Lore AMA
- Needs part 2! Felderburg 15:43, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Overview
The Lore AMA (Ask Me Anything), or "Loregasm", is a series of documents document created by Positron to answer questions City of Heroes players had about the game's story following the Sunset announcement. In the thread announcing its creation, Positron stated that anything it contains "SHOULD be considered canon when concerning anything to do with Issue 24 and previous. Anything after that is speculative and should be treated as such. We'll note in the answer if it's anything different." On September 18th, 2012, Positron posted a link to the first Lore AMA as a Google Doc in a City of Heroes forums thread.
In an interview of Positron and War Witch at OnRPG discussing the closure of the game, Positron stated that he would do yearly AMAs as long as people had questions:
MeticulousMeta: There are still a lot of questions after the Lore AMA. Is there any chance of getting another?
Matt: I’ll make a deal: I’ll do AMA’s about CoH lore every April 28th until the questions stop coming in. I’ll give more details as we get closer to that date, and I can’t promise everyone who should be involved will be.
After taking questions in a now closed Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was announced at OnRPG on May 3rd, 2013, and released as another Google Doc].
City of Heroes AMA 1
The first Lore AMA was linked in a forum post by Positron titled "Loregasm" and includes a key of the answering developers' initials:
That's a link to the doc, in case these boards get shut down, and because I don't want to clean it up for our forum posting format (if someone ELSE does, feel free to pad your postcount).
Some answers are not satisfying. Some answers are made up, and that answer only exists in that doc. I tried to get everyone who was involved in the stuff at the end to answer the questions as best they could.
MM: Matt Miller (Positron)
JH: John Hegner (Protean)
JAH: Jeff Hamilton (Arbiter Hawk)
SM: Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon)
RG: Ryan Greene (Viridian)
TS: Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion)
If there is a miracle and somehow CoH is saved, we reserve the right to change any and all answers given in the doc, to maintain suspense and surprise.
The Lore AMA itself at its time of release is as follows:
Was there anything planned for a Boomtown remake?
MM: Not to my knowledge.
What were the rocket launch pads going to be used for, and when were they officially abandoned by the Dev team?
MM: We planned a space station instead of Praetoria for Going Rogue at first. They were abandoned when the idea of going to the space station was.
Can you show us any images of what the Battalion were going to look like?
MM: Sorry, art unreleased has to stay unreleased due to our contracts.
What were the next few incarnate slots going to be?
JAH: Genesis was coming next, and the basic concept for the slot was creating “patches” or fields that buffed allies and debuffed foes. The Core branches of Genesis powers would get larger areas of effect, while the Radius branches would let you make up to 4 small patches at once at the very rare level. Imagine Sleet or Tar Patch + Accelerate Metabolism or Regeneration Aura + Incarnate-worthy, and you’re on the right track.
After the Battalion, what was the next "big idea" that was going to come down the road, if you had thought that far ahead?
MM: The Dimensionless are a race of beings superior to the Wells. Dealing with them once you became a well unto yourself was the next logical step.
STM: One of the ideas was that you kind of “cheat” to defeat Battalion, in essence doing something that should take you being level 50 ++++++++ and doing it at level 50, shattering the source of Battalion. However, this meant that a ton of things that were controlled by Battalion were now freed to do whatever they want, so the threats were unknown but out there, and now it was the responsibility of the players to go out there and handle them.
Why Statesman and Sister Psyche?
MM: Statesman because of all the reasons we gave in interviews. Sister Psyche because we wanted there to still be a surprise if Statesman’s death leaked out. We called it “Who will die” and not “One will die” for a reason, it was always planned to be two, but talked up to be just one, so that spoiled information always had an air of uncertainty about it.
Were there actual plans for a moonbase?
MM: I approved art dailies from it on the last day of the studio. :( Issue 28.
RG: The funny thing is, our database had a value called MOONBASE that basically represented a build that didn’t exist in the system yet. It was a running gag that we would always be planning a moonbase, but it would never actually come to fruition. The plan for Issues 25-28 were the moment we hunkered down and said, “We’re actually going to do it this time!” We were... wrong.
Why redo Dark Astoria and not the Shadow Shard?
RG: I get the feeling our environment artists would have staged an insurrection if we’d asked them to remake the Shadow Shard zones. That said, we had some stuff planned for Rularuu in Issue 25. While not a full zone remake, it would have made those zones slightly more relevant to the current storyline.
STM: Dark Astoria was 1 zone where we could make a solid revamp of part of the zone without over-tasking our environment artists and deliver it in a timely schedule and without any giant new programming time. Shadow Shard is 4 zones that, to do correctly, would’ve needed proper tech to do things like fight a giant Rularuu, etc. It would’ve also involved trying to take 4 zones and make it into 1, or revamping 4 zones, which would take forever. Lastly, the Rularuu storyline is pretty cosmically powered and would’ve been too high of a bar to start at for Incarnate content. Destroying a god of death is pretty high, but taking down a being that can destroy dimensions in the blink of an eye would be hard to top afterwards with, “Take down this dude called Cole”
JAH: Our first brainstorm meeting for i22, we actually did settle on revamping the Shadow Shard. However, I think the strongest advocates for doing the Shard instead of DA were not on the team that was actually tasked with i22’s creation, and thus the plan changed to DA - both because it made sense as a zone to revamp, and because it’s important for the creators of a feature to be passionate and empowered about it.
Were there any plans to reincarnate States/Psyche or have someone else take over their mantle?
MM: Of the two, she’s the one that we most want to “bring back”
RG: People had bandied around ideas that at the last moment, Psyche managed to mind-ride someone and she was still alive. We never fully fleshed it out though.
STM: I never wanted either of them to stay dead, and many times I weeped/Charlie brown walked back to my desk when people asked me to come up with ideas of how Psyche could come back.
RG: Really? I seem to remember someone adamantly insisting that States was dead for good... :P
JAH I think he meant he did want them to stay dead... he got mad at me for wanting to bring Brian Webb back from the dead...
STM: Someone edited my stern response, which was, “They’re both staying dead and I never wanted either of them to come back. Ever.” I’m a firm believer in people staying dead when they die. I guess that’s why I write a lot of villain content.
JHH: I had wanted Tyrant/Cole to don Statesman’s mantle and redeem himself in the fight against Battalion, but nobody had really seriously discussed or explored that storyline more than Vanguard using Cole’s experience as the champion of Earth’s Well to get some insight into how Battalion functioned with the myriad wells at their disposal.
Why was Back Street Brawler's name changed to Back Alley Brawler?
MM: Blame the Back Street Boys.
JAH: Black Street’s Back, alright - the follow up arc to the i24 Personal Story mission in Kings Row. *ducks*
When Lusca and Kraken names were implemented on the wrong characters, why were those not retconned?
MM: Lusca came LONG after Kraken, I don’t understand why anyone would think we mixed up those names.
JAH: Also, tangentially, the Kraken was actually related to a giant tentacled monster when it was first implemented - the Hydra down at the bottom of the Abandoned Sewer Trial. I wasn’t part of the company back then, but I always thought that connection was kind of cool.
What piece of Lore did you really want to add early on that just didn't fit?
STM: I really really really wanted to add a different Ouroboros/team that was run by Dream Doctor’s team - Ajax, Protean, Keith Nance, Dean MacArthur, and a few others. The idea was sort of similar to your Loyalist/Resistance moments in Praetoria. It would be Midnighters vs. Ouroboros. Neither of them would be totally wrong, but neither of them would be completely right either in their methods, but both wanted to stop Battalion. However, the idea was scrapped due to the huge amount of time it would take to create content for both and the difficulty of having another Ouroboros up. That was all scrapped by me, that is, when I realized all that. I don’t think I ever really talked much about it, other than in my waking dreams.
Why was Weaver One never made a part of the game?
MM: Everyone invested in him moved off the project before they did anything good with him.
STM: I had some proposals to have him involved in the moon base.
Many Praetorian counterparts were never brought to life. Stephan Richter was killed off, Nemesis (as Posi mentioned at HeroCon) died as a clockmaker at an old age, etc. Why did you decide on killing some major characters off and making lesser characters more known?
MM: Praetoria wasn’t supposed to be a “mirror universe” where everyone existed only as opposites. It was supposed to be a universe where things were slightly different than ours, and how those slight differences ended up altering the world as it had. In Praetoria, someone might rise to station that never had that opportunity on Primal.
RG: Removing the ‘evil goatee’ aspect of Praetoria made it a more compelling story, I think. That said, I really wanted to make a Primal Reese, and have him be a mild-mannered and very polite civilian in Paragon City.
STM: It’s an interesting writing task to come up with alternate versions of characters, but it can start to get old fast, especially with plans to eventually merge Praetoria. A lot of the new characters we wrote were strong enough on their own without needing the extra weight of an alternate identity to be carried.
JH: We wanted Praetoria’s story to stand on its own rather than have it be nothing more than a mirror of Primal Earth. Also, it was a great opportunity to introduce brand new characters to fill the roles we needed rather than rehashes of existing ones.
What was the giant "parking garage" in Port Oakes (in early beta) meant to be for?
MM: It was put in for a mission where you had to meet with a mysterious contact who told you to drop what you were investigating. Since that mission got cut, we didn’t need the asset)
Who was the Toymaker (as he was hinted as someone from the heroes past but never expanded on) ?
MM: Not sure, probably Lord Nemesis.
Was there any plans to make seasonal weather changes in-game? (In Port Oakes, if you got under the map, there was another set of mountains/hills under the visible ones that had snow covering them.)
MM: No plans that I was made aware of.
Was there anything in the Lore that Jack Emmert wanted but after NCsoft took over and he left, were they scrapped?
MM: Jack detached himself when Cryptic started working on Marvel. He had nothing further to add to CoH and handed the reins completely over to me.
Why did certain enemy groups get preferential treatment (meaning major story plots; Rikti, Praetorians, etc.) in storyarcs rather than expand others or create "new" enemies to face?
MM: Vs. expanding others? It’s what a writer wanted to write about. Vs. “new” enemies? New enemies take a lot more resources (art, powers).
RG: It’s hard sometimes to figure out what stories can be told about which villain groups. Often it’s dictated by level range. I managed to make a story about the Luddites, for instance, but that was only because I was assigned an appropriate level range for the group. If there’s one group I wish I’d managed to touch on more, I’d say probably the Goldbrickers. I hate to leave a villain group AV-less.
STM: New enemies were expensive to make. You need character art time, animation time, FX time, and sound time. The same talents are needed for creating new costume pieces and new powers, so we need to pick and choose very carefully how we make new enemies and if we’re going to be able to use them a lot down the road, and also if we can leverage the assets in other ways. However, we also weren’t above re-using existing assets to put in new villain groups, like the UPA in i24 or the Rogue PPD in i19.
Was Croatoa actually planned as a halloween zone then kept permanently or was that just a rumor?
MM: Rumor. Croatoa was put in to break up the monotony of “city city city city”.
Was Grandville ever planned to be redone? In beta a couple of years ago, something was done where Recluse's tower, and inside the tower was all shiny and clean instead of the dingy grey/blue colors.
MM: Grandville was poorly made in the first place. I think someone touched it up when we did ultramode, but there was never a plan to completely redo it.
STM: One of our lead environment artists a while back did an investigation to figure out how to properly “fix” Grandville. Grandville’s problem was that it was hacked together with lots of old pieces. Where a geo piece should’ve just been 1 or 2 pieces, Grandville’s was 10 or 15 pieces hacked together, which is why framerate can drag. To fix the problem, an environment artist would have had to go in there, grab those pieces, make them 1 or 2 pieces in 3D Max, then put it into Grandville. It would’ve been, I believe, 2 solid months of an artists time to fix it; unfortunately, it was time we never had.
Can you publish the entire lore bible you apparently had for Kheldians, pretty please?
MM: Sorry no. Spoiler alert: They all end up as fuel for Battalion, except for one. The End.
STM: Matt has a grim ending but that probably would’ve been prevented. Look at me, the guy trying to not kill off people.
Why did Kheldians never get power customisation; was it ever going to be on the cards?
TS: i24’s changes to power customization for pool powers would have given us the ability to revisit this, but to do both in one issue’s timeframe was too much. In fact, we had been waiting for the technical resources to free up to get pool customization in the first place.
JAH: There are two huge problems with Kheldian FX Customization - a.) They use Inherent Powers a lot, which even after i24 couldn’t be customized. b.) Their powers used about 15 FX scripts per power, whereas a modern powerset uses one or two per power. This means both code and FX artist time was required in large measures to allow Khelds to customize their powers - and one can’t just do Kheld FX without doing VEAT FX out of fairness, etc., etc.
What's the farthest Issue that was planned for, and what are the story arcs for each of the future issues (starting with I24, since I wasn't on Beta much )?
MM: Issue 25: Battalion arrives, Issue 26: Fight Battalion, Issue 27: Get your ass kicked by Battalion. Issue 28: Beat Battalion (from the moon!)
Mender Silos is Lord Nemesis. Where were you going with that story? A sinister plot spanning all of time, or was it a genuine redemption? Was Ouroboros really bad all along? Were they going to turn on us at any point?
MM: Genuine redemption, but given the reaction he got from everyone who learned his secret, he started thinking like the Old Nemesis again.
RG: We had a lot of meetings on just this topic. The angle I had been gunning for was that Mender Silos would be an ex-member of Battalion, who saw the end result of their empire and chose to use time travel to oppose them. Others suggested that he had become Time Incarnate itself. Whatever the end result was, he was definitely going to figure pretty heavily in the Battalion and post-Battalion storylines.
JH: The exciting thing about Silos is that he has seen every time stream that didn’t end up with Battalion defeated, so traveling down the time stream where they were defeated (i.e. the one players are playing in) would have been just as much an adventure to him as it was to the players. Once Battalion was defeated, however, who knows what Silos might do.
Battle Maiden joining up with Malta. What were to happen next? Nanite powered Malta Ultra-Sappers Two Kronos Titans merged together?
STM: I joked that Battle Maiden looked at Malta’s line up and went, “Why don’t you just use all sappers? Or install their technology in everything?” But seriously, the idea was that Malta needed a method to become “super” in the Incarnate arms race that had begun - the idea started in my mind when people asked why Malta could go toe to toe with them in the Tin Mage TF, which was a very valid point. The idea was that we would eventually do a new 50+ version of them using Nanite technology with FX inspired by Battle Maiden’s. There probably would’ve been minimal character art revamp time - most likely re-texturing on the Titans and a new piece or two for the soldiers. That’s just me speculating, however, but it’s what I would’ve pushed for.
Arachnos. With Statesman dead, Lord Recluse reunited with the Red Widow, Scirocco flirting with the side of good, and Ghost Widow's loyalty to Arachnos itself, but not its leadership, something was brewing. What was going to happen?
RG: I know that Dr. Aeon was pretty set on having Scirocco set up to become a good guy. We even had an entire Sig Story planned around it at one point. We had shaken up the Freedom Phalanx, but Arachnos was still in the same state as it was when CoV launched... we definitely wanted to make things feel more dynamic on the red side of things.
STM: I had an entire personal story in a playable state that was Scirocco going good, it was awesome. There were 13-14 missions, all fairly quick (i.e. less than 5 minutes) where you played as Scirocco. Here’s the breakdown of it:
- Scirocco discovers Mu’Vorkan’s plans to assassinate him and Ice Mistral. Mu’Vorkan recruits Tyrka/Evil Aurora and Mortimer Kal to help; Tryka/Evil Aurora under the premise of power, and Mortimer Kal under the premise that he’ll use his new position to save Mortimer’s daughter from the villain. Scirocco offers Mu’Vorkan a chance to stop, but Mu’Vorkan refuses and Scirocco defeats him.
- Scirocco sends a message to the Vindicators stating that Red Widow is going to assassinate the heads of the FBSA at a meeting where the FBSA is officially promoting Matthew Habashy. In a gesture of good will, Scirocco goes to the FBSA meeting to ensure Red Widow is stopped. He speaks with Ghost Widow beforehand, telling her that she can change and that the secret is that she’s bound to Arachnos, not to Recluse. GW lets Scirocco go, saying that he has to decide for himself what’s best, but that she won’t follow him nor stop him. Scirocco and Ice Mistral go to the FBSA and stop Red Widow’s plot after she manages to defeat the Shining Stars who were assigned to defense duty.
- Scirocco and Ice Mistral temporarily join the Vindicators, but are split up in order to avoid them possibly plotting anything. Valkryie is assigned as Ice Mistral’s mentor, while Infernal is Scirocco’s. Infernal, Scirocco, and Ice Mistral spend two missions fighting crime in Paragon, which was supposed to have the context of spanning multiple weeks. It’s focused that people just plain don’t like the fact that a high-ranking member of Arachnos is just allowed to walk in the streets. Serafina also mentions that Scirocco’s actions are helping him to unlock the final true power of the former Scirocco.
- After weeks of crime fighting, Scirocco returned to the studio apartment he had in Steel Canyon. He reads mail that he has, which most of it is hate mail against him, and he starts to wonder if it’s all worth it. He then reads a letter from the uncle of a man he saved, thanking him from the bottom of his heart. Before he can have a nice tender moment, he hears a THUD from outside his door, which is Infernal being knocked out. Red Widow appears, informing Scirocco that Ice Mistral has returned to the Rogue Isles. She vanishes, and Serafina appears shortly afterwards, having tracked down Red Widow. Scirocco says he’s going to the Rogue Isles to get Ice Mistral back. Before he goes, Serafina helps Scirocco unlock his final power, which is the creation of a 2nd sword. With that, he becomes the true Scirocco and gains new dual blade powers in the next missions.
- Scirocco confronts Ice Mistral, who says that it’s too hard to stay in Paragon and easier to be in the Isles where they have respect, power, and freedom. Scirocco tells Ice Mistral she’s wrong about all of that, and eventually they would get all of that back in Paragon. Mako shows up revealing that Recluse knew Scirocco would be back to get Ice Mistral. He makes an offer, which is to rejoin Arachnos or watch everyone he loves get killed. Scirocco chooses option C, beat down Mako then make a statement to Recluse. He defeats Mako, then tells Ice Mistral that she can do whatever she wants; she can stay in Arachnos, go to Paragon, or even just flee and go somewhere else. However, he pleads with her to look into her heart and do what’s truly best for her. He then leaves, saying that he has business to finish.
- The incarnate powered and royally irked Scirocco marches on Grandville alone and fights a ton of Recluse’s forces that are led by Black Scorpion. He defeats Black Scorpion and enters Grandville tower, where Ghost Widow waits for him. Scirocco lets down his guard, thinking she might change, but instead Ghost Widow attacks and incapacitates Scirocco. He’s brought to Grandville tower, where Recluse and the remaining named characters of Arachnos surround him. Recluse explains that he let Scirocco go to Paragon in order to prove a point, which is that he can’t change, because no one wants him. He’s dismayed that Scirocco gained all of this power, yet hasn’t learned to truly use it. Scirocco pleads for Ghost Widow to switch sides and help him, but she refuses, saying that Scirocco is going against Arachnos, which makes him her enemy. Recluse orders Ghost Widow to kill Scirocco to make his death poetic. Scirocco is given his final words, where he quotes the final lines of the main character from Charles Dickens, “A Tale of Two Cities”. The cutscene was heavily implied that Scirocco dies.
- At the last moment, the Vindicators teleport into Grandville tower with the help of Ice Mistral, who brought them through the Grandville tunnels to end up right beneath Grandville tower. They tell Scirocco that they’re teleporting him to the tunnels to meet with Ice Mistral and get out of here. Scirocco and Ice Mistral flee through the tunnels, which are on fire from fighting between the Vindicators and Arachnos. They get to the rendevous-point, which is blocked by a wall of fire. Recluse emerges all evil-like from the fire and laughs at the idea that the “sidekick squad” could defeat him. Scirocco and Ice Mistral fight Recluse in a pretty cool boss battle that I had set up with LUA. In the end, Recluse is defeated and teleports away. Scirocco and Ice Mistral flee past the fire and meet up with none other than Matthew Habashy, who said he wanted to use all the resources that he could leverage from the FBSA to help support the Vindicators in rescuing Scirocco.
- Scirocco and Ice Mistral officially become heroes of Paragon without needing any guides from the Vindicators. They’re offered a position in the Vindicators, but the two refuse, saying they’d rather go on their own for now, fighting crime and Arachnos wherever they see them.
- Most of the cutscenes were in a pretty far along state for this before the studio shutdown.
Incarnates. Good old Prometheus seemed to get more and more annoyed with us. Were we going to be able Ascend as part as fighting the Battalion? Was that the going to be the Omega power?
TS: Prometheus was being set up to be the classic know-it-all figure which you surpass. He had an agenda which did not involve you becoming so strong, and he definitely wanted to keep you more in the dark about the actual operations of the Well and the other Well-level powers out there in the galaxy.
JAH: Prometheus was also planned as a boss for a trial for a long time. Probably post-Battalion, though maybe the penultimate challenge in the Battalion storyarc.
STM: Baryonx was really excited about eventually doing a trial where you kick the face in of that giant blue smurf.
The Rikti. With two failed invasions and the knowledge that they were set up for the first one by Nemesis, what was going to happen? They beat their Battalion, if I remember right. Were they going to make a heroic entrance to help us fight off ours?
MM: Yes, the Rikti from their homeworld would have helped vs. Battalion.
TS: I had a pitch once to have the Rikti Homeworld be lost to a catastrophe caused by their internecine war and have the survivors be offered sanctuary on Primal Earth, possibly in a revamp of Crey’s Folly or some other neglected hazard zone. We would have also put Rikti Epic Archetypes in at the same time - with a mostly recovered Honoree as their iconic leader. Ultimately it was just too much work in retrofits for the value - but I thought it would be a fitting conclusion to the Rikti storyline. The “survivors” idea wound up being something we ran with for Praetorians instead.
JH: I had plans for the surprise arrival of a fleet of Rikti saucers to engage in an epic space battle with the Battalion armada in orbit over Earth. Additionally, the handful of survivors of Omega Team who were still on the Rikti Homeworld would return to Earth and reunite with their old comrades to fight the good fight.
STM: The idea I had was that Rikti would help us fight Battalion. But when they saw our Battalion, they would essentially say (in equivalent Rikti speak), “Oh, THOSE guys are WAY different and WAY more powerful than the guys WE fought. Er, but we’ll do our best.”
What was your ultimate goal with Rularuu and how was his story going to pan out?
RG: In Issue 25, Battalion was going to be heavily focused on killing Rularuu, because Rularuu represented a distinct threat to their efforts that they didn’t fully understand. After the players prevented that from happening, we had the idea to somehow use Rularuu as a final gambit against Battalion, likely involving some type of sacrifice from Dream Doctor. It was still pretty vague.
JH: The pitch I had involved Dream Doctor and the players using the Moon Base’s magrail, a breaching pod, and portal technology to board the Battalion command vessel, rip open a hole into the Shadow Shard, and have the Dream Doctor merge with Rularuu. In the brief moment where Dream Doctor’s consciousness and Rularuu’s were joined but he was not yet subsumed by the more powerful Rularuu, he would localize Rularuu’s dimension consuming power to just snatch up the Battalion Fleet before winking out of this dimension, never to be seen again. The players, of course, would have to escape the vessel by leaping into the Shadow Shard, which, devoid of Rularuu’s power holding it together would be collapsing in on itself.
STM: Like Jeff and Ryan said, Rularuu being used to help stop Battalion. The thing with Rularuu is that he can only travel to a dimension where that dimensional version of him exists, which would be Dream Doctor for us. Dream Doctor knows that and in the end helps plan a final gambit about Battalion, which would be releasing Rularuu into the center of their empire, having him wipe out Battalion, then punting Rularuu into another dimension, along with himself. Dream Doctor then planned on merging himself with Rularuu to essentially fight the creature for the rest of eternity, hence Mender Silos saying that he hopes Dream Doctor comes to a better end than all the others.
This all sounds like a horrible fate for Dream Doctor, but it could’ve also been a future issue to deal with, like Issue 44: The Search for Dream Doctor Rularuu.
What was in store for future trials with all the Praetorians handled?
MM: Battalion focused.
JAH: Issue 25’s Incarnate Trial was going to deal with preventing the Battalion from killing Rularuu. It was a natural consequence of I25’s Story Arc content, but one that didn’t rob you of a feeling of accomplishment after completing said arc content. Within the game’s timeline, it was going to run concurrently with the i25 Task Force/Strike Force, which I thought was particularly cool - in the TF, you would escape from the Shadow Shard through a portal right as the portal was closing. In the Trial, you would be shutting down that portal from the Primal side, just in time to stop Battalion from using it to access Rularuu and destroy him.
Mechanics-wise, I was going with a little bit of BAF mixed up with a little bit of Lambda, plus a few unique boss encounters at the end of all that. The first stage was going to be Tower Defense - something I was very much looking forward to. Players would obtain turrets and special devices from scientists at the portal tower, and spend the first 3-5 minutes of the trial setting them up before the assault. You would then fight off wave after wave of Battalion patrols which were trying to access the portal at the middle of the map. Every couple waves would have some unique enemies contained therein, with special mechanics (teleporting assassin’s strikes, team AoE stealth that doesn’t cancel on combat, chaining heals that scale with every target hit, etc.) After the tower defense was completed, one group of players would race up the inside of the tower to access the portal generator at the roof, while another group of players would dive deep underground to shield generators in sewers far beneath the city.
Ultimately, you’d be fighting a Battalion general on the top level of the tower, looking out over the city. Half of your league would be trying to hack the controls for the portal generator to shut it down, while the other half of your league would be dealing with the general and his reinforcements. I was really excited about this trial, though it was pretty ambitious - I’m pretty sure people would have loved the tower defence aspect of it, and I think putting a “puzzle boss” into a CoH trial (the computers in the last stage) would have been a lot of fun.
Were we ever going to return and deal with Prae Hamidon? How was his fight going to play out if so?
MM: Possibly, we threw around some ideas, but Battalion’s arrival kinda cut those short.
TS: The same power that made Rularuu so powerful by combining with parallel versions of himself could have been referenced in merging/combining Praetorian Hamidon with our Hamidon - especially if we needed a “heavy hitter” versus Battalion. When we went through naming various “hidden Incarnates” in the game I made Hamidon an Gaia Incarnate, so it was also going to be a target of Battalion.
Were there any other major storyline changes planned? Anything as major as killing off characters?
MM: Dr. Aeon loves killing off characters, but other than bringing back Sister Psyche, nothing as game sweeping as that.
STM: Sister Psyche comes back over my dead resurrected body. Scirocco was going to become a good guy.
JH: I had wanted Citadel to turn out to be an agent of Battalion in order to spice his character up significantly. Effectively unbeknownst to the scientists at Crey Biotech that built him, a hidden series of code was installed in him that would enable Battalion to flip a switch and turn him to their side. The goal was to make Citadel so that the process by which earthlings become so powerful could be better understood and studied, and thus he was unleashed on the world and observed from afar by a certain Battalion agent embedded in Paragon City.
Be truthful, did you have any plans for bases? Or PvP?
MM: Plans are easy. Yes we had plans. What we didn’t have was enough interest from the players to ever warrant the TITANIC amount of work they required.
JAH: I had just increased Base salvage storage to 100 salvage for Issue 24. I also really wanted to revamp PvP so that it didn’t feel like the game was fighting you (travel suppression, heal decay), but rather so that all the same balance tools were present but in the hands of players instead of the inanimate server (maybe all your tier 1 and tier 2 attack powers would apply 50% heal decay and 5-6 seconds of travel suppression). I also wanted us to gravitate away from Animation Time = Damage - this completely nullifies the role of burst damage in PvP, essentially flattening the “skill cap” of choosing when to use which abilities in combat. However, as Matt said above - both facets of the game were so niche, they couldn’t really justify any investment with a return. Any changes that were made to these systems would have to be entirely spare time projects, and would have to justify themselves as higher priority than any of the other myriad of things we wanted to tweak about the game.
Anything you ever REALLY wanted to do but couldn't? New ATs? Fix all the things? CoH 2?
MM: The Striker AT (Range/Melee DPS).
TS: I had a list on our internal wiki called “Things Tim Wishes He Could Do” - but the vast majority of them were crossed off before I left. I would have really liked to change the way we entered data into the game. I wanted a hot script system that would have allowed us to add LUA coded scripts to all servers without a patch. Mastermind Pet customization. Never having to hit “claim” on the Empyrean Merit rewards ever again. Tons of stuff. I’ll probably have my own thread about this.
MM: LOL@MM pet customization
JH: Bazooka Melee...
Would we ever see a stronger presence of Crey Biotech in the world? And why were they always depicted in game as blatantly and obviously criminal?
RG: We had talked about this recently. Some of the non-Battalion storyarcs I wanted to do involved a President Lex Luthor-style storyarc where Crey gets some legitimate credentials, and the hero player is put in an actual moral dilemma - do you break the law and stop Crey from doing something you think is wrong? Or do you attempt a legal challenge and get bogged down in Crey PR and lawyers? Just something to make Crey’s presence seem more believable.
JAH: We also didn’t originally have the “Neutral Con” concept in the game. In I24, you would have seen yellow-conning Crey in Brickstown - powerful agents who weren’t afraid to jump a hero in a back alley, but at the same time didn’t want to appear to be openly criminal, and often tried to plug the Crey PR line for the citizenry.
We had plans for the Crey Corporation to appear in a meaningful way in the future. I was really excited about these plans - corporate espionage, lawful evil, umbrella/shell/front companies, and an unexpected global reach. I was also pumped to hopefully get some Crey in the game in the 40-54 range - that they didn’t really exist there was probably a big part of the reason not many stories were told about them.
Does anyone ever finally nail Crey to the wall for all they’ve done?
MM: Imagine a world where people keep finding out sinister things that a company like Google, Apple, or Facebook is doing... and yet, people keep using their products, giving them money. That’s Crey.
What are the Center’s goals? He grabbed a lot of power but seems to spend more time keeping his subordinates in check than anything else.
STM: The Center, after Issue 24, was going to be building his powerbase to eventually fight heroes on an Incarnate-level. He’s a dictator and wants to convert the world to his way of thought, believing that things would be much better that way. Of course, we haven’t done much explaining about what his beliefs/thoughts are, so that would’ve had to be done so he doesn’t just seem like a cookie-cutter guy.
Could we get a full list of Primal/Praetorian counterparts? There are a lot of ones that players have theories on that haven’t been confirmed.
MM: Someone should start a separate thread where we can confirm/debunk counterparts, because we don’t have access to “the list” anymore.
What’s happening on Rikti Earth these days?
MM: Civil War between the traditionalists and the restructurists. And Ruin had taken over South Butts, err I mean Australia, on Rikti Earth and created his own nation of enslaved Rikti.
JH: I had wanted the original Tin Mage to have actually survived the Omega Team attack, despite having warded himself runes of destruction in case of capture. I’d wanted the Rikti and him to have struck a logical and mutually beneficial relationship with him, mainly in that he would not be destroyed in exchange for him teaching them magic.
What is Lady Grey doing with Wade?
STM: Extracting information from his mind about what Rularuu knows. This could take a looooooooong time, given that Rularuu has absorbed a metric ton of dimensions into his mind.
Speaking of Lady Grey, how about her full background?
MM: First attempt by the Well of the Furies to create a champion in over 100 years. She refused the power, keeping just the immortality. OR Battalion sleeper agent, placed on this planet in the mid 1800’s during an advance scouting mission.
Anything on the horizon involving the Coralax and/or the Leviathan?
STM: I expanded on them a bit in Issue 19. I always wanted to do a fight against the Leviathan and branch out the Coralax more, but that would be tough to do since the Leviathan is supposed to be all of Sharkhead Isle.
What happened to Praetorian Infernal? (And was he actually T’keron, Primal Infernal’s missing friend/rival gone crazy with power?)
MM: He was K’varr from a world where the demons bound to his armor took over his soul.
JH: Praetorian Infernal had also managed to enslave the demons that the Oranbegan’s owed their souls to and then became their new overlord. Finally free to return spirits to bodies, the Circle of Thorns were very loyal to Infernal, something that Tyrant was not very pleased about, especially with his war on magic. Infernal, above any of the other Praetorians, posed a very real threat to Tyrant, but we ran out of time to introduce that story.
Of any of the factions that could survive the Hamidon in Praetoria it would have been the Oranbegans.
STM: I always just wanted to kill Praetorian Infernal. I never liked the idea that Infernal came from an alternate Hell dimension, and that Praetoroan Infernal came from a Praetorian Hell dimension. But then Jeff and Matt asked me (in Matt’s case, being my boss, told me) not to do in issue 24 and came up with what they said up here, so I didn’t.
Was Manticore going to go Vigilante/Villain? What about Scirocco, Ice Mistral, Mako, and GW? Were they going to go Rogue/Hero?
MM: It’s incredibly difficult to make sweeping changes to characters like that, all their previous content becomes invalid and it becomes a hornet’s nest of work. If we did anything of the sort it would be slow and measured (like starting with Scirocco in I25).
STM: Scirocco and Ice Mistral would’ve gone hero. Red Widow would’ve replaced Ice Mistral’s TF. Scirocco’s patron arc would become flashbackable for anyone to do at 35+. Scirocco would be removed from the world but NOT from any missions because that was a major pain to do and I still didn’t do it correctly. Positron’s granddaughter. Doing Scirocco’s personal story arc, which was about 12-13 missions, would grant you the Mirage badge and unlock all the patron power pools. The personal story arc could be done on a hero or a villain.
Were there plans for doing something with the Primal Clockwork King now that Penny is in the Freedom Phalanx? Maybe make him a member?
RG: Nothing major planned for the CWK, other than trying to give him a more understandable side (and inform more players about his backstory, which I think a lot weren’t aware of). We definitely had plans for Manticore. Spoiler alert, though I think some already figured this out - Manticore was Lastri Kayumanis’s employer from SSA2. His plan was to destabilize Arachnos, to pave a path towards creating effectively a Vigilante group dedicated to destroying villainy at all costs. We also had a storyline where he breaks into the Zig and recruits from there, creating a Suicide Squad-type group.
JH: We discussed having Manticore form a third major side to play against Arachnos and the Phalanx. Basically, he would go full Vigilante with Wyvern and effectively say to hell with the ineffective goodie-goodie tactics of Paragon’s Heroes and dive under the various national treaties preventing Longbow from ever truly shutting Arachnos down.
What was intended for the future of Posi and Numina’s relationship? (And where were its origins? It was kinda suddenly sprung on us out of nowhere, with no real backstory... was there one we didn’t get?)
MM: I’ll see if I can find the story I wrote.(Yes I found it, will publish it after this)
IP was destined for a revamp per the Pummit... how so? Any lore influences there?
MM: We didn’t commit to any revamps at the Pummit.
Arachnos’ presence in Faultline - what exactly are they looking for there and do they ever find it?
MM: You’ll have to ask War Witch to see if she remembers.
Why is Longbow wasting time harassing petty villains in Mercy Island when Arachnos is sitting right on top of the Faultline dam? Isn’t chasing them out of Paragon City more important? Grandville, I can understand, but this...
MM: They need to maintain a presence in the Rogue Isles to keep an eye on things there.
The Honoree has been reclaimed by Vanguard, hurrah - what happens next? (Especially since we have the Lost cure as of Issue 12... any plans for that storyline either?)
RG: Working with the Rikti to fight off Battalion opened up a lot of possibilities. Redemption of Hero One was definitely one of those that we considered.
Anti-Matter invents Clockwork, builds the Keyes Island reactors, and a host of other scientific achievements... what about Positron? Did/does he ever create anything on that scale? Or is Anti-Matter only more prolific as an inventor/scientist because of his competition with Neuron?
MM: In Paragon City there are so many other super scientists and super technology guys running around, that sometimes it feels like 2/5ths of all Heroes have that as part of their Origin story. Positron doesn’t need to be as macro-level inventor as Anti-matter does because there is always someone else around doing it.
War Witch has been restored to life - what now? Will she ever get back together with Apex?
RG: Don’t know about legitimate stories, but one of the jokes we’d tell around Melissa was how, now that War Witch was alive, we could kill her off in so many gory ways. She didn’t very much appreciate those ideas. :P
JH: Namely by having Requiem pay her a visit, melt off half her face and then throw her off a building. :P In all seriousness, I had wanted to do a War Witch TF for Melissa forever and was slowly making headway into getting to do that by having her return to life in I23. You can bet, though, that given the dire situation of fighting against Battalion that Apex and War Witch would once more be fighting side by side.
STM: I never wanted War Witch to come back to life. Not that I think that the story that was done wasn’t good, it was great. I just like pointing out all the people who I said don’t bring back to life. I think Melissa didn’t like my threats that if she came back I would find a way to kill her off to make this one stick.
What are the other 11 methods of time travel besides Dreaming and the Pillar of Ice and Flame?
MM: 3) Flux Capacitor 4) Call Box/Phone Booth 5) Steampunk machine 6) Black Hole 7) Time Tunnel 8) Magic 9) Divine Intervention 10) “Body Jumping” 11) The Method You Came Up With For Your Character.
STM: 12) Min-maxing.
Who wins the Rikti civil war? The Traditionalists or the Restructurists? (Or do they eventually get subsumed by another Rikti group that comes through after them?)
MM: The true, alien, Rikti show up and kill off both sides since they are not pure.
JAH: To expand, there’s this concept of Rikti being an actual alien species that exists in both what we would call Rikti Earth and in the Prime Dimension as well. On “Rikti Earth”, that species found Earth and infested its human population, enslaving them and changing them genetically. In Prime, they either never found Earth or were defeated by early powered individuals. See Matt’s answer far below this for more info.
Can we please get the Dream Doctor’s full story?
MM: Surprised Dr. Aeon didn’t put that in here. Bug him and Protean for it.
Who exactly is/was Ms. Liberty’s father? He’s pretty much been glossed over in everything from in-game canon to the comics to the FP novel... why?
MM: It was never relevant to the story, he was just a guy Miss Liberty fell in love with and had a kid with. Not every character has to be a somebody.
There is some FASCINATING lore in the exploration badges of the game... any chance of getting details on some of these? All of them? :)
MM: For any badge before Issue 6, I made it up off the top of my head when I went to the location that someone had picked to place a badge. What you see is all there is.
If you could retcon any one thing in the storyline, what would it be? Alternately, what’s the one retcon you’ve made that you later regretted?
MM: Clarify that Positron was never a “ball of energy/gas” in the suit. He was always a man, but his body was injured in the Rikti war to constantly emit anti-matter, which the suit converts to power. Regretted changing the text of the Atlas statue plaque.
TS: Being more clear about the way the Well operated in the Ramiel arc. Some players became convinced we were saying that the Well was the ultimate source of all super powers. Nothing could be further from the truth. - All life generates, in small doses, a particular ripple in the fabric of the universe by their existence - you can call this psychic energy, or power, or what have you - but it is generated by their movement through space and time - kind of like static electricity as you run silk over a glass rod. Exceptional life generates an outsized amount of this energy. Over time this energy builds up like a thunderhead, and when the minds of life give it a certain potential “way out” it rushes outward down that channel. In early days of humanity, this “way out” was manifested in elemental spirits, gods, titans - to be followed later by great leaders of civilization, generals, tyrants. As each of these great figures passed on, the outsized energy they possessed became part of the Well. (to be continued)
JAH: For me, Origin of Powers. When I played the story arc, I felt like my character with whom I’d been familiar for years had been changed out from under him. If that fundamental understanding had been in the game since the beginning, it would have been fine - but I was Miles K. Brown the super-scientist-inventor, not Miles K. Brown the Science Magician. I know the arc wasn’t intended to create this feeling - it was meant to give players an added sense of connection with the game world - but I think it needed to leave significantly more leeway for alternative interpretations than it did.
JH: Some of the more ridiculous evil goatee back story shenanigans surrounding certain Praetorians and their interactions with one another as well as their equally ridiculous villain groups.
STM: Malta revealing themselves at the end of Roy Cooling’s arc. It had enough twists as it was, it would’ve been better to just leave the Sky Raiders having a mysterious benefactor and that’s it.
Manticore HAS to know by now that Protean has survived (especially with that whole uber-gathering of heroes in the Dream Doctor’s arc) - is he going to take another shot (no pun intended) at killing him?
JH: Nothing was planned, per say, but it is definitely something that you can bet Manticore would always have on his mind.
All those couples (or wannabe couples) that sent and received love letters for Valentine’s Day? What plans (if any) did you have for those relationships to go anywhere in-game?
RG: I wrote Synapse’s double-dating of the model sisters into SSA2.1. It was a minor callback, but some of the players who had run his valentines tips got the reference.
JAH: I wrote about a third of those Valentine ideas while on a plane ride across the country. Most of them were just total one-offs - they “made sense” within the game continuity, but were never intended to have larger consequences. Protean could speak more to this since he wrote many of the concepts and all of the tip text. My favorite was Sally to Lusca. :)
JH: When we did the V-Tips I had sent a query out to the Paragon team asking for inspiration, ideas, etc. I got a lot of responses and then set to work writing the V-Tips up. I had always intended the V-Tips to hint at things going on in the background and maybe inspire someone to take those story hooks further. Mynx and Arbiter Sands, for example, could have been a great story arc to tell, but also infinitely more fun if Bobcat got mixed up in it all. ;)
Was Statesman phone?
MM: I assume this question is meant to be “did we tell Jack we were killing Statesman?” No. But I did tell Sean Fish about both deaths and he approved of the direction.
RG: It’s a meme, Matt. But who was phone? And no, in this case, I think Darrin Wade was phone.
JAH: Yes, this is dog.
Someone went back in time to screw your character's early adventure up in Outbreak/ Breakout. Who was it, and Why did they do it?
MM: (Made up) You from the far future when you come to the realization that you would have been better off never stopping the Outbreak and becoming a Hero, or never breaking out of the Zig to become a Villain.
TS: (Made up) Batallion trying to stop you as part of the temporal shenanigans caused by their fight versus Silos.
STM: (Made Up) An agent of the Nictus trying to unmake the universe, possibly Requiem or just Requiem’s Nictus - most likely just Requiem’s Nictus. You still wouldn’t have found out who was doing all of this after the Battalion storyline was finished, so that would be a story hook that we would’ve explored more afterwards.
Ouroboros one day crashes into the sea. Different forces seem to be involved in this. What happened that day?
TS: One of the story elements that is not overtly stated in the Mender Ramiel arc is that the light of the Crystal has gone out in that timeline. The idea that Silos was Time Incarnate was an appealing one, and we were thinking that the Crystal was actually part of him, not a separate power. Since in that timeline he was defeated/absorbed by Battalion - no Crystal.
Joke question(maybe): What did Lazarus see when he tossed himself beyond the Abyss?
STM: Issue 25.
Hugo Figures and Agent Gally. Were they ever going to be successful in liberating the Bane Spider network? If not, what ultimately happens to them?
MM: What issue/storyline were they from?
Crimson Revenant seems to be a pretty high-power super for such a low-key bounty hunter. What targets has he taken down in his day?
MM: I have no idea, I can’t even think of a satisfactory made up answer to this.
Operative Jenkins is seen several times, working his way up the promotion tree despite his blunders. What was his ultimate fate?
MM: (Made up) He would eventually lead Arachos, hidden behind a mask, with the help of an international arms dealer who was secretly having an affair with his girlfriend.
t3h S00p4rFr34k also appears recurringly, powering up every time. What was his ultimate fate?
MM: I don’t know, I think one of the older writers liked the character, but I have no idea if they had an ultimate plan for them.
How did High Roller and Mr. Simmons' students finally turn out? Are they continuing their mentors' arch-rivalry?
MM: They turned out great and yes they are.
What was the Ultimatum, and what was their agenda in Praetoria? Were their dimensional incursions the proverbial “first shot” in the Praetorian War?
MM: Ultimatum was getting their spotlight in Issue 25. They were the secret government operatives responsible for many events/assassinations that saved the world from doom.
RG: I LOVED the work we were doing on Ultimatum. We were building these guys not as a full villain group, but as individuals each capable of screwing up the player’s plans by themselves. We were going to do thing like mass mind control of civilians/PPD, an engineer that lays traps/turrets/mines, a sniper killing off an NPC while you were talking with that NPC, that kind of thing. We were aiming for a sort of Metal Gear Solid vibe with these guys, and it would have been awesome.
JH: In the I25 story Battalion gives Earth (ironically) an ultimatum to surrender peacefully and join Battalion’s ranks or they will smash the Shivan meteor into our planet killing us all. The nations of the world are divided on the issue and Vanguard loses a lot of their ability to oppose Battalion amidst all the chaos. Ultimatum shows up with orders to blow up Paragon City using an experimental fusion bomb and blame it on Battalion in order to unite the world against this common threat. Ultimatum does the job nobody in their right mind would ever sign their name next to, which is why they are beyond black ops and who they are getting their orders from in the government remains unknown.
Was Roger Vrabel and Neil McIntosh murdered? If so, by whom?
MM: Hmm, none of the other writers bothered to answer this one, which makes me think that whoever wrote it no longer worked at Paragon.
What (if any) was the relationship between Father Gerard Henri and Martin Henri?
MM: None
What happened to the Children of Enos?
MM: They grew up? The Adults of Enos doesn’t have the same ring.
What was the Blood of the Black Stream?
MM: Ancient egyptian shapeshifters.
Who was behind Gadzul Oil, and what was their agenda?
MM: I think they were the modern day face of BotBS.
Were there any other heroes that wielded the power of Zeus between Imperious and Statesman?
MM: The period of time between Cimmerora and Paragon City is pretty dark of super-powered beings. They were extremely rare before Cole and Richter uncovered the Well of the Furies in the modern day.
What was the Path of the Dark’s agenda in the Romulus Augustus affair? What was their agenda?
MM: No idea, I think whoever wrote that wasn’t on CoH anymore, and the thread was dropped.
Who was King Midas?
MM: A supervillain who had the power to turn anything he touched into “gold” (which only looked like gold, had none of the properties, and was obviously fake) Since he was constantly tempted by what would appear to be wealth, but wasn’t, he became a criminal to steal REAL gold.
How did the Rikti manage to fight off the Battalion?
MM: Battalion of Rikti Earth sucked.
What was the construction site in the North Eastern side of Steel Canyon for? Was anything ever going to come from that?
MM: Launch pad, I think.
JAH: It was definitely for the launch pad. It’s marked as such in one of the maps that came with one of the versions of the game, though I can’t remember which.
Were all the zones going to be revamped?
MM: Once we lost all the environment artists to another team, we’d no longer be doing revamps.
Were the War Walls going to come down or was that a rumor?
MM: It was me taken WAY out of context. We removed a section of a war wall to add in a new area once. I tried to hint at it by saying we had the ability to take the war walls down. I have since learned to be less subtle. The new zone in Issue 25 was to be one of the places “between the war walls” on your Paragon City map.
Who was Professor Echo, really? Was he actually a future/alternate version of Doctor Aeon?
MM: As far as I know, yes.
Why were Countess Crey and Hero Corps colluding, and why didn't the Hero Corps story thread make it into the game?
MM: Hero Corp was supposed to be very “vigilante”, but when all players started to do all the content (because there simply wasn’t enough) we scrapped plans for HC because it would force Heroes to do stuff they didn’t want to. I took this idea and expanded on it for Void Sanction in Issue 24.
What was going on in the burned-out parts of Paragon we could see just outside of the war walls?
MM: Issue 25 was going to open up Kallisti Wharf, a recently rebuilt area between the war walls.
Who was the second villain group player villains were going to be able to join in CoV?
MM: Circle of Thorns. Original idea was 5 existing villain groups, each with a different origin story. Freakshow: Tech, CoT: Magic, Outcasts: Mutant, Family: Natural, Council: Science. Arachnos was created as a conglomeration of all of the above.
Who were the aliens that uplifted the humans of Rikti Earth? What were they like? Where did they go and why did they uplift the Rikti? Where were the aliens in Primal reality?
MM: True Rikti lost their home planet when their star went nova, scattering across the galaxy. One group landed on Earth, killed the gods that were being worshiped, set themselves up as gods, then realized they stopped being able to reproduce. They began altering humans into becoming Rikti-hybrids, and eventually all the original Rikti died off, leaving only hybrids on the planet... and true Rikti scattered throughout the universe.
Why did the Rikti hate magic?
MM: Magic meant the worship of other gods besides the Rikti. Once the Rikti killed all the gods on their Earth, sufficient magic could undo their efforts, so they outlawed magic to maintain power.
Why did Nemesis provoke the Rikti to attack our Earth? How could that have helped him conquer our planet?
MM: By exhausting our defenses.
Was there a Nemesis invasion event planned? What kinds of new enemies might we have seen?
MM: I wanted to do an Ouroboros mission back to Brass Monday, but the Art Lead said we couldn’t make Paragon City of the 1930’s. Viridian did a Brass Tuesday for SSA 2 though, with the Nemesis Monstrocity powered by the Well.
Was there ever to be a Nemesis map type? What might it have looked like?
MM: Yes, it was a very clockworked skin of the existing maps. It looked horrible and was scrapped.
Was City of Heroes all a Nemesis plot? Heroes were penned into zones by war walls, and the city was populated by people who always walked around in circles, never entering buildings, repeating the same lines over and over again, like automatons. Also, there were no children or babies, which could be because Nemesis lacked the technology to create automatons that small. Was Paragon one big Nemesis simulation, meant to study heroes?
MM: Sure, why not. Explains away the limitations of the engine and the art team sufficiently.
Was the Nemesis Horse ever meant to be used in game?
MM: I believe there was to be a mounted warrior on it, but that tech never arrived.
What happened to that Thunderclap guy from the Dark Horse promo comic? And why did States have a helmet in the comic, but a mask in the game?
MM: (Made up): Thunderclap was kidnapped and assimilated into Project: Locke by Crey. States had a helmet because the artist wasn’t told otherwise.
Who is the leader of the Knives of Artemis?
MM: Artemis, isn’t it obvious?
Why did you change the colors of the Black Market truck from Optimus Prime red to blue? It was just a red truck, as seen in the game.
MM: To avoid getting sued by Hasbro.
Was there ever going to be a Zig trial?
MM: Talked about at lunches and such, but never went further than that.
How did the workers in Terra Volta make it to work? (Particularly with the cars that were in zone?)
MM: (Made up) Terra Volta Power had access to stolen Rikti teleportation technology and would teleport their workers directly from their homes. This explains the crazy electricity rates citizens of Paragon City pay.
Why is so much in Cimerora about restoring a monarchy, and not about building a democratic society based on merit?
MM: Because the only democracy to ever work for a significant period of time was the United States, and even there it’s a Democratic Republic hybrid government.
Who did the big statue in the middle of Steel Canyon represent?
MM: I don’t remember, but I know it’s in a design doc I no longer have access to.
We saw very few references to Hamidon’s life as a human before he mutated himself … were you ever going to have us explore his early years/how he became just so powerful?
MM: No plans to.
Why didn’t the Winter Lord freeze over all the waters of Paragon City the last few events? Was he losing power?
MM: Because we added zones with water and had no time to do the work to freeze over the rest of the game.
JAH: The frozen water also generated a lot of customer service tickets from people getting stuck inside of it. While ice skating is super fun, getting trapped in ice is super not fun.
Can you further explain the history of Blue Steel and if he lives happily ever after? I felt really bad giving him that beat down in the Signature Story Arc.
RG: Don’t have an answer for you, just wanted to drop the running gag that we had for Blue Steel. The Blue Steel = Chuck Norris type gags were known around the office, and I had suggested we do a fight where the player is fighting Blue Steel, very hard fight. When he reaches 50% health, he stops, and says, “You think this shield protects me from the world. You’re wrong. It protects the world... from me.” At this point he drops the shield and does a build up animation that causes an explosion, effectively ending the fight as the entire area around him gets destroyed in a DBZ-esque manner.
STM: I wanted Blue Steel to appear more in story arcs and kind of sort of dispel his Chuck Norris-ness. He’s a really cool guy if you think about it - one of the few super heroes who is still a cop. There was going to be a cutscene in i25 where the villain tries to kidnap Steven Sheridan. They attack a PPD car which should have Sheridan in it. Instead, Blue Steel walks out. If you beat him down in one of the previous arcs, he would say, “Round 2, $Name”.
Would there have ever been a time travel set of missions going back to fight Nemesis when he invaded the US after VE Day?
MM: I would have loved to do that, but we didn’t have “VE Day era” art, and no time to do it right.
What happened to all of the gimps, cat people, Siege clones, etc. in pre-GR Praetoria?
MM: Each Praetorian didn’t need their own villain group, so we “retired” some of them for better looking assets.
In the future Ouroborus part of Mender Ramiel's arc, was our character ascended or a very advanced incarnate?
MM: Likely ascended.
Was Lady Grey an Incarnate?
MM: Either that or a Battalion sleeper agent. Take your pick.
STM: Incarnate.
MM: You guys never liked my Battalion agent idea did you. Even though she was created with that in mind the entire time. :)
JAH: I liked it in that it blew my mind when I first heard it two years ago, but I feared it would be too much of a big-name betrayal given how long she’d been touted as a friendly character. Not sure how the others felt.
JH: I preferred her unknowingly setting up all of Earth’s defenses into one Impervium lined basket which Battalion could then completely pacify with a snap of their fingers. Additionally, it didn’t make sense that Lady Grey would be a Battalion sleeper agent, she would have claimed Earth’s well long ago were that the case as nothing on Earth would have had the strength to oppose her.
What was the construction that showed up as a rocket ship on the going rogue map?
JAH: Anti-Matter’s Space Station, which only made it into the game as the orbital laser in Keyes Island Incarnate Trial.
What was the point of divergence between Praetoria and Primal Earth? We know it happens before Hamidon gets his powers, because Nemesis doesn’t exist in Praetoria.
MM: (Made up) A million years previously a moth went left instead of right, and got eaten by a bat.
STM: (Made Up) Someone told Seamus McCann, a writer in the 1400’s, to never kill a character in a storyline.
Where did Horus (from the Blue King comic series) go after the events of that series?
MM: Back into the stable of “characters Rick Dakan created that we were unsure who owned the rights to”
Was Fusionette’s origin (the Nuclear 90) just for flavor or was there plans to do something with it further?
MM: Flavor, but I think someone wanted to do something with it.
JH: I had wanted to do an arc involving other members of the Nuclear 90, some good, some bad. I had developed one guy named Core but he didn’t get much further along than just the costume and a blurb I wrote up for him.
Castle said he couldn't implement all the changes he wanted when the pvp revamp was done. What were those changes. Anything pvp specific you can comment on?
MM: Blended animations (ability to not be locked down to cast) was a big thing missing in CoH and PvP for that matter.
More NPC factions, was this ever on the board/who would you have used/what would you have done with it? For example, long involved storyarcs, repeatable missions , powers, costumes, etc.. a la Vanguard but for other groups like Hero Corps, Longbow, Outcasts, ??
MM: We use whatever faction fits the stories we want to tell. Void Sanction is really a Hero Corps story line, so there’s that at least.
What breed of dog is Woofers?
MM: Northern Sweeney.
What is the deal with Kalinda? She is the only member of the Fortunatas allowed to have a name, and was the first face of Arachnos to many. What is her story? Rumor has it she is the daughter of Lord Recluse and Red Widow, having her being a first contact reflecting Ms. Liberty (being Statesman’s grand-daughter) being the first leveling contact. Is this true? If so, what was her life, and is she aware of her true identity? Being powerful enough to fuel the Jade Spider seems to fit in the bloodline of the Incarnates as well...
MM: Not true, she’s just a very powerful Fortunata.
What can we be told of the Temple of the Four Winds, was there any plans to put them in the game?
MM: Outside of CoH, the Temple of the Four Winds was originally the place where K’varr and his order did their demon binding on their world, from Sean Fish’s Champions campaign. Sean co-opted the name for Primal earth for a place of super-monks that trained Dark Watcher. Many things from his long running campaign are in City of Heroes in one form or another.
What ever happened to the other villains from the Freedom Phalanx Novel. Revenant, Dr. Null and Shadow Queen?
MM: (Made up) They were all Protean in disguise.
Can you give us a general overview of the future “in universe timeline” for CoH? We know the Praetorian War is wrapping up and then there is the conflict with Battalion. Just a brief bullet point idea would be great.
MM: There is a running gag on 24 where usually moments before Jack Bauer is about to take down the Ultimate Bad Guy, we get a scene with UBG on the phone with someone even higher up the food chain. In that regard, Emperor Cole would have been seen calling Battalion right before the Magisterium Trial. Battalion would have called the Dimensionless right before taking down their leader and then the Dimensionless would have called True Rikti, the alien race from our own universe.
Who put the bop in the bopshebopshebop?
MM: The guy who put the ram in the ramalamadingdong.
Was it the same person who put the ram in the ramalamadingdong?
MM: Yes.
What feature or features did you most want to include but couldn't do to lack of ability or time?
MM: In order: More trials, PVP.
How canon were the Valentines we were handing out? I mean in terms of some folks being into others, as well as the implication that Master Midnight's crush for Diabolique was magic-induced.
JH: I treated them as canon.
Was Dean MacArthur telling the truth about his backstory (his father's murder, etc.)?
STM: Yes. I loved writing Dean, specifically because he has that tragic backstory of being 2 steps away from being a good guy if not for decisions he made in circumstances given to him.
Were Villains eventually going to be able to use all the “resources” they had collected like their cloning labs to launch a “master plan” of some kind?
MM: Master Plans... sigh.
RG: I was still determined to create an ‘end of the world’ arc. It kept getting shelved for other content, but I never gave up. I was going to put you in an exclusive-phased zone and everything.
JH: When I did the Mortimer Kal SF I had planned on having us track all of these “things” that the villain collected and then call them in again in future content. Originally in Night Ward, I had intended for villain players with the Mortimer Kal souvenir clue to be able to call him in to help out with all the magical stuff going on, but it proved to be too much work at the time. Eventually I wanted Fiona Kal to become the villain’s sidekick.
STM: In Issue 25, I had it set up with our APB system that you would get powers to use once per mission to summon your previous allies. So if you had done Dean and Leonard’s arcs, you could summon them to help you out. Of course, Dean would just follow you and do nothing, but Leonard would fight. There was still a bit of tweaking to do, like making it so you couldn’t summon EVERYONE, or else then you’d just roflstomp through all the villain content in issue 25.
Oh, and speaking of Issue 25, did anyone in beta notice the references to Kallisti Wharf during the arcs? I was trying to foreshadow the new zone in Issue 24.
Darren Wade and The Dream Doctor both use the "bio" skin for their hands ... what is the story as to why they both have messed up hands? I assumed it was because they delved into magics that dealt with the Shadow Shard. Yes?
STM: Yes.
What did Recluse look like under his mask?
MM: Jesse Ventura
Why are all the plaques in Praetoria, First Ward, and Night Ward in Estonian?
This question does not have an answer in the original document.
Was it possible and were we going to see more mundane personal vehicle transport powers such as a Motorcycle?
MM: Some devs wanted it, and we were talking about how to do it.
Since Frostfire has switched sides and became a hero, what does it mean for the Outcasts? Have they disbanded? Found a new leader? Maybe even followed Frostfire and are now heroes?
MM: If we used them again, they’d have a new leader.
Any plans on finishing off what happened to Pyriss? Is she now an Arachnos operative? Or can she be saved? Likewise, what has happened to Terra after all these years? Has a cure been found yet for those who have turned into Devoured Earth?
STM: No idea for Terra. I continued the Pyriss storyline in Dark Astoria - Vernon von Grun used her as an experiment to try to control the Devouring Earth. He succeeded in essentially re-awakening the humanity in her so that she could actually follow orders. I didn’t have any exact plans of what would happen after that, but one idea was that she could eventually go back to being a hero, albeit a Devouring Earth. She’d eventually learn to cope with what she had become, and it would’ve sent a pretty good message to Peter Themari: evil wins the battle, but good wins the war.
Was there ever a plan to bring primal earths Hero One back from the Rikiti and for him to be a new Statesman type figure (Maybe even lead the Freedom Phalanx?)
MM: I believe this is answered elsewhere in the doc.
Was Galaxy City lost forever or would the zone have been redone in later issues (If so would the tutorial have changed also)?
MM: I think I would have gone crazy if we had yet another tutorial.
STM: I think I would’ve gone crazy if I had to design another tutorial. I did want to eventually make a 40+ zone that was Destroyed Galaxy City.
Was there any plans to go back to the Avillians and the Blood of the Black Stream even though they were scrapped EATs?
MM: Avillians died the moment we saw wings working on any character model and they no longer had to be accounted for in animations. BotBS would have probably made their way into the game post-Battalion.
It was referenced in different contacts’ back story such as Paula Dempsey’s story but any information about past alien invasions before the rikti war?
MM: I don’t recall any specifics from the story bible.
The Fifth Column minions during the ITF mentioned Requiem had plans about Atlantis? What was that all about exactly? Does Atlantis exist in the CoH universe?
MM: Jack vehemently said that Atlantis does not exist, over and over. I think the writer of the ITF never heard that from him.
Does Agent SIx and Omega Watch have any connections to Malta Group?
MM: No.
What’s with the sudden appearance of Angels in Ouroboros and Dark Astoria? Anything to their presence or are they just a convenient McGuffin for Item vending?
MM: They were dimensionless, gifting those who were on the path of Ascension.
Holsten Armitage...Was his future one of possible futures or did he really come from the future that was destined for Primal Earth?
MM: The future he came from came and went with the second Rikti invasion. Good job on ya for preventing his future’s fate!
The heroes who were made for the CCG, other than the ones that became members of Vanguard, were there any plans for them to be introduced?
MM: We had a Master Set of all the cards in the office. We pretty much tapped that well dry with Vanguard though... the rest were meh.
Was there any plans to have Becky the Tarantula Mistress to appear in any missions or stories ever again?
MM: Thankfully, no.
General Hammond’s background mentions a lot of strange enemies such as lizard men and killer cyborgs. Was there any plan to flesh that out a bit more?
MM: No plans.
Is this a Nemesis plot?
RG: Move along, citizen. There is nothing *whirrr* * click* to see here.
Why did the Nicti turn humans into wolf-like creatures?
MM: Because Jack wanted werewolves in the game. Oh you wanted an in-universe answer? Um, the Nicti wanted werewolves in their organization.
What chemicals were Crey working on in Crey’s Folly that caused the pollution?
MM: (made up) A mixture of Bromine and Barium
Just outside the west wall of Grandville is a small pool that contains a coffee drinking Coralax. This is (I guess) the only place where you can actually swim under the waterline. Was this a small test, or an easter egg? Was there any plans to do underwater zones?
MM: There is a river in Cimerora on a cave map you can swim under too. Ken Morse and I discussed, at length, an underwater map. Problem is... it’s very boring. WoW got away with it by scaling up the “interesting” features of the sea floor 1,000,000% and waving their hand saying “It’s Fantasy!” We don’t get that luxury. Champions tried it and when I looked at it there I was unimpressed. In all honesty I think WoW did it as good as it could be done and players still hate it.
Why were there three neon signs on one road near the train in King's Row, but none in the rest of the game (before CoV)?
MM: Art fail?
Who were those villain groups we saw named in that old pre-launch E3 trailer, and why didn't they make the final cut?
MM: They all made it into the game, just with their name changed (legal reasons).
How did the original Ajax’s powers fail him?
JH: They didn’t fail him, he let that happen. As for why, I’m not sure, it was just poetic and interesting.
STM: This was one of the first stories I wrote after being hired. The idea was that the power of invulnerability is super powerful and has its own kind of will to choose its owner. The goal of the power was that the user of the power help save the world and themselves, so it had a knack for choosing people who were not so heroic. The previous Ajax had done all that he could for himself and the world. It was time for him to move on to the afterlife and help someone else change. He knew that going into the fight with the new Ajax. The invulnerability power left the original Ajax and granted themselves to our Ajax to help change his life and the people around him.
City of Heroes AMA 2
After taking questions in a now closed Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was announced at OnRPG on May 3rd, 2013, and released as another Google Doc. The names of the dev giving an answer is listed after the answer in most cases. The devs that answered are:
- Matt, a.k.a. Positron
- Hosun, a.k.a. link to dev red name
- and more!
The second Lore AMA at its time of last revision (May 7, 2013) is as follows:
STUFF GOES HERE