SSA #6 Story Discussion ** SPOILERS **

I'm sure the Midnighters are busy doing what they can to find a way to stop Wade. By the time they get word of the ritual and pull someone off of Shadow Shard duty to run there and help, it would be too late. They can do a "clean sweep" of the area after, but they simply don't have a chance to get there in time.

+1.

Let's not stop with Stun Arrow. How about Cryonic Arrow? EMP Arrow? Surely Manti didn't burn all his inspirations getting through Oranbega; I'd hope he'd be carrying at least one wakie. Maybe a temp power Rez Other, like what comes in the Super Packs? Or how about taking an NPC with one of the many powersets capable of rezzing others? Or maybe even one of the players with a rez power!

Really, I've enjoyed most of the SSA missions until 5 and 6. However, now the forced actions we have to play along with and the utter incompetence of many of the signature heroes are wearing far too thin. This is stretching suspension of belief too far at this point, even for experienced and open-minded players. A snippet of conversation in teamspeak while running the final leg of SSA mission 6 last night, with names redacted for anonymity:

Player1: another ritual?
Player2: yeah
Player1: i'm sure it will go smoothly with no complications whatsoever
Player2: LOL
Player3: lol
Player2: I'm sure
Player1: because we all know these things never have disastrous, unexpected consequences
Player3: right

This is about where I stand now. Looking back at the SSA missions and our new Valentine's day mission arc...

Mission 1--Mysterious villain's magic ritual using big obelisk drains Synapse's powers and nearly kills him, empowers a Lost Boss and nearly empowers Echidna.
Mission 2--no magic ritual. Yay.
Mission 3--Magic ritual set up to "kill" Alexis Duncan-Cole. Not really needed, but it's establishing a pattern.
Mission 4--Magic ritual using the Dirge of Chaos sets up Malaise's attack on Sister Psyche, nearly killing her and allowing him to force himself into her mind.
Mission 5--Magic ritual drains Statesman's powers, allowing Wade to kill him.
Mission 6--Magic ritual to supposedly help Sister Psyche take control of her mind again goes horribly wrong, leading to Manticore killing her and inadvertently sending her powers to Darrin Wade.
Widow Maker arc--Magic ritual goes horribly wrong, nearly killing the player character protagonist.

Well. At this point, even Flambeaux can figure that when someone says, "Hey, let's try out this magic ritual to try and accomplish _______," the proper response is, "NO." So why are these supposedly best-of-the-best NPCs doing something incredibly stupid without preparation, without backup, without assistance, against a master villain who has proven smarter and more cunning than anyone has ever given him credit for... and doing the same dumb things over and over again? Logically speaking, there is no reason, and at this point, "to move the story along" just isn't good enough for me. I'm at the point that as much as I want to see the end of the story and the final outcome, I just can't justify my main character--with nearly eight years real-time experience as a Hero--being either so incredibly stupid or so astonishingly naive as to go along with plans like these.

However, reading Redlynne's post on page 11 explicating the theory that Sister Psyche and possibly Manticore himself are setting up Wade gives me some hope. Maybe, just maybe, we're seeing one of the Heroes start to out-think Darrin Wade, and that would give me some positive feelings for this arc again. I really hope this is the case, and the little bit about the speech balloons really does imply something like this. Red, I hope you're right, because otherwise this arc is going to go down as a case study in Supergroup incompetence.

What Venture said. The SSA have been without a doubt the worst storytelling in this game.

Honestly, I'm never too overtly critical of the storytelling, despite some of the short-comings, but I think I'll make an odd exception in saying that, "Yep. This is pretty bad."

Maybe I'm lacking in comprehension somewhere, that's entirely possible. Maybe it's because Penny got herself killed in all 3 missions and had some dialogue that explained what was going on. But, whatever it was, for the life of me, I didn't know what the heck was happening. The whole mind-riding thing felt convoluted to begin with, but then we start doing stuff that just makes no sense. How the heck did Manticore get ahead of us, past all the CoT, and didn't manage to bring anyone? Why the heck did Nemesis show up in the 2nd mission? Again, granted, I've been consecutively awake for far longer than any normal human being should have, but I've never had issues following the story until the SSAs started up. SSA6 was a rather grievous offender in that regard, but the other ones didn't help much either. Felt rather sloppy all around, and the fact that people can pay for these right now as if they were anything beyond a free alignment merit seems really weird to me.

First, the idea of inspirations/enhancements is just stupid to any story period.

By the reasoning of using them, one shouldn't fear anything. In fact one would have to wonder why there's ghosts in the game period.

"Oh hey! Here's an awaken."

Next, who says all defeats in the game are getting knocked out.

Combining a storyline with game mechanics is dumb. Did the idea that Dr Brainstorm (or was it Aeon, or someone else entirely) brought about Power Proliferation not que people into that?

You know, one of the most terribly recieved storylines for the game. The storyline so bad, it's been retconned out.

Or what, people want to mix and match when it's okay so they can complain about something?

This isn't to say one has to wonder why Manti didn't use a different arrow, but maybe he couldn't.

Also game play wise, if you're going to stetch it that far, how was Manti able to even kill her with one arrow? Anyone who's run the LRSF knows she isn't going to go down with just one arrow.

Nah, one arrow is all it takes with her:



ftp://ftp.coh.com/comics/topcow/comic_11.pdf

Of course, the fact that Manti keeps doing it suggests something seriously wrong with that relationship...

I did say gameplay wise.

No. I'm saying that the characterization of Statesman has not been consistent enough to give us enough information to make a reliable prediction about how he would act in a given situation. I'm not saying that it was inevitable that his confrontation would have occurred as it did, but you seem to be arguing that it was impossible that it could have happened as it did.

He knows his name and the fact the Wade killed his daughter, but it's unreasonable to assume that Statesman would have any reason to believe Wade happened to be sandbagging an anti-Incarnate spell.

I'm not saying that Statesman didn't suspect a trap. I'm saying that he's got 80+ years of surviving traps, and he had no reason to believe this would be any different. It wasn't stupid of him, he wasn't overconfident. When I'm hunting Skulls for the badge on a level 50, I don't feel the need to pop two purples and my tier 9 before each group. And if I should accidentally aggro the Kraken in the process, I'm pretty sure I could flee.

Same deal here. Statesman might have suspected that Wade had something up his sleeve, but he's survived an awful lot, and it's not a reasonable assumption that this non-entity would be able to lock him down and shut him off at will.

It's a writer's job to tell a story. I do think it's outside the scope of a writer's mission to why things didn't happen. I'd certainly agree that a little more explanation about why certain courses of actions were not pursued would have helped the verisimilitude of the arc, but you're never going to have a completely exhaustive list that will satisfy a fan base as dedicated as the one we have here.

I don't see why it should. The very notion that Sister Psyche and Manticore are together smart enough to set Darrin Wade up to take the big fall is pretty far fetched, given the magnificent parade of incompetence we've been given a front row seat to so far.

At this point, not even Lord Nemesis himself can out-think Darrin Wade. I don't see Mender Silos handing out any missions to the effect of "You need to do this ONE LITTLE THING for me to completely change the fate of the Freedom Phalanx."

Right now my INF is All In on the square marked "Too Stupid To Live" for the Freedom Phalanx. I was simply trying to construct a scenario, using the available evidence, that allowed for an "out" from the horrible outcome of SSA 6, in a desperate gambit to save SOMETHING worthwhile out of it. Sadly, I presume I'm just going to be disappointed (again).

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Actually, going by the examples above, the majority of the rituals worked exactly as intended for the person creating them.

Prep time.

We've been all over that in other threads. The only reason a "non-entity" like Wade would ostentatiously provoke a confrontation with one of the world's most powerful supers is because he at least thinks he has a sure-fire way of coming out on top. Given that, it's pretty stupid to treat said confrontation like a coffee and cake run -- or even to give him that confrontation in the first place. Wade would have been utterly screwed if Statesman had been smart enough to realize it was a setup and sent someone else -- like, say, the PC -- in his place.

When a soldier pops out of cover and points a funny looking club at your up-till-now invincible tank do you a> laugh as you slowly rotate your turret to bring the main gun to bear on the nicely stationary and exposed target or b> think that there is now an anti-invincible-tank weapon and one is being pointed at your tank and eliminate the threat whatever the most expedient method is?

The ones who choose "a" probably never lived long enough to get to make another choice and States has, had, been around a long time.

Go go gadget idiotball is all I can say.

Statesman had been around a long time, and was invulnerable enough to survive choosing A for most of that time. Also, if you look at the cut scene, there's essentially no gap between Statesman finding him and Wade springing the trap. He really only does the boasting once he has Statesman at his mercy.

As someone said in another thread, Wade had a good day and States had a bad day and they happened to be the same day.

Psyche: You have to do it!
Manticore: I can't!
Psyche: Kill me!
Manticore: NO!
Psyche: . . .
Manticore: There has to be another way!
Psyche: I'm cheating on you.
Manticore: . . what?!
Psyche: With Dillo.
Manticore: . . .
Psyche: Hoorb!
*Manticore shoots her.*

Jokes aside, here's how it should have gone. The ritual goes out of control, and when Psyche tells Manticore to kill her, he just looks the altar over for a minute, then goes up and scratches out a symbol. Ritual defuses and ends. This is the benefit of 1) Two way communicators, including one built into his headgear, 2) getting there early so you can describe the ritual altar to people over said communicator, and 3) Being able to have people like Grym and Azura on the other end of the channel to tell you what to do when things go wrong.

Beat me to it.

Like I said, go go gadget idiot ball.

Hopefully the next hero is smart enough to just nuke the site from orbit and then arrest Wade after one more nuke for good measure (rule #2 and all).

If it was up to me, you'd already be working for Paragon Studios.

I was under the impression that we weren't supposed to either a) talk about that, or b) put any gospel faith in that content as it was still in its earliest stages of development.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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