For Warfrost, my Street Justice/Ice Armor stalker, I went with the following.
Alpha: Spiritual. Easy enough to ignore.
Interface: Spectral. Frosty is a thermophage, and noms heat from people all the time. His blows can freeze people in place, or drain them of heat over time. There isn't a Cold interface yet, but... eh.
Judgement: Vorpal. I know, just throwing ice would be easier, but Frosty has always been equipped with Vanguard tech. It's how his various Teleportation powers from the market and reward pools are explained. Also he actually has Recall Friend because all Stalkers should have that. This is just a different application of that technology.
Destiny: Rebirth, for now. I'm hoping to eventually grab most of them. I might swap to Barrier for the resistance though. Rebirth is... It's a big AOE heal. Not that different from popping a Team Insp. Same if I grabbed Ageless. Clarion will be a Vanguard Issue Psychic Shield device. Barrier would be a Vanguard Issue Force Field. Incandescence is obviously just a Teleporter.
Lore: Vanguard, natch. (Requesting backup!)
In my opinion, specifically MY OPINION, if you can't work the Well of the Furies into your tight and special snowflake backstory, you've failed as a roleplayer anyway. May as well use the most ludicrous excuses you can think of. When you offer 'alternatives' like this, you're just painting yourself out as 'incarnate powered with out the risks 
'.
That's pretty lame, in my opinion. The point of the Incarnate System, at least to me, is an in-character necessary evil to protect what matters the most (Or I guess claim whatever I wish if I'm a derpvillain). When you have people derping around saying they're God-like with out the risks, you're just a Mary/Gary who became infinitely less interesting because you couldn't work your concept within the realm of the game.
I eyeroll at Incarnates who aren't Incarnates.
I eyeroll at Kheldians who aren't Kheldians.
I eyeroll at PVP is a legitimate way to express RP.
Sans the last one, if your concept has to do any of the following...
1) Ignore the lore of the setting.
2) Specifically make you as special as possible.
3) Forcefully inserts you as a super awesome lore character
You've failed as a roleplayer.
If nothing else, anyone who has "Incarnate Power but isn't an Incarnate" should then accept they are infinitely and immeasurably weaker than an Incarnate Pather, because the game definitely makes this out to be the case. And if you don't? Weak.
I have no words.
Goodbye. Not to the game, but the players. Goodbye. Everyone, remember to have fun. That's all I can say.
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That's an incredibly harsh, intolerant, and arrogant opinion if ever I've seen one.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
In my opinion, specifically MY OPINION, if you can't work the Well of the Furies into your tight and special snowflake backstory, you've failed as a roleplayer anyway.
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It's not a matter of "can't" work in that story, it's a specific desire not to.
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Originally Posted by Reppu
If nothing else, anyone who has "Incarnate Power but isn't an Incarnate" should then accept they are infinitely and immeasurably weaker than an Incarnate Pather, because the game definitely makes this out to be the case. And if you don't? Weak.
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My character doesn't need the well of furies to be stronger than yours. I'm sorry to burst your bubble.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
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Originally Posted by RogerWilco
Like this friend of mine, who wanted to try a 6 constitution sorcerer in Dungeons and Dragons. He died before he got to level 3, but he was fine with that. Weaklings don't survive when fighting large scary monsters.
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Heh. I've been that player. I still am from time to time.
Some of the best laughs in my long time PnP gaming group come from moments like this. When one of us gets into this kind of a mood, we let it roll and see how far it can go... usually followed by that character getting a grand funeral and a heroic send off.
Writer of In-Game fiction: Just Completed: My Summer Vacation. My older things are now being archived at Fanfiction.net http://www.fanfiction.net/~jwbullfrog until I come up with a better solution.
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To play devil's advocate for a moment here, and I apologize if this comes off as harsh - really, I don't take RP that seriously here, honest:|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
That's an incredibly harsh, intolerant, and arrogant opinion if ever I've seen one.
It's not a matter of "can't" work in that story, it's a specific desire not to. If I am infinitely and immeasurably weaker than your incarnate pather, we can either decide that in the arena or by some contest of how fast we can defeat enemies. If your acceptance of the incarnate path makes you more powerful than my character but you cannot demonstrate that in game, then it's no better than saying your car is faster than anything on the road because you have Formula 1 stickers on it. My character doesn't need the well of furies to be stronger than yours. I'm sorry to burst your bubble. |
City of Heroes is both the game we play, and the established setting in which we're all playing that game. These facts fundamentally shift the argument as regards roleplaying, I think. There's an analogy to be made to tabletop RPing here (bear with me for a moment); City of Heroes is something like most White Wolf tabletop products in the sense that the game system (mechanically) is inextricably tied to the setting and lore, and fundamentally unlike Dungeons & Dragons, where the game system (d20) is independent from the lore.
However, City of Heroes does throw an additional wrench into the mix: we have, canonically, a multidimensional universe. So while normally I would stop here and say unconditionally that playing a character that ignores the game's established lore is outside the principles of good roleplaying, the multidimensional aspect of the game's canon is necessarily inclusive of "visitors" from other settings, with the technical caveat that those settings ought to be the player's original concept, not a copyrighted franchise.
Like Reppu, though, I do draw the line there at the basic ten archetypes. Unlike Reppu, though, I would also make another point: I, personally, am not concerned with how people roleplay their characters within closed groups of like-minded people. If you have a consistent roleplay group and you all want to ignore the game's lore for Kheldians as presented, well, more power to you and I'm not going to fault you for doing that within your group.
On the other hand, if you're playing a "Kheldian who is not really a Kheldian!" with the general public, then my own public RP characters reserve the right to consider yours to be delusional, because to them, Kheldians are Kheldians. :P I consider the whole "not really Kheldian" or "not really Arachnos" thing to be no different than joining a Forgotten Realms D&D game and insisting on playing an Eberron character.
Disclaimer: All of the above should not be taken to reflect my personal judgment on the quality of the specific lore in question - I personally am not a fan of the Incarnate or VEAT lore either, but it is what it is.
Oh, and for the record: with my natural-origin dual blades/willpower non-powered character, I just roleplay her as not understanding (or caring) where her incarnate abilities come from. Perhaps it's a bit of a cop-out, but she's very much the type of character not to look a gift horse in the mouth - it's useful power, she sees no reason to question it.
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So you're saying the evolution of lore-based power, aka the Incarnate System, should be ignored in favor of YOUR special roleplay? Sorry, you wouldn't be worth the arena match. You'd just get a palm pressed to your head and then you'd explode or something. But I guess you'd want to use your incarnate slots in both the Arena Fight and/or the Mob Killing Spree while stressing "THEY ARE NOT INCARNATE POWERS SHUT UP ;_;!!!"|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
That's an incredibly harsh, intolerant, and arrogant opinion if ever I've seen one.
It's not a matter of "can't" work in that story, it's a specific desire not to. If I am infinitely and immeasurably weaker than your incarnate pather, we can either decide that in the arena or by some contest of how fast we can defeat enemies. If your acceptance of the incarnate path makes you more powerful than my character but you cannot demonstrate that in game, then it's no better than saying your car is faster than anything on the road because you have Formula 1 stickers on it. My character doesn't need the well of furies to be stronger than yours. I'm sorry to burst your bubble. |
Denied on both counts, because you're being childish.
If you can't accept the Incarnate System in a game where it is crucial to the ongoing plot and cannot work it into your character because you feel they don't remain in spirit of your character, don't get upset when someone who embraced the Incarnate path can just roleplay you being a gnat, because I'm sorry for the following revelation;
Even Incarnates with 5 slots are immeasurably immensely in-canon powerful than those who lack them.
You may choose to ignore this, as much as Reiska put it, I will consider you insane. And you can try to boast saying it should be decided in the Arena (you lost ALL of your RP credibility with this claim, Dechs) or a killing spree (nice to choose something involving AoE with your general theme of characters, Dechs), but again. In canon? Flick to the forehead, your head explodes.
Oh, I never said my characters weren't incarnates. It fits with Frosty's theme, even if he isn't aware of it.
But lets be perfectly frank. Within the game lore, there are countless ways to explain incarnate powers. Deliberately.
Incarnate, in terms of in game use, is now more of a description of power level than an actual "I am an incarnation of a deity" thing.
There are countless ways to explain how you're an incarnate aside from just saying "Yo, I am a demigod now".
The Well of basically connected to everyone, whether that person derives their powers directly from it, or from some outside means like gadgets. It's not a manner of ignoring the lore, but a manner of personally acknolwedging it.
After all, Hero-1 never knew he was an incarnate. You don't even need to run Mender Ramiel's arc any more. You just need to prove yourself, and boom. Easy enough for any person to reach that power level without letting a puddle dominate their story.
The small group I mainly RP with have pretty much rewritten and retconned a fair bit of game lore in our personal canon. A fair bit of it was lore we considered poorly written.
For example, in-lore, a non-Incarnate can totally punk an Incarnate and steal their powers with a deus ex machina ritual. Kinda makes that special status less special! But then again, the Well of Furies is pretty much deus ex machina in its own ways. Deus ex machina gives, deus ex machina takes away. (That's a big clue to why I don't particularly care where people say their Incarnate powers come from. If they want to make up their own unique deus ex machina or even just make it a personal story about a slow journey to cosmic levels of power, it doesn't bother me.)
The group I play with pretty much rewrote much of that plot to be more plausible (espeically considering that the staff writer who wrote that one ignored some game lore that would've made the events of that overall arc easier to swallow).
But, anyway, so I'm used to not taking game lore for granted. I wouldn't roleplay our own divigent variant of history outside this group, mind. A lot of things happened differently due to a number of major in-group plots we ran. For example in our personal timeline, Crey's been pretty much broken up, but that was after a very long running story arc with them as the primary antagonist, spanning a lot of RP and multiple AE arcs.
Of course, public RP is different, yes. You're playing in a shared world. That requires common consensus, and the game lore forms a baseline for that.
But the thing is, this shared world's far more open than most MMORPG worlds. There's all kinds of weird stuff, and it pretty much follows the superhero tradition of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. And it'd be a boring comic universe if everyone got their powers from the same source, which is what the Incarnate storyline pretty much does.
In the end, I don't care too much about concept reflavoring. On the extreme end, it does stretch my credibility if someone turns into a squid/crab and then claims they aren't a Kheldian, but I can pretty much accept people who play human-form-only Kheldians and claim they aren't Kheldians. And I've seen at least one person with an interesting bio about how they got Kheldian-like capabilities from a Kheldian-based source without necessarily becoming a Kheldian. In other words, acknowledging the lore but doing their own spin on that.
For things like that, I prefer conceptual flexibility. The flexibility of the superhero setting is one thing I do appreciate about it. And it's pretty much impossible to fully recapture that flexibility in a game like City of Heroes.
Are you going to insist that someone's Water Blast character is really an Energy Blast character, or that their Sand Armor or Spore Armor character is really a Dark Armor character? That's the same kind of conceptual rigidity you're advocating here.
Furthermore, in a world as open as CoH's (given how it's connected to multiple universes), it absolutely beggars my mind to think that the Well of Furies is the single, sole source of Incarnate-level power in the entire multiverse.
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No, but it would be nice for you to avoid the strawman logical fallacy. I never said the incarnate system should be ignored. My characters have simply developed extraordinary levels of power that have nothing to do with the Well of the Furies. The fact that they are stronger than yours likewise has nothing to do with the RP of it.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
So you're saying the evolution of lore-based power, aka the Incarnate System, should be ignored in favor of YOUR special roleplay?
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Originally Posted by Reppu
If you can't accept the Incarnate System in a game where it is crucial to the ongoing plot and cannot work it into your character because you feel they don't remain in spirit of your character,
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Originally Posted by Reppu
don't get upset when someone who embraced the Incarnate path can just roleplay you being a gnat, because I'm sorry for the following revelation;
Even Incarnates with 5 slots are immeasurably immensely in-canon powerful than those who lack them. |
I don't need the arena to do it.
I don't need AoE to do it.
I can demonstrate how my characters are flat out better than yours. You can invoke all the canon you want, but if you cannot demonstrate your level of power, it really can't mean anything because I can just as easily say "my character found other ways to be as powerful as incarnates," and then flick your forehead and turn you into a newt.
EDIT: You really shouldn't call someone childish when you're the one throwing an opinionated and intolerant tantrum, all while using a slew of logical fallacies anyone with an education should be able to spot.
Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
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Obviously Incarnates are more powerful than non-incarnate characters, except...wait, characters have been soloing incarnates for lord knows how long now. Recluse didn't explode Necromicus' head with a flick, he Bled and died, then I handed him his helmet and he blubbered and tried to save face.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
Even Incarnates with 5 slots are immeasurably immensely in-canon powerful than those who lack them.
You may choose to ignore this, as much as Reiska put it, I will consider you insane. And you can try to boast saying it should be decided in the Arena (you lost ALL of your RP credibility with this claim, Dechs) or a killing spree (nice to choose something involving AoE with your general theme of characters, Dechs), but again. In canon? Flick to the forehead, your head explodes. |
Statesman and 7 of his pals didn't make the LRSF an impossible to finish head explosion-fest. It was tough, but people managed doing it, sometimes without being defeated.
Cannon treats incarnates with a level of reverence when speaking of them, but in practice incarnate as a level of power has always been one that is possible to overcome by non-incarnates.
As for fun with characters not being gods, the recent updates to the lore have been great for expanding my explination of my characters not being gods.
William Valence was always the representation of all my heroes potential, he would gather them and invite them to his home to help grow into their full ability. Basically, my characters are incarnates, but instead of taking power from the Well of the Furies, I have them connected to one of my characters, who is now (thanks to updates in the lore) being explained as a "Young" Well of power.
My solo SG Valence Manor is the dimension he created, and he likes to individuals connected to him gain and seek more and more power. However, since he is a Well limited to those heroes rather than an entire race, he holds more of their traits than the general instinctual traits of an entire race. He seems far more heroic than the Well of the Furies due to the heroic nature of those he came from, and he warns those he gathers to not reveal their secret for fear larger Wells may try to pray on them and consume him.
Because he is a reletively new Well, first appearing in Merlin's time, and then resurfacing a few decades before WWI, the Incarnates that pull from him now are not mistaken as gods. There are no "Templates" for a "Fast path". They couldn't be the representation of a Past incarnate as they are the first of this Well.
Murphys Military Law
#23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
#46. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
#54. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.
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You can take your opinion and choke on it.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
In my opinion, specifically MY OPINION, if you can't work the Well of the Furies into your tight and special snowflake backstory, you've failed as a roleplayer anyway.
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Addition: In MY opnion, if you can't accept the playstyles of others in your tight and special snowflake way of looking at the game, you've failed as a decent and understanding human being.
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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This is pretty much, IMHO, doing it exactly right. |
Originally Posted by Alef_infinity
The small group I mainly RP with have pretty much rewritten and retconned a fair bit of game lore in our personal canon. A fair bit of it was lore we considered poorly written.
For example, in-lore, a non-Incarnate can totally punk an Incarnate and steal their powers with a deus ex machina ritual. Kinda makes that special status less special! But then again, the Well of Furies is pretty much deus ex machina in its own ways. Deus ex machina gives, deus ex machina takes away. (That's a big clue to why I don't particularly care where people say their Incarnate powers come from. If they want to make up their own unique deus ex machina or even just make it a personal story about a slow journey to cosmic levels of power, it doesn't bother me.) The group I play with pretty much rewrote much of that plot to be more plausible (espeically considering that the staff writer who wrote that one ignored some game lore that would've made the events of that overall arc easier to swallow). But, anyway, so I'm used to not taking game lore for granted. I wouldn't roleplay our own divigent variant of history outside this group, mind. A lot of things happened differently due to a number of major in-group plots we ran. For example in our personal timeline, Crey's been pretty much broken up, but that was after a very long running story arc with them as the primary antagonist, spanning a lot of RP and multiple AE arcs. Of course, public RP is different, yes. You're playing in a shared world. That requires common consensus, and the game lore forms a baseline for that. But the thing is, this shared world's far more open than most MMORPG worlds. There's all kinds of weird stuff, and it pretty much follows the superhero tradition of throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. And it'd be a boring comic universe if everyone got their powers from the same source, which is what the Incarnate storyline pretty much does. |
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Originally Posted by Alef_infinity
In the end, I don't care too much about concept reflavoring. On the extreme end, it does stretch my credibility if someone turns into a squid/crab and then claims they aren't a Kheldian, but I can pretty much accept people who play human-form-only Kheldians and claim they aren't Kheldians. And I've seen at least one person with an interesting bio about how they got Kheldian-like capabilities from a Kheldian-based source without necessarily becoming a Kheldian. In other words, acknowledging the lore but doing their own spin on that.
For things like that, I prefer conceptual flexibility. The flexibility of the superhero setting is one thing I do appreciate about it. And it's pretty much impossible to fully recapture that flexibility in a game like City of Heroes. Are you going to insist that someone's Water Blast character is really an Energy Blast character, or that their Sand Armor or Spore Armor character is really a Dark Armor character? That's the same kind of conceptual rigidity you're advocating here. |
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Originally Posted by Alef_infinity
Furthermore, in a world as open as CoH's (given how it's connected to multiple universes), it absolutely beggars my mind to think that the Well of Furies is the single, sole source of Incarnate-level power in the entire multiverse.
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It's your opinion, and it should be valued and honored because it is.|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
You can take your opinion and choke on it.
Addition: In MY opnion, if you can't accept the playstyles of others in your tight and special snowflake way of looking at the game, you've failed as a decent and understanding human being. |
And no, I don't accept the playstyles of others in public roleplay if they bend and twist lore into a shape that isn't remotely close to source. I respect their choice to do so, but will still ICly laugh at them, call them a lunatic, and walk off.
Play by the setting or lock yourself back up in your base. Deal with my choice, because you don't have a say in that. Done!
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Originally Posted by William_Valence
Snip.
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Reichsman doesn't count he's just a giant sack of HP.
Either way, no. The rest of what you said is fine, but... no. Game Mechanics and how to break it =/= lore.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
Snip.
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1) You're using ad hominem against me, in an attempt to suggest my points are logical fallacies. You're using a logical fallacy to try to expose a logical fallacy. This is the wrong way to go about it. It just paints you out to be a hypocrite, which nobody wants. Relax.
2) You don't accept the Incarnate System's LORE, which is what I was saying. And even if you do, let me stop you for a moment and point out that you are saying you have in-character superior alternatives to the Incarnate Power and the risks that path takes. Let me point out, as well, not only is this Mary/Gary of you, depending on character gender obviously, but a huge slap in the face.
The known alternatives that grant Incarnate Power and are recent enough to matter are 1) The Tsoo Soul Ink and 2) The Furies. Both have HUGE draw backs and are WORSE alternatives to the Incarnate Path. The drawbacks of YOUR alternatives should be comparable to those two, or else you did "I HAVE INCARNATE POWER WITH OUT THE RISKS ^_^". Which is a tool-decision.
Now, IF your alternative has a radical downside to it, then I take this all back, obviously. But since most people tend to avoid purposefully designing MAJOR and LEGITIMATE character flaws, grain of salt until proven otherwise.
Oh, and since Incarnate Power is dubbed as the bridge to ultimate potential, well... yeah. You're still inferior to an Incarnate, end of story. Maybe your power is close to theirs, but you're inferior. Plain and simple, no way around it. Inferior.
I'm sorry. Deal with it or do private roleplay. In public, anyone, to me, who is not an Incarnate and is using a LOGICAL alternative, is still inferior in the end. Maybe by a small amount, but inferior. And if they have the nerve to do "All the power, none of the risks!", they're a tool and not worth my time.
Also... your alternative is still tied to the 'potential' of your race. That you can't escape. So, actually... your alternatives are already explained as tied to the Well of the Furies no matter what. So... this argument became pointless with that revelation, but let's continue because you're fun to talk to.
... Unless you ignore lore, then you're just flashing your ego again.
3) Stop talking about who has the superior character. Not only does this make you seem like you have an easily bruised ego, but it paints you out to be a bit of a jerk. As super awesome as your characters are, when you try to say that your in-character character is superior to my in-character character, you lost just then.
And mechanically? You aren't worth the time to devote a 'challenge course' to. Any challenge you state, I can just spend the next twenty-four hours power-leveling and IOing the perfect match for that challenge, and then prove nothing. Again, why you even brought up Game Mechanics in your defense is laughable.
'I can farm better than you can so my non-incarnate beats your incarnate!'
'I can PVP better than you so my non-incarnate beats your incarnate!'
If you REALLY want to do those challenges, let's open it to everyone, not just between us. Again, this isn't worth my time and is already taking too much of it simply responding to. I'll throw anyone you want at you for PVP and Farming Speed. Whatever makes you happy. Just, I'm not wasting anymore time with it. Grow up.
Bottom line? You can't demonstrate your characters are superior to mine, because this is opinion. That's all. You've lost this because it's opinion. And if you really want to try, you're probably losing your marbles at this point because it's an unwinnable battle, no matter who's side it is.
Calm down already, Dechs. If you don't like someone's opinion, just ignore it and get on with your life. Don't make yourself look like this.
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This coming from the guy who publicly trounces people for how they play their characters? |
Originally Posted by Reppu
Deal with my choice, because you don't have a say in that. Done!
... Calm down already, Dechs. If you don't like someone's opinion, just ignore it and get on with your life. Don't make yourself look like this. |
You'd benefit from heeding your own advice, Reppu; that is, if you don't like how we're playing the game, ignore it and get on with your life. If you choose to do anything else you're a hypocrite.
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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That's not bringing game mechanics in there. There is lots of fluffery lore saying Recluse is a big bad. There is also that little bit of inconvenient lore where villian trounce Recluse and punk him so he doesn't try an have them killed. That's not a game mechanic; that's part of the story and lore. Statesman gets dropped by SoAs in their storyline. That's part of the lore. |
Originally Posted by Reppu
Are we really going to bring in game mechanics here? Fine, I'll counter with "Solo the Freedom Phalanx in LRSF or Lord Recluse in STF with out Incarnate Powers or IO's, because the game isn't balanced around the latter and aren't considered beyond a brief tutorial. And why no Incarnate Powers? Because you said Non-Incarnates have been soloing them." Reichsman doesn't count he's just a giant sack of HP. Either way, no. The rest of what you said is fine, but... no. Game Mechanics and how to break it =/= lore. |
I only used the argument that "Non incarnates have been soloing them" to counter the likely mechanic argument of "You didn't do it by yourself" and "they weren't AVs so they didn't represent their power"
The lore treats Incarnates with a level of reverence, but no it dosn not show them as unassailable and undefeatable by non-incarnate.
Quite the opposite in fact.
Murphys Military Law
#23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
#46. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
#54. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.
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While this is a typically-blunt statement by Reppu, the general sentiment of it is more or less what some people in this thread have been saying: when you RP within a closed group, and have over time developed your own 'fanon' within that group which deviates from the game's standard canon like the previous example given by Alef, that's fine and perfectly cool. It's when you interact with others in the shared world who aren't part of your closed group that it falls apart; they can only act upon what the shared world at large and its gamemasters (i.e. Paragon Studios' writers) tell them, or upon their *own* fanon - they don't have the means to know your personal fanon, nor (unless they're also a member of your closed group) any reason to believe that your version of events that differs from what the game itself is telling them is 'true'. |
Originally Posted by Reppu
And no, I don't accept the playstyles of others in public roleplay if they bend and twist lore into a shape that isn't remotely close to source. I respect their choice to do so, but will still ICly laugh at them, call them a lunatic, and walk off.
Play by the setting or lock yourself back up in your base. Deal with my choice, because you don't have a say in that. Done! |
To a certain extent, the game's own structure makes "personal fanon" necessary; there are many story arcs in the game which, plausibly, can only happen once, especially where zone arcs are concerned, and in general the game at large seems to assume that most of those arcs have not been completed. Case in point: the Rikti War Zone - at the end of the final mission in the final story arc in Rikti War Zone, you have (perhaps singlehandedly) defeated Hro'Dtohz and stopped the renewed Rikti Invasion. The game world at large, however, does not reflect this; two or three years later, there are still gaggles of Rikti swarming the zone, Rikti Mothership raids still happen, Rikti still occasionally invade city zones, and the Lady Grey TF can still be undertaken repeatedly. A bit of suspension of disbelief is necessary here, for sure; the game has told us our characters have stopped all this! Another good (and much lower-level) example would be the newbie arcs that were added with the Atlas Park revamp. What happened to Aaron Thiery? The game explicitly gives you a choice of his fate - to arrest him and send him to the Zig, or to kill him, and the gameworld at large gives no indication as to which is the "canon" path of that storyline (and, due to phasing, doesn't need to). Some of my characters have killed him, some of them arrested him. Neither is globally "correct" in a shared world sense.
Getting back to the core point here is that yes, when you try to introduce elements of a closed-group fanon in an open roleplay with the shared world at large, generally speaking most other players' characters will have no good reason to believe your characters if their claims are incompatible with the "official" version of events presented by the game, leading to the aforementioned regarding of your characters as delusional. I hope that's clear; regarding those characters as 'delusional' isn't intended to be insulting or disrespectful, but simply a natural reaction on the behalf of other people's characters to someone telling them something incompatible with their knowledge.
tl;dr: when RPing "in the open", in the world we all share, it's best to try and stick as close to the game canon as possible, because that's all any of our characters not involved in your closed groups can know. But what you do in your SG bases or private teams is your business and perfectly fine as long as it's not violating the TOS </obligatory ERP is never acceptable disclaimer>.
Tabletop analogy: My usual D&D playgroup might well think it is funny and hilarious to play a warforged in a 3.5e Forgotten Realms game (because of how out of place such a thing is), but I wouldn't walk up to a gaming table full of people I've never met running a Forgotten Realms game and demand to play a warforged in it, because they don't exist in FR canon.
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Originally Posted by Reppu
Are we really going to bring in game mechanics here?
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Game mechanics really need to stay out of this argument.
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Originally Posted by Reppu
2) You don't accept the Incarnate System's LORE, which is what I was saying. And even if you do, let me stop you for a moment and point out that you are saying you have in-character superior alternatives to the Incarnate Power and the risks that path takes. Let me point out, as well, not only is this Mary/Gary of you, depending on character gender obviously, but a huge slap in the face.
The known alternatives that grant Incarnate Power and are recent enough to matter are 1) The Tsoo Soul Ink and 2) The Furies. Both have HUGE draw backs and are WORSE alternatives to the Incarnate Path. The drawbacks of YOUR alternatives should be comparable to those two, or else you did "I HAVE INCARNATE POWER WITH OUT THE RISKS ^_^". Which is a tool-decision. |
However, I also get to point out a flaw in Reppu's argument - she missed a couple alternatives. The full list of Incarnate power sources we know to this point are:
1) roughly speaking, the entity we know as the Well of the Furies, by the 'fast path', e.g. drinking directly from a physical manifestation of the Well. Four characters we know of on Primal Earth have gotten Incarnate powers in this fashion: Statesman, Lord Recluse, Hero 1, and Stheno. Lady Grey tells us this is a path of constant servitude (to the Well).
2) roughly speaking, the entity we know as the Well of the Furies, by the 'slow path'. This is the path the game canon tells us we are taking.
3) the Tsoo's spirit ink. We are told in the Dark Astoria arcs that this is empowered by the Tsoo's Ancestor Spirits, and that its use actively prevents the spirits of the Tsoo's ancestors from passing on to the afterlife; this is implied to be a great offense in their culture. Big drawback.
4) direct contact with the Furies, the path taken by the Knives/Talons of Vengeance as I understand. Obvious physical transformation drawback.
5) Rularuu, who is, according to Prometheus, another Well. As far as we can tell, this is probably where Darrin Wade is getting his power, likely via the 'fast path'.
There are likely others I'm not aware of offhand.
"Recent Enough To Matter" was supposed to mean what it is. I know I missed quite a few, but they haven't been as recent.
We lack a lot of info on Rularuu so he wasn't included.
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When you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong. Don't get upset when I eyeroll at your character and call them a lunatic.
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Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
This coming from the guy who publicly trounces people for how they play their characters?
You'd benefit from heeding your own advice, Reppu; that is, if you don't like how we're playing the game, ignore it and get on with your life. If you choose to do anything else you're a hypocrite. |
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Doesn't matter. You said earlier that if a playstyle bothers us, we need to ignore it and move on. Practice what you preach or admit to being a hypocrite.
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Originally Posted by Reppu
When you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong. Don't get upset when I eyeroll at your character and call them a lunatic.
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My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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When you bring it ICly, that is how I'll ignore it and move on.|
Originally Posted by Nalrok_AthZim
Doesn't matter. You said earlier that if a playstyle bothers us, we need to ignore it and move on. Practice what you preach or admit to being a hypocrite.
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"Wow. That Kheldian who says they aren't a Kheldian is kind of a lunatic. I'm going to walk away now."
We're done now. You don't listen well.
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Neither do you. Earlier you told this whole thread that if you don't like a opinion, ignore it and move on. And yet here you are, focused on what EVERYONE ELSE is saying, insisting that one way of RP is the only way to RP. You're not the RP police, you're not the opinion police and you're not the Lore police.|
Originally Posted by Reppu
You don't listen well.
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Until you have a position at Paragon Studios as a writer for the game, you are not the authority on what a character's origin is. Until you come to my house, put a gun to my head, and force me to say my character is affected by the Well and that my opinion is invalid, you have no say in how I play or what my opinion is.
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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Heh, missed this one. If this was on virtue, I think I know who that was |
Originally Posted by Reiska
This is the sort of thing I can get behind, actually; during double XP weekend I saw a Dark Armor tanker that colored the auras blue and was RPing it as water manipulation. It looked absolutely amazing in action.
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Originally Posted by Reiska
This never, ever ends well. Just saying. Story and gameplay segregation, etc. Our characters routinely do lots of crap the lore dictates should be impossible. Statesman survived a direct hit from a nuclear ICBM but is somehow routinely beaten back in the middle of Atlas Park by eight non-incarnate supers with seven of his friends backing him up?
Game mechanics really need to stay out of this argument. |
Redside PC lore progression: Broken out of Zig as possible "Destined one" -> Perform various jobs becoming more powerful-> Select a Patron for protection and progression through the ranks -> Do Patron Jobs -> Betray Patron to save bacon -> Do more Patron Jobs -> Find out you're such powerful competition that the battle between you and Recluse would end the world -> Find out Recluse doesn't like competition -> Defeat Recluse at the moment of his Victory in alternate future to punk him and show him not to mess with you (Without ending world)
Defeating an Incarnate is part of the Redside lore, and has been for a while now.
Incarnate are, as I've said, revered by lore but not the be all end all level of power. Lore supports the premise that non-incarnates can act at the level of incarnates and even defeat them.
Murphys Military Law
#23. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
#46. If you can't remember, the Claymore is pointed towards you.
#54. Killing for peace is like screwing for virginity.
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I have a character exactly like that; Eon Scar.
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Originally Posted by William_Valence
Heh, missed this one. If this was on virtue, I think I know who that was
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My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
The problem is that ******** don't know that they are ********.
They don't even understand what it actually is that makes other people see them as ********.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
I trend to acknowledge the Well as part of my characters' backstory but might not think of them as having this formalised relationship with it. The Well's part of the way the CoX universe works, I don't need to RP it out any more than the physics engine making my toon fall down if they aren't flying.
So my current main (StJ/SR scrapper) has been getting power from the Well basically since level 6 and Combat Readiness, but she's only peripherally aware of the Well as such. As far as she knows it's just kung fu. Sixteen kinds of kung fu that go right into teleport kicks, healing people she likes with chi and punching people she doesn't like so hard they catch fire. Oh, and her brothers set her up with those nifty little drone thingies that zap people when the hacked Warworks attack robots didn't work out.