If you could write the end, what would you do?

If you could write the final end-of-game event for this game, what would you do and why?

Me, I'd take inspiration from one of my favorite Series Finales on TV- ER. Yes, I used to be a regular ER watcher. Sometimes I would drift away, but I always came back.
In particular, I'm referencing the last couple of minutes of that finale.
The characters are in the ER doing their thing, when a call comes in that several trauma patients are inbound, victims of an explosion if memory serves. The camera cuts outside, to the entrance, where we see the ambulances pulling up, and several ER docs rushing out to meet them, as the camera pulls back, and the screen fades to black for the last time.
So they didn't do something crazy like blow up the hospital, or have everyone get infected with some deadly disease. No scorched earth here. They didn't pull a Quantum Leap like D-move either, with screen text saying "Oh, by the way, these characters never did get what they were looking for".

Rather, they went out on a more positive note- the hospital will keep running, and the characters will go on living their lives, we just won't be there to see it.

I'd have us go out in similar fashion- one last invasion, where the last baddie spawns a good 15 minutes or so before the servers shut down. That way, we go out feeling that we saved the city one last time, put down one final threat before enjoying a few minutes of success, before moving on to whatever future awaits us. Some of us will hang up our capes and resume civilian lives, others will continue on as crimefighters, others will resume their own twisted plotting and scheming, others will return home to whatever lives they left behind when they answered the call to defend Paragon. And yet others will pick up stakes and go elsewhere as wanderers.
So we too would go out on that note- the city will continue to exist, many of our alts will continue on with whatever lives they choose, we just won't be here to see it.

I'd find that a much happier note to go out on than the mutually assured destruction of Tabula Rasa- yeah sure the bad guys are dead, but oh drat, all the good guys got wiped out too! That or the absolute nuke-fest that ended Praetoria as a workable civilization.
I've never been a fan of "Rocks fall (or aliens attack), everybody dies!" scorched earth endings.

Now, I'm hoping that between now and Nov 30th, we'll see something good happen that will make all of this "planning the end" business redundant. But if not, this is how I'd like to go out- on a happier note than some of our predecessors.

---

A (Golden Gate) Bridge Too Far- arc 299315
Crazy NIMBY's, Railroad robber barons, and kickboxing Engineers, Oh My! Go back in time and join the fight to save a San Francisco icon!

This is what I would like to see....Hami raiding Atlas...or an invasion of Hamis...or Hamii followed by Rularuu and Mot and then every AV....and the heavens open and the ghost of Statesman joins the fight...the main heroes also join in the fight until.....evil is defeated

....and then we get to see Paragon as it was before....no giant energy walls...no hazard zones...just one massive city...that you can fly from Atlas to PI without the trains.

There is a huge ceremony on the steps of city hall and mayor thanks all of us for fighting the good fight and making the city whole again. "For 8 years we have learned that for every evil that spawns from the darkness a shining hero rises to do battle with it. We were broken and bloodied and discouraged...but we did not give up the fight. We continued to rise while we fought enemies foreign and domestic, alien and all too familiar. On this day you have cried out to the heavens that Paragon is a City of Heroes, not to be trifled with. I declare that this day, November 30th will forever be known as City of Heroes Day."

Fade to white

---

"I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams." Aunt May SM2

i dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone...good bye Paragon

^Love it, Silver Pharoah

---

A (Golden Gate) Bridge Too Far- arc 299315
Crazy NIMBY's, Railroad robber barons, and kickboxing Engineers, Oh My! Go back in time and join the fight to save a San Francisco icon!

Thanks. Got a bit teary eyed writing it

---

"I believe there's a hero in all of us, that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady, and give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams." Aunt May SM2

i dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone...good bye Paragon

Me and my friend's personal canon:

The Battalion arrives to invade Earth in the very near future. Many die in the initial onslaught and the death toll is incredible for both hero and civilian alike. The war against the invading force is desperate and bloody. The Elder Gods come down from their Grand Pantheon to help, Earth's allies from space and alternate dimensions arrive to help defend.. the true and ultimate power of all those who live here and who help is unleashed. It's barely enough.

The Battalion is defeated once and for all, the Wells liberated, and Earth survives, but much of the world is in ruins, and billions are dead.

The Elder Gods, even they having been at the mercy of its power for so long, turn their attention to the uncaring and unfeeling Well. Using their combined power in an unprecedented show of nearly omnipotent power, disperse it forever, with the consequence of every Well sharing the same fate.

This act forever unbinds human potential, but also unmakes the super powers of nearly every being on Earth, human or otherwise. Their fates would be their own, but the powers they once held would need to be rediscovered naturally by future civilization.

The Elder gods themselves are severely drained of their abilities and retreat into the dimmed Pantheon, while the few left on Earth with any superpowers find that their powers don't behave normally. Most people with any power left are people from other universes using alien magic, or had reached this potential through completely natural means, though again, they are not unaffected.

Primal Earth, for the most part, reverts to being an almost completely mundane world. Heroes take off their masks, villains are reduced to thugs, and the world as a whole takes steps towards rebuilding in this new reality.

There is a future to be forged.

---

I favor the above ending. We win, but at great cost. It's....fitting to the sorrow some of us feel at losing our digital home.

---

---

@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

I think we should lose. We're not going to get a Battalion invasion because none of their powers or VFX or models have been created - probably. But I want our Hamidon and Praetorian Hamidon to join forces, invade our world, and win. The City of Heroes falls.

---

Doom.

Yep.

This is really doom.

Till 30 November being a fight against the Hamidon from Praetoria.

As we lose one section by one section.

Characters that get dropped in the fight too many times are restricted just to a Pocket-D like area.

As our characters fight, and each day we see how many civilians we've managed to save.

Until it just all goes dark.

And we find out that someone managed to get all the baby duckies and bunnies through a portal at the last moment.

And Skrunchie held her sock monkey at the end.

---

"If you build it, they will run you over with it."-RPG Designers Mantra
Working on: YotZ Legends: Even Heroes Die (First Round Edit)

Everyone meets in a church


and we all say goodbye

---

A Fey Invasion.
Wave after wave of Tuatha de Dannan and Red Caps, no mediporters or rezzes available...you go down you stay down. And then everyone's screens freeze up before showing a final cut scene.
Snaptooth holding Baby New Year in both hands over his head.
"Got you now, Suckers!"
And then Snappy rips him in two.
The End.

---

@Redcap

ANARCHY = A Society that does not need government
114. Ahrouns do not appreciate my particular brand of humour, so I should stop bleaching bulls-eyes in their fur.

---

Doom.

Yep.

This is really doom.

If the game had to end... Forced into a desperate battle with Battalion, we'd blow up the Well of the Incarnates; the two, linked, sustain one another, fighting a war for control that will not end while either exists. Without the power from the Well, superpowers would begin to fade from the world; even the power of natural heroes is diminished without the living connection to their spirit the Well facilitated.

But the changes superheroes wrought wouldn't disappear. Magic isn't gone; it wasn't created by the Well, merely empowered by it. The technologies invented by super-geniuses don't fade, and while the flashes of insight might not come so easily, hard work and dedication still enable people to create amazing things.

The portals to the Rikti homeworld wouldn't disappear, either. And while the Traditionalists finally wrest political control, rogue Restructurist guerillas and terrorists still threaten both worlds.

The Praetorian citizens start to integrate with the Primal citizens... but they bring not only new technologies and social developments (their teaching system, in particular, is incredibly successful, creating a new era of enlightenment in Primal earth), but their vices and criminals as well. The inherent facist tendencies, so deeply imprinted in the society after only a generation, lead to new gangs even as the coordinated remnants of the Syndicate wage -- and largely win -- a silent war with the Family, Tsoo, Trolls and other gangs, creating a precarious but effective coordination among many of the criminal elements. Street crime in Paragon rapidly drops; the Syndicate doesn't approve of random violence, and their enforcers are sometimes hailed as heroes when they disperse violent anarchists like the Freakshow. But in the boardrooms and the darkest alleys of the city, betrayal and murder continue with a quiet and ferocious intensity.

And using their advanced ecological technology, some displaced Praetorians build new homes for themselves -- in the sea, occupying huge domes and traveling ships, and on the moon, where a brief war is waged. The details are kept quiet, but frightening images find their way to earth, images of strange Nictus Council troops and far more frightening things. Oh yes; the Kheldians are not gone. Their control over energy and form fades with the Well and Battalion to some extent, but they are their own beings with their own strange lifecycles.

The remaining heroes and villains slowly consolidate themselves with existing groups. Many former Natural "super" heroes join the PPD; others join Wyvern. Those whose unique gifts have not quite faded remain with a reformed Longbow or Vindicators as peacekeepers -- the UN expands, for the dimensional portals have not gone away, and there are many Earths (and Orths, Terra Primes, and stranger places) we make peaceful contact with. The Midnighters still exist, as do other groups. The villains... well, some of them join these groups too, quietly. Some reform; some "reform," living dual lives in Paragon City. Arachnos is not gone, nor is the Council.

The 5th Column... that's a stranger story. Their three-way battle with Nemesis and Ouroboros is fought across time and space in places no other sentient being will ever see. And they are all changed by this.

Even without superheroes... there are still heroes, and the story goes on.

---

same way they ended beta

________________

---

---

THANKS FOR THE SPOILERS...




I keed, I keed. But seriously, if I hadn't already watched it, I would've been mighty angry.

---

Doom.

Yep.

This is really doom.

I say on Nov 30 they turn off the ability for enemies to respawn. We can all go zone by zone, saving people from purse-snatchers. Once a zone is clear, it stays clear forever. By the time the day ends, Paragon City will have been saved. Crime will be no more. We can all retire with our heads held high. (And in the Rogue Isles, Longbow interference will be permanently eradicated, incursions from Snakes and Coralax put to an end, and so on.)

---

Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie

I like that one. That's... something I'd actually like to see happen.

I've always wondered if a spawning zone like the old Galaxy could have been, for a moment or two, completely free of villains...

Mike

/The task monumental... the glory forever.

---

August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012