*spoilers* The Freedom Phalanx are incompetent!

A couple things being overlooked in the whole "They're incompetent!" crusade:

Point 1:

Have any of you played through the villain side arcs? Manticore was defeated in SSA3 by the villain PC. The villain side arcs are designed to make you feel just as powerful as the Freedom Phalanx too, in the form of beating them up. Since the arcs are designed to be soloable, sending the entire Freedom Phalanx to protect her is kind of ridiculous, unless you expect the average player to be able to take on 7 Elite Bosses simultaneously, while solo.

I'm assuming that several of the people posting here have NOT played through them, otherwise SlickRiptide would not be under the impression that it was Blitz who killed Alexis. It was not Blitz at all, in fact he had no idea she was going to be killed. The culprit was either A) the villain PC, or B) Darrin Wade (he shoots her in the head).

The arcs are designed to be played from both sides with the same end results. If the Freedom Phalanx didn't screw anything up, it ruins things from the villain perspective because the Phalanx would have won.

Point 2:

Why do police officers get bereavement leave when a loved one dies, instead of being told to get back out on the street immediately?

Easy answer: It's because they would be distracted by grieving for their loved one and won't have their full attention on their job. Same goes for soldiers, if they recieve word that a loved one dies they are not immediately sent into combat if it is at all avoidable.

Yes, even though both the police officer and soldier are consummate professionals, grieving for a loved one WILL have an adverse affect on the performance of their job. They will not be as competent as they would normally be until they have had time to get through their grief and focus on things again. Both the cop and the soldier would stand a VERY good chance of getting themselves or someone else killed because their mind wasn't on the task at hand.

Now, with that said, look at the timeline of arcs 3 through 5. We experienced them over the course of 3 months. For the characters in the game, no more than 2 days had passed. Statesman died within 48 hours of his daughters death. Arcs 3 and 4 probably took place in teh saem 24 hour period.

Since Alexis was known and apparently well liked by everyone in the Phalanx, it is reasonable that her death would hurt all of them. She was mother to one, and daughter to another, and probably a close friend to all of the others, at the very least. The only one I would expect to not be affected by her death is Citadel. Everyone else was distracted by grieving for their daughter/mother/friend and didn't have their mind fully on what they were doing.

That's part of what I meant by "They're still human beings". Any other professional who routinely has the lives of others in their hands is given the opportunity to get through their grief before they are asked to resume their duties. The Freedom Phalanx had no such opportunity before they had to deal with the next threat.

It is perfectly reasonable for anyone in that situation, professional as they may be, superhero or not, to not be at the top of their game. It defies human nature to expect otherwise.

Yes, the Freedom Phalanx are superheroes, and consummate professionals at what they do. But I don't care how professional you are, if someone that close to you dies, it is GOING to affect how well you do your job if you are not allowed to get past it first.

You want to give them crap for bickering and being incompetent? Lets have someone YOU care about brutally murdered and see how well YOU function over the next couple days. I'd be willing to bet you wouldn't be a very good police officer or soldier....or superhero, until you've had time to ge past it.

Killing Alexis was the linchpin of Wade's plan, and he had to act on the rest of his plan immediately, while the Phalanx was still trying to cope with what just happened. With everyone distracted and not at the top of their game, they were much easier to deal with.

While I agree that it could have been presented better, there are some things that I think are getting missed from lack of information. Wade did research on each of them, and apparently read the same books I did

He played up to each of their weaknesses, and used his resources (Malaise, and our villains) well.

The role of 'hero' never fit Marcus Cole very well. Before being empowered, he was a big-time thief and mercenary with a very flexible morality. If it wasn't for Monica Richter, who later became his wife, needing help against Nemesis (yes, it all started from a Nemesis plot- read up on Brass Monday) he would probably have just used his powers to benefit himself. In fact, he considered that, but his love of Monica was his driving force. He chose to be a hero for her, and the city, out of a sense of responsibility, not out of the goodness of his heart. His resolve was hardened by learning what his former best friend was up to, and what he had become (Lord Recluse). The book also introduces the original members of the Plalanx and gets into their story a bit.

That's all from the "Web of Arachnos" book. Macus is brash, a bit self-centered, and doesn't come from the most noble of backgrounds.

Fast forward to a few decades later, the novel "The Freedom Phalanx" starts us off in a now dilapidated and crime-ridden Paragon City. The origial Phalanx had long been disbanded and a hopeful young scientist (Positron) and his friend and roomate (Synapse) decide to set out to try and bring the city back to its former glory. Well, more Positron. Synapse didn't really want to get involved, but wasn't going to let his friend go out there alone.

Monica is on her deathbed, and Marcus Cole no longer guards Paragon, focused more on world-shaping crimes and criminals (even making a reference to going to other planets). He wasn't really concerned about the fate of Paragon itself. In fact, He was pretty much ready to fly off into the sunset the moment she passed, leaving the world and his now grown up daughter and young granddaughter to go on without him (the "grandpa can you fly to heaven" was a reference from a conversation he had with his granddaughter in this book). He was tired of always having to be the hero.

We get introduced to the other heroes, Manticore, the mysterious, driven, Batman type character who really wants nothing to do with anyone else and has his own agendas. Sister Psyche, amazing and aloof (you find out she's 'aloof' because of all the 'noise' people make in her mind and has to work hard to shut it out sometimes).

Anyway, Positron and Synapse discover a plot going on that would drive the city into chaos, and they need help. The villains of the story weaken Sister Psyche before he can even talk to her (they damage her ability to block out the voices so she ends up in her apartment in the fetal position just trying to shut the city out). Manticore is on the trail of his villain, Protean (who is also part of the conspiracy, but he doesn't know it) and doesn't care about anything else (to be fair, he'd been hunting Protean for years now, and he'd just resurfaced, so he didn't want to lose the opportunity before he disappeard again).

Positron decides to talk to Statesman, in the hospital. He appeals to Marcus' strong sense of responsibility and in the end convinces him to re-form the Phalanx. After that I don't want to give away the plot. Stuff happens, Sister Psyche works her stuff out, they come together and wind up stopping the plot (obviously). The lesson here, however, is how disparate they really are at the core. They're all powerful and capable of fantastic stuff as a team, but there really has to be something tying them together to work against (instead of each other, really). This is also illuminated in the comics as well. Without something to focus on as a force, they don't really work together well, and often work alone in the day to day (except Positron and Synapse).

That said, I'm going to point out how this ties in, in another post, just to help prevent the 'wall of text' reaction.

Now how all that applies to Wade's plot is as follows.

The only 'suspension of disbelief' I really had to get past in the SSA's was the whole ordeal with Blitz and sending Alexis as a diplomat. The events once she's there makes sense, but the whole setup was a little strained. Other than that though.

Alexis' death, and his estranged relationship with his granddaughter put Statesman right back into that mindset he'd had, one he hadn't really shaken except for his sense of responsibility.

Manticore, who's a... focused individual, finds out about Malaise. I'm sure he and Sister Psyche had an argument about this before she even went to interrogate him. Having the argument with Ms. Liberty didn't help. He was too focused on his quarry to really think of anyone's feelings. In the cowl, he's not a warm person anyway. He was really just a distraction though.

Malaise can't control people directly but can subtly affect them. I'm sure he'd been in touch with the 'inner Shalice' at some point prior. In the comics she started out having trouble holding her in check, so time-wise, it hasn't been that long (however long after the Rikti War in 2004 it took to get back into her own body, and though the comic book explaination of I-5 and ED being a plot of Arachnos really weakened her control over the 'inner Shalice' even more).

Playing the villain arc, it's pretty clear the 'inner Shalice was anticipating this, and may have even subtly prompted Sister Psyche in that moment of annoyance and weakness to do exactly what they wanted. Rookie mistake, yes, but we need to keep in mind all the factors at play. She's powerful, but she's like a tower of glass, and like I said, I'm betting Malaise had already commmunicated the plan to inner-Shalice before or during the mission. Remember he considered himself an artist setting the stage. How subtle was he in doing it? How long had he been setting this up? With the external and internal prompting, how hard could it have been to shatter that tower?

At no point was it clear that there was an overwhelming menace. Having nothing to focus on they pretty much acted individually, or stayed out of the plot alltogether. Wade anticipated this, and took full advantage of it. That's why subtlety was so important. Our villains were just another patsy to spread the idea of a plot even thinner and to distract from what he was really doing in the background.

Wade had no doubt that once Statesman found out who was responsible for Alexis' death, he wouldn't bother with gathering the rest of the Plalanx. In fact, he figured Statesman would come to kill him, breaking his role as hero with the goal of leaving the world afterward. He even said as much. However, regardless of Statesman's goals in the encounter, he had no doubt Statesman would come alone. What reason would he have had to bring anyone else?

As players, we see a bigger picture, and can run the arc over for things we may have missed, but the rest of the heroes can't. For those of us that have played both hero and villain arcs, we see more of the plot (including the cutscenes at the end) the Freedom Phalanx has no clue about. It wasn't until the last live SSA that the Phalanx actually started getting organized about it, because there was nothing they were aware of that they needed to organize against per-se.

Good post, Sam.

I've mostly tried to avoid critiquing the SSA chapters because I know where that road leads for someone as verbose as myself.

Litany of failure aside, I do have one rather big complaint and it ties into what Sam has been saying.

It's this: The rationale of the people (i.e., not just people in this particular thread) who review the arc positively boils down rather consistently to this: "The heroes are not themselves, and so they fail repeatedly. That makes them human, not chumps."

They're not themselves. One or more overcome with grief. One or more are blinded by anger. One or more their defense overloaded. One or more are cocky instead of cautious.

For any of a half-dozen reasons, they are not themselves. Except for my hero, of course. She is the only one keeping her head and wits about her, and that's why everyone depends on her and dotes on her every action despite the fact that she's failing just as badly as the signature heroes.

Yeah, fine. I get it. We're the stars now, and if we had any doubt about it, this arc puts it to rest.

A story where the root cause of the heroes' plight is that they are all behaving abnormally is a story that does not appeal to me or make me feel satisfied with the writing.

To answer your question, Sam, we no longer have any ideals. They are bad business, or so someone decided who apparently listened to the vocal complaints in that department long enough to become convinced that thousands of new F2P players would feel the same way.

You can't just say "Oh, they're human. They're flawed. That makes them more interesting." No, it doesn't. It makes them boring and unworthy of respect.

These are signature heroes. When I read a Retief novel, I don't read about yet another story where Retief bamboozles the diplomatic corps, deduces the fly in the ointment, wins the great diplomatic coup single-handedly, and once again gets all the girls, booze, and prestige while showing up the diplomats for the boring, hidebound, bureaucrat that they all are and then think to myself "Not again. If only Retief had a fatal weakness and he actually lost a gambit once in a while." I read Retief stories because that's the kind of story I WANT to read. If I wanted gritty realistic diplomacy stories I'd go read some real life diplomat's memoirs.

When I want to play a super hero I want to play a story where the heroes act like, well, heroes and not like dense, incompetent chumps who are too blinded by their inadequacies to see the truth that I took about five seconds to see. (Oh,and Manticore showing up with police officers? This is the guy who has his own private mercenary army, right? Who decided they should be rogue law enforcement officers instead his own highly-trained and unquestionably loyal Wyvern troops?)

I'm not saying that heroes should never have flaws, but for flaws to make the hero more interesting then they have to be interesting flaws. So far, this story is not giving us anything interesting. We're not learning about the heroes, or seeing them grow through adversity, or seeing any other redeeming feature of this continual parade of fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.

All I'm getting is "Crap, I can't believe that happened! Good thing YOU were there or it would have been a lot worse! I'm so glad that YOU are here to protect us. YOU are the one thing that SuperBad fears. I wish that every hero was just like YOU."

Yeah, thanks. I'll remember that when Alexis Cole's birthday rolls around.

I didn't ask to be the most important character in the game world and as a player I think it's a mistake to send the game in that direction. I don't pretend that my views on that subject are representative of any kind of majority. It might be that the vast majority of players are that self-absorbed that they can't stand having a fictional character be stronger than their own hero. I remain unconvinced of the truth of that statement but I could be wrong.

In any case, I think it's a bad precedent for the game but the die is set and there's really no turning back on that policy any more.

The problem is the writers doing the story, are trying to capture popular super hero tropes, such as Jerk *** Batman. But they aren't as talented as the writers of the comics.

So instead of Manticore coming across as jerk *** Batman, aka a magnificent ******* , he comes across as whiny child.

Let's just say that if my main hero had freedom to act in any way he desired and he was standing beside Justin Sinclair watching as Malaise apparently murdered Alexis Cole in front of us, Malaise would not have left the the Isles alive. I have little doubt that Sinclair would backup whatever story my hero concocted to explain the accident that befell Malaise.

Oh, and Marshall Blitz is apparently toppled as head of state of Warburg? We disabled the missiles and arrested Blitz. Where does that leave Warburg?