SSA #6 Story Discussion ** SPOILERS **

Thought we could use a thread about SSA6 that wasn't about "it's here" or "and other stuff on the market" or "and new powersets" but just about *the story* and the big reveal.

Sister Psyche is dead.

So... Who Will Die? Isn't just about Statesman, but about Sister Psyche, too. And who knows... maybe more. Characters in and out of the Freedom Phalanx are now dead. More to come?

I thought it sucked. I think someone on the dev team has been reading too many George R.R. Martin books. Here is a hint, I am not a fan of him, or his books. Give me Jim Butcher any day of the week over Martin and his weird NEED to kill off his characters.

A lot depends on how they're viewing this arc, from a literary standpoint. If this is a stand-alone novel, then part 7 is going to be focused on defeating Wade, which doesn't give you the scope to kill off another big-timer without trivializing it to squeeze it in. If this is meant to be the first book of a series, however, then Wade doesn't need to be defeated, and we have more room for blood-letting.

Lets backtrack across the whole map. Nothing will happen.

A friend pointed out we now know who the mysterious hero in white and red is, but I just noticed there are 2 well known heroes absent from the image. If we go up against Wade in the final part, will Manticore sacrifice himself?

Heh. It's amazing the freedom phalanx has been around as long as they have, considering how fast they're dropping now.

If BABs wasn't in that picture I'd say things didn't look good for the odds on favorite to die before WWD launch.

When do we start the redside purge?

I continue to like the way the story is progressing, but the gameplay was terrible and almost entirely filler.

Mission One: You learn of a ritual that can help Sister Psyche, and you go to beat up a bunch of Carnies. Pretty standard mission here. You find Penny Yin, who was indeed the hero about whom everyone was speculating in the funeral picture. You rescue her and she tags along. She seemed to hold her own and she's a potent ally if you're running a more support oriented character.

You get to the end of the building and find Vanessa DeVore. Just when you're talking to her, Malta attacks. I think it's four waves of ambushes and it's much better than the alignment mission with Frostfire where Malta attacks, because each wave seems to be triggered by the defeat of the preceding one.

If I had one complaint it was that a malta officer said: "We've got reports of a super hero incursion, take precautions!" when everyone knows they call us MH-1s.

Mission Two: Go to an instanced Portal Corps map, talk to Akarist. A couple groups of Nemesis attack and you have to defeat them to end the mission. This mission did nothing to advance the story, and it was clearly just there to draw things out.

Mission Three: Wow. It's an escort mission/glowie hunt in Orenbaga. That is PAINFUL. You weave your way through the tiny winding tunnels, with Penny and Sister Psyche tagging along, clicking on a couple glowies (which are, fortunately, pretty easy to find). Meanwhile, Penny must have learned aggro management from her buddy Fusionette, because she was picking a bunch of fights we could have avoided. When I finally got to the end of the map and entered the portal, it took me to an ENTIRELY NEW ORENBAGA MAP and I had to go all the way through that one too.

We finally get to the ritual site, a voice tells us that Mister Wade is going to kill us, so it's BACK through Orenbaga to find the assassin, only this time there's a bunch of Rularuu inside. So we go back through the halls, squish the assassin (she was an Elite Boss level soul mage, as near as I could tell, but she imploded, so I don't really have any idea of what her powers were.) She told us that Psyche had already been dealt with and she was there to kill us. So it's back through Orenbaga again to return to the ritual site.

It turns out that the ritual was booby-trapped and it was all a ruse to supercharge Psyche and force Manticore to kill her. That was actually pretty neat, and whatever complaints I have about these arcs, it's not the cut scenes. Unfortunately, the resolution had nothing to do with the hoops I jumped through to get there. We could have cut out the second mission entirely and huge swaths of the first and third and still had the same story.

I usually run my Hero-aligned toons through a SSA as soon as it's released for the free alignment merit, but I don't think I can bear to bring myself to slog through this one again.

Yeah, I wasn't too impressed with that felt like the shoe-horning in there. No guards, no Longbow escort, heck not even Wyvern. This is Manti's damn WIFE, and they didn't think to bring Numina or any of the other magic savvy Heroes along? What the hell were Montague and the Midnighters doing, having a tea break?

I wasn't too ticked with Part 5, personally. Despite the many gripes it got from some, it did work albeit with a little lack of polish in places.
This wasn't part 5. This was...eh. It started off promising, and then fell flat on its face. Badly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

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

Does anyone know Manticore's Hero/Villain kill ratio?

Haven't played it yet, but I understand it's Manticore who pulls the trigger? If so, Totally called it.

Yeah yeah, I guessed wrong on Statesman (but for the right reasons). I doubt they'll kill Posi Sue off at this point.

I still think a latent Malaise psi-timebomb would have been more plausible than some ritual though. Shrug.

I ran this a few hours ago and two words popped into my head as soon as the cutscene started (and it does look nicely filmed, at least):

KNOCKOUT ARROW.

She's using mental powers, and unless I missed some key part of City Lore, the general rule is 'knock out the psychic, knock out the psychic attacks'. There's zero reason to kill off Psyche aside from to make Penny Yin the new uber-psychic.

For me, this was just your generic mission runs (why were the Nemesis even there? I didn't get Part Two at all; it was just padding) with a 'shock twist' cutscene at the end. I actually /slapped Manticore as soon as I ran back to him because his big pancaking mantle was obviously cutting off the flow of blood to his brain.

I'm not afraid to say that I've been spending more time playing other games of late than CoH because the quality of the writing in these arcs just turns me off. I feel like there's no faith in putting my character on the spot to even have the illusion of affecting events, so I'm either too late or in this case two maps away so I can't do anything about the outcome.

It's really, really hard for me to be invested in the story or even feel like I'm important at that point. I pretty much expect another big scripted event to wrap up SSA #7, and this 'book'. Bring on Volume 2 and hopefully a lift in quality.



S.

I felt a little bad going to fight Penny, and then the fight started and I didn't feel so bad. She was holding me right handily, and I have 9.3 hold protection. Killed that pet of hers and then really started putting a hurting on her. Her powers were awesome though, maybe Psionic will become an Epic archetype in the future, I would love some more Epics. Wade's over- preparedness is really straining my suspension of disbelief though. I never really liked the villain knows every little thing you'll do and you're only furthering his plan no matter what you do.