*spoilers* The Freedom Phalanx are incompetent!

What's wrong with Midnighter?

Actually I see the opposite happening.
Statesman might be the superman of this game and so the writers have him behave in non-superman-ish ways.
Manticore isn't trying to be Batman as the writers are making him the rogue/jerk of the group...every group has one.

Every superhero universe has to be able to make their characters different than Marvel/DC. Its not easy as each as decades of a head start.

As a sidenote, Slick, murdering an ambassador is an act of war. It would have been appropriate to kill the lot right then and there without any consideration of whether or not they should be arrested and Mirandized. They sure did not extend the same courtesy to Alexis Duncan.

/Mr. Grey

How awful.

/Mr. Grey

Agreed wholeheartedly. I'm not sure which I'm more disappointed with, that so much of the playerbase are cynics or are jaded with the in-game characters or lore or that the devs seemed to pander to that sense, just giving them more fuel for their internet flames.

And I wonder, did the writers devise this so well that we all walked into this obvious trap? I mean, they outright told us who was gonna die. That wasn't the hook, everything else was. So is it possible they wrote this in a manner to make the story so 'bad' (for those that absolutely cannot tolerate some of what the plot holds) just to brilliantly mirror our own harsh and conceded vitriol back at us? Needless to say, I didn't run any of the chapters until they were all released so didn't know how the whole thing shaped up until afterwards.

It was a fun ride at face value, putting some fun imagery of my characters interacting with the fights and heroes. But when you explain it that way, Mr. Grey, it really does make this whole thread quite hilarious.

I like to make my characters with flaws and frailties, to make them 'human' (not in the actual race-sense) so when I got to interact with the FP, it made them feel like we were on the same level...not in power but in prowess.

Now I need to pick a character to run the villain side arcs on

/subscribeto_Mr._Grey_newsletter

This part actually is explained, somewhat. Blitz teleports away from the conference room and barricades himself inside a fortified, heavily-guarded building. However, he's the governor of just one small island, and it's clear to everybody that Longbow, let alone the US military, can break through all of his defences and kill him. It'll just take time. They can't bomb the place because Alexis is still in there, presumed to be alive and held hostage, which is why the player character is sent in, instead.

But "Paragon City" is at war with Warburg after that stunt, make no mistake. We start raiding their missile silos (again, why just NOW?!?) and planning to overthrow their governor. If Blitz had died in the fight, no-one would have mourned, but he didn't, and executing prisoners of war is bad practice all around, so he's taken for trial.

What makes somewhat less sense is why Manticore doesn't just kill Malaise when he attacks. It's been suggested that the player character would have stopped Manticore, but really? It's a fight. The guy's trying to kill you. If you shoot an arrow through his head, it might look bad, but it's a mortal fight. **** happens, people get dead. The public will understand. And again - I was never under the impression that my character did anything to stop Manticore. If I'd brought a rifle, I'd have shot at the guy with it.

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.

Can I pay them with Monopoly money?
A friend of mine works for the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and some drunk guy actually tried to pay the toll with Monopoly money one night.

Actually, when you really play both sides of some of the arcs, number 4 especially, you really do get the impression we're only observing events, not actually affecting them or even helping them move along.

Or in number five, we exit the cave and either that whole scene had been playing out while we were fighting our way though (in which case a "meanwhile" cutscene caption is needed) or our characters are just standing there, watching this with no real explanation for our lack of action.

I'm not trying to say Darrin Wade's plan should have failed or that the Freedom Phalanx should be flawless, but rather to show that the Phalanx really WAS the old standard for best, but Darrin Wade still manged to top them with his ten year planning and keeping backups, and we top Wade by forcing his hand and pushing him back into a retreat.

Like I said, in that scenario, EVERYONE looks good. And in it's own way, I think it would be more impressive of Wade to have a genuine backup plan unlike a lot of typical villains rather than rely solely on one plot, and to effortlessly shift to plan B when plan A fails instead of him racking up a chain of flawless victories, because it shows he really did plan this out, and why he's a threat.

And if the players become the ones to keep forcing him into plan B, or in the case of villains, help plan A go off without a hitch (or even be forced to improvise and help secure a plan c) it makes the player feel like they are affecting events than just observing.

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.

No, but you may have. Villainy involves, style, panache,the chutzpah to offer an enraged Statesman dinner, and the effortless manners to get him to taste the wine while you detail your scheme to overthrow the world. Darrin never got past the "YOU FOOLS, I'LL SHOW YOU ALL" stage of Mastermind Mimetic Disorder, and malaise is just a monster.

At best, Darrin is just a criminal. At worst, an *******.

Just got to read this part.

OMG! Tearing up! Hiccups from laughing so hard

But that's what all villains are

Or Rorschach.

"I'm not jerkass, golden girl, I'm a villain! well the difference being one's a job and the other's a personality disorder!"

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.

I saw this earlier and have to comment...

I've BEEN in this scenario. I was a Marine in Japan when I got word that my oldest brother, one of the people I looked up to all of my life, had died.

I'll tell you what that did to me. It humbled me. I also realized something as I was enlightened prematurely. Nobody is prepared for it.

Nobody.

Everybody deals with this kind of loss differently. You can't be sure how anybody is going to react. I came to find out that I was placed on a "Shadow Watch." Basically, your unit quietly makes sure somebody is always present to keep an eye on you to keep you from doing something drastic. They do that because they don't know how you're going to react.

The military. Dealing with death since the dawn of civilization. They still have no idea how you're going to react when you deal with personal loss.

I'm not saying this excuses what Statesman did... But what he did is still understandable.

I hate you for making me quote this since I hate Will Ferrel with a passion, but he said its best.

Megamind: Oh, you're a villain all right. Just not a super one.
Titan: Oh yeah? What's the difference?
Megamind: PRESENTATION!

That doesn't change anything

You said it beautifully. Everything I've read about Statesman is his detachment, but the thing is, the way he was written in the books, and in the comics, and in-game, still waters run deep. Marcus Cole was a very emotional person, who put that aside to be the hero everyone, at first, wanted him to be, then later expected him to be.

I was really honestly surprised at the end of SSA 5 that he decided he was going to bring Wade to justice. I totally expected him to go in with the intent to murder him, casting his hero image aside, and leaving the Earth. That's partially what I expected the 'death of Statesman' to mean (the other was that Wade was going to trick him and kill him like he did).

The fact that he intended to bring Wade to justice, even thenk did raise my estimation of him as a person. That was a conscious decision that, for him as I understand him, was probably the hardest choice to make.

I'm really not fond of Will Farrel's work either (this is generally an understatement) but that movie was a true masterpiece. Feel no hate for loving such a good movie, and all the excellent performances in it. Hate the roles, not the actors who get thrust into them. They have to make their money too, and typecasting is it's own demon on their backs

That's the interesting thing about psychic powers. There is a broad range of variations in potency and functionality within that domain of abilities. For example, someone who is telepathic may not be telekinetic or clairvoyant.

I get the impression that Malaise has psychic powers which Sister Psyche is not fully protected against even in optimal conditions. He has the power to rewrite someone's entire identity, which is a bit different from weaponized telepathy which can hijack subconcious facilities of the brain or result in a complete mind-wiping.

On that topic, the "mind-riding" ability is also a poorly-explained power in the CoX universe because it begs to question if it is the same as soul-swapping, which would be more akin to a supernatural/magical ability as opposed to a mutant one. The problem is that CoX covers both spiritual (supernatural) and psychic (psychological or psycho-kinetic) abilities without explaining the distinction between the two when it comes to determining one's identity, as one would expect rewriting one's identity would still render them the same person - only "brainwashed".

Thankfully the other big can of worms, the Praetorian's Seer Network, sort of makes sense because it really isn't so much about souls as each person is an individual unit hooked into a hive mind. The disembodied psionic energies you encounter in First Ward are explained as pure psionic energy which embodies the memories and emotions which Mother Mayhem found unfitting within her Seers that was stripped away from an individual and became an independent, parasitic essence that you "could" sort of explain away as being soul-less or as soul fragments with their own individual existence.

I've always argued that Professor X has had some serious writing problems through the years since his list of psychic abilities has broadened at some point or another over the decades that he's pretty much covered almost every major domain of psychic powers, and unfortunately he's been the poster boy for most psychic characters in comic books. This has spilled into the creative minds of writers through the years in other media and resulted is some pretty vague generalizations about the mechanics of psychic powers in general.

Super-Strength also has this same problem because the strength alone would not protect your body from the damage it would incur by using that level of strength without a way to mitigate the resistance or feedback. You would break several bones trying to lift a train even if you had the capacity simply because without some kind of Super Durability your body is still nothing more than muscle and bone - both which aren't the sturdiest things in the world. Ever had a pulled muscle or broken bone? And that's just from the exertion of performing ORDINARY tasks.

I wanted more for my character from the story, but I generally don't care about the signature NPCs. I like it when I come across a story that makes me care one way or the other, but I'm so used to not caring that I'd be perfectly fine with all the signature NPCs getting vaporized with little fanfare.

Au contraire, my dear. It changes everything.

Well Super Strength tends to come with it a bit of sturdiness.

Also, it depends on how the Super Strength is defined (like tactile telekinesis).

As for psychic abilities always going to be hard to explain and set out utilizing in this type of setting imo. It can work in a setting such as comics or pen and paper RPGs, but CoH is just so varied, it just makes it difficult, at least I think so, to clearly define it and utilize it.

Unfortunately, it gets put into the same category as Jedi Powers in the old Star Wars books (haven't read the new ones so I don't know) and other super powers in various comics over time. Basically, they're as powerful (or powerless) as the writers want them to be at any given time to get their story to work.

Like I said before. I think the 'in' with Sister Psyche was the mote of Shalice that got left within her. Running the villain arc, I was given the impression she's well aquanted with Malaise and was ready and waiting for this turn of events. This could have been going on for some time, without Sister Psyche's knowledge (especially since it was a part of her subconscious she was trying to ignore).

I get what folks are seeing as flaws, but I also think there's some part of the picture that's being missed by not knowing all the material (that we have access to, and which we don't) that led to these events.

As a gamemaster of many years experience, I've had to realize on more than one occasion that what I'm doing doesn't always make sense to the players, since I know the full story and logic behind it. This can frustrate players and have them question the story (I usually make it a point to have a Q&A answering all questions at the end of a story just to be sure everyone knows what was going on in my head when I did X thing at X point). I obviously can't say that this is happening here, since I don't know everything about it. Could it be incompetence on the part of the writers? The Freedom Phalanx? Maybe.

However, I can confirm that sometimes the storytellers lose track of what they players know, and don't know, since they themselves know the whole story, and create based on that premise. I can imagine this is even more difficult for MMO's where literally you have to attempt to anticipate the motives of thousands of players. (This is one reason I have yet to have published my multi-arc AE story from 1-50 dealing with the concept of 'your' villain character taking over the world). That's why I thought it was important to point out the two novels that the SSA references; The Web of Arachnos and The Freedom Phalanx. A lot of the information (and even some of the dialogue) references these stories, so I can't say one can make a full critique of the work without being familar with these, and how it defines/affects the Freedom Phalanx, and Statesman in particular.

So sure, I may be trying to be optimistic about the story and some of the thinner plot elements that we may perceive, but I also can say, even with as much as we saw, we have not seen the full story. Hell, it's not even done yet.

That's my 2 cents anyway.

EDIT: Also, I have to agree, this is a great thread, Sam

Fine with me if he is, there's still a clear-cut case of excusing characters from the 'we seem to be incompetent, can you take over for us?' disease?

Honestly, the author of the work isn't important as much as the intent, and when everything is said and done, Doc Aeon still reports to...guess who? as his boss who gets final say on how things go. And the man himself has not only written in a dev letter but said on camera he instituted the idea, so he cannot be blameless.

Self-serving from marketing? I can buy that concept. Doesn't make it a good idea, mind you.



S.

I'm not trying to burn the guy, honestly. Here's the thing, though - if it were JUST the Statesman, I could see that. His daughter died and he's mad as hell and he can't take this any more. Fine, I can dig it. But it's not JUST him. It's every bloody member of the entire Freedom Phalanx that's doing this. It feels like the entire world was made dumber and more capable so that I could shine without actually having been elevated in anyway, and it's not working.

Having Statesman botch? Fine. Having Manticore botch? It can happen. Having Synapse botch? He's a cocky her. Having Psyche botch? Malaise got under her skin. Having the Midnighters botch? Eh, their club got invaded. Having them ALL botch, though? It's Botchamania 199!

Having one person act irresponsible can be attributed to that one person just being heartbroken and not thinking clearly. Having EVERY person act irresponsible, on the other hand, can only be attributed to the writers' invisible hand godmodding all smart decisions away from otherwise capable heroes' minds, and it just comes off as meanspirited.

It actually reminds me of Frank Miller's the Dark Knight Strikes Again. Make Superman look bad so you can make batman look good. In other words, make the Phalanx look bad so you can make us look good. But it leaves a bad taste in my mind to have risen to prominence over the ruined reputations of the Freedom Phalanx, ruined specifically and intentionally so that I could take their place. It makes me feel like my heroes are villains. Or Power Loyalists, at the very least.

That's part of the problem, Tenzhi. I never cared about the Freedom Phalanx as people before, because we were never given a chance to know them as people. And no, I didn't read the books or the comics. I'm going off of what's in-game. All we had to go off of was that these are the premier heroes that everyone looks up to and who saved the world way back when, and who are too powerful to get involved into the game until right at the very end.

To my eyes, the way to make me care would have been to show me these people's actual personalities off-duty, to see the person behind the mask and the goofy name, as it were. That didn't happen. Instead, we get to see their personalities bleed through into their work, and it's exactly those personalities which cause them to fail, and fail repeatedly. Essentially, they succeed as heroes but fail as people. And I'm supposed to care about them after that?

I want to hijack your post for a second to drag it into a different direction. Psychic powers are like the Force, in the sense that you really, REALLY shouldn't explain them. They work because they work, and how they work isn't fully understood. The last thing we want is to introduce Midichlorians as a scientific explanation for psychic powers, because not only would that degrade the flair behind most canon psychics, but it would be Origin of Powers all over again.

You're quite welcome Story writing and character design are some of my passions, and I like bring those up as often as I can.

Again, I want to point out that I don't mind the SSA story much at all. It's a bit convoluted, but it's a chessmaster's plan, so that's par for the course. It's also a good test of mettle for the heroes, and that's always a cool story thread.

The problem is that the heroes utterly fail their test of mettle in every way that's possible to fail, as well as some which are essentially impossible, to mis-quote Dr. Breen. The story is decent, but it's the characters that let it down, because the plot requires everyone to be incompetent. We can argue about WHY they're incompetent till the cows come how, but the simple fact remains that they are. They make obvious mistakes, they act like ******** and they fail at their life's goal of being super heroes.

The Freedom Phalanx characters deserved better. They deserved to be treated with more dignity and respect. They deserved to be the high ideals we should all strive to match, so that when we finally do, the accomplishment of it is worth a crap.

That's a very, very good point. What David did and is still doing really is head and shoulders above the whole rest of the game development community in general, at least speaking of major companies. Yes, there's been a lot of talk about giving us what we want, but very, VERY little talk of actually ASKING us what we want. Until David Nakayama did just that. He's the guy who came to the forums and asked us what we wanted, then worked with us until we could come up with something which is workable, then did that. He's the guy who came in with enthusiastic suggestions that we rebuffed almost wholesale, and he just shrugged, adapted and found what we wanted.

As far as I'm concerned, involving players in "all things art" was a major step in getting us what I want, to say nothing of a PR miracle like I haven't seen before. Involving us in other parts of game development - such a story writing - would be a very good next step, but I'm not sure if anyone else can do it like David can. Synapse has come pretty close, though.

Actually... I'm told of an interesting story from an old Beta. Pre-Live, Keith Nancy was written as some kind of disgruntled official who hated our character and was just looking for an excuse to order us killed. And he used an army of invincible ninja to do it. It wasn't until much player outcry that this is a horrible idea that he was changed into the sort of passive-aggressive, untrusting yet lovable deadpan that we have today. And it's exactly this kind of angst, moral ambiguity and degrading of what it means to be a hero that I'm seeing all over the SSAs. And I really don't like it, because it mars what could have been a compelling story.

That's a very good way of putting it, Oz. I'll remember that. And you're right. I suspect that this is just a fundamental misunderstanding of what players want when they ask for their characters to be more capable, but by this point, it's starting to feel like a backhanded insult towards our intelligence. "There, now everyone sucks except for you! Happy now, Ms. Mary Sue?" No! Not at all. I wanted the world to keep its great heroes. I admired these guys. I wanted to be like them, but you wouldn't let me!

I wanted to be more like the Freedom Phalanx. I didn't want the Freedom Phalanx to be more like me. Or more like what the writers apparently think I am.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, essentially. It's sad, and not just because these people were the icons of the game who are now demolished. It's sad because this has become a serial practice. Ever since Going Rogue, the people in charge have systematically defaced the entire game, tearing down everything that was iconic, beautiful or great, and stomped on it in the mud. The Freedom Phalanx were pretty much the last of the old guard of elemental heroes who stood their ground DESPITE being just human, and now they're reduced to squabbling morons, just like everyone else. We may have stopped the invasion of Praetorian armies, but we failed to stop the invasion of Praetorian storytelling and characterisation.

You know... When I first started playing City of Heroes, it was a positive, uplifting game. Sure, villains existed, people got killed and bad stuff happened, but at the end of the day, we helped make things right and everyone lived happily ever after. What, really, was wrong with that? Why did we need go through the 90s of comic book history all over again and make the whole world suck? What did that accomplish, aside from putting us in a grim and gritty world where there are no more true heroes left, and the only relics of the old time are ineffectual when they're not outright self-destructive?

The "Who Will Die?" storyline could have been told in a way that uplifted the Freedom Phalanx and finally showed us exactly what it was that made them the world's premier heroes, with us right alongside them, proving that we are now their equals. Instead, all this showed is that the Freedom Phalanx are not worthy of being the world's heroes. They're not strong enough, they're not cohesive enough as a team, and they're ******** to top it all off. It's to the point where I start to wonder how exactly they became so famous in the first place, and what sad, sorry state of affairs the super hero community must have been for THESE people to be the best.

And that's a HORRIBLE way to look at the Freedom Phalanx.

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.