Heartsick (*SPOILERS FOR BELLADONNA VETRANO*)
And the city is hardly "in flames" when the fires only take a couple of windows at the most on a single floor of the handful of buildings that have been damaged - it's hardly Blyde Square or Skyway City.
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Not surprised, though.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
I don't. I feel a sense of "we could have evacuated everyone who wanted to go and left the rest to the Hamidon back in i19 and spared ourselves this pointless, over-long drawn-out storyline."
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![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I don't. I feel a sense of "we could have evacuated everyone who wanted to go and left the rest to the Hamidon back in i19 and spared ourselves this pointless, over-long drawn-out storyline." If I were to be a little less meta about it, I'd add that we also would have spared all the primals who died in Praetoria's invasions (don't give me that crap about Tyrant sparing civilians. When you're knocking down overpasses and blowing up buildings, civilians die.) as well as any Praetorians who would have jumped at the chance to leave but weren't given the option, and died in one of the ultimately pointless Resistance/Loyalist or Praetorian/Primal conflicts.
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I think Golden and Savior do a good job of pointing out why we had to do this.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
And I've admitted that part of my reaction does boil down to the fact that I think that Skyway City is so ugly that, frankly, I think what Durray did to it qualifies as an improvement. Even after the Atlas Park revamp, Paragon City's architecture and urban planning remind me of everything I hate about late 20th, early 21st century American cities, with the added aesthetic offenses of all that Albert Speer-esque cyclopean statuary and immense policed concrete neighborhood walls. As Leslie Fish sings, "Down, down, tear it all down!" |
Basically, this boils down to "I liked this zone, and I wish they hadn't blown it up." Don't couch it with arguments against the Praetorian war, the Resistance, etc, if all you really care about is a skyscraper.
If you didn't see the Praetorian leadership as anything but sinister, you willfully ignored half the story. People brainwashed and mind controlled into subservience need to be slapped out of it, and sometimes that includes blowing up some of the symbols of their oppression. They need to be shown that there's an actual battle out there, and that they need to choose sides. There is no more neutrality in Praetoria.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
And it's everything we fought to prevent, in three of the four level 1-20 Praetorian arcs. Half the city is on fire. The Crusaders won.
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Picture it: "It the symbol of his oppression! BURN IT! BURN IT ALL DOWN!"
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
It had to happen eventually.
Picture it: "It the symbol of his oppression! BURN IT! BURN IT ALL DOWN!" |
![](http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i259/rufusy2k/BB-MadStan-1.png)
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It had to happen eventually.
Picture it: "It the symbol of his oppression! BURN IT! BURN IT ALL DOWN!" |
Or the 5-6 buildings with small fires taking up a couple of windows on each one while 30+ other buildings were untouched could have just been the result of crossfire during the battle.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
But then we wouldn't have had the fun of totally crushing the loyalists
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So is taking enjoyment in the suffering of others, by the way.
![Stick Out Tongue](images/smilies/tongue.gif)
"I do so love taking a nice, well thought out character and putting them through hell. It's like tossing a Faberge Egg onto the stage during a Gallagher concert." - me
@Palador / @Rabid Unicorn
They didn't do a very good job of buring it down - although if they vandalized the elevators first to stick to the Man, and then had to take the stairs to the top, they were probably too out of breath to start a big fire, and their anarchist spirt would rebel against the traditional method of setting fire to the ground floor first and letting the fire work its way naturally upwards, trapping everyone on all the floors above, and they were probably saving all their explosives for use on hospitals and orphanages, which would explain why they didn't simply blow the buildings up.
Or the 5-6 buildings with small fires taking up a couple of windows on each one while 30+ other buildings were untouched could have just been the result of crossfire during the battle. |
Click here to find all the All Things Art Threads!
"Hurting people who've fallen into your hands is the mark of a villain, not a hero."
So is taking enjoyment in the suffering of others, by the way. ![]() |
![Wink](images/smilies/wink.gif)
A lot of the fun also comes form the sheer scale of what the devs have done - the loyalists are one of the biggest and most complex villain groups in the game, covering 1-50, with their own unique zones, troop types, AVs and history - but instead of the normal temporary victory that we get over other groups, this time the devs have spent almost 2 years carefully setting them up for us to utterly destroy them in the most permanent defeat and destruction of any villain group that's ever been done in the history of the game - they've basically given us a group with the size, scope and depth of Arachnos, but let us crush them in the most spectacular, wide-ranging and comprehensive way possible, even openly telling us which of the AVs have been killed rather than captured, leaving no room for a "world reset".
Add in the fact that ever since GR was first announced the heil brigade have been squealing their "for the greater good" lies just about every thread about Praetoria, but now have to witness the total rout, collapse, defeat and humilation of the loyalist dictatorship, and I23 becomes almost better than sex.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
On the other hand, look at who was in charge of Praetoria. When you play Emperor Cole's mission at the end of the arc, you realize he was the ONLY person with a genuine desire to do what was right. He was the only one with good intentions. |
All of the true monsters in human history, from Chin Shih Huang-Ti through Hitler to Osama bin Laden and whoever else is coming down the pike, committed their atrocities because they thought they were doing good. They were saving their people from evil and corruption, according to them at least. What is so frustrating about this Argument That Will Not Die is that practically everything Tyrant and his regime said and did is cut and pasted from real human history. If you're prepared to argue that Tyrant was really a good guy then you might as well argue that Hitler was just misunderstood.
As for the comparisons made to Paragon City, I wonder exactly how we know what the murder rate is in Skyway City and where this information is available, either on the company website or in game. The truth is that Paragon City is in growth mode. They're rebuilding destroyed areas of the city, building new housing, and that wouldn't be done unless people were moving into the city. The game's artificially-inflated portrayal of criminal activity notwithstanding, people want to live there. Whereas even with everyone drinking the mandatory government-supplied Kool-Aid people were literally dying to get out of Praetoria.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
If you're prepared to argue that Tyrant was really a good guy then you might as well argue that Hitler was just misunderstood. |
Cole's story is one of a man with good intentions and bad circumstances. Praetorian Earth is a long series of bad circumstances.
Now Cole is in a world with better mentalities (at least, one would think so). He has a chance to see where you can take a chance, can hope that people's better judgement will win over their selfish desires.
Or maybe he'll just run into somebody like you, who will selfishly butcher him when the world is at stake and we need all the help we can get.
He's not the black-and-white madman he was back when he was first conceived. He's not a paragon of morality either, by no means, but nor are any of the heroes in this game.
But they're getting better.
Even Scirocco overcame his villainy and has made a better, more honorable person of himself.
Give the man a chance to redeem himself, or at least let him be imprisoned and learn why what he did was wrong.
If you just kill him, he doesn't learn anything, and those who are still loyal to his cause wind up believing that he was right, that maybe Primal Earth IS a chaotic den of psychopaths and madmen that needs to be culled.
Executing him doesn't solve anything. His city is already destroyed. His society is already crumbled.
Let him live with his shame. Let him learn his guilt.
It's hard to imagine a worse punishment.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
They're not the same person and have no connection to each other. |
Cole's story is one of a man with good intentions and bad circumstances. |
Or maybe he'll just run into somebody like you, who will selfishly butcher him when the world is at stake and we need all the help we can get. |
He's not the black-and-white madman he was back when he was first conceived. |
He's not a paragon of morality either, by no means, but nor are any of the heroes in this game. |
Even Scirocco overcame his villainy and has made a better, more honorable person of himself. |
Give the man a chance to redeem himself, or at least let him be imprisoned and learn why what he did was wrong. |
If you just kill him, he doesn't learn anything, and those who are still loyal to his cause wind up believing that he was right |
Executing him doesn't solve anything. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
Venture seems to have made it clear; he doesn't believe in Heel Face Turns.
![](http://i778.photobucket.com/albums/yy70/KojiroJames/neversurrendersig.jpg)
Venture seems to have made it clear; he doesn't believe in Heel Face Turns.
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Those nightmares are going to haunt me forever now.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
I will be very, very disappointed if what comes after the Rikti War, the Council War, the Second Rikti War, the Second Council War, the Praetorian War, and the Battalion War is yet another war.
When I was a kid? Superheroes fought crime. I miss that. Nothing would delight me more than to to spend a year or more leading up to a triumph over corruption in Paragon City and in the US government as thorough as, if hopefully less destructive than, the triumph we just had over the Praetorians. Say, a victory where it's enough to expose their secrets and the whole conspiracy collapses, something like the one we had over the Rikti Lineage of War that all-but ended the Second Rikti War. I would dearly love to expose their secrets in such a way that we see either the Family or Crey or the Circle of Thorns or Wyvern or anybody else engaged in crime and corruption at home go down hard.
Please, don't let me get mod-smacked over this, but I get enough war cheerleading in my daily news, I don't need it in City of Heroes. I get enough fatalism about how we can't ever really triumph over corporate and government corruption in my daily news, I don't need that in City of Heroes, either.
After that we can have another war, if we must. Preferably one that's less grim. I nominate Nemesis, one that features steampunk submarines and brass dirigibles and crazy can't-work inventions. Or maybe something silly, involving numerous but comically incompetent extra-terrestrials. Or maybe some wacky, ill-thought-out scheme by Dr. Aeon and Dr. von Grun involving robotic Magical Flying Rainbow Unicorns. Something not nearly so grim and serious. Something fun.
Venture seems to have made it clear; he doesn't believe in Heel Face Turns. |
Edit: oh, and I agree with Brad. Less war, more crimefighting. With meaningful consequences plz k thx bai.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
No, it's more like I do believe in the Moral Event Horizon. You can't backtrack after you've walked off a cliff.
Edit: oh, and I agree with Brad. Less war, more crimefighting. With meaningful consequences plz k thx bai. |
And yeah, if we could get an issue or two of just local crimes and plots, that'd be awesome. When was the last time Crey, or the Trolls, or even the Circle of Thorns had the spotlight?
I still figure Cole's been laid low. There's no need to kill him. Let him suffer.
He's seen what his pride and shortsighted plotting have brought his world to. Praetoria was falling apart long before we got there. Maybe he'll learn his folly. Maybe we'll get to use him as a weapon against the Battalion.
Or maybe this is all moot and he's dead anyway. A would-be dark god for a dying, crumbling world, broken and struck down by the champions of a bright one after his last, desperate bid to drive them off... Just as poetic, just as epic, and all without the unnecessary ugliness of a trial, public assassination or tedious debates like these.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
In the personal story after this arc, Marcus Cole puts his finger right on what really went wrong: he placed too much trust in Shalice Tillman, and she turned out to be (like just about every powerful psychic in canon) completely insane. Strip the Seer Network out of Praetoria City and I would move there from the real world in a heartbeat. And even with the Seer Network, I'd probably move there from Paragon City or the Rogue Isles.
Because Hamidon is right, you know. Even without mad scientists, we're running an unsustainable civilization right now on real Earth; to provide everybody on real Earth with a 21st century lifestyle would require 5 Earths' worth of resources. Throw into that the damage being done by superhero on supervillain battles, and the resources being used to rebuild after each one, and it really is a short sharp run downhill to the "Agony Hall" future that everybody who completes the Project Destiny story arcs sees: the ecosystem wrecked, the cities destroyed, no survivors but demons and robots and a handful of mutants. Whatever Praetoria's other flaws, it solved that problem.
Seriously, would you rather live in Skyway City than in Imperial City?
*shrug*