SSA 5 Discussion (And countdown till its live!)

This. Though it does look like States went out like an AE Baby as some have said, Wade clearly took his time and planned carefully while "Staying off the radar" as it were to avoid his plans from being preempted.

Still, a better fight would have been nice.

Also this again presumes that States didn't know what was coming and wanted to die.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I don't see why people keep saying "Did Statesman hate being immortal"

It'd make more sense for him to hate it, if he had been alive longer. He'd been alive for less than a century. That's not enough time to be all angsty about being immortal and outliving everyone.

There's people hitting the century mark in RL and they're quite happy to be alive, and they for sure outlived many loved ones.

The immortality is a curse mantra only works when you've been immortal for a few hundred years.

Statesman wasn't born immortal. He had a couple decades of life under his belt before gaining immortality. He's already watched the love of his life and his daughter die. That's enough to wear down otherwise strong people. On top of that, he's lived through his hometown being decimated by Rikti.

This story arc ties in rather heavily with the City of Heroes novels from years ago. It was pretty obvious from the second one that Statesman had pretty much given up on life when his wife died. Only the fact that he was nagged by Positron into joining the Phalanx kept him from being eternal emo boy.

Paraphrasing Chandler, the easy plan to stop is the one that was 10 years in the making, the one someone tried to get very cute with. The hard plan to stop is the one the guy thought of two minutes before he put it into motion.

Let me put it to you this way: in the thirty years or so that I was an active GM, I don't think a single one of my players would have fallen for this. I'm including the 10-12 year olds I introduced to the hobby.

I like how both of you have to take the worst possible interpretation. Statesman was neither stupid, or detached or arrogant. It's amusing that you insist on it as well.

However, you're both right, but only in the most basic sense:

Yes, Statesman was having an off day. His daughter was dead. However, his own dialogue when he goes to confront Wade shows that he wasn't being overly aggressive. If anything, he was in full control of his faculties. He fully intended to take Wade in and put him in jail. So despite whatever distress he was in over his daughter, he wasn't going to compromise on his morals.

However, if Statesman did indeed know that there was a trap in place, he had NO way of knowing what sort of trap it was. Remember, not only was Wade utilizing a second power-stealing obelisk, which only the PLAYER (and NOT the characters) know existed in the first place, he was using a long-lost ritual that Sister Arlia used against both Imperious and Romulus, a ritual NO-ONE knew existed until this SSA.

Statesman likely had every reason to believe Wade thought he had an ace up his sleeve. But honestly, even given the number of times Statesman has been captured or sealed (all of which were only temporary) none of them resulted in the loss of his power or immortality. So if Statesman knew (which is a distinct possibility, he's a centuries-old hero, he shouldn't NOT know), there was no reason for him to believe that Wade's trap would work, only that Wade would -think- his trap would work.

Again, the player has the advantage of being an omniscient member of the audience, thus, it's perfectly clear to us that it's a trap, and most of us guessed well in advance what the trap would be. But only because there was information given to us in a cutscene, with no way for the character to acquire that information.

Sadly, no-one in the CoH lore has Deadpool's level of meta-gaming. And thank god for that.

Heh, Banana McJammyPants also paid tribute to our fallen fellow tank

Thank you, Champion.

Yes, but that still won't stop them from saying it was obvious, since they the player know this, so obviously their character in the story arc must have some how found out all this as well.

What makes you think that? I only ask because the rest of your post didn't elaborate on this.

No matter how well the writing goes, suspension of disbelief is partly a skill, and partly a gift of the imagination that not everyone has. Those who have it, know it. Those who don't, blame the writers. Of course, sometimes we all have to blame the writers. But you can pick these people out after a while, because they blame the writers frequently, I mean insanely frequently. Writers ought to consider their criticisms too, of course, but only after the general audience has been pleased, and only if there's time. Some people take on the responsibility--or hobby--of revealing their criticisms, no matter how deeply buried or far a stretch. To attempt to please these people foremost would be to leap into one very miserable rabbit hole after another. A talented writer can destroy his or her potential by doing so.

I'm sorry, but I cannot believe Statesman would assume he was completely invulnerable to a trap meant specifically for him. We've seen Statesman get captured, KOed and de-powered too often for that to fly.

It would be one thing if Statesman was expecting a different sort of trap, or if he fell victim to trap-within-a-trap sort of deal, but Statesman clearly had no plan for any trap more cunning than Darrin owning a .22 revolver.

Even if I stretch my disbelief hard enough to accept that, it just makes his death pathetic because it sure looks like States could have been killed by any schmuck who bothered to plan ahead. Statesman is THE powerhouse of the CoH universe; if he goes down without a fight because someone found a magic scroll of Statesman-slaying, it makes the whole universe look inept.

Statesman, and we, deserved better.



Umm. I knew Batman. Batman was a friend of mine. Darrin Wade is no Batman. :-p

-D

Of course he isn't - he's left Batman trailing in the dust

That's probably because Wade got help noone else in the entire game (this includes Recluse, all the Patrons, even Emperor Cole and Prometheus) gets:

The power of deus ex machina. He knows stuff noone else knows, he has access to things noone else does because the writing lets him so he can kill Statesman.

That's not good planning, it's just clumsy writing. 'I can defeat you because I have this thing that just happened to be here all the time! Ta-da!'


S.

Walking into a trap you know exists because you're confident the trap is one you can handle isn't arrogance. Also, there's no signs of detachments. SSA4 clearly stated he's upset. But he's not allowing his anger or sadness to blind his sense of princples. Hence, no detachment.

Uhhh, no. Deus ex machina means he got a magic "I win button" that came out of thin air to solve his problems.

The second obelisk the players knew existed. The magic ritual to drain Statesman was revealed in that arc. Since the arc's intent was to show us HOW Statesman died, it's not a Deus Ex Machina.

As much as I enjoyed this arc, I do have to admit that Wade does do a bit of Deus Ex'ing. For example...what if anyone else had gotten to him before Statesman? Or...what if Statesman hadn't been alone? Or...what if Statesman had simply beaten the snot out of him before his trap went off? He also just happened to know that everything was going to lead up to this one point, without fail. Any number of things could have gone wrong in his plain to have thwarted him before now, but somehow his Xanatos Gambit came off perfectly, without a hitch. Well, except for the hero character...and soon to be the villain characters I am sure.

Side question...what was Sister Psyches part in all this? Was that just a personal grudge? Or was he just trying to get her out of the way until he could deal with her?

Ah you appear to be one of those people who doesn't engage in debate. (You disagree, but you do not counter.) Nevermind.

Hehe.

It's all not unlike Malaise's plan in part 4. For him, there was no promise no hero wouldn't have shown up and been able to do the same thing as Sister Psyche, possibly even more effectively, or that a vigilante type hero wasn't called in and wouldn't shoot him the second the dirge started playing, or maybe a hero who's power was to nullify all psionic powers and mental influences wouldn't be called on. His whole plan hinged on the idea that Sister Psyche and Aurora would not bring any help that could help, and had it not been for forced game mechanic limitations, his plan could have been easily thwarted.

Likely the latter and Wade now wants to either kill her to make sure she can't disable him with a psychic attack or steal her power too to basically give him a powerful mind and invincible body.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Oh, pish tosh. I'm becoming rather tired of this recent bid to quiet any kind of dissent by categorizing it as someone's inability to "suspend disbelief" and then ridiculing them for their supposed lack of such a skill (since any truly imaginative person is able to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, presumably).

I've refrained from criticizing the arc primarily because I think that they probably did the best they could given the tools they had to work with, the apparent dislike of the dev staff for the character of Statesman, and the requirements that the arc be a certain length. There were a lot of custom locations in that arc and I figure that if some of them end up in the architect that some small good will have come out of the thing.

None of that changes the fact: When I got to the end of the previous arc, the first thing I asked myself was the question that the mission contact asked - Why kill Miss Liberty? Even if he wanted her blood for the ritual, it wasn't necessary to kill her. What was the point. That most obvious answer was that he wanted to force a personal confrontation with Statesman.

If I can figure that out within thirty seconds then I credit Statesman with the brains and experience to figure it out and take appropriate measures ahead of time.

He didn't take those measures. You can rationalize it however you like, but in the end the reason he failed to take them is that the script required that he fail to take them. The requirement to suspend disbelief in such a situation is an implication that something is wrong with the script; otherwise it would be inherently believable.

"Suspending disbelief" is not some wonderful attribute when it really means "deliberately ignoring the weakness in the script". Suspending disbelief is supposed to be about ignoring the things that DON'T matter to the script. "I know that carpets don't fly in the real world but for this fantasy I'll just go with it".

When the script requires its characters to behave in ways that don't make sense, then pointing that out is not some flag that the person doing the pointing has a defective imagination.

Hmmm...but would he be thinking clearly when his daughter has been killed?

Would he care?

His daughter was killed, he figures out the reason, the killer wants a personal confrontation with him, so he goes along with it to give him just that.

This works even if your character figures it out as well.

Your Character (YC): Statesman! It's a trap! He wants you to fight him one on one!

Statesman (S): I know.

YC: I'm coming with you.

S: No...you're not. *instantly takes flight at unmatchable speeds*
or
S: This is my fight. *instantly takes flight at unmatchable speeds*

YC: You heroic fool.
or
YC: You damn fool.
or
YC: You fool.
or
YC: Idiot.


Statesman isn't some gangbanger who grabs his gang to help settle a score against one person. He's an old school, one on one type. He's the classic hero. This doesn't look to be a world threat, this looks to be a lone villain with an agenda for personal power.

He's the type raised in the early 20th century where this type of thing is dealt with one on one. Not today's belief were one gets slighted, so grab your friends to make this an unfair fight.

He was a father who just had his daughter killed. This made it personal. Win or lose, he was going to settle the score one on one. Because that's his upbringing.

Sadly, DW was counting on this. It was part of his plan. And for the player, this part worked. I'm sure someone's saying "Well my character could of done this or that to be there" And yup, maybe they could of done this or that, maaaaybe they did, and this or that failed anyways.

While not as powerful, I'd expect the same thing from a hero such as Captain America (if he had a child), and he's considered a tactical genius. It's the difference in mentalities of yesterday and today (btw...not saying there werent views such as grab your friends back then, and not views of going it alone today...but I think you get the point).

I'm also sure Statesman figured he'd win as well. Saddly, that day, that just wasn't the case.

Mind you, I didn't want Statesman to die myself. And really, I don't see Statesman dying as making the game center around my character. I don't think the stories can be written that way and work for the general playerbase. I think the stories have to be written to done a certain way to have them be involved and yet still not stop the story from going what way they plan, because to do otherwise, just isnt in the cards currently with CoH.

It's basically up to the player to figure out how much more their character was involved while the story played out.

For a solo player, I think this will be easier, for a mass community RPer, a little more difficult as then everyone did the same thing.

And he did. Did we know about this ritual at any place before this story? No.

Can any other villain NPC or PC have access to Wade's knowledge, planning and mystical ability?

No.

Do the actions of PC's either red or blueside have an impact on the storyline?

No.


These are all things built into the story to ensure that certain events happen. Deus ex machina is 'ghost in the machine' in French. An unseen party that enables events to happen a particular way.

All of this story, which deliberately precludes the player characters from influencing the story in any meaningful way (see: The death of Miss Liberty, Statesman, the escape of Malaise) all happen in a manner controlled by external forces to the story. By that I mean we are unable to influence the outcome of Wade attacking Statesman for no other reason that we are not allowed to.

That is deus ex machina.



S.

Or it's just how writing in the game has to be to work?

You go in and fail the mission. So you keep repeating it untill it doesn't fail?

Heroes go in to stop it, while villains go in to let it happen. Which side wins in the story?

You say "My hero saved Statesman!" while another player says "No! My villain stopped the hero from saving Statesman!"

Untill they can have phase tech work on every little thing in the game, I'd expect more of the stories in the game to go along that route.