Hmm. Okay so we have:

Anthem: Sassy powerhouse (female human)
Arrow Shade: Silent (japanese?) ninja (female human)
Codebreaker: Quirky detective (female human)
Memory: Glamorous psychic babe (female human, duh!)
Cambion: Angsty demon-mage (male half-demon?)
Overclock: Cheery robot speedster (male persona robot?)
Particle: Charming brainboy (male human)
Vodnik: Flashy russian fishman (male mutant?)

Eh. It sounds ok. I guess guys heavily got the monster shtick here but that's pretty common in comics so no complaints. Are all the heroes youngsters or do we have older heroes to relate to? i.e. the detective gal?

I think you guys are also missing the obligatory alien from outer space. :P

Eh. I suspect the ninja girl will end somewhere between Psylocke and Wolverine. They are the sneaky scrapper of the team. It's fine for me. I also hope there's anti-hero team as I like them more than the boy scouts who can take the "being a good guy" to dumb levels.

30-40 is still relatively young. I'm talking about heroes who are in their 50s. I could easily see our super detective to be more middle-aged brains type woman who poinpoints enemy weaknesses and uses guns rather than a scrappy batman type. Dual pistols anyone?

That being said I'm kinda neutral towards the signature heroes here. They seem rather vanilla archetypes but I guess that's the point. I'd rather see the envelope pushed a bit more. Think for example Cambion as a sexy seducing male incubus. It's pretty common to have your slightly darker themed heroes to follow two gender stereotypes: either you have the sexy female seductress with a few minor tactically placed inhuman elements or then you have the brooding male monster. You don't generally have powerful ugly female heroes or sexually ambiguous seductive male heroes.

Or what if the Cambion's demonic form was alternate form? Think Etrigan. Only that the demon is in fact a female demon while the hero that is possessed is a male human - or female human possessed by a male demon. The transformation would do a gender swap.

Or what if the detective gal had dwarfism? She could have a powerful brain but her body would limit her offensive role. Basically her task in combat is to pinpoint weaknesses and support. This would mean she also functions in a supportive role in our missions pointing out facts and weaknesses. Batman is mostly a loner. The heroes here are part of a team so they do not need to be super capable in everything.

Similarly we have a hero of potentially russian ancestry and japanese ancestry. Those are dang common in comic books but I feel they don't reflect the reality. If you categorize by ancestry I'd say the largest group in the states is german, followed by african americans, irish, mexican and finally english. For example there are more folks of polish, italian and swedish ancestry than of russian or japanese. These are ancestry groups mind you. Not immigrants. Still you don't often see mexican or polish or scandinavian heroes. Granted it's nice to see a russian-origin super who is actually a hero.

[quote=Shadow ElusiveAlso, 'sassy' is a *terrible* way to describe Anthem. It's...like some kind of cutesy thing, a gimmick. Kitchy sidekick blunt is sassy. A perky teenage superhero is sassy. Anthem is NOT sassy. She's actually a mature adult, you see. A no nonsense, down to earth, veteran of much blood and near death ex-marine adult. Sassy...words fail me. Just no.[/quote]

Sassy? Oh, gods no! She'd kill us for that.

A better word for her might be... Blunt. She's the kind of person that has had to learn how NOT to call people idiots.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

You're talking about a very forced form of originality here, where you try to find strange or just opposite twists on whatever you perceive as being too common and use them *because* they're strange or opposite. As a writer who has discussed this sort of thing with other writers, let me assure you this tends to go badly.
Also, 'sassy' is a *terrible* way to describe Anthem. It's...like some kind of cutesy thing, a gimmick. Kitchy sidekick blunt is sassy. A perky teenage superhero is sassy. Anthem is NOT sassy. She's actually a mature adult, you see. A no nonsense, down to earth, veteran of much blood and near death ex-marine adult. Sassy...words fail me. Just no.

I just want to +1 Shadow on this.

All of my education and training was in creative arts, and putting originality above quality is almost always a very, very bad approach. Artists often fail because they try so hard to do something new and different that they forget to do something that's actually good.

It's a common rookie mistake to try so hard to be unconventional that you forget that the conventions exist for a reason. Haiku and iambic pentameter, the 1/4/5 chord progression and 12 bar blues, asymmetrical balance in visual art, etc., all exist as conventions for a reason.

I was impressed with the tasteful and imaginative use of the genre's conventions in this update. It clearly showed a familiarity with, understating of, and love for the genre, as well as a mature aesthetic--yet with a quarter-twist to keep it fresh. Keep up the good work and godspeed.

These lore updates are always bittersweet for me because, while I enjoy them, they make me ACHE for the game!

PS- How did anyone get "sassy" out of the descriptions of Anthem? Sassy like Wonder Woman or Captain America.

I think I'm going to like overclock and vodnik... they seem fun....

Anthem Kind of comes across like Rodimus prime might have from the transformers cartoons. Big hero leaving behind a huge legacy that you're expected to live up to? Eyes and pressure from everywhere, and possibly being expected to lead without all the know-how garnered from your hero's years of experience. Should be fun to see where her character developes.

More importantly though... Can we tease out some character art from the art teams? :3 I'm more just curious what their current concepts would look like in a heroic pose lineup side by side.

Shadow Elusive wrote:

You're talking about a very forced form of originality here, where you try to find strange or just opposite twists on whatever you perceive as being too common and use them *because* they're strange or opposite. As a writer who has discussed this sort of thing with other writers, let me assure you this tends to go badly.

Perhaps sassy was a wrong word but she seemed to exclude a bit of an attitude in the previous story. I used sassy in a sense of "bold and rude". I guess blunt and effective would be a better descriptor (is there a one word for that?). Granted. I don't much like Anthem so it probably affected the wording. I mean our first introduction to her was her rescuing entire superhero team and wiping the floor with every obstacle. She just seems to fall into "too good to be true" category.

As for the forced originality. I'm not sure what is particularly forced in expanding character concepts. I'm not saying you should make all of them transgender mutant aliens from another dimension. I'm saying you might wish to break the gender and racial roles a bit without putting all that package on one person.

Clearly you have already made a few choices such as equal split for males and females and Anthem being a black female soldier who is also the team leader. Just don't push it too far and make Anthem infallible.

You still have the traditional going as well such as mostly white, token foreigner, all monsters being males. I just find it mildly dissapointing that for example Cambion ended being more Infernal and less Numina. Also I just find it curious that you think having for example a gender swap through demon form or an incubus style demon is forced when both have presence in comics. It's just that you rarely see them in signature roles.

Similarly the dwarfism example was to illustrate that you can have a hero which doesn't push it too much. People are going to associate them with dwarves after all and it would also illustrate the point that generally speaking there's nothing wrong with the small folk while giving them more visiblity. Same thing with all heroes not needing to be spring chickens. 50 years olds for example are (at least here) still in regular work life.

I like the team and am looking forward to interacting with them. I think you've done a good job of balancing three disparate goals you alluded to: (1) keeping familiar tropes, (2) making them original, and (3) ensuring they are not so flashy and unique as to eclipse our characters. Especially looking forward to hearing how Codebreaker talks. (That's a tricky thing to pull off without stumbling into an mire of hackneyed dialogue -- good luck!)

This quote ("See Update 102 for a video of my fellow Staff Writer Stephanie Smith and me...") gives me great hopes that I won't be facepalming at the grammatical errors on every release as I did with CoX. A heartfelt thank you for not saying "...myself and..." or the even more infernal "...me and..."

I'd like to hear more about whatever villain group of sig chars will balance the Paragons (if there is one), and especially be interested to see how they don't take over too much of the spotlight, relegating any of our villain characters to lackeys as CoV tended to do. Also, I really, really hope they have a member called "Triangle" to balance the Paragons' "Particle."

I wouldn't mind seeing a "wise mentor" character as Everwind mentions, but please try to avoid having them talk down to our characters or, worse, blatantly lie to them to "test" them. The Shooting Stars arc still makes my blood boil just thinking about it.

Also +1 to Darth Fez's request for hearing more about the worker bees as well as supers. Stan and Lou indeed! "That's not Superman; that's a guy in a hat." And no, I didn't get a notice about the power interruption either.

Since for once I've a slow day at work I'm going to also comment about the "your character being a hero".

Good but don't make the signature heroes incompetent. They should neither overshadow nor be overshadowed by the player in the long run or they lose all credibility. It's as bad if they become useless package you have to carry through the mission. If they have a designated role such as a detective they should damn well be shown to be effective in that. Always think them as an extra player in the mission/story rather than a backdrop.

Also keep in mind players are going to have multiple heroes with different backstories and personalities. Provide a dialogue wheel for conversations. It's not something that satisfies everyone but it covers multiple approaches when conversing with NPCs. When a signature hero is involved in a mission provide options. If my hero concept is a detective I don't want to pick Codebreaker to tag along with me and take my role. I want to pick Anthem to punch things. Simply providing a single additional option when setting up the mission can change the experience from painful to pleasant.

Also speech bubbles are a simple trick to make NPCs feel more alive while in the missions. When allies move around they should warn PCs when they spot a trap, enemy, hazard or some other PoI. Basically react to surroundings as deemed by their role. We should also have a journal where these updates go in case we are in a middle of a big fight and miss the words. It helps you to avoid the info dump that everyone skips while picking a mission and makes the mission more lively. NPC allies should actually mean something without stealing the role from PCs. As such there needs to be options.

I like the idea of low-level groups inspired by a particular Paragon. Like a bunch of ninja-esk vigilantes that try and emulate Arrow Shade, but she doesn't want to have anything to do with them. Or a whining gamer that is building an army of robots to kill Overclock because Overclock happened to defeat his lvl 80 in a MMO Raid. I like low level because these groups don't have enough inf to impact much of anything. They are the crazies acting out of a personal (possibly whack) view of a particular Paragon.

Brand X wrote:

Not going to lie. This team does not seem at all that interesting when I think of such teams as the X-Men or Cyberforce or Teen Titans.

Of course not. Those teams all have literally decades of plot and character development.

If you just wrote a one page essay--not even about their character history and development, but just about how they were initially thought up--how interesting would any of those teams be?

I mean, if we described any team (random roster) the way Northie did:

Original Avengers:

Captain America: Overgrown boyscout 50's leftover (male human)
Thor: Dumb Blonde Norse god (male god)
Hulk: Nerdrage guy who turns into a big radioactive brute (male human)
Iron Man: Tech guy. Rich and suave, wears armor. (male human)

Justice League:

Superman and Martian Manhunter: Two last-of-their-kind aliens (male alien)
Batman: Detective with a thing for bats (male human)
Wonder Woman: Amazon princess token badass chick (female human?)
The Flash: Guy who got hit by lightening and now is fast (male human)
Green Lantern: Space cop turns willpower into hardlight (male human)
Aquaman: Underwater guy. Breathes under water, strong, controls fish (male human/atlantian)

X-men: Bunch of mutants. One shoots energy beams out of his eyes, one controls weather, one turns to steel, one is smart with an apelike body, one has healing, senses, and unbreakable metal bones and claws, leader is psychic but disabled and in wheel chair. Five males and a female.

Fantastic four: Exposed to cosmic rays together. One is big rocky monster tough-guy, smart one is stretchy, one can turn invisible and make invisible forcefields, one has fire powers. Three males and a female.

Teen Titans: Sidekick group. Batman and Wonder Woman Clones, Cyborg tech guy, Alien super-strong flying blaster, Mystic deamon-princessy goth chick, shape changer, etc...

It's just a quick rundown. If it were THAT interesting of a team just from just a quick rundown description, it would most likely be so over-the-top that it would be a mess. It wouldn't actually come across well or develop well as a living, breathing literary entity.

The thing is, the Paragons aren't our only characters. We've got a whole bunch of people from Chief Gherrenfur to Bob the Plumber to Captain Orbit to work into this game.

Tell us what you want to see, what you want to do. We're listening.

Cinnder wrote:

This quote ("See Update 102 for a video of my fellow Staff Writer Stephanie Smith and me...") gives me great hopes that I won't be facepalming at the grammatical errors on every release as I did with CoX. A heartfelt thank you for not saying "...myself and..." or the even more infernal "...me and"
>

Grammatical errors? Us? there ain't nuthin we hates wurse than grammar errors. Why grammer herself hates errors...

Northie wrote:

Paragons are our peers and should play active role without being bogged down by bureaucracy. We should accompany them on joint missions rather than be relegated as errand boys because the great and mighty heroes are too busy picking their nose.

To build on this thought, it would be great if one or more of the Paragons (and their peers) were members of groups/organizations that were important to their personal interests. Thus we could encounter and even get missions from Particle, for example, not because he's Particle or a member of the Paragons, but because he's a member of Crazy Scientists Anonymous.

Nice update. I like the diversity--just be careful of the "all women in comics are beautiful" cliche. (I'm sure you're already avoiding ones about the size of secondary sexual characteristics.)

My first thoughts after reading the descriptions were how [u]my[/u] character concepts would interact with each Paragon. Some respect, some dislike, some envy, etc. This is a sign of good design and writing on your part! And makes me eager to see this game.

My next thoughts were if my characters' reactions could have any game-mechanical effect. I know we'll have "reputation" of some sort with various groups. Can we also have something similar with individual NPCs? If one of my characters reacts poorly to Anthem's brashness, will all the Paragons look at me dimly? Or can I earn the trust of Vodnik even while feuding with Anthem?

[i]Who would you like to hear about in future updates? Give us suggestions.[/i]
Everything, give us everything you've got.
No? Okay, then anything, give us anything.
:D

warcabbit wrote:

The thing is, the Paragons aren't our only characters. We've got a whole bunch of people from Chief Gherrenfur to Bob the Plumber to Captain Orbit to work into this game.
Tell us what you want to see, what you want to do. We're listening.

Space Ninjas! Vegan Zombies! Sewer Alligators! Seriously, the more characters that you can add to make the game seem alive the better. There has to be Jarvis the Butlers, the construction guys that have to clean up after epic super battles, Newspaper reporters, Ambulance drivers and EMTs, firefighters (let's not forget some real heroes that risk their lives without super powers). There needs to be fortune tellers, and protestors. "The Historian", Super Hero Tour Guides, Super Hero Paparazzi? Can You Imagine having to do a press conference as a super hero and answering why that car had to smashed.

Please lay out the cities in a grid pattern, like most major cities. Give them visible street names so we can actually meet at the intersection of Fern and 22nd Street. The roads in COH were largely uniform in size, but to make it more real, some roads need to be wide, and others narrow. COH had some crazy road lay outs that I will never understand why they had to be so difficult to get around. There need to be residential areas, warehouses, industrial parks, and hi-rise buildings. There never really was a suburbia in COH and that is where most evil can be found ;)

I want to carry an injured person to the hospital while being chased by a bad guy. I want to chase a bad guy that is fleeing a crime scene. I want to stake-out a place and follow a bad guy back to their hideout.

Pleonast wrote:

Nice update. I like the diversity--just be careful of the "all women in comics are beautiful" cliche. (I'm sure you're already avoiding ones about the size of secondary sexual characteristics.)

Maybe all women in the real world are beautiful, and we just have an overmarketed industry trying to convince them that they are not?

Personal time, I worked for a photo lab for awhile, and I asked one of our customers how he found so many beautiful women to photograph. He said that he just found women, and that every woman is beautiful, he just found how to present it for each one.

Is Bob the Plumber related to Bill the Electrician from House II?

Nina Guardian wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
Maybe all women in the real world are beautiful, and we just have an overmarketed industry trying to convince them that they are not?
Personal time, I worked for a photo lab for awhile, and I asked one of our customers how he found so many beautiful women to photograph. He said that he just found women, and that every woman is beautiful, he just found how to present it for each one.

Doc T, did I ever tell you that you're awesome?

I showed my wife what Doc wrote cause it was so awesome. But her reaction made me a little jealous :P.

Back off, Doc!

[img]http://i.imgur.com/jKHmnMe.png[/img]
;)

Practical.

Be Well!
Fireheart

warcabbit wrote:

Tell us what you want to see, what you want to do. We're listening.

I want to see the obligatory space alien! I'm also interested in the supers representing different groups and organizations ranging from LGBT groups to religious groups, to political lobbyist, to corporate heroes, and to less militant government or private sector supers.

Basically supers who don't form traditional Paragon style hero teams just out of the desire to help or who don't fall into the army or private sector paramilitary/special forces category. If supers are relatively common you can bet that different organizations with political or commercial aims are going to have a hero as a faceman/spokesperson.

It's also nice to hear about supers who work in the background and not on the field. For example a super with limited precognition would be a damn good stockbroker or could lead a charity organization with goal to raise money for charities without being out there to scrap with supervillains.

Darth Fez wrote:

While I would also be interesting in seeing a setting with so many superheroes/villains explore the political and religious ramifications, both politics and religion are minefields. It is guaranteed that both subjects will go to bad places very quickly. I'd rather pretend it is business as usual as far as religion and politics are concerned, rather than seeing (parts of) the forum, and even in-game chat, devolve into a running flame war.

If done, it does need to be handled delecately. Remember the whole 5th Column thing?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any envelope-pushing, just that it needs to be handled very cautiously and very well to end up a plus instead of a minus for the game--especially in a game that is supposed to be in the spirit of CoH.

I'm with Darth Fez on staying away from politics and religion in a game like this. Surely the writers of CoT will be able to give us interesting stories that explore various issues of morality without having to tie them to specific political or religious positions.

Izzy wrote:

Cinnder wrote:
I'm with Darth Fez on staying away from politics and religion in a game like this. Surely the writers of CoT will be able to give us interesting stories that explore various issues of morality without having to tie them to specific political or religious positions.

Is that why MWM doesnt want to use any Greek Mythology? :)

Animal House is why MWM doesn't want to allow any Frat Mythology.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Pleonast wrote:
Nice update. I like the diversity--just be careful of the "all women in comics are beautiful" cliche. (I'm sure you're already avoiding ones about the size of secondary sexual characteristics.)

Maybe all women in the real world are beautiful, and we just have an overmarketed industry trying to convince them that they are not?
Personal time, I worked for a photo lab for awhile, and I asked one of our customers how he found so many beautiful women to photograph. He said that he just found women, and that every woman is beautiful, he just found how to present it for each one.

:D Great point!

But I suspect the photographer had the advantage of only photographing humans. Which a photographer of the women of the Paragons would also have. Not so much for anyone photographing the other members of the Paragons.

Perhaps I should have stated my point as the contrapositive: "only men in comics can have a 'monstrous' appearance". And I see that the two "monstrous" members of the Paragons are not obviously female.

I don't mind the distribution of the Paragons, per se. Any given group can have its own idiosyncratic make-up. But when designing all the supers groups (from heroic to villainous to in between), try to have some monstrous, identifiably female characters.

Pleonast wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
Pleonast wrote:

Perhaps I should have stated my point as the contrapositive: "only men in comics can have a 'monstrous' appearance". And I see that the two "monstrous" members of the Paragons are not obviously female.
I don't mind the distribution of the Paragons, per se. Any given group can have its own idiosyncratic make-up. But when designing all the supers groups (from heroic to villainous to in between), try to have some monstrous, identifiably female characters.

[/quote][/quote]

Monstress female characters? Sorry, she's DC. Then again, so is Primat. I do love Primat.

Pleonast wrote:

Nice update. I like the diversity--just be careful of the "all women in comics are beautiful" cliche. (I'm sure you're already avoiding ones about the size of secondary sexual characteristics.)
...I don't mind the distribution of the Paragons, per se. Any given group can have its own idiosyncratic make-up. But when designing all the supers groups (from heroic to villainous to in between), try to have some monstrous, identifiably female characters.

Why are you so hung up on fictitious, super heroines being depicted as anything less than traditionally beautiful or physically well endowed?

Heck, if the old people don't look like 20-somethings with grey(ish) hair, that's already a step in the right direction.

Honestly, in some games the only way I know that certain characters are old is that the text says that they're old.

Darth Fez wrote:

Heck, if the old people don't look like 20-somethings with grey(ish) hair, that's already a step in the right direction.
Honestly, in some games the only way I know that certain characters are old is that the text says that they're old.

This reminds me of Guild Wars 2 and their horrendous lack of anything resembling an age that isn't late teens/early twenties. Check it out:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/s92Vv.jpg[/img]

Guys. Don't do this. Please.

Zerohour wrote:

Pleonast wrote:
Because I like diversity. I'm tired of seeing women in media being presented in ways to please stereotypical expectations of female beauty. (And some of these expectations come from other women as well as men.) I want to see some characters who are female and feminine, yet not designed to meet "Hollywood" standards of beauty. I don't want all the non-human characters to be male or non-gendered. And I definitely do not want the monstrous women to be sexxed up like Mystique, which defeats the entire point.
What do you define as "Hollywood standards"? Because these days there are many different types of attractive women working in films and on television. In fact I don't think the range of beauty had ever been as diverse as it is now. While you're at it, explain to me how one can make a character "female and feminine" yet avoid a sense of beauty at the same time? As for creating non-human female characters, I'm sorry, but they're gonna have to have breasts and/or feminine hips and maybe even *gasp* long hair. Those physical attributes define what female is and excluding them will make them rather androgynous which is what you want to avoid.

Alright, Here's something I'd like to point out - you seem to be proliferating a relatively common misconception; not all women have to be hollywood beautiful to be beautiful. Me? I'm long legged, tall, flat chested, don't have much in the way of hips, and have man shoulders, but I have nice hair that I take care of, I wear clothes that fit who I am and are feminine without being revealing. Am I hollywood beautiful? Not by a longshot. But what I am is feminine and good looking without having a curves for miles.

The Secret World does an absolutely SPECTACULAR job with this as far as NPC's go (and a spectacularly TERRIBLE job with PC's, ironically). It's worth taking a look at their NPC's.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/11/11/chaos-theory-my-favorite-secret-world-npcs-part-1/

Well I'm glad we are on the same page. My original point was more directed towards the fact that someone was all bent out of shape about Hollywood standards of beauty which I don't feel really exist anymore in the way the poster was suggesting