genuine need or company spite? *spoilers*
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2012-03-29 18:39 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I suspect Psyche dying is a prelude to Manticore going from a Batman-style Hero to a Punisher-style Vigilante (with no place for such an individual in the Freedom Phalanx, shaking up its membership roster even more).
(If that wasn't the intention.... um, I'm not working at the moment, so could you folks at Paragon use another writer? I have some ideas....)
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I think that will depend on how Positron leads the Phalanx - will he continue to follow Statesman's line of keeping the group morally correct, or will he allow darker types in it?
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
I suspect Psyche dying is a prelude to Manticore going from a Batman-style Hero to a Punisher-style Vigilante (with no place for such an individual in the Freedom Phalanx, shaking up its membership roster even more).
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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I never felt the need to be "The Guy". That might make me some kind of unique snowflake but I kind of doubt that's the case.|
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
Statesman has been heroing for eighty-some years now. Just by his sheer longevity and legend there was no way I was ever going to be The Guy compared to him as long as he was still an active hero. And as the SSA showed us, there was no way he was going to stop being an active hero unless someone stopped him.
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My hero is not "The Guy" now, either. Once you leave the SSA, the world goes on like it always has. It's not as if anybody but me, the player behind the keyboard, is ever going to acknowledge my character's "guyness".
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Your capacity for irrelevance is remarkable. In fact, I see it mentioned quite often.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Spandex goes with everything - it's a very versatile fabric
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'I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: 'however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'
'I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.
'Don't be impertinent,' said the King, 'and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke.
'A cat may look at a king,' said Alice.
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That's Vanguard's turf and blueside needs at last one competent organization around that's not out to conquer the world.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
or will he allow darker types in it?
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| I never felt the need to be "The Guy". That might make me some kind of unique snowflake but I kind of doubt that's the case. |
When the Rikti invade AP, my hero is out there fighting while Ms. Liberty just stands there looking pretty. My hero-hood isn't threatened by do-nothing quest givers.
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I don't think that Lady Grey wants to rule the world - just protect it |
Originally Posted by Ogi
That's Vanguard's turf and blueside needs at last one competent organization around that's not out to conquer the world.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Fair enough.
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
I never felt the need to be "The Guy". That might make me some kind of unique snowflake but I kind of doubt that's the case.
My hero is not "The Guy" now, either. Once you leave the SSA, the world goes on like it always has. It's not as if anybody but me, the player behind the keyboard, is ever going to acknowledge my character's "guyness". |
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That's exactly what I meant when I described their motivation as "generic at best." What is the source of that passion for law and order motivating Primal Earth's Statesman when that wasn't enough for Praetorian Earth's or Amerika Earth's? Why did he originally adopt a "masked adverturer" persona to defend Paragon City, instead of, say, joining the police force? Why did he continue his career as Paragon City's primary defender despite the deaths of friends and family over the years? What made him a hero?|
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
I think you kinda answered your own question though. Statesman and Sister Psyche wanted to uphold the greater good - just not at the costs that their Praetorian equivalents are willing to go through. Heck, its blatantly shoved at us in Statesman's last scene: He's going to face down the man who killed his daughter and bring him to justice by... booking him, murder one. Because that's what the representation of truth, justice, and the Paragonian Way would do.
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The in-game speeches from Emperor Cole and Lord Recluse provide us with their philosophies straight from the horse's mouth. Statesman doesn't even get the proverbial "famous last words" when he dies.
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That's always been my approach to my characters, even the ones who want to save and/or take over the world. Pretending that they're unique or superlative requires more roleplaying skill than I can muster.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
I never felt the need to be "The Guy". That might make me some kind of unique snowflake but I kind of doubt that's the case.
My hero is not "The Guy" now, either. Once you leave the SSA, the world goes on like it always has. It's not as if anybody but me, the player behind the keyboard, is ever going to acknowledge my character's "guyness". |
As The Incredibles' Syndrome observed, "When everyone's super, no one will be."
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Suppose this is true. Can you prove that he makes such decisions purely out of spite? Are you paranoid enough to believe that he doesn't like the players, now?
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Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
Actually we know that Positron is prone to throwing the toys out of the pram.
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"I wanna show you a trick mother showed me when you weren't around."
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Originally Posted by Kierthos
Honestly, I would have loved that part of the arc much better if, after losing his powers, Statesman said "There's... one thing you should know."
Darrin Wade sneers, "What's that, old man?" Statesman says "Before... before I was Statesman... I was a soldier." and pulls out a World War I era pistol, and takes a shot at Wade. Sure, Wade would take the shot and shrug it off, maybe get some tiny little scar on his face from it and then just summon some Rularuu beastie to smack the life out of Marcus Cole... AND then you run the cutscene. |
@Glass Goblin - Writer, brainstormer, storyteller, hero
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
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Warning: 35 year old spoiler. <.<
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Originally Posted by GlassGoblin
"I wanna show you a trick mother showed me when you weren't around."
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'I don't like the look of it at all,' said the King: 'however, it may kiss my hand if it likes.'
'I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.
'Don't be impertinent,' said the King, 'and don't look at me like that!' He got behind Alice as he spoke.
'A cat may look at a king,' said Alice.
Why's everyone pretending 'death' in a superheroic context is anything but a temporary state/plot contrivance?
States will be back, Sister Psyche will be back, the only question is when and how.
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My City Was Gone
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I had an idea on how to fix that, perhaps as a future issue or expansion.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
My hero is not "The Guy" now, either. Once you leave the SSA, the world goes on like it always has. It's not as if anybody but me, the player behind the keyboard, is ever going to acknowledge my character's "guyness".
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Essentially, they give players their own "bottled city of Kandor" to play with; a pocket dimension where supers don't exist and is imperiled by some kind of threat and thus you are their only hope.
Over the course of the storyline your choices and actions determine how that world ends up. Do you go on to become that world's savior or do you seize control and make then tremble under your boot heel or do you set it all on fire and dance on the ashes?
If they could jury-rig the Doppelganger tech, maybe they could even have holographic monuments to you. Add some reasonable customization, the ability to name the place, etc.
I guess this would be taking the long requested "player housing" to the next level, giving villains their own little world/country to conquer and rule over and giving heroes a place they can "be The Guy".
Or maybe it's a dumb idea.
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It's not dumb by any stretch of the imagination, but what this describes is basically a single-player game. Why the devs would want to put a dedicated single-player option for a pocket instance into a multi-player game with a shared virtual environment is a bigger question than why they'd kill off a former dev's in-game avatar.
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I guess this would be taking the long requested "player housing" to the next level, giving villains their own little world/country to conquer and rule over and giving heroes a place they can "be The Guy".
Or maybe it's a dumb idea. |
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So you say. And since all writers think like you, that means the Paragon Studios writers must have had an ulterior motive.|
Originally Posted by Neuronia
Psyche's death was needless except to help self-gloss Positron.
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I wonder what my motive is for deliberately denying the truth: need or spite.
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Of course he doesn't, otherwise he'd let them create level 50 characters for PvP right out of the gate rather than play through all that booooooring PvE content. (Fully purpled, too.) Or at least not try to stop them from farming their way past it in a couple of evenings.|
Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Suppose this is true. Can you prove that he makes such decisions purely out of spite? Are you paranoid enough to believe that he doesn't like the players, now?
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Seriously and FWIW, I didn't realize that Jack also created Psyche.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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The same could be said of Dark Astoria and the first 20 levels of Praetoria, for that matter.|
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
It's not dumb by any stretch of the imagination, but what this describes is basically a single-player game.
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| why they'd kill off a former dev's in-game avatar. |
I think the statement that this was the most interesting thing they could think of to do with these characters was on the money. I feel like the current writers, rather than build on the game's lore and grow characters, would prefer to bulldoze to make room for what they want. It's like in bad fanfiction when a writer has doesn't respect the cannon and just bends it to their use, shipping characters who've shown no real interest in each other, giving people motivation they didn't have before, making people act wildly out of charcter and less competent just so their story can work.
Wade is no surprise, just a symptom. "I stopped the guy with godlike power and several more lifetimes of experience than me without lifting a finger in combat when no one else in 70 years, even the people who know him the best, could".
Uh huh. Well nice work Darrin-Sue.
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I saw it in the theater, on first release. Thirty-five years ago... *sob* |
Originally Posted by Aneko
Warning: 35 year old spoiler. <.<
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Also, I bow to your superior Tube-Fu, as I wasn't able to find a clip of just that scene.
@Glass Goblin - Writer, brainstormer, storyteller, hero
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
"Spite" is possibly too strong a word to describe the motivations of the dev team. There's no question at all that some of them felt that Statesman was a symbol of an administration that they were well shot of, and that publicly removing him from the game environment was a way of removing the last remaining symbol of the old regime.
If you feel inclined to verify that conclusion, you're welcome to search through my posts for the last couple of months. You'll find the links to the interviews that I've posted in the past, with the words from Matt Miller's mouth. I feel no strong incentive to dig them up again myself when they've been gone over thoroughly already in other threads.
By the end of SSA1, we are presented with at least a hand-wave explanation for Darren Wade targeting Statesman and Sister Psyche. Story-wise, we have to be content with that. Do I ever want to see this happen this way again? No. They'd better have gotten it out of their systems at this point, because as a player who regularly either subscribes or tends to spend $15 or more per month on purchases I won't stand for this kind of shenanigans a second time.
I don't need to know all of the insider information in the company's operation to know that I disliked where this story went and the path it traveled to get there. I expect the management to treat the game's environment and back story with respect rather than treating it as a throw-away construct that can be tinkered with whenever someone feels that they have to "leave their mark", or treating individual characters as if they "belong" to some individual developer, acquiring that developer's baggage, instead belonging to the game and its players.
I don't want to see that any future SSA's even have a question of "spite", whether it's an appropriate label or not.
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Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Suppose this is true. Can you prove that he makes such decisions purely out of spite? Are you paranoid enough to believe that he doesn't like the players, now?
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Have you seen what they did to the AE?
They took something unique to City of heroes, something no other MMO had done before.
And destroyed it because people weren't playing how Positron wanted.
To paraphrase black ops.
"3000 people used to use the AE, now it's a ghost town."
And let's not get started on his parting words on removing rewards from Incarnate trials as you unlock slots. Better hope that enough people are running the newer trials to ensure the old ones don't get the AE treatment.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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Originally Posted by Megajoule
Of course he doesn't, otherwise he'd let them create level 50 characters for PvP right out of the gate rather than play through all that booooooring PvE content. (Fully purpled, too.) Or at least not try to stop them from farming their way past it in a couple of evenings.
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You know that might actually revive PVP in CoH, a single server for PVP with that mode enabled.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
Have you seen what they did to the AE?
They took something unique to City of heroes, something no other MMO had done before. And destroyed it because people weren't playing how Positron wanted. To paraphrase black ops. "3000 people used to abuse the AE, now it's a ghost town." |
oh, and: lol.
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I had written up a nice long post, but, sadly I hit 'preview' instead of 'submit' and left it there for several hours, only to come back to find I was logged out when I hit 'submit'
So, the short version of what I wrote:
Statesman and Sister Psyche never had any real character development (at least until post-Cryptic, with Positron in charge). They were incredibly bland, flat, generic characters that were completely inhuman. As others have said, wtf was their motiviation for doing what they do? Not what flag do they fly under, but their actual motivation. The characters were boring, and, quite frankly, I've never liked Statesman, all the way back to when I first started playing City of Heroes.
It's really a problem with the entire Freedom Phalanx. Manticore by far has the most depth of any of them, and... he's seriously pretty cliche, rocking the quasi-vig batman-with-a-bow thing. Manticore has had far more direct involvement with the player than any other member of the Freedom Phalanx, appearing in the flesh in a variety of story arcs, and interacting with the player (I quite liked him in the Twinshot's Shining Stars arcs).
I enjoyed all the WWD arcs. Getting to play with Synapses powers was fun (they kind of sucked, though ), along with the floating ships, going into Sister Psyche's mind, going to the mooooooooon, getting to personally execute an old hero, and a load of other things. They were fun. I do have a few complaints, but they're nothing major: Rulawade needs to be buffed (GW and PY were both tougher), they need a graphic for the Apocalypse Beam (I thought it was bugged and not firing...), and on the mission where you go to the Chantry, the waypoint needs to be selected by default.
So maybe if Statesman and Sister Psyche had ever been developed I'd actually care if they died (I cared more about Jean, and beating up the Shining Stars!). The very little bit of cannon character development they've had was done under the guide of Positron (and maybe Warwitch, I don't recall when she took over). You could have replaced them with cardboard cutouts and no one would have noticed a difference in their depth (didn't Nemesis practically do that once?).
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Killing them off like this seems like the devs' admission that since they didn't know what to do with them in the game, removing them entirely was the most dramatic option they could come up with.