SSA #6 Story Discussion ** SPOILERS **

Or it could just have just been his "CO will be better than CoH in every single way" interview

Yeah, I think the combination of all said factors makes it an okay maneuver in my book.
I can imagine it is somewhat like running a gaming campaign and one of the original guys, who was a brash, pain-in-the-neck had the super duperest of all the characters and, since he left, you've had that same character remaining as the head honcho. That could get old pretty fast.

I don't know... as a complete outsider to any of that (And I was not here when Jack was here and I was busy with other things and really didn't know anything about what he was like or anything), I never truly related Statesman to Jack (other than I knew he used it as his forum handle).
As much as players have pointed to solid reasons for negativity towards the person... it is possible that it may have been worse to have actually known him, hehe.
Maybe it wasn't even that bad, but it still is the lovechild character of the guy that ditched this game to make a Marvel game... no, fine, a Champions Online game... and then talked a big game about it and used some underhanded methods (if anyone recalls that stuff) to spread word about his game and negativity against CoH. *shrugs*
Peoples is peoples.
I'm not going to say it is petty of anyone at CoH if any of those reasons are behind them killing off the character.
It's their show and I'm still watchin'!

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

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I think the problem is having Matt Miller phrase things as he did. At that point, if this were "Castle" or "The Mentalist," the fact that Statesman and Psyche were both creations of Jack Emmert and are now dead would be linchpin motive that has Our Heroes exclaim, "Aha!"

From the standpoint of dealing with Jack Emmert, I am in no position to begrudge any ill feelings. He may have deserved every bit of hostility ever expressed by anyone. I can also understand Matt Miller's perspective in the sense of "opening up new possibilities by cutting ties to the past" sort of way.

The execution (pun semi-intended) of the death of Statesman left so very, very much to be desired, for all the reasons I shall not repeat. Coupled with the Miller comments, it made the entire enterprise look very mean-spirited. Perhaps, as I said, deservedly so to Jack, but what about the folks, such as myself, that had no identification of Statesman=Jack?

I never knew Bob Kane. I like Batman. I never knew Lee Falk. I like the Phantom. I could go on, but the point is that even if Kane and Falk turned out to be utter swine as people, Batman and the Phantom still appeal to me. In the case of Statesman, he was generally depicted as an arrogant, aloof and non-perceptive swine in the comics... EXCEPT when Troy Hickman got a chance with him. The Hickman Statesman was TREMENDOUSLY appealing to me and fraught with all sorts of possibilities as a character.

The Hickman Statesman, if he HAD to die in the Paragon Studios scheme of things, deserved an openly explicit noble and heroic death. There are folks that have filled in the blanks in the story to come to the "noble and heroic" conclusion, and I have noted their efforts. But the story, as presented, shows an experienced, veteran hero walking into an Obvious Trap(tm) and dying at the hand of his daughter's murderer with a smile on his face.

I am a VIP. I am still here. There is so much else to enjoy about CoH, and I do. But I am directly paying for the SSAs whether I ever play another or not. I cannot "vote with my pocketbook" because VIPs pay regardless, and going Preem or Freem means I cannot play all of my heroes, etc., etc. I seriously doubt if my non-participation in further SSAs will make a blip in any data-mining that the Devs do. But "still being here" does not equate to "I am still watching" in this context. Bad form, Devs, very bad form.

Kill him anyways. Then at least it proves they're not killing off characters because of a dev.

BABs was a dev, he's gone, why not kill BABs off while we're at it?

That means the intro of Penny counters every reason they had to get rid of Statesman and Psyche.

Not to mention we have all the other big time powers in the game.

Recluse, CK...plenty of others I'm sure.

But we're not cutting ties to the past, we still have the rest of the Freedom Phalanx, which is from the start of the game, as is Statesman.

This isn't cutting the ties to the past, if Positron and the rest of the Freedom Phaanx remain alive.

Kill them off, let player characters be the new Freedom Phalanx.

Even better, give players the option of being in the Freedom Phalanx SG or their own created supergroup! The FP will just have an unlimited number of spaces, stops you from joining another, and gives you access to the Freedom Phalanx supergroup chat channel!

\o/

*cough* Freedom Phalanx Reserve badge *cough*

That's just a badge. What I suggested is so much more!

I'll have to dissent on this evaluation. The amount of ancient mythology in the game could have come from anyone with a high school diploma. And the world of CoH is a rip off of the generic world of Champions, thus stripping out any sense of a unique world where ancient Greek culture has any more influence than it does in our real world, back story of the first novel notwithstanding.

Because he's not a member of the Freedom Phalanx, obviously. He just hangs around them all the time, shows up in videos with them, fights with them in the LRSF and for many years had "Freedom Phalanx" under his name in the targeting window.

I had most of a long reply saying the same thing typed out, but then my daughter woke up and I couldn't get back to the computer until now. You've said what I was going to, so rather than post my original reply, I'll just say this.

I think that if you're going to kill off one character, doing it to Statesman is going to have the maximum impact. There are several good reasons for the choice, but the quote at the end of the interview gives the decision the impression of pettiness. "Yeah, nothing burns like an effigy."

I never had a huge problem with him. I've been playing since a week after launch, though the last time I was really an active poster on these forums was around when someone had leaked the details of ED. (My signature is a bit of snark about ED. I suppose I should change that, as it's no longer really topical.) I never hated him like a lot of people did, but the whole we’ve finished making large changes to the power sets was stunningly tone deaf, and I can understand the animosity that followed.

Is that right?

Have you looked up the origins of Orenbega or Adamastor or Lusca or the Malta Group or The Knives of Artemis or Tuatha or Croatoa or Jack-in-Irons or...?

I can go on. There's a lot more going on here than just what you get from some high school kid reading Bartle's Mythology. The game draws on all kinds of well-known and lesser-known mythology as the basis for its various factions and monsters. In the case of Malta and Croatoa, it draws on recent mythological components (Illuminati/conspiracy) and American myth (Roanoke colony disappearance, Lovecraftian settings; the Paragon University Magical Annex might as well be Miskatonic University). Even a faction like The Warriors which is an obvious homage to a well-known movie is also given a background that ties them into the more classical Greco-Roman mythology that you mention.

If you think that the mythological background of the game begins and ends with Pandora's Box and the Well of Furies then you need to dig deeper.

The one group that could have received a stronger treatment in this respect is the Tsoo, though I think that they are deliberately designed to be something of a homage to a particular Western view of how mystical Asian secret societies and criminal organizations from old movies and pulp stories are depicted.

Now, there's no doubt that a lot of credit for the development of these ideas goes to Sean Fish, and it isn't really clear where the line should be drawn between Rick Dakan and Jack Emmert, but there's no doubt at all that Jack's background in mythological studies made itself felt throughout all of the content from the first couple of years of the game's life.

I'm not saying that the game is some deep treatment of any of these elements or that Jack was single-handedly responsible for developing all of the content. I AM saying that most of the core mythologically-inspired ideas came from his vision. Your average high school student wouldn't have a clue about Norumbega or Adamastor or the Tuatha de Danan(sp?) or a dozen other inspirations for content in the game.

The act isn't over, there is still one more left and this means when Statesman and Sister Psyche is now dead, then there must be a big blow left for the final part and this scares me for a little bit. Comic characters don't have to die like that, this is just not right.

What's bothering me is supposedly 'one will die' and we've now passed that which means either they lied to get people to buy them or she's not technically 'dead'.

On the upside; Independence Port's getting a makeover for i23, one way or the other.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Not going to lie, that pissed me off. ED didn't piss me off, and I found (as I suspected at the time) that ED didn't severely nerf most characters or most powers (it did impact some rather disproportionately, such as nukes and snipes, plus the way it impacted defenses). But the sense of being misled like that was one of the reasons my interest in the game tapered off before issue 7. If he hadn't said that, or if he'd at least been honest about further changes possibly in the pipeline, I would not have been fussed.

It makes more sense to kill them off.

offend Jack? He'd probably also be offended if they kept writing stories about "his character."

They're probably sick of having to write Jack's character into everything big.

They're probably sick of his ridiculo-god powers making it hard to mechanically explain why he's sending girls with guns to go fight gods in his stead.

Would you prefer that he be "rebooted" to be grittier and more realistic? throw darts at the diversity board and see what he gets changed to? "Let's see here, you hit crippled, narcissistic, sex-maniac, warmonger, black, and hispanic. Hand this to Tony and tell him to have the backstory written by tomorrow, or we throw two extra darts."

I see that as being no different than having to write for every other character they had no hand in creating.

I see that as no different than a comic book writer having to write for a 60 year old Batman or Superman.

So the fact that the character was created by someone else shouldn't be a factor.

And if the problem is him sending heroes off to fight things he could fight, then work around it by saying "OMG! Brand X I have to save the world from a meteor hurling it's way towards the planet! Quick! Take care of Recluse while I take care of the meteor!"

Also, this is no different than every other hero (Positron, Synapse, basically all TF contacts) who hands out missions to our heroes. And suppossedly they're tough enough to handle the situations on their own too.

Oh! Also, not worried about offending Jack This is just me not caring for the killing off of characters because Jack made them.

Also, I think someone just really loved Big Trouble in Little China.





.

I'm amused that I'm not the only one who thought of this.

Not caring would imply that you have no opinion either way...

But perhaps what you mean is that it slightly irks you, you just aren't going to burn down anyone's village over it.

Yes, I would have preferreda bit of a revamp to Statesman, and here's what I would have done.
Cole, being the Well's champion, convinces the Well to withdraw all of it's support from Statesman (actually, to make to make it better, have the SSA up to part five go on as normal but Statesman is stripped of his powers JUST BEFORE Wade activates his trap, causing it to have no effect on the completely human marcus cole) leaving him a normal human once more. He feels weak and inquietude, but watching BaB, Bluesteel, Manticore, our own characters, and countless others continue to battle inspires him and all this helps give him a new lease on life.

He's no longer immortal so he becomes bolder in dealing with Arachnos because he doesn't have all the time in the world now to make it a better place, at the same time he begins to reconnect with everyone.

Starting by becoming a low level contact who would, from all plotlines forth, be contactable in new or revamped content like Keith Nance was at the end of the Roy Cooling arc or the countless villain contacts in the Vincent Ross arc.
Basically, you can always count on being able to call on Marcus Cole for some form of help with your tasks.

BOOM!
Stripped of his powers and forced to retake his stock on life, you can do a lot with his character, making him mortal and stripped of the Well's power after having it for so long justifies him sending others out, and by having him be a low level contact who has a reoccurring function, it helps better establish his new personality and gives him value to the players.

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.

Yeah. I was steamed at the time, but much like you, I got over it. I remember when I heard about it. I was playing a scrapper that I really liked at the time. I was thinking "All right! Now that I have focused accuracy, I can slot everything for straight damage now!" and then someone broke the news over the server channels. Heh.