having him say "Hey, catch me later. I'll buy you a beer." It works.

Dark Astoria, from what I've seen, is fairly inoffensive in regard to dialogue trees if you ignore the optional prompts for extra information, and a SIGNIFICANT improvement from the empty-headed jock we're forced to play in Dr. Graves arcs, so that might be an acceptable compromise, but I'll have to see more of it to say for certain.

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're referring to the Surviving Eight recap video that was posted recently, I believe. There, he describes Positron as very intelligent naturally, very tough because he "has armour" and also very powerful at the same time. The feedback I saw off this was something along the lines of "Oh, he has armour, does he? My Rad/Rad Defender has armour. Can he be tough, too?"

I'm not actually saying that makes Positron a Mary Sue or not (I'm actually thinking not), but it does kind of rub it in our faces that signature NPCs can have blasts, support powers AND armour while we can't.

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.

I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that your defender isn't tough when you can shrug off bullets and energy blasts. "Armour" isn't just about toggles. It's one of several perfectly legal ways to justify being able to take a punch from anything bigger than a hellion.

So yes. It's entirely fine to say your blaster is wearing armour.

(That said, I'd love a blast/defence AT. Blasters aren't quite right for the classic "power armour" style character.)

I'm wincing at myself for calling anyone on anything. I come to the forums to read and discuss issues, not posters. So you have my apologies for that.

(Good job on your constructive feedback. I don't read every thread, and I hope I never do. Another reason for me not to focus on any particular poster.)

It's one of those moods that affects authors every now and then - to have one over-arching thing that everything they previously did fits into, thus everything makes 'sense'. I almost never see this work well when it's introduced after the fact, in a "here's what was actually going on" kind of way. Particularly when you retcon things that clearly weren't part of the mythos into being part of it.

I mean, there's a reason why retcons elicit such a reaction from fans.

I would venture to say that this kind of thing is never, ever a good idea. I venture this opinion based on the human ability to recognize patterns in everyone who has ever tried this in the past.

I mean, unless where they're going with this is that the Omega slot is us transcending the Well, destroying it and scattering its power to all of humanity so that never again will entities like the Battalion be able to hold the threat of absolute dominion over our heads, and never again will people like Cole be randomly gifted with penultimate power by a lunatic puddle. That's the third option any true hero (well, or villain, once you remember that you should never attempt to eat a power source larger than your head) would take. The third option. Not rejecting power, or dancing for the Demiurge's amusement, but punching it in its fat metaphorical face.

I expect that'll be part of Issue 30: "Come Back, The Writers Are Out Of Rehab Now! We're So Sorry!"

You may be on to a way of "solving" a good bit of the problematic Well lore here, JC, if that turns out to be the case as later events unfold. But it also highlights another important point:

There is often no way to tell who is lying, and who is not, within the game.

The Menders and the Letter Writer appear to take differing points of view. How does one resolve that? A LOT of emphasis is laid by many folks on the fact that "Mender Silos" is an anagram for Something Else--- but is that really a be-all-and-end-all clue? For crying out loud, Statesman is an anagram for "Satan Stem!"

Given that Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark betwixt the Menders and the Letter Writer, can we trust the word of others in different contexts? If the Well can seize you and make you talk, who is to say that Lady Grey (an anagram for "Gayly Red;" obviously a Commie!) is not possessed by the Well and telling us that "the slow path is perfectly safe, yeah, that's the ticket."

In other games, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted in processing information and formulating a plan of action. That usually isn't the case in CoH, although there have been a few times in which your contact gets a Little Wacky, and other times in which you are merrily sent off to a mission that turns out to be A Trap. Most of the time, I am required to take at face value some things that I would otherwise be fairly dubious about, just because the game mechanics require it.

Further, it also turns out that NPCs can actually "change sides," which raises the question as to just when what they have told you ceased to be reliable/the truth. And I also remember some hints being bandied about that a) Hamidon enhancements or b) exposure to the radiation in the Hero Respec Trial might turn out to have "side effects" (mwah ha ha), although thankfully, this was not pursued (and don't get any ideas now, Devs! )

So we shall see how all of this plays out with your theory and the Well, JC.

You scored a LOL with that, Shadow.

You also made some very good points about retconning.

That would be a clever way to salvage the story without having to claim it was all a dream or something equally desperate. All of a sudden, it turns out the Well was not sentient at all, just a source of power, and what was talking to us and using us was "don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain."

Wait, what was I saying again?

Seriously, though - think about it. Imagine for a moment some kind of semi-sentient cosmic parasite which has the will to exist, but no power to manifest. Now imagine if such a thing has managed to latch onto the Well, this abstract source of power. Because it is not worthy, it cannot act on its own, but because it is a parasite, it can infect others and manifest through them. It offers its power to those who are ambitious enough to take it without asking questions, but its power is tainted, corrupted. The parasite lives inside the well and by spreading its power, it poisons the champions who draw from it, and thus controls them.

Yes, it's a nasty, unpleasant storyline especially for those who've already binged on the Well's juice, but consider the larger implication for a moment - if there's a sentient being behind the well which is itself not all-powerful, then this being can be defeated and removed, and the well can once again be "purified" and left as a source of pure inspiration with no thought to poison it. Yes, it means we've been drinking parasites all this time, but that can be cured. If it CAN be cured, then the storyline still leaves the door open to possibility, and it does so without actually contradicting itself in any way that I can think of off-hand. Hell, this thing can even be said to be playing the Batallion for fools. It has the power to be all-knowing and all-seeing, after all.

Yeah... Been there, done that, and the results are... Not pretty. A while ago I was determined to paint nearly all of my heroes as being part of the same broader organisation for... No real reason whatsoever, and for a while it looked like it was working. Then I gained a bit of perspective and I realised the kind of mental gymnastic required to force every concept through the same hole, as it were. In the years since, I've been slowly freeing my older characters from this bond by simply taking out unnecessary mention of this organisation from their backstories, and this has been incredibly liberating. All of a sudden, these characters are free to have much more believable relationships which are not driven by the need to put character A in situation B at time C because the plot said so.

Moreover, this is one of the benefits of having a large consistent persistent world - you can imply that certain results are all derived from the same common cause as a mere allusion without having to say it, and thus let your players draw their own conclusions. There are, for instance, rumours that Mayor Spanky made a deal with the devil and that brought much of Paragon City's success, but I haven't seen this specifically confirmed everywhere. That never really comes up, but if it did... Who's to say it wasn't the Circle of Thorns that he made a pact with? Or maybe the Banished Pantheon? Or maybe neither, maybe the Insert Name of Vengeance were involved. It's loose enough to be subject to interpretation and at the same time... It really doesn't matter, so it realistically COULD be any of the above.

The real irony to much of City of Heroes' storytelling is that the writers seem aware that they need to pander to our egos and let us win by punching out Cthulu, and they do this on a very superficial level. For instance, when you run the Maria Jenkins arc, every NPC you team with will tell you "This is YOUR story. I'm just here to help. I promise I will not steal your glory. This is not my fight. I will not overshadow you. You are awesome, and probably more awesome than me. This is your story. Now please stop complaining about it!" to the point where it actually makes me feel bad to read it, like we raised such a stink that the writers were left shellshocked and scrambling to praise us on pain of death.

But that's still just superficial pandering, with the broad strokes stories still paining our characters are the minuscule underlings caught in a big fish game run by the signature NPCs. They are still the movers and shakers, theirs are the high adventures and the moments of glory. We're just a face in the crowd, praised out of one side of the narrative's mouth and sullied out the other. There seems to be this profound disconnect between storyline presentation and storyline intent. The writers seem to genuinely want to put us over strong and make us appear big and powerful, yet they also seem to genuinely fail to comprehend that their basic story structure is simply not conducive to that.

In short, just being told we're awesome isn't enough when the events that make up the story treat us like... Decidedly not awesome. Being told I'm godline doesn't matter when the writers intend for me to be stoned to death by ordinary people, as it were.

And then there's this. Thank you for putting a smile on my face

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.

M-E-N-D-E-R---S-I-L-O-S
1-2-3-4-5-6---7-8-9-10-11

S-O-M-E-T-H-I-N-G---E-L-S-E
7-10-1-2-?-?-8-3-?---5-9-11-?

Uh. No. No it isn't.

S-O-M-E-O-N-E---E-L-S-E
7-10-1-2-?-3-5---?-9-11-?

Nope, doesn't work either.

Conclusion: Theory mongers are high.

I'm thinking of the new Villain tutorial in particular, which requires that you either break someone's arm, break their leg (why are these separate options when they're pretty much the exact same thing?) and then something about threatening the Longbow grunt. The options I want to see:

1) Persuade him to tell you what you need to know.
2) "Persuade" him to tell you what you need to know.
3) Threaten him.

The "alright, alright, I'll talk!" reaction is slightly inappropriate with the first route, but oh, well. Turning a fake decision tree into a real one is a lot harder than just writing more vague text.

It's an anagram of Lord Nemesis. That was just an attempt to save us all a spoiler that Ramiel pretty much spoils anyway.

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.

Yeah, the less everything fits together perfectly, the more realistic it seems. Real life has odd wodgy bits poking out every which way. Imperfections improve the whole - provided you don't try and obsessively explain exactly what's really, truly going on. There's a certain level of agreed on truth that needs to be present to really get anywhere, but you eventually cross a line where it becomes stifling.

All I can think of is that they may not have tried to write a crossover (with another writer) before. You learn a lot from that kind of thing when you both bring your own characters and preconceptions with you, or, at least, when you have a Big Idea Which Will Be Totally Awesome You Guys Seriously. Specifically, you learn that Internet collaboration is the best, since this reduces the instances of writers stabbing each other.

Well to be fair, calling a Rikti human is kinda like calling a human a neanderthal. They consider themselves more evolved.

I find your ideas spot on and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

He is Nemesis. This has been stated.

The letter writer shouldn't be trusted with the fate of the world either. That's all I'm going to say to avoid spoilers.

The difference is that whoever wrote Spanky's story either knew what his deal was, or intended it to be deliberately vague. The common cause has to be decided up front, even if it's not revealed to the audience. You can add in unforeseen results later, but you can't do it the other way around; that is, you can't just show the results, and come up with a common cause later.

I think the real problem is that they frankly suck at writing epic. We tell them we want to feel powerful, they bring NPCs down to our level, so rather than making us look powerful it makes the NPC look weak. We want to punch out Cthulhu, but they don't have the resources to let us actually do it, so Cthulhu puts on a human suit and we get to punch him out in the mission text.

Well, in all fairness, I was too mesmerized by his hairdo to notice the "Hello! My Name is Nemesis" badge he may have been wearing.


And that was well played there, thanks.

It does illustrate the conundrum... who is telling the truth, if anyone, and how can you tell... without it being obvious because it is now Too Late?

That makes for an interesting story

Hey, hey, hey!
*I* coined Puddle of Mild Annoyance

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.

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

Apologies, Alpha

I just mean that the Rikti have more in common with humans than Stardiver does. At least they have organs and tissues and brains, whereas Star is essentially an animate statue powered by condensed solar energy. And she LOOKS like it, too. I can understand seeing someone like Spock and saying "You, human!" It'd make sense - he kind of looks like one. It's quite another thing to look at Vger and conclude that this giant space ship clad in an energy cloud MUST be just an oddly-shaped man, to quote Taz the Announcer.

I could have told you as much even without spoilers (which I haven't even seen yet) just from the arrogant, presumptuous "I'm right and everyone else is stupid and wrong" approach he foists on us through his letters. Maybe I'm just a contrary kind of guy, but the more someone tells me how I'm destined to be his ally and how I should be smart and be his ally, the more I want to hand his letters to Mender Silos and go "Here, does this help?"

Of course, of course. Spanky is one of Rick Dakan's old "story seeds," and he and his team went through a lot of trouble to keep everything consistent behind the scenes. My point, though, was that by keeping him consistent yet vague, it left the door open for the character to be interpreted in a variety of ways, as well as for the writers to ret-con him on the down-low. If we never knew the truth to begin with, then it's not a ret-con, at least not on the same calibre as claiming "everything you thought was wrong."

More than anything, my point is that even if you know that everything comes down to the same root cause, you don't have to explicitly define it if you want players to have some creative freedom. It's true that Incarnates, the Well and so forth have been with us since probably Rick Dakan, but for the longest time, they weren't a problem because their definition was vague and as such never got in the way.

"Suck at writing epic" is a harsh but fair appraisal, I should say. "Epic" in general seems to be badly misunderstood, or perhaps badly misused. There seems to be this idea that "epic" just means a zillion people in the same place, and while that may have been its original literal meaning, that doesn't necessarily make for a good story or, more crucially, for a good BIG story.

In my eyes, an epic story is one where the antagonists are put over strong, but the protagonists are put over even stronger. A clash of the titans, if you will. It is a story that does not end in a whimper or a fade, but one where two major forces are built up, praised up and eventually slammed together in a spectacular showdown.

The crucial element here is that both sides need to be threatening, respectable and impressive, and that's simply not what's happening, at least outside of Dark Astoria. We're taking turns between demeaning the players and then demeaning the NPCs until it feels less like an epic clash of the titans and more like a parking lot brawl between two drunk bums.

I've actually tried writing crossovers, but in the case of my attempts, the writers I crossed over with were still alive and active and thus available for consults. I couldn't imagine trying to use other people's characters without their direct input since I just KNOW people who care about what they write are quite particular about how their characters are presented.

At the very least, crossovers need to be written with a great deal of respect for the source material. That's another writer's work you're wiping your feet on, and a certain amount of respect needs to be shown. And killing off said other writer's characters for no reason other than because you needed a shock death is to respect what an angle grinder is to tickling.

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.

All of Praetoria is also linked with the Well, and how we make Incarnate progress is through Praetoria, at least at this point. Tyrant is the Well's champion and his iTrial allies have been boosted by his power to be god mode sues. I suppose you could make Incarnate progress by taking down Malta and Council and so on, but that's really not the Incarnate 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.

What you say is true, however, are you required to run through Ramiel's arc to begin your path to Incarnate power? Can you not unlock all of your abilities without ever setting foot in Oroboros? Do you have to converse with Prometheus to participate in any of the trials?

I understand your viewpoint with regards to the storyline, but if you choose to proceed with said storyline, then you choose to be beholden to the "puddle of mild annoyance".

Edited to add: There's also no reason why you can't turn your back on the Well entirely and use what knowledge you gained to forge your own path (completely free of the Well mind you).

With Issue 22 though, there's no reason to even be involved with the puddle for any story progression (unless you want to proceed with the Praetorian storyline).