Lore AMA
Overview
The Lore AMA (Ask Me Anything), or "Loregasm", is a series of documents 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 a 2012 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.
AMA by Year
This page contains the text of the documents as they appeared at release. A list of the questions linked to by topic and developer can be found here: Lore AMA/Sorted.
AMA: 2012
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 (September 18th, 2012) 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)
In an interview with onrpg.com Positron notes that the story was originally not published, but that elements of the relationship first appeared in a piece of fiction for the Seventh Anniversary Event. That piece of fiction can be found here: Prepare for the Praetorian Invasion on the live servers! The original story, still a draft, was published following the shutdown announcement on the CoH Forums. A Google doc of the forum thread can be found here: Past Lives (draft).
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.
AMA: 2013
After taking questions in an open Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was announced at OnRPG on May 3rd, 2013, and released as a closed Google Doc. In most cases, the name of the dev giving an answer is listed after the answer. The devs that answered are:
- Matt Miller, a.k.a. Positron
- Hosun Lee, a.k.a. Black Pebble
- Tim Sweeney, a.k.a. Black Scorpion
- Sean McCann, a.k.a. Dr. Aeon
- John Hegner, a.k.a. Protean
- Keetsie Braz de Cunha (née Berbel), a.k.a. Tunnel Rat
- Vince D'Amelio, a.k.a. The Dark Watcher
This is the most likely list of developers who answered AMA 2, as there are multiple devs with some of those first names. Some questions do not have a dev name, and it can be assumed that they were answered by Positron unless the context indicates otherwise. Several questions were unable to be answered, and are marked as "Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)."
The second Lore AMA at its time of last revision (May 7, 2013) is as follows:
On April 28th, 2013, Matt Miller and other members of the Paragon Design team put answers to lore-related questions of City of Heroes to questions that are in this public document.
Q) Was Tanker Invulnerability ever going to be revisited? (Ms Blue Eyes)
A) Wasn’t planned to (Matt)
Q) What was your favorite character type?
A) Fire/Rad Controller, Pre-Nerfs. (Hosun)
A) My first character was a MC/Emp Controller and I thought it was a blast right up until my damage dealing teammates decided to stop playing as much as I wanted to. (Tim)
Q) What sort of love interest would you have given Lord Nemesis? (MisterMagpie)
A) Pottery (Hosun)
A) Lady Safeguard (Sean)
Q) You had a lot of Greek and Roman mythology going on, did you have plans to bring in other mythologies? Or any you wanted to find a place for but couldn't? (MisterMagpie)
A) Jack Emmert established the mythology of CoH way back in the day. Pretty much Greek/Roman gods were “super heroes” of their day, so there really was no intention of adding other pantheons to the game. (Matt)
Q) What was the deal with Radio/Television? Were they Dimensionless? I thought they were just the mad delusions of my villains, but as Television was the “villain” of Mako week I am wondering if there was more back story/plans with them. (Randy Jarvis)
A) They were not Dimensionless, they were (most likely) evil spirits of the netherworld possessing various inanimate objects, iirc (Matt)
Q)Was H.D. the Praetorian version of Television? (NeoVid)
A) Yes (Matt)
Q) What did the Khalisti Wharf TF entail? (Randy Jarvis)
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) Since Arbiter Sands had hooked up with Mynx romantically were we ever going to see him switch sides and become a hero?
A) It was a possibility that we considered but had nothing set in stone. At the time I had planned on exploring deeper into the Valentine’s Day themes in future Valentine’s Day Tips. (John)
Q) Was Ouroboros ever going to be expanded to let us visit the WWII era? (Eldritch_Knight)
A) The problem with past time period is art assets. Doing eras like “1940’s” involved a ton of environment work to remove/replace “modern” things like phone booths and street lamps. In the end it was decided that if we were going to do environment work, it would be for something blatant and obvious, like the moon. (Matt)
A) If we had the urge, we likely would have tried to steal natural cliffs and shorelines from the Cimerora / First Ward terrain, bunkers from the Striga and RWZ sets, and done an “Omaha Beach” style outdoors map. It would have been one of those hodgepodges that came together because of a one-off idea (like the Lost Ouroboros map). Cities and anything else would have been too involved. (Tim)
Q) Was there going to be a payoff with the Penny/Clockwork King relationship? If so, what? (@kaosarcanna)
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) Just how advanced were Nemesis’s automatons supposed to be? Some seemed clanking and comically robotic, while others like James Harvan were disturbed and upset to learn they were machines. (@Dr. Reverend)
A) They were as advanced as the plot required them to be at the time (Matt)
Q) Lusca: where was she hiding in Independence Port? Did she have a lair down there somewhere? (@Dr. Reverend)
A) Sure (Matt)
Q) Were we ever going to learn more about the previous eras’ heroes and their adventures, like the First Hero Brigade or the by of the Black Forest? (@Dr. Reverend)
A) Wasn’t planned, but the possibility always existed if we needed it. (Matt)
A) One of the rejected Battalion plotlines was to have their “deceiver wave” show up in the guise of revered heroes of the past which had “ascended” - Atlas, Elementar, even possibly Statesman. (Tim)
Q) There seemed to be some history between Kalinda and Ghost Widow that was partially discussed in-game; what was the backstory there? Was Ghost Widow holding true antipathy for the Fortunata, or was it something else below the surface? (Doctor Northwood)
A) IIRC it stemmed from basic jealously of “Kalinda was alive”. GW had quite a lot of power and pull in Arachnos, but her spirit was bound to the organization, so she had no free will. That would make anyone envious of people in a similar situation but with free will. (Matt)
Q) Did influence “exist” in CoH world, or was it purely a gameplay abstraction? {@Quinch}
A) Abstraction. It was always intended to be your “pull” with people. Like when a cop goes into a restaurant and doesn’t have to pay because, well, cop. Before launch I really tried to push an “exchange rate” mechanic that would simulate someone doing a favor for you on behalf of someone else, as well as curb twinking.
For example, if a level 50 hero gave a level 10 hero 1,000,000 influence, the level 10 hero would receive only 100,000. The other 900,000 would lost in the exchange. The idea behind this was people were still willing to do favors for the level 50 hero, but less so when they realize that the favor is actually benefiting this level 10 that they never heard of before. (Matt)
Q) Were synthetic intelligences sentient and if so, what were the ethical implications of them being bought and sold at the market? {@Quinch}
A) The only truly sentient ones were the ones that players rolled up as characters (Matt)
Q) Brain-piloted robots, framing beginning heroes and “adopting” them, nanobot assassins... what was the worst thing the Malta has ever done? {@Quinch}
A) Probably minelaying an entire floor with mines and then tying a badge to not setting any off. (Matt)
Q) 5th Column and Council are supposed to be CoH analogues to nazis and fascists, but they lack the sheer psychopathy that made their historical counterparts so terrifying. What’s up with that? {@Quinch}
A) Rated T for Teen (Matt)
Q) What are the additions or changes to the game you wish had never been done and why?
A) I wish Fire Imps were never nerfed! (Hosun)
A) I wish we could have given it a proper send off with a suitable world ending/saving event (Vince)
Q) The Hellions, Gadzul Oil, the Blood of the Black Stream. How was it all supposed to fit together? (@Serpentine)
A) Pretty sure that Gadzul Oil was run by a person or persons that were "blood of the black stream" i.e. descended from ancient powerful lineages in Egypt. Kind of a Merovingian type deal) They wanted a foothold in the Rogue Isles and influenced Marcone with a magic book. One of the Hellions tried to use the book to level himself up. (Matt via Sean Dornan-Fish)
Q) What is the history behind Nick Pocker and the Hellions and were there any plans for the gang's future? (@Serpentine)
A) We didn’t really have anything more we wanted to do with the Hellions, they were a “gang” level villain group and therefore didn’t have any breadth to expand into. (Matt)
Q) Crey Corporation, what were their big plans? Countess Crey’s backstory had this “fallen hero” angle to it, so were there ever plans to explore more of her larger schemes?
A) Their ultimate plan was to take over the world ala Apple, Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, only slightly more nefariously. (Matt)
A) I wanted Manticore and Julianne to hook up. I also had this notion that she’d become an Incarnate and rival the other heavy hitters in the 50+ realm. (Tim)
Q) What was your favorite villain group, in terms of background, aesthetics, powers, etc.? What was your favorite group to design, if different from the previous question?(@Stratostorm)
A) The Freakshow, even though they were in desperate need for an art rework (or perhaps because of it) were such an elegantly simple and fun group to work with. Additionally, their man and machine (power extreme!) origin allowed me to do so many things with them, such as having the advanced military computer M.A.R.S. take control of them in an effort to defend itself during, what it believed, to be a total collapse of NATO. As for designing a group, of the ones I had the opportunity to design, I think The Talons of Vengeance were my favorite. I took what was originally an all female version of the Praetorian Resistance from levels 1-20 and made them much more integral to the overall Lore of CoX. I also got to work with the incredibly talented artists when concepting them out and was giddy with joy at their horrific look. (John)
B) I really liked the Animus Arcana. I thought the concept of sentient spells was really cool. (Hosun)
Q) What is your thought that Nemesis may have actually been the biggest hero of all in Paragon City? His constant plots typically ended up making Paragon City stronger in the long run. For example, the Rikti War he caused brought us so much new technology and prepared the city for fighting greater threats in the future, essentially preparing us for Praetoria and Battalion. (@LightofthePhoenix)
A) We definitely had conversations about this in the office. (John)
A) I did mention this very thing in Branforth the Seer’s Stanza X, which refers to Nemesis. (Tim)
Q) U’kon: Giant Rikti, Rikti in a mecha-Rikti suit, what?
A) Giant Rikti. (Matt)
Q) What was the deal with the Gamester and Red Rook Industries? And did either have a relation to Castle? (IanTheM1)
A) The Gamester was our analogue of Arcade. There was no relation to Castle. (Matt)
Q) Was there any plans [or would you have liked] to have natural disasters play a role within the game? (@damz)
A) We would have loved to include natural disasters, but a couple reasons, most technical, a couple ethical, prevented us from doing so. (Ethical? Well yeah, if we include a “super-storm hurricane” disaster in the game, it would come off as insensitive to leave in the game in the wake of Sandy, for example).
A) One early Summer Blockbuster pitch was a disaster flick. It got canned equally early because we couldn’t really make the gameplay concept fit our systems. (Tim)
Q) Were any of the heroes kidnapped by Crey Industries (like Invisible Falcon and Shining Light) kept alive so that their DNA/powers could be used again and again? If so, would they have eventually been rescued either through a TF or a Signature Story Arc? (@Turbospeed)
A) According to the story bible they were dead. But, no bodies, so we could have done whatever we wanted in the long run (Matt)
Q) What was the the tentacles going on in the Ouroboros destruction? Was it Praetorian Hamidon? Lusca run amok? Explain? (@SnowJackal)
A) AFAIR we left it ambiguous on purpose so we could hook a story to it later. (John)
A) That was Ouroboros after Battalion had attacked and consumed/co-opted Silos. The tentacles idea was just that it was a natural entity of that region of spacetime - no longer repelled by the presence of the Menders. While we did keep it loose as we didn’t have the entire plan set in stone, we did have the pillar turned off - the thought line was that if we were saying Silos was an Incarnate of Time that he was the pillar. We also had the Time Echoes because we wanted to introduce the idea that Battalion had inroads into the timestream and inroads into manipulating Incarnate forms (as also seen in the Lore powers). One thoughtline which was only partially developed was that a good chunk of Incarnate power was, in one sense or another, thoughts (singular or collective) becoming manifest (literally Incarnating). (Tim)
Q) I remember weather was once mentioned but was presented to have had no actual gameplay purpose. Do you think that it could have ever have been implemented? (@RobotoHQ)
A) It rains in Statesman’s death scene. We could have made it rain on maps, but streets would not get wet and it would end up looking odd. (Matt)
A)We began doing weather for dramatic moments in cutscenes, as Matt has mentioned. First Ward also had a few environmental effects like flying dust. The main challenge with precipitation like rain or snow was that we needed new tech to keep those effects from rendering inside buildings like Wentworth’s. We also needed a lot of time to properly mark those places. Additionally, there were some more minor concerns with what the rain would look like at super-speed, and how much the extra particles would tax the player’s machine. Frankly, I don’t think we would have found the time to implement it, especially with all the new powersets coming in. (Keetsie)
A) Fake Tim Sweeney did figure out a pretty cool way to make snow appear though, during last year’s Winter Event. I think it was basically a PbAOE. (Hosun)
A) We could do full screen space camera effects, which is how the snow appeared on the screen near the Winter Horde in the last Winter Event and the rain appeared in some Dark Astoria missions. We hadn’t discovered (back then) a good way to systemically tell the difference between indoors / under a bridge and outdoors, so we didn’t want to use it in areas where it wasn’t magically generated (and hence snow was fine indoors) or only had outdoors. One of the things I had uncovered before the shutdown was a way to do this easily - so it was plausible. We would have never had puddles, though.
Q) Hamidon looks delicious. Does he taste like berry blue Jell-O? (@Serpentine)
A) How did blue become a flavor? (Matt)
Q) What was going to be the plan for the final incarnate powers and trials? (@Sarrona)
A) There was no “final”, once Omega slot was reached that would be the new “Alpha” slot and 10 more Incarnate levels would appear above it. Getting the first 10 Incarnate powers would have been trivialized so the “new grind” would be the Omega-base tree. And then there was a tree after that, and one after that, etc. (Matt)
Q) Not sure if this was asked/answered in the previous Lore Doc, but, what’s the origin & story behind First Ward & Night Ward? They were 2 places I hadn’t played through ...GFX issues (@Tanklet)
A) First Ward and Night Ward are two sides of the same coin, only Night Ward exists as an overlap of the Netherworld and First Ward. Basically, First Ward was the first attempt to create a new beginning by Cole during the Hamidon Wars, but the city’s defenses (the sonic barriers) were flawed and the Devouring Earth attack destroyed the city in part. Raymond Keyes was instructed to turn the sonic barriers inward to halt the attack, adding to the destruction but ultimately saving some of the city structures. In the aftermath, the Praetorians used First Ward as a dumping ground for undesirables in the Praetorian Utopia, as well as a playground for Mother Mayhem and her Seer Program run out of the Mother of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital. Her presence and practice of psychic surgery to create the seers (and casting off parts of their psyche as Apparitions) is what started to thin the barrier between First Ward and the Netherworld, ultimately trapping part of the Netherworld in the pseudo dimension that was Night Ward. Night Ward was a glimpse into the bizarre world of the Netherworld and the theme we adopted for it was a bizarre magical story land of the dead. The Drudges were working feverishly to try and usher the souls of the dead to their destinations but were trapped in Night Ward as the Netherworld in that region was getting pulled closer and closer into the real world, presenting them with all kinds of problems, and in turn, cascaded down the storyline to reveal that the Talons of Vengeance were attempting to hasten along Night Ward’s slip into reality for their own purposes, namely the releasing of an ancient evil that would have spelled doom for all of Praetoria had she escaped Night Ward and entered the land of the living. (John)
Q) Were there any other confirmed praetorian doubles with a differing gender to their primal counterpart, excluding Fusion and Jane Temblor? (@Nemesis_CoH)
A) We had plans of introducing a Primal Version of Reese, but I don’t think it was a gender swapped version. I remember we talked about how this version would be the most well loved character of all time, but we never made any solid plans about it. (John)
Q) For that matter, how did they get powers? There couldn’t have been a Praetorian version of the Nuclear 90. At least, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. (@SpectraLass)
A) The origin of their powers is no different than that of Jim and Fusionette. Jane inherited her tectonic control powers from one of her parents, while Fusion was born with a natural nuclear reactor for a heart. (John)
Q) Also, were the rest of the Nuclear 90 heroes too? Or were some of them even villains and/or civilians who just happened to have powers? (@Mako)
A) It is highly unlikely, with the massive death toll on Praetorian Earth, that the same family trees that produced Primal Earth’s Nuclear 90 would have survived the Hamidon Wars. Additionally, we never revealed any concrete names about the Nuclear 90 (AFAIK), though at one time I had planned on writing a series of arcs or TFs involving them, which would have given us more of a roster to draw from in the future. (John)
A) One of the items for the store that never got approved was to actually purchase a spot in the canonical Nuclear 90 for the character of your choice, and then we would have had the justification to build new content around it. (Tim)
Q) I have a pet theory that Dr. Aeon, Nemesis, Mender Silos, and DJ Zero were all the same person. Also, that Mender Tesseract was Ghost Widow. Any thoughts on this?(@rdrowell, Mecha-Stripe)
A) Sorry, but nope. Mender Silos -is- Lord Nemesis + 10,000 years of regret. DJ Zero was his own Well, and Mender Tesseract was a member of Battalion that Silos convinced to join Ouroboros during his trip back in time. (Matt)
Q) I also have a theory that the Nictus’ Shadow Cyst Crystals are corrupted pillars of Ice and Flame. The Cysts can act as a wormhole, so the bending of time and space really isn’t that far out there when you think about it.(@rdrowell, Mecha-Stripe)
A) Interesting. Wasn’t our intention, but I could see us going in that direction if we wanted to. (Matt)
Q) What stage was Praetoria at, culturally? I believe it was the 1980s, maybe early 90s, based on some of the missions (Richard Jones for instance.) but also on the fashion. (@rdrowell, Mecha-Stripe)
A) The intention was that they were more or less in the same time frame as Primal Earth, but so much had changed in their world that fashion and architecture didn’t match up to our timeline. And yes, Richard Jones was a call out to Dick Jones from Robocop. (John)
Q) What was Mender Tesseract? We’re told she’s from the future and that she’s supposed to be crazy powerful in her own time, but we know little about what she actually was or her powers.
A) Mender Tesseract is ex-Battalion. As Lord Nemesis traveled back in time, he had to make various “stops” to upload into a new body (this is how he got around the whole temporal tether rule). During one of these stops, he convinced the crazy powerful Tesseract that Battalion was bad and doomed to fail, and she should join the winning side when she had the chance. Pulling her out of the Battalion equation was a key part of weakening them to the point where they could be destroyed in the future, should Ouroboros fail at stopping them in the past. In other words “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff.” (Matt)
Q) Let's play Rowling-after-the-fact for a minute. Who was gay? Come on. I bet it was Ice Mistral. [Yes! Was anyone gay, bi, trans, etc? (MisterMagpie)]
A) Honestly, there was no thought put into this. Characters were whatever we needed them to be at the moment. If we did want a front-line LGBT hero or villain it likely would have been a new character, since retconning existing ones can feel kinda artificial (ala Alan Scott in DC comics) (Matt)
Q) Was Anna Palatine intended to be the Praetorian Lady Grey? (@Dynamite Monkey)
A) At one point, there was going to be a Lord Grey to be the Praetorian Lady Grey. I think he got cut. (Vince)
B) Anna Palatine was left undefined so that we could have had her develop into anyone we wanted. Lady Grey, however, was never discussed, at least, not with me. (John)
Q) What were Crey and Aeon’s ulterior motive with Architect Entertainment? (@Dale-Man)
A) Learn, measure, and eventually exploit the weaknesses of super powered beings that used it, for their eventual elimination and/or control. When people say that “Mission Architect was just built for exploiting” they were more right than they knew. (Matt)
Q) One element I loved was the Coralax and the Leviathan. I always wondered, did the Dev team have any plans to explore them further in the elder game? If yes what were you planning to do? (@Hagia Sophia)
A) We had no plans, but that’s not to say they would have been completely ignored in the future. Too much good stuff there (Matt)
Q) Additionally, what ever became of the rumored Coralax EAT? Since EATs always had fairly large plots centered around them, (more or less,) did that thought process go far enough to have a story developed for it? (@Mako)
A) The large plots is actually one of the things that prevented us from introducing more EATs. We had a ton of ideas, but the sticking point was always a lack of time necessary to both do the powers and the content associated with the EAT that would meet player expectation. I remember working on ideas for a Circle of Thorns PEAT as well as a Devoured PEAT. (John)
A) EAT’s in general were a PITA (pain in the arse) as they required a lot of mission content to be created for them, and only the EAT’s could run that content. I think it was a precedent set by HEAT’s that we ended up following for VEAT’s. There was also a Praetorian EAT that was going to be a redeemed Clockwork. A lot of design and animation for the EAT’s were done, but they still needed art and content. Eventually we were thinking of introducing Purchasable Archetypes, which had no story content tied to them. (Hosun)
Q)What plans did recluse have in regards to statesman’s murderer?
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) Who was Pristine, the poor wounded heroine that never left the hospital in (IIRC) Atlas Park?
A) An ironic joke, I assume (Matt)
Q) Why on earth did Sunstorm use a generic blue-skinned PPD model when he showed up in missions, instead of his own model as seen in Atlas Park?
A) A bug that never made it to the top of a priority list, I assume (Matt)
Q)In the COH universe, which came first: the chicken or the egg? (Voodoo Girl)
A) The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken (@Neiltyson)
Q) Was there any significance to the giant rocky hill next to the tram station in Talos Island? (FnordX)
A) Isn’t that where Talos smashed through the Earth’s crust to cause a mini-volcano to stop the Nazi invasion of Paragon during the war? (Vince)
Q) Shadowstar. Nictus when she came to Earth (Ancient Egypt or earlier) or already a rebel (Warshade?) (Memphis Bill)
A) Nictus (Matt)
Q) Kheldians are an extragalactic race. Are we talking actual "other galaxy" as in Andromeda, etc, or just "outside" like, say, the Magellanic Clouds? (Memphis Bill)
A) Outside. (Matt)
Q) With either one, how would Twilight's Son actually be the "last Peacebringer?" Lying, actually last somehow, or last "in this galaxy?" (Memphis Bill)
A) Battalion conquered and dominated the entirety of the Kheldian race to use as fuel for their warships. (Matt)
Q) What kept Mender Silos's hair sticking up like that, and was it developed by Vernon von Grunn? :) (MB)
A) Mendor Silos and Environment Artist Don Pham use the same stylist. (Hosun)
Q) Carnival of Light mask. Carnival of Shadows mask. What could have happened if they'd met? Power struggle/carnie civil war, live and let live, ? (Memphis Bill)
A) Hot Vanessa DeVore on Vanessa DeVore action (John)
A) The Carnival of Twilight would have all been insufferable vampire fiction fans. (Tim)
Q) Would we ever, in any of the plans or discussions you had, have met the rest of the Pantheon's deities - either being sent to where they are, or them breaking through? (Memphis Bill)
A) Always possible, but not in any plans. (Matt)
Q) Tell me more about the Moon... What would the base have been like? What would we have gotten to do up there? (@Brightfires)
A) The Moon was going to be the staging ground for the first battles with Battalion, and the final battle with Battalion in a very elegant manner. If I had my way, the final battle involved a boarding module filled with Earth’s finest, the Moon-based mass driver, Rikti Portals, every nuclear weapon on earth modified with Battalion technology launched in tandem, and Dream Doctor doing what needed to be done to take the fight out of Battalion permanently (John)
Q) What Powerset was heavily desired by the dev team but never possible to implement due to technical limitations of the game?
A) My guess would be stretching and size-changing. (Keetsie)
B) Shapeshifting. (Hosun)
Q) Were there any aquatic civilizations planned to emerge or be discovered? Or were there ever larger plans for the Coralax?(KelpPlankton)
A) Yeah, but doing “underwater” stuff just kept getting pushed off and pushed off.
Q) Was a Superspeed Melee set ever under consideration? (KelpPlankton)
A) No. It would have conflicted with too many “other” things in the game. Players would have wanted it to get superspeed travel pool by default, or have it built in somehow, etc (Matt)
Q) Did Mother Mayhem have scars on her chest from all the times that big spikey belt buckle undoubtedly stabbed her every time she sat down? (@Perfidus)
A) No (Matt)
Q) *hoorb* If Dillo was an incarnate, what abilities would he have had? (@Perfidus)
A) Adhoorb for starters (John)
Q) What unit did Marcus Cole and Stefan Richter serve in during the First World War, and where were they exposed to gas? (@Xylric)
A) This was never decided upon because it was never really relevant (Matt)
Q) Why did we not see more active costumed villains and villain groups or development into nemesis/usual suspects written into the content proper (We always millions of vanilla villains)? (@AlabasterKnight)
A) It’s easier to justify the defeat of countless hordes of faceless badguys than constantly throwing Boss X into the Zig every other mission. (Plus, easier to develop) (Matt)
Q) If CoH could have had some sort of crossover with another property(comic, movie, TV, whatever!), what would have been your first choice?
A) COH vs Arrested Development. Then COH vs. Chuck. And finally COH vs. Big Bang Theory. (Hosun)
A) Whoever picked up the IP... (Tim)
Q) Were there any more future plans for integrating Praetorian stuff into Primal Earth? In the i24 beta, it introduced the New Praetorians, and gave some groups more futuristic tech, but I was curious if it was going to be an ongoing plotline. (@Scitenik)
A) Players complained of “Praetorian Fatigue” so we moved away from anything to do with Praetoria starting with Issue 25. (Matt)
Q) Were there ever any plans to ‘retake’ and ‘rebuild’ Praetoria after Hamidon took it over following Tyrant’s nuclear temper tantrum? It seemed like it was building up to a big confrontation with the Praetorian Hamidon. (@Scitenik)
A) We scrapped the idea of going after Praetorian Hamidon when players voiced their “Praetorian Fatigue”. So we moved onto Kallisti Wharf, Battalion, and the Moon.
A) Too big, actually. If we came back it would have been years later. (Tim)
Q) Was Praetoria always intended to be a 1-20 zone, or was it originally meant for higher levels? Some of the content felt challenging for lower levels, and having the story originally stop at 20 seemed a bit odd, and made more sense for later on in the game after encountering Portal Corp in Peregrine Island. (@Scitenik)
A) Praetoria was originally intended to be a revamped newbie experience from 1-20. After we had designed to have the players leave and not return until incarnate, however, we added First Ward back in from 20-30 and then Night Ward (which was originally supposed to be a part of First Ward itself) as 30-40 content. This was in response to players wanting to have a Praetoria only Praetorian. I believe the challenge level of some of the early Praetoria stuff was simply a case of getting to work with new tools and have missions do things we hadn’t done before combined with some power creep on the villain groups that ended up getting out of control due to the small margin of error allowable at such low levels. (John)
A)I know at one point Praetoria was supposed to be just the tutorial, then it lets you out in Primal Earth. Then at a different point, Praetoria was supposed to be nuked at the end, which was part of the reason it looked like heck when you visited in the Portal Corp missions. (Hosun)
Q) Virgil Tarikoss Claimed that Magic in CoH at first could only be commanded by humans, but then the gods (Hequat, and Ermeeth) usurped the power.. Was this actually true to canon or just Virgil’s personal beliefs? (@Hagia Sophia)
A) The story bible suggests that magic was given to humans by the gods (much like Prometheus gifting them fire) and thus causing a lot of strife between the deities. This was almost unanimously considered “a bad move” and the world has never been the same since. (John)
Q) What made the Axis Marcus Cole decide to become The Reichsman? Seeing how Statesman was a hero and Tyrant-in my opinion-was trying to be the hero, why would Reichy be evil? Was Reichsman the “Odd Cole Out” or were States and Tyrant the odd ones-meaning, did the majority of Coles tend to be more evil or good in the long line of other dimensional Marcus Coles?(Excuse my fascination with Reichsman-Chimeleyh)
A) Don’t know specifically about Reichsman’s back story, but I imagine it goes with my general “Marcus Cole in most timelines” theory. The power he gets from the Well stems from humanity’s desire for law, justice, order - that form constantly repeated throughout the Incarnations over time drives into him in this iteration. As history shows, a desire for “order” is one which can easily tip into tyranny - it’s “freedom” which is truly rare and unique, and it’s also extremely costly. This is one of most common themes in super hero stories (and a literature expert could deconstruct it and point you at the roots of super hero stories in specifically the American context as a primary reason as to why this is). So Marcus in Primal Earth not crossing that line being the exception rather than the rule makes sense thematically. (Also, even Reichsman believed himself to be in the right.)
Q) What REALLY happened to Sister Psyche?(Chimeleyh)
A) Killed, but we had the “out” to bring her back (in a different body) if we ever wanted to. The way I saw it her powers were out of control, so even if she mind-rode into another body, that wouldn’t stop her powers from killing everyone, so if she did leave, she did it in a way that would shut her powers off, and thus making it impossible (for the time being) to occupy another body. (Matt)
Q) What happened/will happen to the defeated Praetors? (Chimeleyh)
A) Some were killed in the battle, others afterwards, while still others were redeemed like Marauder in the New Praetorians Arcs. (John)
Q) Who randomly placed all the badges throughout the zones? Was it some hero with too much free time? Or was it just another Nemesis Plot? (Chimeleyh)
A) Badges were never random. There was always some interesting vista, view, or point of interest nearby that story was crafted around. (I placed all the exploration badges for the original CoH zones) (Matt)
Q) Were the Battalion going to look like humans, or something different? (@BigAngry)
Follow Up: Eldritch Abomination-ish, a la Great Old Ones? (Cymmetri)
A) They would be humanoid, natch (limits of the engine), but would have had a sort of bio-organic armor “theme”. Since they are a collaboration of thousands of alien races, we could then take that theme and swap in different heads, hands, legs, tails, etc to make the different races and viola! Bad guys for years! (Matt)
Q) What were the favorite films of each of the Freedom Phalanx members, and of the Arachnos AVs? (Eldritch_Knight)
A) Positron: A Brief History of Time. Infernal: Excalibur. Statesman: The Day the Earth Stood Still. Synapse: Die Hard. (Matt)
A) Lord Recluse: Citizen Kane, Ghost Widow: An Affair to Remember, Scirocco: Lawrence of Arabia, Black Scorpion: Moulin Rouge!, Captain Mako: Jaws 3D, Citadel: Short Circuit, Numina: Schindler’s List, Manticore: The Third Man, Penelope Yin: Mononoke-hime, Woofers: Homeward Bound, BOTLER: Dead Poet’s Society
Q) A lot of the hero contacts had really interesting backstories, but either no storylines, or the exact same as other contacts. Was there ever plans to give them missions to give out that suited them? (MisterMagpie)
A) No plans, sorry (Matt)
Q) What was the deal with Mender Tesseract? All of the Ouroboros Menders had some kind of darker side to them (Twilight Sun sold out his race, Mender Lazarus did crazy Multiple Man-esque things in the timestream, and Mender Silos was an anagram), but Tesseract was only really alluded to being really ruthless. What was her backstory? (Isawa Koi)
A) Answered above (Matt)
Q.) Was there ever a plan for a Praetorian Hamidon vs Primal Hamidon showdown? (@Zombie Fryer)
A) Answered above (Matt)
Q.) Why was Sister Psyche( in what looks like her original body) in the future mission in the new version of the LRSF? You would think Penny would be there instead. (Chie S)
A) Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff. (Matt)
Q.) If you were to end the game on your own terms, how would you have done it? (@Bubbawheat)
A.) I like Fake Tim Sweeney’s idea, which was an all-out battle between Earth and the Battalion. Lots of doom. Earth is changed forever in less happy ways. It would have ended with an epic moment for your character, which would then lead into City of Heroes 2. (Hosun)
A) If I had my way, City of Heroes 2 would have begun in a similar way to City of Heroes - there was a war and all the heroes died fighting it, now it’s your turn. If we just had to *go out* but with a bang, I would have had that war, but have one of the consequences be the “burning out” of most of the super powers and special power sources involved - and as a result the world would be “depowered” for a time. (Tim)
Q.) What other powers were coming out?
A.) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q.) Do you have any insight as to what the Omega Incarnate Slot might be? The others seemed badass enough already. PBAoE kill everything?
A.) Jeff Hamilton would know. I don’t remember if this was Omega or not, but I know one of the latter tiers did allow you to nuke minions through your magnificence. There were also abilities that let you trade off one stat for another. (Hosun)
A) I’ve said this in a couple places but the primary trees which had been sketched out on paper were Arete (instant recharge on all powers for a period), Majesty (cause foes to instantly fight for you and then self-destruct), Infinity (summon doppelgangers of yourself), Transcendence (immune to everything and can attack into Phase), and Fulfillment (major PBAOE +Level Shifts) (Tim)
Q.) If you all had the choice to add any one powerset to the game, what powerset would it be and what archetypes would have access? (Protonic Flux)
A.) Sniper Rifle, Blaster, Corruptor, Defender, Mastermind Secondary. My goal was for it to have a “momentum” like mechanic (ala Titan Weapons) where subsequent attacks would happen faster against the same target. (Matt)
Q.) What was the most fun part of CoH’s lore for you to write?
A.) Everything Ouroboros/Battalion related. (Matt)
B.) Praetoria, my CoH love child. (John)
Q.) What was the backstory of Lady Grey? Of all the characters, she seems to be one of the most elusive in terms of giving away anything about herself. (Yoru-hime)
A.) I don’t care what the other writers say or wanted to do with the character, the original intent was that she was an advance agent of Battalion, seeded here in the 1800s. When Battalion arrived, she would have shut down all of Vanguard, leaving Earth defenseless against the invasion. This was hinted in the fact that Vanguard had seemingly limitless access to Impervium, and when Battalion first started showing up would be even more so decked out in the stuff. Vanguard was getting it from Battalion all along. (Matt)
Q.) What happened to the history plaques in Dark Astoria when Mot rose? One was in Moth Cemetery, so it was presumably churned with everything else, but the others were gone – plaque, pedestal, and all – with no obvious signs of vandalism/being ripped away. (@Placta)
A.) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q.) Was there ever a plan for a primarily red-side oriented incarnate raid thingy? DA was amazing but a lot of the incarnate stuff was “greater good,” ya know? Did you guys plan on doing something to account for the lopsidedness of endgame content balance between red and blue? If so, what did those stories look like?(@Party_Kake)
A.) Villains only constituted 20% of the users, so doing large scale things exclusively for them would have been an irresponsible waste of resources. (Matt)
Q.) Was there any kind of development at all of more flying poses, vehicles, etc or was it something that was never looked into?(@Emerald Cloak)
A.) We were starting to look into that with powers like the flying carpet and hover board. We weren’t discussing additional flight poses, but I think vehicle ideas were being tossed around for our travel powers. I think Colin wanted to look into a motorcycle power. With the introduction of pool power customization we were also considering elemental skins (like Ice Flight and Electric Speed).
A)I THINK the above answer was from Keetsie. We all wanted vehicles, but the animation system didn’t easily allow for it. Every animation had to be redone for every single ability in game. Ninja Run alone took Nelson Tam 3 full months of nonstop work to make. That’s why Rocket Board detoggled you. We estimated it would take about 9 months of dedicated animation and tech time to redo the animations system to allow you to use your powers while in a vehicle. Aside from that most vehicles wouldn’t fit inside a mission (imagine a car in the layer cake map), and the game didn’t really have a flag we could use to set vehicle powers to be usable only when you’re not in a mission. The COH engine was really really really really really broken. Which allowed the Dev team to do impossible things on a regular basis, but only if they were mostly impossible versus completely impossible. (Hosun)
Q) In Ghost Widow’s Patron arc, we find out just how much she hates Red Widow. Why exactly did she hate her so much? And now that she’s back, what does that mean for Ghost Widow? (@Samuraiko)
A) It was never retconned what the bad blood was about. We also never got around to what it meant for her to be alive now. (Matt)
A) My off the cuff speculation would be would have said there was an Arachnos prophecy that Red Widow would be the end of Arachnos if she was allowed to live. Since that was Ms. Liberty’s plan in the first place, it makes sense that she showing up would have the potential to upset the Arachnos applecart (esp. when tied with the death of Statesman).
Q) Related question to the above - I can’t believe I’m actually asking this, but is Red Widow, perhaps, the only woman for whom Recluse might actually have some feeling? (“Love” per se might be out of his range, but “the only woman who can truly understand me and my genius...” Gods, even that sounds wrong, but you know what I mean.) (@Samuraiko)
A) Behind every great villain is... someone they can use as a body shield when they need a half second to escape. (John)
Q) The Phalanx - Statesman is gone, Psyche is gone, Manticore (accordingly to the previous Loregasm) is going vigilante... was the Phalanx destined to implode? No offense to Positron (the character, not the dev), but filling Statesman’s shoes has GOT to be a tall order... (@Samuraiko)
A) I was championing the position that during the Battalion war Tyrant would be taken out of lock up by the last loyal vestiges of Vanguard to help against Battalion. The idea being that Earth was losing the war not because they didn’t have someone of Statesman’s power, but because they lost him as a symbol, a banner for everyone to rally around. Even in a severely weakened state, Tyrant would don Statesman’s costume and become that symbol, rallying Earth behind a lie, but for the greater good. The result would be one of the major turning points of the war, and afterwards, Tyrant/Marcus Cole, would reveal to the world the lie that turned things around, and prove that the power wasn’t in any one man, it was in everyone. They didn’t need that symbol, just something greater than themselves to believe in again. And kicking Battalion’s ass was a good start. (John)
Q) Who was messing with the player’s timeline in the Pilgrim’s introductory Ouroboros arc? (@minimalist)
A) I honestly don’t remember. Requiem I think (Matt)
A) If we go with the plots laid in the Mender Ramiel arc, it was Battalion after they co-opted Silos following their triumph. (Tim)
Q) With the death of Statesman, would Hamidon have become the head of the Freedom Phalanx? (Hamidon THE GOO!)
A) Positron was the new leader, Penny replaced Psyche and a contest would have been held for the CoH fans to create the new replacement for Statesman. (Matt)
A)The big marketing event I was working on was the “Hero Tryouts.” We would have a contest where players could submit a character for inclusion into the Freedom Phalanx. The Dev Team would pick the top 10 or so of those, and then we’d let teh players vote between the top 10. The winner would join the Freedom Phalanx (but not as the leader). Matt was even working on a mission or TF for I24 or I25 where the new member would be introduced. Using the Alternative Power Bar, you could actually play as the new member. There would even be a Hero side version and a Villain side version. Sigh..... We were also working with Rooster Teeth to do a series of live action comedy videos to promote it, which would have culminated in the winner being announced at their show in Austin. (Hosun)
Q) In Studio 55, there is a ladies’ room door where the cursor turned to a hand when you moused over it, although clicking it did nothing. An error, or a future Easter Egg? (@Interface)
A) By-product of an artist not turning off the “interact” node on the door when they placed it. (Matt)
Q) In the game files, there was a Hazard Zone called “Elysium”, it consisted of a single building placed on a grass field within four War Walls: to the best of your recollection, were there ever any plans for “Elysium” to be built up into a game-ready zone, and what would “Elysium” have been used for, in-game? (@Cold Bob)
A) Probably not, probably just some designer’s test map. You weren’t supposed to be snooping in the files anyway. (Matt)
Q) Also, comment on “Vinceland” being in the game files as a City Zone? (@Cold Bob)
A) Private zone that Vince used to test things with. Marked as “public” at one point and therefore published to the players in a patch. (Matt?)
A) Vinceland was a magical place where anything could happen! I used it for testing new features and scripts. Patrols, Dropships, RV glowies, Workbenches, Superdyne Raids, Villian respec vines, locked doors, keys, burning buildings... all of these first were tested there before being given to the design team to implement in the full zones. (Vince)
A) I used the lesser-known “Daveland”, another similar zone, for a lot of screenshots. Having an empty space made asset generation a lot easier. Another “Vince Fact” is that the internal (dev) name for Powers Suppression was “Vince_is_evil” (Hosun)
Q) Was there any significance to the texts on the whiteboards in all the offices, remember something about sales or if we don’t something or other..? (@bobhir)
A) Nope, I think it was a random whiteboard snapshot taken at Cryptic and intentionally downrezzed to be unreadable. (Matt?)
Q) Was there any more Lore written for Katie Douglas or any of the other freed Seer’s who had to be plugged back into the network to save them from the Apparitions in the Night Ward Arc? (@LadyLoveDie)
A) Katie resonated with the community far more than we anticipated, and so we continued to write her into the rest of the Praetoria content. We had no real plans for where she would end up, which was nice, because it let us write her very organically (she had some hang ups). Through the course of Night Ward Katie and the seers are released from the Network and Katie aids the player (with her badass ability to teleport via memory) in taking down Lamashtu.
Q) Were comic books a ‘thing’ in the CoH-verse, in the way we know them now? (@plainknight)
A) Sure, why not. (Matt)
Q) As hinted in the beginning of the Incarnate storyline, where you’re standing in the remnants of Ouroboros after the Storm, you’re supposed to be crazy uber powerful, similar to Emperor Cole when he wiped out Arachnos single handedly. What was to come after the storm? Was the introduction to Battalion and their henchmen so off the charts that you would have to be uber godly just to survive? What of the rest of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles? And where did Battalion come from? (LadyShin)
A) That’s more than one question. In order: The Dimensionless, Yes, Where ever the story took us, the other side of the galaxy.
A) Eventually the player would become so powerful it would be difficult to actually tell those stories in any conceivable manner. By that point we would have needed to hit the COH2 button in order to have anything make any sense. (Tim)
Q) Where there plans to add all ‘Beaconed Zones’ to all SG/VG bases so that transportation to the Rogue Isles would be possible for Vigilantes/Rogues, and were there plans in the works to expand upon the amount of ‘Beaconed Zones’(Shadow Shard, Praetorian zones)? (@Dark Energon, aka Nephila)
A) I originally read this as “Baconed Zones.” Which oddly enough, made more sense to me. Tim could answer this better than I, but I think Rogues/Vigilantes were hacked into the system, and getting them to work properly was an incredibly difficult dev task. (Hosun)
A) We had unearthed the right way to do these after some time in limbo. If it had been mentioned in my presence when I had a free couple of hours it would have probably gone in as a QOL feature in the gaps. (Tim)
Q) When was Canada Joe going to start handing out missions? Don’t tell me he was just going to hang there forever... (@SpoilersBelow)
A) Then I won’t tell you. (Matt)
Q) How about Matthew Burke? Any metaplot on him that got left behind during the relaunch of Mercy Island?
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q)What’s the story behind the babies in Paragon Island? I never saw any anywhere at any time. No pedestrians pushing carriages, no small children playing anywhere. Where’d they all go?
A) Same place that baby pigeons go in real life. You don’t see those now do you, but they MUST exist somewhere! (Matt)
Q)In the CoH backstory, when the portals started appearing before the Rikti War, Star Strider entered one. He never returned. Was there a plan to have him return, or for us to find out what happened to him at some point? (Liquid)
A) No plans, because I think no one remembered about him, if I had, I might have used him instead of Dark Watcher in Vanguard (Matt)
A) I had wanted to have some more survivors of Omega Team return in addition to having the Rikti join Earth in the fight against Battalion and thus release those Omega Team members they managed to capture. I had planned on the original Tin Mage having survived, and I believe Matt wanted Ruin to have carved out an empire on the Rikti equivalent of Australia. no reason Star Strider couldn’t have returned this way to boot. (John)
Q)Can you elaborate on the original discussion/decisions around replacing the Fifth with the Council? I spoke with Rick Dakan (the original lead designer, original primary writer of the story bible, and, from everything I've read, the creator of the Fifth Column) in 2006, and he told me that the Council takeover was not "planned all along" (which I realize is a relative statement). We know that you created a story around the change (and there were some weird retcons that were backed out like Ubelmann the Unknown being about the American Civil War instead of WWII), but are there any details that you can give us now about why the story was created? (Liquid)
A) CYA for release in Germany. Yes we didn’t NEED to go to the extremes that we did, but it made for a great story. (Matt)
Q)What are your thoughts on the RP community within the context of the lore? (@Mazzo Grave)
A) My thoughts are: thank you for playing in our world. I hope we made it entertaining and inspiring to you. (Matt)
A) A collaborative and collective story will entertain in ways that a single or handful of storytellers never could. Understanding that no one story will ever entertain everyone equally, and then appreciate the effort and love that others put into their additions. You can always filter what you do and do not like, including the official lore. I loved seeing what the RP community would do, it gave me some great ideas of where to take the official story lines. :) (John)
Q)Tell me the truth. Was Statesman actually permanently dead? Were there plans to revive, reuse or recreate him in ANY way in the future? (@Mazzo Grave)
A) Dead. Of course, I planned an “out” (Which Dr. Aeon hated). A “non-dick” version of him from another dimension (where he was the sole survivor after some cataclysmic event) finds refuge in our world and takes up the mantle. (Matt)
A) Well there was also John “Protean” Hegner’s idea.....(Hosun)
A) See above. Tyrant teaches the world a valuable lesson while briefly stepping into Statesman’s shoes in order to give Earth the rallying symbol they needed. Then like a total badass he tells them the truth, tells them that symbols are worthless without the power of the people behind them, and that that power exists in them all, puts on sunglasses, retires to a horse ranch in Montana. (John)
A) Dead. Tyrant masquerade was the only viable way of having him return, everyone loved John’s idea for it. (Tim)
Q)If Statesman was actually permanently dead, were there plans to replace him with a new original character? Were there ever talks of maybe letting the players try and fill those shoes? (@Mazzo Grave)
A) That was the plan (see above) (Matt)
Q)On the original map for the Rogue Isles, there’s a group of islands just south of Port Oakes and Cap au Diable (listed as “Uncharted” on the map). Did the Devs ever have any plans for these? (@Flafty)
A) Probably, should CoV had done amazelnuts sales. (Matt)
Q) As the best ever Goo in the history of gaming, I was wondering when your expansion related to the wacky adventures of Hamidon The Goo and his annoying companion Jurassik would have come out.
A) Issue 28. Thousands of goo textures, wasted. (Keetsie)
Q) Kheldian players successfully defeated Arakhn, Requiem and the world take over plot. Given that this is a multi-stellar war fought across vast distances and multiple races, what incentive was there for joined Peacebringers to stay joined and on Earth? (@Ardua)
A) Memphis BBQ. Nothing like it in the entire universe. (Matt)
A) In the Incarnate speculation talk we proposed that “beings who were contributing to the Well’s gestalt” - ie a way to include non-humans, artificials, mystic entities etc who called Earth “home” in some way would find themselves being drawn to it. This was the lore figleaf for why players would stay in areas around Earth, for one. (Tim)
Q) For that matter, did the Peacebringers start recruiting Warshades to help bring the war back off of earth and take it to the Nictus? (@Ardua)
A) No (Matt)
Q) One last one because Kheldians > All. Would we have gotten to see more of the Kheldian and Nictus races and/or ships etc with the coming of both the Battalion and the True Rikti? After all nothing says heroic reveal like a friendly fleet coming in to add firepower. (@Ardua)
A) Sounds cool, and if the art time allowed it might have happened.
Q)Why were all the “Statesman” characters “evil” except Primal Earth’s? (Randy Jarvis)
A) Only the ones that eyed Primal Earth as a target were “evil”. The rest were fighting their own battles in their own dimensions. Also, there was a period of time where he and Stephan Richter were the two most powerful people on the planet. In almost every dimension, teaming up meant the world was theirs for the taking. (Matt)
Q) What were the remaining Incarnate Trials going to consist of? What where the rest of the Incarnate powers going to be?(@Zourg?
A) I know originally the Magisterium was going to trigger an invasion of the Praetorian Hamidon, but that got cut due to scope creep. (Hosun)
Q) Was the Incarnate arms race (overpowered characters vs. overpowered content/trials) worth the time and effort? Do you regret introducing 50+ abilities? (@ScopeCreep)
A) Absolutely worth the effort. No regrets. We had amazing success with the incarnates, and even though people voiced displeasure with them, that never showed up in the metrics. You guys played the crap out of them. (Matt)
A)I loved the Incarnate System. It finally allowed me to make the balanced hero that I wanted, versus a limited glass cannon. (Hosun)
Q) What was the deal with Weaver 1, and for that matter all the orb weavers of Arachnos? Was he/they ever going to be introduced and/or explained? If so, in what capacity? (@Dr. Mechanor)
A) I think they were the product of poor planning. The team that took over for the CoV writers never was given anything to do with them so they were largely ignored (Matt)
Q) What were the means by which the Hamidon gave life to the devouring earth villain group? How did it bring life and apparent sentience to inanimate objects? What was involved in the transformation process for the devoured? (@Dr. Mechanor)
A) Spirituality meets science. Dr. Hamidon had created a serum that was supposed to turn the Earth against humanity, in a moment of desperation before he could be arrested by some insignificant heroes, he drank the serum and melted into the protoplasmic goo that would later reform into our favorite gelatin dessert gone mad. He now directly possessed the power. As for Devoured, well, first the entire nervous system was liquefied by a special enzyme injected through the eyes of the victim, then the remaining miles of microscopic cavities were filled with tiny hair-like... you know what, I’m not getting into it. :P (John)
A) I loved the fact that before launch, Hamidon was supposed to be a great, glowing, golden greek god-like figure. Then launch creeped up rapidly and suddenly there wasn’t enough time to make that model. So they settled for an amoeba. Seems fair. (Vince)
Q) Was Sally real?
A) Sally was actually a virtual construct of code and graphics. Simply put, she was a computer graphic running via a computer simulation. As was Croatoa. And Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. The entire game of City of Heroes actually. None of it was real. (Matt)
A) Sally was real in my heart. <3 (John)
A) John doesn’t have a heart. (Hosun)
Q) Was there any plans to de-Riktify The Honoree? (@EF)
A) MMO timelines are a bear. If we de-Riktify him, then half the playerbase would demand we remove the Rikti version of him from the game to remain consistent, and the other half would want that content to remain in the game because they want to play it on Alts. Since there is “no good solution”, it was best just to leave him as is. (Matt)
A) Would have been part of a heroic sacrifice moment (ie, not have to deal with him in the world after the fact) if we had done it. (Tim)
Q) What was up with those Angels of Vengeance and such we encountered standing around in Night Ward? Any connection to Prometheus’s two friends? And who were they supposed to be anyways? His assistants or his minders? (@Dr. Reverend)
A) The Talons of Vengeance were not associated with Prometheus or his friends. They were, however, servants of the Furies, sent to ensure that those gifted with the power of the Well of the Furies would use it as intended. Tyrant betrayed his friend, Stefan Richter, stole his power for himself, and thus angered the Furies. In turn, they sent the Talons of Vengeance to sow misery and death upon the world until Tyrant was overthrown or the world burned.
Q) Curious, what were we gonna fight after the True Rikti?
A) Just like in the tv show 24, right before you take down the final Rikti, we’d have him make a cell phone call to his boss to show you that even the ultimate bad guy answers to someone. No idea who that would have been, but probably some rogue Dimensionless (beings that exist outside of time and space and created the Wells). (Matt)
Q) What is Protean's history? Where did he get his powers? (@Serpentine)
A) Maybe he’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline. (John)
Q) Grym. What is his deal? Are there more like him? Do they all get a city? (@Serpentine)
A)Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) What's the history of the Knives of Artemis? Did they have a leader? How did they get involved with Malta? (@Serpentine)
A)Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) What Lore was behind the appearance of the Battalion? I’d ask about actual details of their appearance, but...I don’t know if I’m allowed to! (@Treees/Taimatsu-maru)
A) In a nutshell. Battalion started off as a powerful race of beings who eventually conquered all their neighboring star systems and then discovered the power contained within “Wells” (of the Furies). They soon found out that multiple wells exist in the universe, and they had the capability of conquering races who had wells and adding that power to their own.
This went on for millennia. They conquered half the galaxy, and eventually started scouting for new Wells and came across “Earth”. Earth was unique. It had a powerful Well, so powerful it would bestow powers to the citizens of the planet. No other Well had done this before. It made Earth a very tempting target, but also one of the most difficult they ever would attempt to conquer. They sent agents to undermine the Earth’s defenses, many of which have been on the Earth for decades, planting themselves into positions of power. For a while they thought the Rikti were going to do their job for them, but that only proved how resilient of a species mankind actually was.
Q) I kept hearing there were Easter Eggs, especially in the Rikti War Zone, that the players never found. If so, what were they and were there any other Easter Eggs put in that the players never discovered or reported? (@Pogothulu)
A) I have no idea what easter eggs were found or not. The Producers were the keepers of the Easter Eggs, so bug Melissa Bianco or Nate Birkholz. (Matt)
Q) Speaking of Easter Eggs, what’s the story behind the “secret room” in Grandville that was put into the game by War Witch, but then (from what I understand) almost immediately taken back OUT of the game? (@Cold Bob)
A) That wasn’t added by War Witch, but by the artists themselves, and they didn’t tell anyone (which is a HUGE no-no).
Q) Towards the end, players found out the secretive ‘Blue Matrix Room’ in Peregrine Island. What was it’s purpose/function? Were there any plans for it in the future? Was it discarded?(@Pogothulu)
A) Matrix room was the original “staging area” for Arena fights. It was universally hated among the artists and designers, so it was sealed off never to be seen. Apparently we needed better seals. (Matt)
Q) After Bio Armor, Psionic Melee, Wind Control, Savage Melee, Radiation Armor, and Radiation Melee, were there any more powersets far enough along in development that you can tell us about them now? (@Cold Bob)
A) We had a meeting to brainstorm some. I think Sniper Rifle and Magnetic Control were both on the whiteboard. I vaguely remember someone pitching Rainbow Blast. (Keetsie)
B) Water Manipulation, Hydro Armor, Air Control, Throwing Weapons. There was also the Striker AT. (Hosun)
Q) Can you tell us anything else about the Primalist archetype (other than it was cancelled because “it just wasn’t fun”)? For example, as a (presumed) shape-shifting archetype, what creature forms would we have been shape-shifting in and out of? (@Noctis Lumen)
A) Phil could answer this better than I can, since it was his work. The main reason for it from my recollection was that it would have taken around 6-9 months to complete, which meant it would have been closer to a year before players saw it. And that would have come at the expense of multiple Power Sets. There was also some disagreements about what you’d shape shift into. We only had wolves and lions at that point. Adding bears, gorillas, aardvarks, etc. would have required all new animation and art. (Hosun)
Q) With the plans for Issue 28 to include a Moon Base in the game, would Steel Canyon and Port Oakes FINALLY have received their launch pads for the Space Shuttles?
A) If we had time after finishing the moon bases, yes. But probably no. We had plans to teleport you to the moon. (Matt)
A) Originally, I believe those launch pads were designed to send players to the orbital space station and the alien ship that was to be the end-game content for GR. The ship was going to be a probe ship for the Battalion. (Vince)
Q) Can you tell us more about how the Battalion managed to get control of Shiva? The Drowning in Blood trial implied that the “Dark Father” had “wed” the “Mother” of the Shivans already on Earth pre-Galaxy City. (@Coreth)
A)Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) Followup on previous; was there a plan in mind for the neo-Shivans aside from just destroying Galaxy City? Was there a goal in mind for them as more than just a warning? (@Coreth)
A)Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) What form were the Mind and Vitae slots going to take? Would they have granted incarnate shifts? (@Cymmetri)
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)
Q) Please expand upon the plans (or the part that) The Center would play in the upcoming issues, and how Requiem tied into said plans. (Or what Requiem was planning to do.) (@Liz)
A) We hadn’t gotten to that part of the story development yet, but 5th Column definitely had a foothold on the Moon. (Matt)
AMA: 2014
An unofficial thread was started on the Titan Network forums for gathering questions. Positron was contacted and said: "I plan on doing it a bit differently this year. Doc will only be up for a short window." On April 17, 2014, at 8:45 AM PDT, Positron posted a Google Doc that he left open for only 24 hours. Positron also put in some general rules for asking questions, largely prohibiting questions not related to the game's lore:
CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition
On April 28th, 2014, Matt Miller and other members of the Paragon Design team will put answers to lore-related questions of City of Heroes to questions that are in this public document.
Rules:
Try to limit the number of questions you ask. We only have a limited amount of time to answer questions, but if you monopolized half the document with your questions, we might be forced to skip over questions asked by other people.
The document will be open for 24 hours ONLY. At 8:45am Pacific on 4/18/14 the document will be closed so we can generate answers.
Read the already asked questions, try not to repeat. If you have a similar, but not the same, question as another user add it as a comment in the format described below.
No questions about the following subjects will be answered so don’t even try.
- Paragon Studios
- Paragon Employees (including “where are they now”)
- The future of CoH
- NCsoft
- The Shutdown of Paragon
- Anything non-CoH lore related, really
We, the designers, reserve the right to make up answers for questions that never really had answers to begin with. (Ex: What was Statesman’s Mother’s Maiden Name?) This means there is the possibility that we contradict existing Lore that was written by someone-not-us. In that case: mea culpa.
Do not delete or edit any other user’s question! Feel free to comment on it in the format described below.
Don’t edit anything outside the two horizontal lines in the document.
New rules may appear at any time.
Rule violating questions will be deleted/ignored.
Add your question to the bottom of the doc. Use the following format for your question:Q) This is the question that I am asking? (Your Name or CoH Forum Handle) [Another user’s comment - Other user’s name]
Note the Q) line is bolded. Feel free to add more Q)’s as needed.Previous Year’s Lore Q&A docs: 2013: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bjjR2rdP9Kbe8baODElUQGRxNTTlj_b5PVqCdNXJ8o/edit?usp=sharing
2012: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?usp=sharing
Following the initial 24 hour period, there were 76 questions. A copy of the document seven minutes before its takedown for answering can be found in a Google Doc. Positron noted in a tweet on April 23rd, 2104, that all questions for the 2014 AMA had answers.
On April 28th, 2014, the tenth anniversary of City of Heroes, Positron released the answered questions as a Google doc. The devs that answered are:
- Matt Miller, a.k.a. Positron
- Melissa Bianco, a.k.a. War Witch
- Chris Behrens, a.k.a. Baryonyx
- Tim Sweeney, a.k.a. Black Scorpion
- Sean McCann, a.k.a. Dr. Aeon
- John Hegner, a.k.a. Protean
The third Lore AMA at its time of last revision (April 28th, 2014) is as follows:
The content below has not been changed except as needed for formatting or clarification purposes. The most notable change is the way comments or sub-questions are shown - rather than an extension after the initial question, in this article they are bullet points below the question. The wording is unchanged, and can be seen in its original format at the link above.
CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition
Previous Year’s Lore Q&A docs:
2013:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bjjR2rdP9Kbe8baODElUQGRxNTTlj_b5PVqCdNXJ8o/edit?usp=sharing
2012: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60hi-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?usp=sharing
Q) There were several villain group names in the original trailer (Revelation, Twilight Men, Seraphim, Fear Factor, Killing Crew) that we never really, or ever, saw in game. Were there plans for them? Did they end up getting sidelined by other groups? How wicked awesome were they? (@bpphantom)
- [IIRC, Twilight Men became Malta, Fear Factor became the Carnies, but I could be wrong - @Samuraiko]
- [I seem to recall Killing Crew becoming the Freakshow... Felderburg]
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Samuraiko and Felderburg are correct. There was some trademark issues with the original names and/or better names were thought up. Also some groups were concepted but cut (Revelation and Seraphim I think) long before real production started.
Q) While I understand it wasn’t truly completed yet, how were the upcoming villain groups powers being designed to fight against a fully powered Incarnate? What was the idea about long term opposition viability against the characters who were starting to get more powerful than the first trials threat levels.
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - We started to get a bit more creative about the things we would allow villains to do. There were quite a few rules that we started to bend and then outright break at the end. This started with the Going Rogue VGs, from Protean, Castle and Synapse, but really broke loose with the First Ward groups, which Arbiter Hawk, Black Scorpion, Zillionaire, Protean and I designed. The best (worst?) example here were the Psionic-damage Awakened, which had some unusual mechanics where they would synergize with each other, forcing choices as to which part of the group was most threatening to your team’s make up, or bosses with mechanics that forced a lot of movement or management of adds. The First Ward groups generally were really risky, given the level range, but they generated an interest in more challenging fights that we wanted to build on.
The Talons of Vengeance, the Banished Pantheon monsters, the Knives of Vengeance, … many of the late villain groups began to do things like have powers that behaved differently at different radii, used unusual debuffs like -EndCost and -MaxHP, stacked on the -Def, -Rech and -Acc, or struck at combinations of damage that weren’t necessarily easy to build for. We began combining powers together on single creatures that would be absolutely debilitating unless planned around, and then had them be one of a couple of types that could appear together (ToV Siren and Sorceress). Eventually, we’d have to start including Incarnate level powers on regular villains, particularly when Omega appeared, but we hadn’t reached that point yet. Thanks to Black Scorpion, we also got better at estimating what an individual power, or a suite of powers, behaved like, so we could build to a challenge level we wanted to hit. There was still plenty of experimentation to be done!
Another thing we focused on, though, was creating an epic feeling. We spent time trying to make these powers and the creatures using them feel like you were facing something you’d never seen before. It wasn’t enough for a Keres to have a death-energy ice blast; she needed to do it with a titan weapon slung on her shoulder and blackened shadow ice. It wasn’t enough that the Siren sang; it was her song itself that took physical form and tore into you. It wasn’t enough to have a death creature running you down; it needed to be a skittering, chittering nightmare that would be memorable because it felt different than anything you’d really seen before.
Q)Did Paragon City have plans on how they were going to rebuild The Hollows? (@AtomikSteel)
A) Matt (Positron) We hadn’t really planned on rebuilding the Hollows, we threw a lot of design time over the years to fix its initial implementation though. In hindsight we probably should have scrubbed it and started over with it.
Tim (Black Scorp) One of the crazier EAT ideas involved the Battalion and the Rikti civil war moving forward- some Rikti becoming tenuous allies (and therefore Rikti EAT pcs). One of the underutilized hazard zones would become terraformed to be their home on Primal Earth. A similar concept involved the Recovered Devoured EAT concept and possibly one of the DE zones.
Q) Instead of just demolishing the older zones (Galaxy CIty) was there any plans to rebuild or renew the older zones (Perez Park?) @MetalMountain
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I had a design document written up for a revamp of Perez Park. It was going to be a mix of a high level/low level zone. The Circle of Thorns would have completed a ritual and caused the main “park” to come out from beneath the ground and rise into the sky, and they would’ve begun remaking part of Oranbega there and on the ground. The ground portion would’ve remained the same level band, while the island would’ve been a high level zone. The idea was that you would see the floating islands as a vista from the city zones that surrounded Perez. We were planning on re-doing Perez Park for Freedom launch, but decided against it, as we were doing a lot as it was and the quality of the content would suffer. I wrote the doc in preparation for that, but we cut re-doing Perez Park early on.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Yeah, I know we kicked a few ideas around for Perez Park, and the rising of Oranbega just seemed appropriate. As the main 1-50 magic origin villain group in the game, the Circle of Thorns were definitely deserving of the injection of awesome. New costumes and now a whole high level zone dedicated to them. One of the things I really enjoyed talking about with Oranbega, is how it would have enjoyed U.N. protection, what with being a sovereign nation in its own right. The fact that it uglied up the Paragon City skyline with some nefarious dark wizard mojo was just salt in the wound. I had some ideas involving Oranbega playing a much more political game in the future from their base right in the heart of Paragon City.
Q) One of my favorite additions to the game was Faultline’s update. It really made the CoH world feel “alive” or dynamic. Were there any plans to wreck different zones or rebuild others? Thanks again for all of the great times and stories. (@Peter_Chess)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Faultline’s update taught us a ton of things, primarily it was pretty much exactly the same amount of work to overhaul an existing zone as it was to make an entirely new one. Adding a new zone makes the game bigger, whereas overhauling a zone makes the game the same size, and removes something that some players liked.
In the end if given a choice of overhaul or make a new zone, we almost always would choose to make a new zone (unless our focus was something like acquisition of new players, then overhauling early zones became a priority).
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I loved Faultline. It was my "baby", replete with endless easter eggs. But Matt's right. We thought it would be quick, but the old assets were so well...old, they didn't mesh easily with the newer ones and we spent time reinventing a wheel that wasn't technically broken. So it wasn't quick. In fact, if you placed old Faultline next to new Faultline you'd notice that new Faultline is 1/3 smaller. However, what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in unique areas rather than just endless crags of rock.
Still love Bianco's restaurant, I had to beg to get that in there.
Q) What with Talos. Kings Row, Steel Canyon, and Skyway being trashed in various task forces, were there ever plans to revamp those zones? Talos was kinda nice as it was, but Christ did Skyway ever need an overhaul… and were we eventually going to take back Galaxy City after the Shivans wrecked it? (@Samuraiko)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - We had some ideas of having players go back to a wrecked Galaxy City as a level 50+ zone, but to that, we would’ve had to make the Shivans way more impressive to fight.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I had laid out a massive zone revamp plan at one point, where some of the salad bar villain group treatment for the zones got reduced to tell just the core stories. It would have been a ton of work, and as Matt said in the question above, it was a hard sell when we could churn out a whole new zone instead. Still, I argued that revamping the older zones was necessary to keep new players interested, and I think the revamps for Freedom and i24 were steps in the right direction.
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I wanted to revamp Boomtown back into Baumton, complete with amusement park, fairgrounds, but there would be absolutely no asset reuse there and it never made the list for touch up.
Q) Prometheus at one point brings up “Ascended” wells and renegade Ascended, using Rularuu as an example. Was there more intended for this concept of ascending into that kind of power in it’s own right, either for NPCs or as a further stage of Incarnate abilities waaaaay down the line? Further, who were some of these others who either ascended by circumvention or went renegade? (@Twi)
- Q) The Dimensionless created the Wells, but it also seems like people / beings can contribute power to Wells, or even become Wells themselves. Additionally, it seems like beings of great power can have their power transferred in whole to a new being (Zeus -> Statesman, Merulina -> Leviathan) rather than just having it reabsorbed into a Well. Can you explain more about this? (Felderburg)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There isn’t really a good way to answer this without tackling the second question first, so here goes.
The “Wells” were created by vastly more powerful entities than the Dimensionless. We tentatively called them the Primordials, but never settled on a player-facing name because they wouldn’t really be a factor until Issue 32 or after. The Dimensionless were the collective name for the dimension-spanning armies of each Primordial, and were charged with supervising the sapient species and their “Wells” in order to protect the first Primordial, who was bonded to the font of existence, which we internally called the Source.
“Wells” were individuals chosen by the Primordials to provide a buffer between the font of existence and the sapient species to which a “Well” was tied. Essentially, once a species became sapient, its deeper potential and creativity could leverage the energy of the Source to achieve amazing feats. “Wells” were trusted to serve as control valves helping the sapients grow their potential while keeping the power-mad from coming too close to the first Primordial/Source and threatening existence. The “Wells” would be influenced by and grow with their species, and in return the species was helped to freely develop their powers and abilities as they saw fit, but without risking everything to do it.
This is why rogue “Ascended” like Rularuu are considered extremely dangerous: by effectively becoming their own link to the Source, an Ascended could potentially gather enough power to challenge the Primordials themselves and change the nature of existence. Those chosen for it must be trusted; rogues are anything but.
Each “Well” had a watchman from the Dimensionless, who would be a check on the “Well” to ensure it didn’t get any ideas of its own, and serve as a balance to the “Well” helping the species along. Rogues generally didn’t accept such oversight willingly, making them doubly dangerous. This oversight was Prometheus’ job, though he aggressively took the approach that the Well was a tool meant to be used by the “multiverse of humanity” to shape their destiny, while the “Well” thought its role was to shape and influence the species to grow in directions where “humanity” became his tools against other “Wells”.
This conflict between the two first came to a head with the Flames of Prometheus. Zeus, one of the Well’s first champions, punished Prometheus for attempting to awaken the species’ latent ability to manipulate the Well with the Flames. Prometheus’ resentment over his punishment has festered for millennia, and he has gone from hating Zeus to hating the Well and distrusting the Dimensionless for their lack of intervention.
A second factor influencing Prometheus is the success of Battalion. He sees their continual expansion across the universe as a sign that his philosophy of “Wells are tools” is correct. Combined with his resentment of the Well and his own self-importance, Battalion’s success has inspired him to the belief that he could lead humanity to shake off the Well’s control and build a better Battalion. In this sense, he denies the player the chance to become Ascended not so much because of the threat they pose to existence, but because it would obviate his role as our guide. He would once again be surpassed by those he believes owe their success to him, as Zeus had done. He would lose to those he should control. He would once again beaten by a Well. This result was something he simply would not tolerate, and we intended for this to boil over near the end of the war with Battalion. Prometheus would have eventually become a traitor to his cause (and you) as you came closer to ascension.
Sometime in Issue 25/26, we planned to introduce a “Third Way” NPC, who would be a Dimensionless sent by the first Primordial to guide the players through the path between the Well and Prometheus. This is because the Dimensionless are aware that the defeat of Battalion means that those Wells they consumed would need to be taken over to save the lives of trillions, and the players would be in a position to ascend to do this. You could be a villainous Ascended, and rule like a tyrant, or a heroic Ascended, and rule like a paragon. Once this started, however, both Prometheus and the Well would personally take issue with it, and they would need to be dealt with. We never got far into designing this stage, however, since it would have happened around Issue 30-32.
So, with all that out of the way, DJ Zero was one of the other Ascended. There were some others, though I cannot find those notes at the moment. The Praetorian Hamidon was certainly on its way there, though.
For movement of suites of powers, this was going to be covered in the Pandora’s Box arc more thoroughly. Essentially, the Box provided a way for a “build” to be preserved separate from the “Well”, rather than be reabsorbed and redistributed. Zeus and Tartarus had done this long ago. There were many other items of great power out there that would facilitate the same thing, some of which had already been mentioned in game, and some of which we were developing. An interesting direction we planned on taking this is how these items (and the builds therein) might interact with the player, and how they could be used to assist in the war against Battalion, Prometheus and the Well.
That went on awhile… someone else want to jump in?
(Matt) Why? You covered it better than any of us could.
Q) What was the lore on the Trashcan man located inside Fort Trident? If memory serves, him and his… trashcan were clickable, the latter function as a contact but had no missions. Just a little joke or was there to be more for him down the line?
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was originally designed that EVERY Contact have a unique story arc associated with them. In an effort to make our release date, the story arcs were condensed down into Origin-specific arcs and multiple Contacts would hand out the same arc.
Trashcan Man had a unique rhyming voice to the character, so putting an existing Story Arc (or even the general missions) didn’t work for him, so he lost his “Contact” status right before Alpha.
Since I liked the character so much, I made sure players visited him in a Task Force (Synapse’s, I think, I am probably wrong though).
A) John Hegner (Protean): Matt, I’m not sure if they are talking about him, or the guy that Pitman had in the Arachnos recruitment area who was also ninja’d into Fort Trident to explain where he got his sweet enhancements. Basically he was a gutter rat who had the ability to pretty much get into anything and the only reason he wasn’t a smear on the training room floor was because he stole great stuff. IIRC he was effectively the villain version of B.O.T.L.E.R.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Good lord, you’re right. I got confused with The Can Man. I always got them confused and hated the Trashcan Man name you guys chose because of that. :)
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion) The joke was his power was that anything anyone “trashed” wound up in his hands. Hence the name and the goods.
Q) Why would you have Operative Lo Pan be a named Arachnos paper mission boss instead of a Tsoo one?
- Arachnos can have Asian members too. (Felderburg)
- Beyond that, all Arachnos paper mission bosses were named after movie villains. Operative Bligh, Operative Lo Pan, Operative Gruber, Operative Kurgan (have to remove the head FULLY!), the list goes on. (Kadmon)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yeah, newspaper missions were randomly generated, and that name just was on a list. No thought put into it.
Q) Did Statesman or Lord Recluse have a weakness? (Mentalshock)
- Statesman: Darrin Wade. Lord Recluse: the short-sightedness of obsessive villainy. (DarkGob)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Both of these characters were empowered directly through the Well of Furies. This was their weakness. If you could sever that connection (which was thought to be impossible), then you could kill or destroy them.
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion) They also were influenced by the elements they were Incarnates of - having drawn that power in as opposed to entirely generating it themselves. You could say that there is an element of “living up to their roles” in how they acted.
Q) Did PCU offer classes in power training/was it possible to get scholarships to PCU through your hero license? ( ParadoxicalOxymoron )
A) Matt Miller (Positron) They tried to offer classes in power training, but no insurance company would cover them if they did. They did offer free classes on criminal justice to those who had hero licenses though. Better to teach them the limits of the law, and know how to spot crimes in progress.
Q) Could you have gotten a degree in Super Heroing from PCU? And if yes, then was it a BA or BS? Was there a graduate degree program? (@AtomikSteel)
A) See above answer.
Q)I have always wondered, who was on the take within Paragon City Hall? All the villain groups had to have an inside man in order to pull off all of their hijinks. (@AtomikSteel)
A) John Hegner (Protean): first, never make a list when that list doesn’t need to see the light of day. Second, i24 had a story arc in Kings Row that dealt with the Family, Skulls, and some political corruption.
Q) Were there plans for Crey to get involved in the Incarnate arms race? What with Malta forging an alliance with Battle-Maiden, and Crey’s Paragon Protector project seeming like small beans in comparison to the rapidly upscaling power levels, how would they have kept viable as a villain group? (@Twi)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I had written out an idea that Crey were trying to biologically engineer their own incarnates in an improved version of the Revenant Program, which would involve them trying to scientifically measure Incarnates. The goal was to build an army of Incarnate Paragon Protectors. I really liked the idea that Incarnates started an arms race between high level villain groups that were trying to match the powers that were coming out.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Back in the first few drafts of Praetorian content I had Battle-Maiden and Black Scorpion having a nano-tech vs. power armor arms race for some higher end content that sent you back and forth between Primal Earth and Praetoria. We scraped it, but I had always liked the idea of Crey making a deal with the Freakshow to upgrade their cybernetics with Battle-Maiden’s nano-tech.
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) We won’t talk about the Incarnate artifacts the Countess bought up to become an Incarnate herself. That storyline lives in the same place as the one where Manticore winds up turning to her for solace after he goes fully downhill.
Q) Simple question… where were all the buses?? Plenty of Bus Stops, but no buses! Silly cosmetic thing really, but were buses ever planned? I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s asked this? (@Wolfybane)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Sadly no. The Paragon Transit Authority switched over to 100% Monorail system shortly before 2002, but the bus stops still brought in ad revenue, so they kept them around instead of demolishing them
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) If someone didn't cap off a monorail correctly, you'd get buses, of a sort. Monorails would hop the tracks and wander down streets with the cars. My question is how, considering how many ambulances were part of the atmospheric SFX no one really noticed there weren't any on the streets.
Q) In general, what was the deal with Praetorian Hamidon? And in specific, why did it come into being so much sooner than Primal Hamidon, and if it didn’t start with Hamidon Pasalima, why was it still named Hamidon? I asked Protean about this once, and he basically said he couldn’t tell me yet, but that there was actually an important reason for it. (@TA)
- I don’t remember the specifics but if I recall right, someone went overboard with nukes during an earlier war, spurring Hamidon Pasalima to take drastic actions earlier. I remember that this was mentioned somewhere in the promotional material for Going Rogue but I can’t remember where. @Mekkanos
- Nukes were used in the Praetorian Korean War. I don't remember how that eventually led to Early Hamidon. (@DKellis)
A) John Hegner (Protean): Reading between the lines, when Marcus Cole (praetorian version) disappeared after the nuclear exchange in Korea, he retreated from the world, hating what it had become. This event changed everything in Praetorian Earth. Years later, a young Dr. Hamidon, his life’s course changed by the environmental tragedy of the nuclear crisis, would discover early the means of creating the Devouring Earth. He tracked down Marcus Cole (many believed he was dead) and offered Cole the chance to be humanity’s guiding light and bring them into a new age of peace and prosperity and one-ness with the Earth. Cole dismissed him as a lunatic and thought nothing of it.
Years later, Dr. Hamidon, convinced if something wasn’t done sooner than later, and untrusting of anyone else with the responsibility to guide humanity, used himself as the germinating seed that would soon become the Hamidon. The rest is more or less history that was written up on the Going Rogue website, where the Devouring Earth nearly wiped humanity out, but Cole returned to save the day.
In that history, there is a moment where Cole is fighting the Hamidon (Kaiju?) and it projects a telepathic beam into Cole. During that momentary connection, Cole and Hamidon have a heart to heart discussion which he never reveals to anyone else, but it is at that time that cole convinces Hamidon to give humanity a chance to redeem themselves. Hamidon lets himself get “beaten” and waits to see if Cole can rally humanity into something worthy of saving. By the time Going Rogue begins, with the horns of war between Primal and Praetorian Earth sounding, Hamidon is unconvinced.
Cole is on the fence about invading primal earth, because he knows Hamidon will be unhappy, but he also has the backup plan of simply fleeing Praetorian Earth and sealing the portal up behind him and starting anew on Primal Earth. A third option, becoming the Well’s champion, presents itself and leads to Cole’s final defeat.
Q) How much did the US Government/Paragon City spend per year on repairs to buildings, roads, etc.? (@AtomikSteel)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The U.S. Government was asked not to step in and help, and was told Paragon City could take care of its own. Paragon City had an insane tax rate on the super-rich, and those taxes were used exclusively to pay for damages caused by super-powered beings.
You see, all the Billionaire Playboys are secret (or public) IDs of super-heroes anyway, so they just thought of the tax as a work/hobby expense.
Q) So in the Midnighter arc, the heroes help develop a cure for the Lost. Which (thanks to a bug, until they fixed it) you could actually zap the Honoree with! Was this the early groundwork for eventually restoring Hero 1? (@Samuraiko)
- Much to my amusement, you could also zap the AV at the end of the Lost section of Death From Below. Not much utility there, as it robs the group of XP, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t funny :) (Kadmon)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There was a redemption/reversion arc planned but I can’t recall what it involved. I do know that when writing the Lady Grey Task Force, the writer didn’t like the fact that Hero One came back as a Lost. One of the variables in the mission data was “INeverLikedThisStoryArcAnyway”.
A) John Hegner (Protean): We had some discussion on bringing back Hero-1 as well as a handful of Omega Team who had somehow survived all these years on the run on Rikti Earth. IIRC Ruin had taken over Rikti Australia. The restoration of Hero-1 would have been closely related to the reveal of these characters and their work with renegade factions within the Rikti who opposed both the war on Primal Earth and the genetic modification of the Rikti people.
Q) Prometheus told us about how the Well of the Furies came to be, and how a person came to embody it - details hazy, text isn’t in the wiki. The identity of that person was suggested to be someone we’d know of, but wasn’t revealed. Who was it, and why/how? (@TA)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Prometheus was actually referring to DJ Zero as another Ascended with whom we were already acquainted. The identity of the Well wouldn’t be someone we’d met in game at that point. “He” was already ancient when humanity came to be. Then again, Positron, Protean or Dr. Aeon may have had other ideas…
Q) The Lore Bible suggested that it might have originally been intended for the street gangs of Paragon to remain viable threats all the way through to level 50. The way things played out, though, that was pretty much just The Freakshow (and to a lesser extent The Warriors). Were there ever any lore plans to demonstrate truly high-level versions of other street gangs? The Outcasts always seemed to have potential and the lore suggestion that Grendel gave Statesman problems suggest high danger from The Trolls. (And the mysterious leaders of The Skulls and The Hellions were probably more dangerous than their bottom-of-the-totem-pole members implied.) (@CyberSunset)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - The Skulls were getting an update for Issue 24 that would have introduced us to the three leaders, Morena, Veles and Chernobog. I believe Protean had some other future plans for them as well, but they’d have at least acquired Arch-villains and made it to level 25. We would probably have found a way for most of the other groups to get higher-level or more powerful versions if the story development merited it, but there weren’t any solid plans.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There were two “paths” of Streetgangs in the games, the artifact ones (Hellions, Warriors, Tsoo) and the superadyne ones (Skulls, Trolls, Family). This was intended to keep the players fighting streetgangs, although ever more powerful ones, as long as possible if that’s what their character was into. There is a running storyline through the missions and story arcs of the two paths.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Part of the i24 revamp of Kings Row was to bring the Superadyne story arc into clearer focus. Before, most of the initial story is scattered through a handful of task pool contacts, which meant a good number of people probably missed them. My goal was to pull those threads out of task pools and turn them into full story arcs or even Task Forces.
Part of my grand revamp plan was to really redefine the turf wars in the zones, making them “belong” more to one group or the other. The Hellions served the Warriors who were rivals to the Tsoo and Family. The Skulls and Trolls had a relationships that fed up into the Family, who opposed the Warriors and Tsoo. The Tsoo were sort of the odd men out, but were strong enough to hand without a mewling low level gang serving them. This was one major chunk of the Paragon City criminal puzzle.
The other side of the coin had the paramilitary groups like the 5th Column and Council battling it out from 1-50, meanwhile the Sky Raiders and Freakshow showed up mid-level to mix things up and provide some cross over to the more gang related smash and grab activity and heists with such characters as Captain Castillo.
Then you had the Circle of Thorns and Vahzilok, who were a bit more marginal and self contained. The CoT and Tsoo, however, did clash over magical matters from time to time, while the nobody really liked to mess with insane Dr. Vahzilok, whose grandiose plans petered out around level 25 anyway.
Q) In the Going Rogue promo, Manticore and Ghost Widow were shown with auras around them. Were there plans for them to change sides at that time? If not, what were the auras meant to represent? (Liquid)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I forget. Maybe? I think it was just to represent how those characters saw themselves, Vigilante and Rogue.
I know we pitched having a “major player” switch sides, but then realized the headache of all the content that character was involved in and came up with two new characters to poster-child Going Rogue.
Q) Was Mr. G always intended to be Praetorian Protean? (Liquid)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Yes, John “Protean” Hegner had this planned from the get go.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Yeah, we wanted it to be super subtle (so totally obvious to our massive player base of apparent psychics). If you read the Praetorian content, any character that tends to repeat his last sentence is actually Doppelganger - off the top of my head I think it was just Mr. G and Tami Baker, but I am certain we hid Easter Eggs here and there. The intention was that Protean was damaged goods in Primal Earth. Doppelganger had been playing the game of masks forever and had no issues about discovering his missing identity. After all, he trained Chimera after murdering his parents. Manipulative bastard, ain’t he?
Q) What was the Kheldian “homeworld” like, their government, native culture, etc, prior to their being a big space war? Did they evolve their symbiosis with the Dwarf/Nova races peacefully, or was that a necessity of the war with the nictus? (Spectralent)
- Q: And would we ever have gotten to visit? (Memphis Bill)
A) Matt (Positron) It was never fleshed out, afaik.
Q)Would Tyrant redeem himself and take Statesman place? (@Night Prowler)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There were some idle discussions that mentioned this as a possibility. To my memory, it was not settled, however.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That was my plan. After he broke Praetoria he would see the error in his ways and redeem himself taking up the mantle of his former enemy. I know some of the writers pushed back on this saying that “Statesman is dead-dead, no backsies.” I would like to point out that this respected that and also got us our marketing poster-child back at the same time. :)
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I had a vision for Tyrant’s redemption as basically playing out similar to Hannibal Lecter. When the going gets tough for Earth, Vanguard turns to the one man who has been the Well’s Champion for some insight into how to stop Battalion. Cole basically points out that what Earth is lacking is a symbol to rally behind. Statesman was that symbol for Primal Earth, just as Emperor Cole was that symbol for Praetoria.
In a massive PR move, Lady Grey and Vanguard basically convince the world (and the players) that Statesman has been resurrected. But really it’s Emperor Cole just carrying the symbol forward in order to rally Earth’s forces. I had ultimately wanted him to try to sacrifice everything in one last hurrah, but Cole’s curse would be that he could never become the man he was destined to be on Primal Earth, and would be forced to survive time and time again, never achieving the redemption and glory in death he so desired.
This truth would come out issues later and cause some massive issues between Ms. Liberty and Vanguard.
Q)Were there any plans to allow Heroes/Villians to go to the Preatorian zones for badge hunting, exploration badges, etc? (TheJudge)
- I recall that they could do that anyway. The only thing they were locked out of without purchasing GR was access to story content and contacts. @Blondeshell
A) Matt (Positron) Yeah that sounds right to my knowledge. I think there were some badges that were impossible for a non-Praetorian to attain and vice-versa.
Q) Was there anything that the team wanted to include plotwise that was deemed too controversial or grimdark? (@Peter_Chess)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - The original introduction arc for the revamped Atlas Park involved Matthew Habashy purposefully abandoning his wife to the destruction of Galaxy City. He did it out of cowardice, and his arc was supposed to be a redemptive one where he was out to prove his love to his wife after leaving her to die. However, in our first team playtest, the content was very divisive. Some people loved it and wanted more, other people hated Matthew Habashy for what he did and wanted no part in the rest of his story. We changed it after considering that it might be too divisive for the very first story arc in the game.
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - When Positron asked for my idea for “Who Will Die?”, I suggested pretty much instantly that Sister Psyche and Manticore have a child, but she is murdered and the child kidnapped. It kind of cascaded into misery from there, but I could tell almost immediately from the reaction that it was going to a bit too dark a place.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There was a letter for the Omega Team Time Capsule from one of the suicide team members that was very, very, grimdark. It was extremely emotional, but had such a dark ending to it that it was deemed inappropriate and (thankfully) never published.
A John Hegner (Protean) - We could have taken Mother Mayhem much further, but decided she was creepy enough as is. Mother is still my favorite Praetorian baddie. Isn’t she yours? ISN’T MOTHER YOUR FAVORITE TOO!? Good.
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Minds of Mayhem remains my personal favorite of all the trials I worked on, and it couldn’t have existed without Mother Mayhem, so I second John’s motion!
Q)What was the plot of the third novel going to be? I still re-read the other two novels every so often. (The_Judge)
- I seem to remember it being “The Rikti War.” (Memphis Bill.)
- That is correct. It is even mentioned on one of the last pages of the Freedom Phalanx novel (Lycantropus)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was to be the first Rikti War. I think that what we did in game (with the time capsule) was far superior than anything that the novel could have achieved.
Q)With the Praetorian relocation occurring, were there plans to use the formerly Praetorian-only enemy groups in additional content? (IE The Destroyers, Syndicate) (@Carin_McLeoud)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I think we had some plans for the Syndicate to start working together with the Family. There was a long villain story arc for i24 that involved Praetorian Penelope Yin going crazy while trying to take control of the Awakened. The idea was that she would become the new leader of the Awakened and become a nemesis for primal Penelope Yin.
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - The Talons of Vengeance were everywhere, thanks to Diabolique, and as we introduced the remaining elements in new powersets (Water, Wind), we’d have continued to expand them. We also combined some other forces, mainly DUST, IDF, and Resistance into the Unified People’s Army, under Calvin Scott’s leadership. The Carnival of Light would continue under Desdemona’s guidance, though some of them would also join up with Aurora Pena, and that story could have gone a few ways (*cough*Praetor Tilman?*cough*). The Forlorn would continue to follow Noble Savage as well. The only ones I think were completely wiped out, not to appear again were the Destroyers.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - In some ways The Talons of Vengeance were the slowly creeping death that would ultimately destroy humanity. Master Midnight has a monologue where he paraphrases what they are about, and basically says that they are the literal reason why the ancient Greeks punished oathbreakers so harshly, because if left unpunished, then the punishment of the Furies (i.e. The Talons of Vengeance) would consume mankind until justice was done. The oathbreaker in this case was Emperor Cole. The oath he broke… ask Praetorian Stefan Richter.
Q) From the Summer Blockbuster Double Feature, was there anything significant about the extra information you could get by reading the bios of the Time Gladiator enemies? I’ve occasionally wondered if the backstory for Armageddon, Apocalypse, Gotterdamerung (and the never-seen Gehenna) was meant to set up something down the line. (@CyberSunset)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I don’t think so. That whole thing was a piece of fiction within the fictional universe of CoH. (Like Tarantino’s Kill Bill).
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) I don’t know about Time Gladiator, but you could learn the oh-so-secret revelation that the devs were big fans of Leverage and Ocean’s Eleven from Casino Heist. Also, the VO for that event’s trailer was done by our lead engineer.
Q) If you have a chance... everything in this post, which also includes questions not answered in previous AMAs as well as general dev opinion / favorites questions that only a few devs answered: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9602.msg138418.html#msg138418 (I will post my most burning questions here, though) (Felderburg)
A) Matt (Positron) I would recommend putting questions into next year’s AMA. It’s way more convenient to work in this format than a forum post.
Q) Who or what are the Furies? Would we have ever seen them in-game? Are they the same in both dimensions, or is it just the one set in charge of every single alternate Earth well? (Felderburg)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Like Prometheus is a watcher and agent of the Dimensionless, the Furies were watchers and agents of the Well. They work to see its interests preserved, but like Prometheus notes, they haven’t evolved with their master, who has changed with “humanity” through the millennia. Their ideals are ancient and somewhat out of sync with the current mindset of the Well. However, they also still serve his interests, particularly in loosing the Talons on Praetoria to test Tyrant’s mettle, so there’s not much pulling of the leash. There was only one set for all dimensions; they were made immortal by the Well’s power. I like to think they were drawn from three different dimensions, but that wasn’t official at all. Neither was their appearance. I tended to think that they would have multiple forms, and this dichotomy in form was reflected in the beautiful Sirens and the monstrous Keres.
Q) How accurate is the 2004 Story Bible that was released? (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Story_Bible) Some of its lore is contradicted by in-game materials, while some of it is seemingly confirmed. (Felderburg)
- I think that was “This is what they started with/at launch, it changed during development.” (Memphis bill)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The number of people working on the game when the bible was written as well as the last couple years of the game was TWO: Melissa and myself, and neither of us contributed greatly to the original Story Bible.
I made it clear to any person who wanted to contribute to the game that they were not beholden to anything in the bible as long as it still maintained the integrity of what the players were already told and knew about. How did we remember what we told the players? ParagonWiki of course.
I was convinced that if an admin at ParagonWiki knew Paragon Studios’ IP address they could look at what pages we were reading and pretty much decipher the content of our upcoming issues.
That said, I am not surprised there are contradictions. If someone had an idea for backstory that contradicted something the players were never told, what kind of manager would I be to say no? “Sorry, Joe, you can’t be creative this week. Please use stuff that was written by Rick 6 years before you ever got here, even if the players have no clue about it.” I never wanted to be that guy.
Q) Can you tell us more about the nature of Rularuu, how his dimensional devouring / transferring to himself worked? Or just everything about Rularuu in general? (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Rularuu was a very power super who, in his native dimension, grew so powerful he consumed his entire universe. Unsated, he found an alternate reality, and an alternate version of himself, and teamed up and consumed that one too. Did this over and over and over until he got to our dimension, where the Midnight Squad figured out what was going on and created a “Shadow Shard” for him to consume, and in doing so would trap him there.
That was the crux of the ‘ruu. Pretty much he was our Galactus.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - What Rularuu had discovered was a means of jumping dimensions. There were some strange caveats to this process. First: He could only jump to a dimension where there existed another dimensional version of himself. Second: When he left a dimension he had traveled to (or originated in) he consumed the entirety of that dimension. This was why he was so insanely powerful. It was also the reason that Battalion feared him above all other things.
It also happened to be the reason that the Dream Doctor was able to defeat Rularuu. He was Primal Earth’s version of Rularuu. It’s also why he went into hiding. He realized that as long as he stayed on Primal Earth, Rularuu could one day go to him, consume everything, and leave.
Battalion sought to discover what happened to Rularuu, as they detected his arrival in our dimension, and then… nothing. This made them incredibly paranoid about Earth, for they apparently had the power to stop the Devourer of Everything. Discovering that the Dream Doctor was the key would have focused Battalion’s efforts to the nth degree in destroying him.
I had wanted to have Dream Doctor sacrifice himself by merging with Rularuu and containing his dimension consuming power to just the localized area of the Battalion fleet. With Dream Doctor gone, Rularuu could never return. With the Battalion fleet annihilated, Earth gets a fighting chance and moves onto the offensive. None of this was ever given a green light or fleshed out completely in a meeting, but damn we were getting close to having those meetings where I was going to present it.
Q) Who funded the first manufacture of Superadine back in the 70s? According to the 2004 Story Bible, Nemesis didn't know about dimensional travel until Portal Corp's presentation, so I assume it wasn't him (as he would have known about the dimensional discovery of the immoral scientists creating Superadine). (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The 70’s was a crazy time, man. There was a group of super-villain scientists who called themselves the Mood Ring (Made up of Lava Lamper, Belle Bottom, Rock Pet, Smiley Face, The Streaker, and 8-Tracks of Destruction) who perfected and sold the formula to the Family who used their considerable business interests to see to its manufacture and distribution.
Q) Would the True Rikti have looked/acted like the regular Rikti but… bigger? Or would the True Rikti have been even more alien and bizarre? Would fighting them have been like fighting regular Rikti with lots of crazy defenses and new tech basically? (I’m similarly curious about The Dimensionless and other long-way-off enemies.) (@CyberSunset)
- Would we have fought the True Rikti of our dimension, or the "fake" Rikti's dimension? (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I would have loved for them to be even more alien, on a non-humanoid animation rig for one, but that would have limited what they could do in-game, so they likely would have been humanoid, looking like super-exaggerated Rikti.
Both True Rikti’s would have been in-play. The one in Rikti Dimension would have been answering the distress beacon sent before the uprising on Rikti Earth took place. They would NOT have been happy at the outcome of their race, diluting it with the genetic material of these “humans” even if it was the only possibility for their survival.
True Rikti would have made their way to Primal Earth and contacted our True Rikti. We were still up in the air as to whether or not our True Rikti were conquered by Battalion or not.
Q) In regards to existing power sets, I believe it had been brought up on the original CoH forums, were some of the underperforming (perhaps perceived as such) powersets going to be tweaked (ie: Energy Melee, Electrical Blast, Icy Assault)? Also what can be mentioned about what the other origins versions of Sorcery, and what were they going to have for powers? (ErrantBlue)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That question is in the hands of the powers designers and not the story-guys. Maybe one day Arbiter Hawk will do a Powers AMA or something.
Q) The initial contacts whose story arcs were replaced when COX went free to play had their own backstories (for example, the tech contact was the former hero Horatio whose armor was used to help rebuild Citadel). Were there any plans to use them at all in new content? (Blue Battler)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We were always open to the possibility, but as far as I know, no writer was running with that idea.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - The arrival of Battalion, and Earth getting its ass royally kicked, was going to have people come out of the woodwork to fight the good fight. And yes, Katie Douglas was going to have a bad hair day and take it out on a Battalion Warship.
Q) There never seemed to be any mention of professional team sports in CoH. Was there ever a thought to expand missions, contacts, or costume sets (besides boxing) in that direction? I referenced American football in one character bio (http://cit.cohtitan.com/character/2089) but rarely heard of or saw mention of anything else even in other players’ character bios. (@Blondeshell)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Not a lot of thought went into sports in a super-powered world. I am sure that they are around, but how do you know that the guy who hit 90 home-runs last season wasn’t a telekinetic?
If we ever put an arena or colosseum into CoH, we would have had to come up with some sports team. But alas, we never did.
Q) Were the non-immortal characters (like Psyche and Statesman) supposed to be in their mid-40’s/early 50’s by the time CoH started? Or was this just sort of a screwup brought about by the timeline introduced in “The Freedom Phalanx”, which had the modern incarnation coming into being in the mid 1980’s. (@Hyperstrike)
- This was just the game acknowledging “Comic book time” if I recall correctly. Basically there was no attempt to explain why some character seemed long lived yet youthful, same as Spider-man was introduced as a teenager in the early 1960s, yet is only mid twenties today. (Rune)
- Additionally, States was an Incarnate, which I recall being used to explain his youth, while Psyche’s mind-riding was used at least once to explain her youth (her body somehow didn’t age without her mind in it). (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Comic-book aging, although Dr. Raymond Keyes is in his 50’s during the time of the main game.
Q) Were there ever any regrets or apprehension in “The Origins of Power” story line being used in game to explain in game changes and/or mechanical functions of powers (ie: the introduction of diminishing returns/enhancement diversification)? (ErrantBlue)
- At least one Dev had regrets about it, per the 2012 AMA question: “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?” Don’t know about any other dev’s feelings, so hopefully they answer. (Felderburg)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - I can’t speak for the others, as this came into the game before I joined the team, but it was certainly in the back of our mind while we developed the background that drives the Well, Prometheus, Battalion, Praetoria, the Dimensionless, the Primordials, etc. One thing we worked on in this regard for Incarnates and up was to emphasize that the Well was not the source of powers; human creativity and potential were instead leveraging the energy of the Source (which we planned to rename), through the Well, to achieve superhuman feats in whatever way they chose. The player should be the driver of their own story, and we wanted the framework to be flexible enough to accommodate that, even though it didn’t seem that way when we had to dole it out slowly.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I think if anything we regretted that we couldn’t tell it all up front without spoiling the story. We heard the outrage and had to knuckled down knowing that the pay-off in the end would more than justify the momentary appearance of lack of character control.
Q) Were there ever any plans to finally rescue/revert Tanya/Terra from “The Terra Conspiracy?” That was a favourite, though somewhat sad, arc. (Memphis Bill)
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) There were plans for two Praetorian Epic Archetypes on the tables, and quite a few of the powers were actually implemented. One a Praetorian Clockwork, and one a Recovered Devoured. I think that we probably would have used the former as a way to help refresh some of the AI/robot related storylines, and the second to advance Devouring Earth plotlines like that. An way to trigger factionalizing or internal disruption to the DE might have been a good, polarizing plotline. Plus, we could probably have turned her into our own version of Sarah Kerrigan.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Unrelated except for the DE comments above. Many players asked us about what the deal was with Praetorian Infernal (since he wasn’t from Primal Earth initially anyway). We kept him off the radar for a few reasons, not the least of which was a lack of Praetorian CoT costumes. Anyway, I had toyed with the idea early on of Infernal being Cole’s greatest concern because his magic was unrivaled in Praetoria. His master stroke would have been learning of a way to use the Thorns on Hamidon and to effectively possess him and through him all of the Devouring Earth. The temp name I had for him was Hamidaemon.
Q) Were there ever any plans (before or after release) to flesh out, or possibly branch by choice, the VEAT arcs? The later ones always felt disappointingly *rushed* to me (and let’s not get into the speech on the last one…) and given the insight from some of the independent arcs, there was potential in the banes and fortunatas. (Memphis Bill)
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) It would have been a passion project by one of the staff, as there wasn’t a good case for going back. On the other hand, I could have seen Sean writing additional VEAT only optional or side content into whatever came next in terms of the Recluse/Red Widow plotlines.
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon): What Tim said.
Q) I don’t know if any of you were present at the time, but I remember how, early in development, CoH was *very*different from the way it was at release; no archetypes, and origin mattered a lot. If you remember that far back, could anyone expand on the way it was first planned? (@Interface)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was before even I joined the game. It was much more freeform, but it was quickly discovered that without a guiding hand in choosing powers, a player could make a completely combat-gimped character that could never gain XP. It was then decided that a guiding hand, in the form of powersets, was the way to go.
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I was around for this, though I'd barely gotten past responsibilities beyond laying down combat beacons in the Sewer maps so I wasn't "in" on the design decisions or plans. It was way back in the beginning when the game had spawn generators, rudimentary loot (as in, yes you really could loot a defeated foe), a completely different UI, and the beginnings of directioned attack locations (i.e. head shot vs. leg shot). The game used a points system for abilities and, yes, Flight was pricey so while I could fly, I had no real attack powers to use as Matt mentioned.
These were very reminiscent of "traditional" gameplay mechanics players were used to at the time. I believe there were inherent bonuses with whatever origin you chose, but the reward wasn't stellar - maybe something like more Heal for X and more Stamina for Y. But it did incentivize choosing X origin just for the benefits so it was scrapped.
Q) Given the I24 changes, Blasters were, IMHO, just about right. In your opinion, were all the archetypes ‘just right’ at that point? Personally I’d say Corruptors needed a bit of love, and Warshades were still a failed experiment, but that’s just my two INF. (I know these aren’t technically Lore questions, but I really need to know.) (@Interface)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Again, outside the wheelhouse of what this AMA can easily answer.
Q) Can you give us a general description of what the Battalion would have looked like, what they’re powers were, and how they were connected to existing lore? (@Liberties)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Battalion’s forces were sort of a mish-mash of hundreds of different alien races all subjugated to work for them. To that end the art direction was a uniform suit of power armor, made from Impervium, that we could throw into the costume creator and then put alien heads, arms, legs, and tails on in hundreds of different ways.
Their powers were planned to be extreme. You would have needed level shifts to have a hope of hitting and hurting them, and surviving their attacks. They were end-game content exclusively. Non-end-game Battalion would have been lackeys like the Shivans.
Battalion had an agent on Earth for decades, planting the seeds for their eventual arrival. Now, originally the Battalion bible had this as Lady Grey, who sold out to Battalion shortly after becoming head of Vanguard. This would have allowed Battalion to subvert the organization put together to stop threats like them.
As time went on we eventually created a new NPC to be the “traitor to Earth”, named (XXX). This would have been cleaner and better fit with the story that the writers wanted to tell, and left Vanguard intact (not causing us a bunch of work tearing out and re-working stuff involving Lady Grey).
As we worked on the story it became obvious that this new NPC was going to be the traitor, so we decided to change it. We looked at our roster of NPCs and saw that Stephen Sheridan, aka Dr. Science, fit the bill of Battalion agent perfectly. He would have used the new zone, Cole Plaza, as the staging point for the invasion by Battalion.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - IIRC there was Battalion (the race) and then there were the legions of loyal super soldiers. Levied from the myriad worlds Battalion had conquered the Wells of, these legions were equipped with the finest technology in the galaxy. The legions were going to be badasses themselves, but facing down an actual member of the true Battalion race was intended to be nothing short of epic.
Q) Penelope Yin was revealed to be Vanessa DeVore’s daughter in the Praetorian arcs. Was there a proper backstory built around this, as it seems to really strain the timeline (with Vanessa being a graduate student and finding Giovanna Scaldi’s mask in 2000, Penelope Yin being an older teenager in 2012, and Wu Yin being noticeable older than Vanessa by some 20 years)? Where was this storyline going? (@Phoenicia)
- Did this revelation of her mother apply to the Primal Earth side of things? (Felderburg)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Dr. Aeon had planned out Penelope’s story into Primal Earth, where she would have become the arch-villain Penelope Mayhem, leader of the Awakened. He or Protean could probably go more into her background, though.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Because the Praetorian timeline is suitably mixed up due to the events following the Korean War and the Hamidon Wars, we had license to determine that some individuals were born earlier or later than they were on Primal Earth. Vanessa DeVore is one such individual. I did have a rough timeline at one point, but I doubt it exists anywhere anymore.
Q) Was Penny Yin's mother always intended to be DeVore? (Liquid)
A) John Hegner (Protean) - To my knowledge, no. I remember connecting the potential dots at one point, mulling it over, and then excitedly dropping the idea on designers to see their reactions. Majority of reactions were positive, so we went with it. It also helped flesh out Mr. Yin as the head of the Syndicate as well. Until then, that villain group had no true heart.
Q) OK, *one* last not-really-Lore question then I’m done. You step through a time warp back to ‘04. Axe the Fitness pool or keep it? How about Hasten? (@Interface)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - C) Buff the heck out of Pummel. (also, I’m not a powers designer)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Axe the fitness pool. Hasten has a hilarious history. In Alpha it was way too good. If I recall correctly, there was no crash. When we added some drawbacks to it, the players went ballistic. I still remember one player claiming that it was “completely worthless now”.
I would always, always, keep that player’s comment in mind whenever we would downgrade other abusive powers and players would complain. A small part of me would always think “maybe it’s not enough?”
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Fitness seemed to remind me of making a Palladium character. How everyone seemed to be a gymnast/boxer/track&field star/professional lawn dart champion, etc, because the bonuses were just too good to pass up. I always felt like choosing your tertiary power pool should have been like D&D feats. The unique spice to make your Fire Tank stand out from the Fire Tank next to him. Instead, some pools were almost universally ignored, while others, like Fitness, were pretty much required.
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Barring any other changes, making them more like feats or utility powers from D&D 4e would have been a nice move. Several powersets suffered because thematically correct powers were in the 9, though failed to fulfill a clear mission.
Q) Were there ever plans to delve further into Cimerora? (Lord Arkasas)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I really wanted to expand on the Path of the Dark and its connections to Cimerora.
Q) Less of a lore question, more of a general writing question. Were there any stories/characters/ideas you didn’t use because you thought they might be too close to existing comic stories, or would cause potential trouble with Marvel/DC? (@Cooldrew/@Crippl3)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We wanted to make a game where comic book fans could feel at home, yet at the same time make it their own. Many, many, of the storylines in CoH pay homage to classic comic book stories. GIFT was pretty much just Xavier’s School, HeroCorp was Heroes for Hire, Vanguard was S.H.I.E.L.D., Altas Park was Metropolis and Kings Row was Gotham, etc. etc.
I mean, they were our own versions with their own stories and uniqueness about them, but we wanted players to find familiar footing when they played CoH.
Q) What were the ultimate Magic origin and Technology origin threats that were conceived of by time of the sunset announcement, and what made them scarier than what we’d fought before? (Tim Compton, AKA @Draeth Darkstar)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - I don’t know that these were specific to an origin, but the “ultimate” threats included:
- A possible battle against Praetorian Hamidon, though we were also considering other solutions to that story.
- A war against Battalion, culminating in showdowns with their well-consuming “True Battalion” leadership, some as early as Issue 26.
- A war against Prometheus, the Furies, and the Well to free yourself from all of them.
- A war against the Primordial who came closest to eliminating the Source at the dawn of existence when he returns. You have to rally other Wells (along with some NPCs, that’s you in the post-Battalion, post-Furies world) to your side.
- A war where the Concepts of Order and Chaos themselves break out of the void, culminating in battles against their personifications and the first Primordial to save (or control!) all of existence.
But first you need to survive a civil war tearing the Dimensionless and their Primordial leadership apart, fraying the whole infrastructure keeping it all going.
Q) What tabletop RPG system do you feel best fits the power scale, game style, and themes of City of Heroes? Have any of the developers designed any unofficial homebrew City of Heroes pen and paper material? (Tim Compton, AKA @Draeth Darkstar)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Jeff Hamiliton and I were just talking about this the other day. IMO, the best “system” for conveying a comic-book game would be something akin to Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG system. Extremely narrative storytelling, less emphasis on making numbers into bigger numbers.
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) If I were to do it, I’d probably start with FATE. It’s got a lot of room for the player’s imaginations and thoughts to move the game along.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Power Scale, Game Style, and Themes. This sounds like you want something that plays like CoH combat. My money is firmly on D&D 4th edition. Hell, Matt even ran a Cimmerora game using 4th edition rules. I’ve seen people playing Justice League using their rules (Batman is a Rogue, fyi). But if you are looking for something that plays like a comic book, well, I would suggest modifying Dogs in the Vineyard or In a Wicked Age to use their rules but match the superhero theme, as they are heavy story games and not so much about min/maxing stats and abilities.
Q) If City of Heroes came back would you bring back Statesman and Sister Psyche? (@Nyght Blade)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Personally, no. I hate it when comic book characters are brought back to life.
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Same, though we did discuss it. My opinion is that there were other, more interesting stories to tell in the context of their death that wouldn’t work if they just came back to life.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Death is such a formative part of life. We had so many places we wanted the death of those two iconic characters to take us. Ms. Liberty and Manticore both have these huge gaping wounds in their hearts now, so many possibilities to go with that. We fleshed out a number of ideas as well, and they shook things up something fierce.
Q) Something I actually quite enjoyed about the story in the game’s later years was that the villains (both groups like Arachnos, and the player character) WEREN’T incompetent; they were extremely skilled and organized, and probably accomplished more than the heroes from about Going Rogue onwards. Was this an intentional decision, or did that just happen during writing? (@Cleretic)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Villain groups in games fascinated me, and I was a big City of Villains player. I loved being able to advance the stories of villain groups and the player villain. One of my favorite was with Malta, Praetoria, and Incarnates. I loved the idea of Malta rescuing Battle Maiden, since she was totally powered by technological means. It was a lesson I personally learned in the Alpha Strike task force where people said it didn’t feel good to be fighting Malta when you’re an Incarnate - why are they a threat? That’s when I began to think… this must be what the villain groups are thinking. How can we face Incarnates, and what do we do to solve this?
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Heroes had a ton of advantages, and it felt like the momentum was on their side - villains needed to step it up to keep pace, and we wanted to ramp up the stakes at the high-end.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - A hero is only as good as their villain. Definitely intentional. The writing for Praetoria necessitated that shift in possibility, since a decidedly non-heroic faction had taken power in Praetoria. Furthermore, the capacity for humanity to overcome obstacles basically empowered villain groups like Malta to start catching up. Only the inclusion of Incarnates kept the heroes a step ahead of them. Basically, the heroes shine brightest when surrounded by darkness, and we wanted things to get oh so dark.
Q) One thing I never really got an answer to was, what was going on with Primal Earth’s Furies while Praetoria’s (insane) Furies were running rampant in our world? Why did they not intervene? (@Lycantropus)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There’s only one set of Furies. They unleash the Talons of Vengeance, their army of the Well’s will, on Praetoria because of Emperor Cole’s actions when claiming his power. Primal Earth originally did nothing to offend the Well or the Furies, so the Talons had no business there, until Diabolique fled there and Mot started waking up.
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) They trusted Statesman to do the right thing. I suppose they would had some reaction after his death.
Q) Speaking of Primal Earth’s Furies, they had a resturant in Kings Row at the top of a building. Was that ever planned to be represented in game (or was it and we just didn’t know-if so, where!?)? (@Lycantropus)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There were some talks about it appearing in the Pandora’s Box arc, but I think that was scrapped. Someone else could elaborate more on that arc. If not there, it would have likely been seen when it came time to face them.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I wanted that restaurant so bad. One of my driving goals was to get things referenced in the novels and comics into the game whenever possible.
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) That would have been a great place to use the phasing tech. What has looked like a bunch of vents and water towers on top of that building suddenly appears to be a restaurant now that you’ve completed the story arc.
Q) Were there any Easter eggs that no one ever seemed to find? (@Crantz)
- Per previous AMA: “The Producers were the keepers of the Easter Eggs, so bug Melissa Bianco or Nate Birkholz. (Matt)” So if they’re around for this AMA, hopefully they’ll be asked. (Felderburg)
- Oh, okay, thank you (@crantz)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I don’t think anyone noticed that there was a skull on each and every cover of the Who Will Die? SSA.
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//6/69/Who_Will_Die_Part_1.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//7/71/Who_Will_Die_Part_2.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_3.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_4.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_5.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_6.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_7.jpg
For Pandora’s Box there is a Nemesis tidbit contained in every cover.
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//3/34/Pandora%27s_Box_Part_1.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_2.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_3.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_4.jpg
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I know it took months before anyone finally triggered the massive Hamidon tentacles outside of the sonic fencing in Praetoria, and months later someone finally got a screen shot after people were talking on the forums about hearing or seeing “something” out there.
I remember the design team got dragged into the sound designer’s office at one point when it was all finally hooked up for the first time, and played it. My immediate response was, “I’m a loyalist!”
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Null the Gull’s talk tree had a certain path through it that seemed like it was looping, but it was just repeating the same text in different internal states. If you kept going in the right pattern for about 10-12 pages, it did a badgegrantall on your character. No one found that on Live. (WHAT?! - Matt)
The Gullible badge was created by Leandro and posted via twitter, in response to Positron's response above. Positron then added it to the AMA doc.
Q) Did Nemesis have a real name? If he didn't, do you want to make one up right now? (@Crantz)
- According to the novel “The Freedom Phalanx”, his name was Gerhardt Eisenstadt from Austria in the late 1800’s (@Lycantropus)
- Ah! Thank you (@crantz)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yes, Mr. Eisenstadt was a gifted clockmaker and toy maker, and well ahead of his time.
Q) If Megan Duncan learned of the ability to resurrect someone who died (per the Valentine event) why did she choose to bring back Red Widow instead of her grandfather or Sister Psyche so soon after their deaths (this Valentine event was presented shortly after the Who Will Die arc reached that point so it just seemed weird)?(@Lycantropus)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Statesman wasn’t killed, he was destroyed, so no resurrection magic would work. Sister Psyche was killed on the cusp of frying the minds of everyone on Earth. Bringing her back would just resume the countdown, so that was out of the question until a solution to that problem could be found.
Q)We never saw how the Signature Story Arc “Pandora’s Box ended. How was that all going to play out? (@Lycantropus)
- Episode 5 did get released to the beta server before shutdown, and both the hero and villain versions are documented at Paragon Wiki. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Pandora%27s_Box_(SSA) (@Blondeshell)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That’s a great resource for that sort of thing. Far better than what we have access to.
Q) Can we just make a big, running doc left open for questions, that devs can answer as they see fit? It seems like it’s sort of a chore to try and gather a bunch of people once a year, and it would also help get more responses to general “what was your favorite ___?” type questions, which seem to be answered by only a few devs at a time. (Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Then what would we do every April? This is more fun (and less year-round work).
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I agree with Matt. Having it be a “time of year” brings it more into focus that if it was just sitting there all the time. How often would I be expected to check it? I wouldn’t want you guys to feel let down if I got distracted by something shine-tastic and didn’t answer for months on end.
Q) Is there anything you can tell us about what was going to happen story-wise at Kallisti Wharf? I know some of the arcs that were in beta made some mention of it apparently being a source of a lot of technology, which seemed to interest Arachnos. (@Mekkanos)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - A new friend of the people would present a technologically advanced waterfront development to the people of Paragon City, complete with memorial to Statesman. He would be a totally innocent, upstanding citizen, and not in any way connected to Battalion. Certainly not one of the well-consuming true Battalion, ruler over an army designed to crush resistance before it even notices a... Coming Storm?
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We changed the traitor to Stephen Sheridan after Chris left. :)
A) John Hegner (Protean) - The storyline would still firmly point the finger at the new guy, then Steve Sheridan was going to blindside everyone. Oh what could have been!
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - What about Shiva? Was that event still kicking around? That would have been a really fun event… indeed, what could have been!
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - If I recall correctly, the idea was Battalion would show up for the first time at the opening of Statesman One. A portal into the Shadow Shard would open, and Battalion would begin to try and actively attack and destroy it in order to stop Rularuu, who they devised was the only being powerful enough to completely stop them. Their main plan was to bombard it from space and then Shiva would deliver the final blow. I think in the last month before we were shut down Addison Delaney, one of our environment artists, had finished the initial pass of the final fight, which would have taken place in space on top of Shiva, and ended back down in a crater in a random part of the world. At the end, Steven Sheridan, revealed as a Battalion agent, would arrive to fight you. I think if you were a hero, you fought him on Shiva and used Shiva’s power to launch him back down to Earth. If you were a villain, your overall goal was to take a chunk of Shiva’s power for yourself, and we planned that the villain, temporarily gaining the strength of Shiva, would have a drag-out brawl with Steve Sheridan, who eventually would retreat before the villain’s power was removed. This was all in the first pass phase, so nothing was too set in stone… ish.
My favorite… FAVORITE… part of Kallisti Wharf, was the villain section, which was a bit more fleshed out. The idea was that your villain was planning their biggest move yet, which involved crashing Statesman One Plaza durings it opening ceremony. You set up a secret base within Kallisti Wharf, and then summoned previous contacts to aid you. For example, in the unreleased i24, you gained allies in Mr. G, TRANSMUTOR, and a few others. If you didn’t betray them in the end, they would show up in the i25 arc to help you, along with Dean MacArthur, Leonard, and Vincent Ross, if you did their arcs. You had a choice at the start of a few missions of who to bring with you.
I think the ultimate goal was if you summoned Dean, he would have no powers whatsoever, but would just shout out one liners. We also had a mission that we had (sort of) gotten to work where you as the villain had to defend your secret base from incoming heroes. The owner of the mission wouldn’t fight - they would be flying around placing items to fight groups of heroes. If you were teamed, your teammates would be on the ground fighting. If you had NPC allies, they would be your “heroes” who you could order around to move, attack, defend, like mastermind pets. This was all in the extremely experimental phase, but it would’ve been amazing to get it off the ground and in.
Q) The Drudges, and Night Ward in general: What’s going on with the British themes? Is Praetoria actually in the British Isles, or is something else going on? Also, are the Hooded Lanterns supposed to be “unformed” Drudges, or just conjured entities? (@Goblinman)
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) The Black knights and Pendragon had a large effect on the artistic focus for the zone, and the Midnight Squad being similar to the stereotypical British “Watchers” can also be blamed for this. Night Ward was also supposed to evoke “not of the present time, but containing the past,” and “British” tends to read as “old.” It had a good deal of influence on the art, and also gave the excuse to put a blue police box in Night Ward. Part of Pendragon’s shtick is his deep connection to the ideas and collective spirit of the Isles, so as in-world explanations go it is somewhat plausible.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Whispering Coyote mentions that the Drudges took samples of the world of the living to model their enterprise on. He mentions the DMV amongst other things, IIRC. The cruel task masters took a page from Industrial Age Britain for their efficient utilization of labor for profits, those profits coming from shipping souls in exchange for wax to keep their candles burning.
Q) What was the deal with Number Six from the I24 beta? It’s implied that he was the AI Executable Number Six from one of the early Crey arcs. In fact, he outright said that things were simpler when he was Executable Number Six at one point. However, his bio claimed that he was a human with the ability to turn himself digital and his “real” name sounds humanlike. Which was he; human or AI? Was he an AI that was pretending to be human, maybe? (@Mekkanos)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - He was Executable Number Six. I wrote that arc. Bonus trivia, we squeezed in that Incarnate Arc when we noticed we had nothing for solo incarnates for i24. His initial character was someone who could turn himself digital, but then I decided it would be much more interesting if he tied back to Executable Number Six. He would have more backstory, and create a conflict between Crey and Vanguard. However, the idea was that he was originally human with the super power to turn himself digital, but that Crey trapped him in a computer for so long that he nearly lost his mind.
Q) Was there anything planned for the Lord of Frosts from the backstory lore? To recap, he was the leader of the Imperial Japanese supers in WW2, and he "vanished mysteriously" along with his US counterpart Captain Volcano at the end of WW2. (@DKellis)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Nothing planned, sorry.
Q) Can you go into more detail on the actual background of Countess Crey, and was the Clarissa van Dorn personality made up by her (Countess Crey) or was it an actual person that she was impersonating? (@Liberties)
- Clarissa Van Dorn was a real person. In fact, in the arc where you find out about Countess Crey’s background (Check it out here), you find Clarissa Van Dorn’s dead body. That’s what spurs the whole
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Looks like someone got cut off writing that, but yes, that was all resolved in-game.
Q) Were there any future plans concerning the Freedom Phalanx and their HQ? In the SSA, their meetings seemed to take place mostly within the underground/cave base in Atlas Park, but it seemed kind of lackluster compared to the likes of Grandville and Cole's tower in Nova Praetoria. Expanding on that, were there ever any past plans to give a group a headquarters that didn't work out, or any headquarters that you had planned to introduce in the future? (@Scitenik)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The Freedom Phalanx “main HQ” was more of a gathering point than a Watchtower-like HQ. Each member had their own base that fit their own needs, and they only gathered at the main FP HQ when briefing the team on a crisis worthy of their combined talents.
As for the second part of your question, “not really”. But in a similar vein I really wanted you to be able to buy vistas that you could stick on the walls of your Supergroup Base that would show a windowbox of an in-game zone (totally faked), so that you could deem your base as existing in that zone. The aritsts claimed they couldn’t make it look good, so they nixed the idea in the planning stage. I’m still sad.
A) Shiny bases exist to get blown up (cf. Tyrant’s Tower, and every action movie with a cool base ever -- how many Helicarriers are they going to go through at S.H.I.E.L.D.?). I’m sure this would have happened to the Moonbase, should we have ever gotten there.
Q) Did you guys have any plans for future storylines involving S.A.M. (Superpowered Activities Monitoring) or FBSA (Federal Bureau for Super-Powered Affairs)? (@Scitenik)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There would have probably been a time in the future where we had to do our “Government Taking Control of Supers” storyline, but that wasn’t in the next few issues planned (that was all Battalion).
A) John Hegner (Protean) - S.A.M., for the record, was intended to be annoying and redundant, like any good overfunded government program. Some group decided that they didn’t like how FBSA ran things and figured they could annoy the piss out of Congress enough to warrant them slipping in a loophole to give S.A.M. traction and legal authority. This was intended to make friction and provide a hook later for some government vs. government infighting.
Q) Were there any plans for Praetorian zones after Night Ward? Or in continuing the Resistance/Loyalist storylines in the Primal Zones (similar to the arcs that were available in the i24 beta that involved the fallout from Tyrant's Trial)? (@Scitenik)
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - We thought about filling out Praetoria to 50, including going out into the Hamidon Wastes, but it was hard to justify it given concerns about Praetoria fatigue and the fact that Issue 24 spelled out the world’s fate.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yeah, players made it clear that they were getting sick of Praetoria, so we expedited its demise.
A) John Hegner (Protean) After working on Praetoria for nearly 4 years, I was getting a bit sick of it too. Though, we did have a plan to take players to Neo Tokyo at one point for 40+ content.
Q) Was the Prime/main universe the only one with Kheldians? It always seemed strange that they never showed up ‘canonically’ in multiversal arcs. (@Tab)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Battalion’s existence ties directly with why Kheldians are on Earth. Battalion doesn’t exist in other universes like it does in ours, hence why Kheldians never play a role in multidimensional stories.
Q) Were there plans in the making for a special event for this year, 10 year anniversary of the game. And is it possible to get the badge for this (@Dark Energon)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We hadn’t got to this point yet in our planning.
Q) Can you explain how the CoS strongmen were recruited/created? One arc suggested they were dead, but the wiki talks about their loyal service. (@Sooner)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The dead can be extremely loyal.
Q) Why were the remaining members of W.I.S.D.O.M., Rose Star and Spark Blade never added to the game? Were there plans to add them? Also, what is W.I.S.D.O.M. an acronym for? (Peacemaker - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Art time to do their costumes.
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Pretty much. They had elaborate costumes that didn’t justify the art time needed to put them into the game. And I have no recollection of what WISDOM stood for, but it was probably something Korean.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I strongly supported having Rose Star step up her game to fill in for Statesman as primary tank on the Freedom Phalanx. I thought it would be badass to have her take the hits and show Spark Blade and the other gents that she doesn’t need protecting, but the backup is nice to have.
Q) Did Katie Douglas survive the destruction of Praetoria - and if she did, was she going to appear in any further content? (Golden Girl - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Katie Douglas did survive everything and was part of the Praetorian refugees who arrived on Primal Earth. I had an idea that she would one day join the New Praetorians if the Praetorian Aurora Borealis ever left it.
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Katie Douglas is such a fun character for me. She evolved from what was intended to be a glimpse into the life of a seer and became pretty much the poster child for Praetoria and gained a cult following. Definitely psychic manipulation going on there.
Q) I've got one more - when the 5th Column returned, during some of their street fights with the Council, a 5th Column soldier would sometimes unfavorably compare the Council's base on Striga with their own secret base, which they claimed was in the heart of the city - where was it located, and was it going to play a role in any future content? (Golden Girl - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Weird, I don’t recall that. I mean, the 5th Column base was on the moon, why would they claim otherwise?
AMA: 2015
On April 24th, 2015, Positron released a tweet with a link to a Google Docs form for submitting questions. The form was open until April 28th, and players were limited to one "lore related (not business, development, or systems / powers)" question. Upon submitting a question, the form noted that answers would be "made available sometime the week of May 3rd." After the form was closed, it told players that it was not accepting further submissions, but to "Try again next year!"
On May 17th, 2015 Positron released a Google Doc with the 2015 AMA answers. The devs that answered are:
The fourth Lore AMA at its time of release (May 17th, 2015) is as follows:
This document is presented largely as it appeared at release. Minor changes to formatting have been included, and images are shown rather than text links where relevant.
Matsuri: Were any aspects of the comics that were released inspired by often unknown or not implemented lore or storylines?
Positron: Pretty much all of them, especially the Blue King comics written by Rick Dakan. He took the parts of the story bible that he wrote that might not have been in the game at the time and fleshed them out into comic book form. Sean "Manticore" Fish also continued this tradition while running the Top Cow run.
Samuraiko: Which story arcs are you a) most proud of, b) most ashamed of, and c) most wishing you had the chance to go back and revamp lorewise?
Dr. Aeon: Most Proud Of: Dark Astoria. I'm not really ashamed of any of them, but I do wish I could go back and tweak the Roy Cooling story.
Jargo: Is Mender Silos actually Lord Nemesis?
Positron: Yes. He's from 10,000 years in the future though, enough time to truly rehabilitate and see the results of his actions. Since he's just a consciousness in a robot body, he just kept transferring into new (older) versions of himself to get past his time-travel tether.
Blackout: Ok, this is gonna be kind of a long one, but what was up with Eisensturm?
He's described as being the leader of the Storm Korps (The sort of Nazi 5th column equivalent during WWII, the column, whilst German were involved more with the Italians than with the Nazi's back in the day). Furthermore, what little lore there is on them places them at Normandy on D-Day, and the Statesman is described as being injured during this battle to the point where he was unable to take part in the rest of the war; Did they do that? Did Eisensturm and the Storm Korps beat down the most powerful superhero on the planet so badly that he was hospitalized for months? That's kind of significant for such an overlooked character.
In addition to this they also kidnapped the King of England (again pretty significant) and nearly succeeded in escaping with him. Finally the last piece of lore regarding them describes all but five of them being killed by the First Hero Brigade in the Black forest of Germany at the very end of the war, but it doesn't actually specify who survived. Did Eisensturm survive? If so is he still alive in a prison somewhere?
Positron: Short answer to a long question: I had completely forgotten about Eisensturm until you brought it up, that’s how little effect his story had on the game as a whole. Sorry.
@Nyght Blade: What events would you make to celebrate the 11th Anniversary to City of Heroes if the game was still running?
Positron: Something we would have figured out about 3 months before the anniversary, probably. Maybe less.
Zombie Fryer: What flavor jello is Hamidon?
Positron: None, since he's more of a celled organism than a by-product of animal bones.
Kheldarn: In the story arc, "The Cult Of The Shaper", from Diviner Maros, you encounter Barracuda trying to find out what happened to her. You end up having to fight, and defeat her, before she can find out. What happened to her that she's not supposed to discover, and why?
Positron: I must apologize, I don’t know the answer, and it looks like everyone who looked at these questions didn’t know either. This will have to go on as unanswered.
Blue Battler: Was there ever any thought given to introducing Professor Null and Revenant (Positron and Synapse's archenemies from the Freedom Phalanx novel) into the game?
Positron: I think there was plans for them for the unreleased "Rikti War" novel, but since that never materialized they were fair game for us to use, only no one on the team actually wanted to use them, so they went unused.
Felderburg: In the story for the Rikti invasion ([1]) it notes that the entire world was affected. Right after the first Rikti invasion, what was the status of Rikti in the rest of the world? Do places like London and Tokyo have the same sort of Rikti infestation that Paragon does?
Positron: The Rikti were pushed back to the portals in Paragon City, so that's where the majority of them have been found. There might be a small "undiscovered tribes" of Rikti popping up from time to time in other parts of the world, but it's rare.
@duane: Many hero missions to kick COT butt had sewer or abandon mine entries.
Is Oranbega "under" Paragon City or just accessible by dimensional portals "under" Paragon City?
Positron: Orenbega is literally under Paragon City, no dimensional portals needed to access it.
Lord Epsilon: My question is this: What is it like in Paragon City these days, now that the BSHA (Bureau of Super-Human Affairs) has been defunded? Are Skulls and Hellions just sitting around, moping about a lack of thrill in doing heists, since there's no one there that can legally stop them anymore?
Positron: I am sure an alternate reality like the one you describe exists.
6X: Say two mid-game villain groups had to merge together to become big enough to survive into the late game, what two groups do you think would work lore wise, and also from a gameplay challenge perspective? Were there plans for anything like this?
Positron: We’d never thought about combining groups for late game. We had a zillion ideas for new groups for late game though.
Todogut: Matt, you tweeted, "When I went to Korea to pitch CoH2, I set my luggage combo to be the planned release date. My luggage combo is 914." Please tell more about the pitch for CoH2. What did the pitch consist of? How was it received? Would CoH2 have replaced CoH... or would they have coexisted? How would CoH2 have differed from CoH? I'm very intrigued about what might have been.
Positron: I've probably said too much already with just that tweet.
Zombie Hustler: During the revamped Dark Astoria story arcs, Battle Maiden is freed by and teams up with Malta. What was planned for the ultimate outcome of this pairing?
Dr. Aeon: The plan was that she would help give a major upgrade to all of Malta by giving them the secrets to her nanite tech. The set up was for Incarnate-Level Malta with new powers, in the future. Imagine that!
KelpPlankton: Portal Corp introduced us to the idea of a CoH multiverse, but outside of Praetoria we mostly just saw ones that were like "world where <enemy group> took over the planet" and not a lot of fully alternate Earths like the Praetorians. Are there any other ones like that, drastically different Earths, that we never got to see?
Positron: Of course! However, the game wasn't a Sliders MMO, so visiting alternate dimensions was just one thing you could do, and Praetoria got the most amount of attention from us, so it's the most fully fleshed out. With Praetoria behind us we moved on to other classic tropey comic book stories, like the planned outer-space stuff and the moon base.
Black WildFire: You've said previously Lady Grey was being considered to be a sleeper agent for the Battalion. Does this mean she may not be human and instead be one of the many races absorbed into the Battalion? Was she planning on syphoning Darrin Wade's knowledge to use against Earth?
Protean: This story thread had a few iterations and some supporters of her being a double agent, while others wanted her to be loyal through and through.
Dr. Aeon: Adding to what Protean said, I think in the end we moved away from Lady Grey being a double agent and instead chose Steve Sheridan.
Czar Bal: I have always wonder who/what was Black Heart (Black Heart Memorial Hospital from many of the villain zones)?
The question about Black Heart appeared after the Lady Grey question and before its answers in the original document, and went unanswered. However, information may be found at the Black Heart Memorial Hospital article. According to Manticore's Canon Q&A Thread: "Black Heart is an homage to Sacred Heart Hospital. If there is a Black Heart in the Rogue Isles, he or she has yet to make a move."
Mesmorizer: Ruladak, Faathim, and Lunaruu were all very interesting and distinct personalities in the Shadow Shard. Did you ever plan to include Chularn the Slave Lord, Kuularth the Scavenger, Aloore
Positron: If the need arose to use more aspects, sure. But I don’t think we wanted to visit that well too often.
Zemo: Why was nessie such a weakling
Positron: That’s what she wanted you to believe.
Joosy aka Control Queen: What was the real secret (if any) behind Ouroboros? Where they recruiting us to save the future or actually destroy it?
Dr. Aeon: From my memory: Ouroboros's goal was to use the power of Rularuu to destroy Battalion. Mender Silos aka Nemesis witnessed Battallio's wiping the floor with Earth's heroes and villains, even after the whole world united to take them on. After centuries on the run and planning everything out, Nemesis realized the only way to defeat Battalion would be to unleash Rularuu upon the core structure of the group. So, Ouroboros wanted to save the timeline by using Rularuu as a nuclear option, while Dream Doctor and his team wanted to find a different solution. Internally, when we were planning it out, the idea was that when the time actually arrived, we'd show the core Battalion leadership to be someting like Incarnate Level 100, but that you could defeat them with the help of Rularuu.... which a whole other story!
Fescu: As far as I know there were never any actual retcons when Going Rogue went live, and the old lore states that Praetorian Earth did have a Rikti Invasion. A few of the new missions even have war walls in them. So how come the populace doesn't appear to know about the Rikti?
Positron: We retconned out the Rikti invasion of Praetoria and replaced it with the Hamidon-threat. Sorry to burst your bubble.
SaffyMcA: Was there a lore-specific reason why some NPC groups had access to power combinations that players couldn't, such as the Tsoo with their storm summoning martial artists?
Positron: Devs cheat.
@Artificial Intel: What exactly happened to Arachnos, Lord Recluse, and the four generals during the events of Going Rogue? It seemed like outside of a brief excursion into Praetoria and the Well, they completely took the backseat compared to the Freedom Phalanx and Longbow.
Dr. Aeon: If I remember, Arachnos was actually trying to support the Resistance in Praetoria to destabilize Cole's regime. Lord Recluse wanted Tyrant out of the picture, knowing that Tyrant killed Recluse in Praetoria's timeline.
NerfedAgain: Where did all the witches, werewolves, ghosts, zombies and other Halloween-specific monsters go after Halloween ended? And was there anymore story behind the Deadly Apocalypse Halloween event beyond different groups showing up and summoning a giant monster that had to be stopped? I always wanted to know what they were up to during the rest of the year.
Dr. Aeon: You thought they were monsters? My God.
E.Normus: What was the long-term story and details about the rest of the Incarnate Powers and the end of that storyline?
Dr. Aeon: i25 (I think?) was going to have Battalion's first invasion of Earth in Kallisti Wharf. We would have established 2 competing "time travel" groups; Dream Doctor's team and Ouroboros. Dream Doctor still would have been the, "we can defeat Battalion if we figure out something", while Mender Silos was in the camp of, "the only way to destroy Battalion is to unleash Rularuu upon them and then somehow destroy Rularuu." We had revealed that Rularuu being sealed in the Shadow Shard was not part of Dream Doctor's plan. The Dagger of Jocas was supposed to kill Rularuu, but someone had gone back in time to tamper with the ritual and instead created a container for Rularuu to be used in the future. There was going to be a lot of fighting with Battalion and eventually culminate in the two sides coming together to release Rularuu when it became obvious that there was no way to defeat Battalion. The players would've faced the leadership of Battalion, who were out of anyone's league, essentially fighting the end boss of a game, but you're only on hour 2. The goal of the fight would've been to release Rularuu. Dream Doctor would have sacrificed his life to bring Rularuu back into the world to destroy Battalion, but not blink all of the universe out of existence. That was going to be the end of the current Incarnate storyline, but we already had plans for what was after that. The leadership of Battalion were essentially Incarnate level 100; players would've been barely incarnate level 56. There would be a LOT of bad guys between 56 and 100 that now no longer had to fear Battalion's influence to deal with. Also, I think we had some vague ideas to do more with the Shadow Shard, assuming that Rularuu was now even further shattered than before. ... I think.
MechaCrash: One of the generic villains from bank robbery missions, Pyra, looked like she had cat ears. Was she a catgirl or what?
Positron: Yes.
Michiel: One of my favorite villain groups was the Vahzilok, and I was always hoping that there would eventually be higher level content for the good doctor. It just seemed like a natural progression for a man bent on immortality to show back up and be more powerful than when we lasts him. Were there any plans to have new Vahzilok content, or to create another higher level, horror themed villain group?
Dr. Aeon: No plans that I'm aware of, but it would've been cool to bring Dr. Vahzilok in as a support character.
Gaymer: Where there any future plans for Lusca (story arch development to further flesh her out)?
Positron: Not that I can recall.
Elindor: What was the source of Kheldian abilities? With Shapeshifting, Energy Projection, Flight, Healing and that Team Buff going on, the best I can come up with is a combination of being able to freely convert matter and energy and the Force.
Positron: 
Capt. Obvious: Do you think you would have added additional "media" contacts like Radio, and Television.
Protean: We had HD in Praetoria and had talked at length about Internet
Mentalshock: What would the next step have been if Nemesis had succeeded in uploading himself into the Rikti Hive Mind? I find it hard to believe that that was a final goal - obviously the greatest mastermind in the world would have had plans to use such an asset.
Dr. Aeon: Go.Hunt.Kill.Heroes
Mr. Titan: Was "Hero 1" originally a placeholder name for the cape mission that just stuck?
Positron: Hero 1 was in the backstory for years before we decided to put a cape mission in. His concept art was the most “capey” so we drummed up the idea that you had to honor his memory in order to get a cape.
Pogoman: Were there any easter eggs you guys put into the game for the players to find and the players never did? If so what were they?
Positron: We get this question every year, and every year it’s harder and harder to remember what you guys did and did not find. Probably at this point just in-jokes and names based on people we know.
HarvesterOfEyes: Whatever happened to Tabitha Fabish?
She was the original owner of the magic-origin shops in Talos and IP. One day her signage was replaced with that of a Mexican restaurant, and when those were removed the shops were taken over by Pandora's Box.
As Frida Lyngstad would say, "there's something going on."
Positron: She slipped dimensions trying a new spell. Lost forever.
Rise of Heroes: Hey, i'm kinda wanna know when does the City of Heroes return, i actually getting each tears when i see it's gone, Please return :_: When??
Positron: Not something I can answer, sadly.
Venture: Excalibur as seen on Ms Liberty's belt does not match Excalibur as seen wielded by Hero 1.
- Images linked in AMA question (Click for full size images)
- 20120825164449!Ms. Liberty.jpg
Miss Liberty in game
An unused model of Hero 1
Is there a lore reason for this or is it more a design issue due to the size of Ms Lib's character in game?
Positron: Artistic license. That and Excalibur can morph itself into whatever shape it (i.e. the artist drawing it) desires.
Arkasas: What was the story rationale going to be behind opening Kallisti Wharf?
Dr. Aeon: Kallisti Wharf was one of the "in between" neighborhoods that was decimated in the Rikti War. The opening was to commemorate the rebuilding of the wharf and also Paragon City's continued recovery. It was going to be marked by the opening of Statesman One Plaza in honor of Statesman, which would be a huge tower dedicated to the pursuit of technology and science. It was going to be previously named after a brilliant scientist, Emil Christie, but he offered instead to name it after Statesman after the events in Who Will Die. Emil Christie was a pupil of Steven Sheridan, and the two worked hard to build the infrastructure of the tower.
The storyline of Kallisti Wharf was going to be seen on two sides - heroes and villains. Heroes would be working to help secure Kallisti Wharf in the final days before its release, while villains were working towards establishing their own villain base in the heart of Kallisti Wharf with the aim of taking over Statesman One Plaza. The villain storyline was going to be the culmination of several story previous story arcs, where the villain had gathered their own villainous inner circle of previous contacts - evil Penelope Yin, Transmutor, Agent G (if he was still alive), Leonard, Dean MacArthur, to name a few.
Both storylines led up to the opening of Statesman One Plaza; the villain was going to ambush the opening, use a device to knock out the huge amount of heroes present, and take the Plaza for themselves. The heroes just finished foiling a plot from a smaller group of villains to do the same and was attending the opening. As Emil Christie was giving his speech, a member of Battalion appears, tells everyone in Paragon to bow, then unleashes the first wave of Battalion to attack and take Statesman One Plaza. The villain and hero storylines would have converged here to fight off Battalion's first attack, but were forced to retreat when a Battalion ship appeared and turned the tables. Battalion would have also kidnapped Steven Sheridan.
There were going to be a lot of cool things after this that may or may not have worked since we were still testing them. I had set up a castle defense mission where Battalion discovered the villain's base and was sending soldiers to destroy it. As the villain for the first part of the mission, you could fly around and place your lackeys around the area to defend against Battalion, while also dropping down turrets etc. to help them. After the first few waves were defeated, you'd jump back down and fight the mission's boss yourself.
This is getting kind of long without me even getting into the meat of the story, so I'll wrap it up. Statesman One Plaza eventually opens up a gigantic portal into the Shadow Shard, with Rularuu trying to escape. A genetically modified Shiva, controlleed by Battalion, appears near Earth and begins to bombard the portal with meteors. Battalion had figured out that the only way Earth could kill them was by using Rularuu, so they were going to use Shiva to destroy it from far away. Players would eventually close the portal and discover that Steven Sheridan was an agent of Battalion.
The final act of the storyline was going to be a showdown against Shiva. Battalion was going to order Shiva to bombard the planet and be done with it. Emil Christie concocts a device to drain Shiva of her powers. If you were the hero, Emil Christie was willingly working with you. If you were the villain, you kidnapped Emil Christie and forced him to make the device in order to transfer Shiva's power to you.
The last mission was going to be a showdown in space on top of Shiva (which we had already built before the closure). You'd fight waves of Shivans while Emil Christie's device went to work. At a certain point, Steve Sheridan appears to fight you as a representative of a "higher" member of Battalion. The heroes and villains get infused with the power of Shiva and go toe to toe with Sheridan, eventually knocking him down back to Earth. The player chases after Sheridan to a small crater his impact made. The fight continues for a while before Sheridan retreats, admitting that more care would have to be taken when fighting the players.
The player's Shiva power would be depleted after that, and the arc would be complete. Shiva would remain de-powered near Earth, and the initial Battalion attack would have been deflected, but now Earth would know that it was "on" - Battalion had arrived and had no intention of stopping until Earth submitted or was destroyed.
So yeah, the Kallisti Wharf arc was going to be pretty small.
Sam T (@Psyte): If you fast-forwarded the game's story by 10 years, which of the low-level enemy factions would have "graduated" to the big leagues (level 40-50 and/or Incarnate content)? The Tsoo? Legacy Chain? Wyvern?
Dr. Aeon: Tsoo - Incarnate-level ink, we hinted at that in Dark Astoria.
Demon Cat: How were Portal Corp dimensions designated? For example you had: Upsilon Beta 9-6 (Praetoria) and Omicron Zeta 12-20 (Freakshow world). Was there a method to the madness or was it simply random?
Positron: Whatever the writer needed at the time, so... random.
MattBold: I NEED more information and Lore about the Kheldians. Please tell me everything.
Positron:
Exclius: What lore did you have regarding the Star Sentinels. Were they just a Green Lantern analogue or where they something more specific? I heard about them in some of the Battalion lore and they instantly caught my attention.
Positron: They were Green Lantern/Alien Legion analogues that didn’t get fleshed out greater than that.
Tataku: So one thing missing from the comic book experience of CoH was the uber-powerful alien warlord, ala Darksied or Thanos. Were there any plans to implement such an AV? Perhaps the head of Battalion?
Protean: Battalion was run by a war council of galactic warlords, each one being immensely powerful and leading vast armies of subjugated alien races.
General X: What would COH2 entail? Lore-wise, how power sets and archetypes would work, whether it was a new engine, or anything you can openly share about it?
Positron: Well, you see... waitaminute, this isn’t a CoH question, this is a question about CoH2! Nice try!
Nightsjester: Was there ever any plans or ideas to redeem Lord Recluse?
Dr. Aeon: I don't think we planned to ever fully redeem him, but there were plans to make him a more relatable super-villain. We had him try to go after Tyrant in Praetoria with the full might of Arachnos in order to stop Tyrant's further attacks on Primal Earth. Lord Recluse would have been researching how to empower Arachnos to Incarnate-levels in order to fight of Battalion.
We wanted to make it a big deal that Lord Recluse was one of the few super villains in charge of both an army and an entire nation, the Rogue Isles. That makes him a villain with something to defend and something to lose, and he would behave in that way. Since we were dealing with lots of inter-galactic threats, Recluse would, of course, be mobilizing his army to deal with it and making deals not to get in anyone's way, because why would Arachnos be fighting Longbow when Battalion is attacking?
However, we also wanted to make it abundantly clear that Recluse is still the bad guy. Even if Arachnos was working together with other groups, they would still be stealing information on them, making plans to deal with them when the bigger threat was over, and other nefarious things.
Firemoth: Why did Statesman never take his wife to the Well of the Furies? Did he not know he was immortal at the time?
Positron: Recluse destroyed the Well, there were no more waters running to take her to.
Phoxx: Are you happy with the direction the new Super Hero MMO's are going considering a lot of them seem to borrow ideas from COH/COV i.e. Champions Online, DC Universe Online, etc
Positron: Honestly, I haven’t really been paying attention to the other Superhero MMOs. Obviously if they are borrowing ideas they A) want old CoH players and B) We were probably doing something right.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oak: How exactly did the Praetorian war get started? What catalyzed Cole's interest in Primal Earth to the point of full-on invasion and war?
Protean: Cole's primary interest in Primal Earth was as an escape plan from Hamidon.
Overclock: With all the time travel that happened after Issue 11 and the release of Ouroboros, were there ever thoughts about retconning out some bit of established game lore? Bonus points if there were and the reason was that what had been established in-game and was a pain for the new content writers to deal with (aka the reason most retcons seem to happen in comics).
Positron: We retconned stuff out all the time. Players hated it whenever we did it though.
AMA: 2016
Positron posted a Google Doc form in an unofficial thread on the Titan Network forums.
On April 28th, 2016, Positron released a Google Doc with the 2016 AMA answers. The devs that answered are:
The fifth Lore AMA at its time of release (April 28th, 2016) is as follows:
I'd like to take a moment to thank Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann, without whom this Loregasm would not have been possible (or very much more boring at any rate). Honestly I'd forgotten pretty much everything Sean added to this Q&A until he wrote it down. My old age and distance from the project has forced me to make room in my head for other stuff. While I'd like to keep doing these, I will tell you that if Sean's not here to save my bacon next year, these are going to get a lot more boring.
Samuraiko: What, if any, was your favorite 'lore conspiracy theory' that the playerbase had going? Something that the players were going nuts trying to figure out, and were probably WAY off base. ("Such-and-such is a spy," "this is a Nemesis plot," that kind of thing.)
Dr. Aeon: The really annoying thing was when the lore conspiracy theories were true. I think people had mentioned before Dark Astoria that they thought the Dream Doctor was the Letter Writer, and I remember thinking, "How the heck would you think that?" We also used to joke that anyone could tell what we were planning if they knew the IP of the studio, because then they could see all the pages we were looking at on paragonwiki for reference, since it had all the details of everything we ever did in the game more than we did.
Positron: Most players were really good about just enjoying the game we served them, but a few players (even some devs in the studio) never really could accept a GOOD version of Nemesis, Mender Silos, and kept picking at and digging for a future betrayal that would never come.
I like to believe that people can change, and that a version of Nemesis forced to live and see the world he tried to conquer, conquered by someone else due to his actions, and forced to work for those new conquerors... he had to change. Silos would never go against the modern version of himself (Paradox and all that), but Ouroboros had no ulterior motives. The Letter Writer's warnings were just that, cautions against what COULD be, not what was GOING to be.
@Placta: Which Council AVs returned to the 5th Column when it resurfaced?
Dr. Aeon: If I recall correctly, Arakhn and Nosferatu rejoined Requiem, who had also recruited Reichsman during the events of Dark Astoria. I think Vandal was sticking with the Council due to their technology, and Archon Burkholder would've flipped at the moment it looked like the 5th Column was winning... but of course Requiem wouldn't have allowed him back. Protean is Protean, and was loyal to no one. Maestro continued to serve with the Council.
Fink: Is it all a Nemesis plot?
Positron: People ask us all the time "why did you never finish x or y plotline?" Well, the answer is two-fold. First, player fatigue. Praetorian Earth was SUPER fun to visit, but after a while, the players wanted something NEW. We still had a ton of stories to tell there, but we made the decision to leave it alone and move along the main (Coming Storm) storyline of the game.
Second, that plotline was likely shepherded and nurtured through to life by a designer that no longer worked on the game. Just like plotlines in comic books, writers aren't (and frankly shouldn't) be asked to pick up and finish something started by someone else. Hopefully then have their OWN ideas and can take a plot from start to fruition, and leave just enough lore and plot hooks for another writer to, if they wanted, pick up and make their own.
AJ: What are other "Elseworlds" you could have envisioned exploring eventually?
Positron: All the different Statesmen/Stateswomen from the various universes was something I really wanted to see happen. Also exploring what happened to the Omega Team on the Rikti Homeworld (and Ruin's takeover of their version of Australia) was something I was super into.
Not the Gamester: Did the Gamester have an actual identity and backstory or was he just an excuse to have a winter holiday event?
Positron: He absolutely did. Manticore (Sean Dornan-Fish) did a backstory for him. He was basically the City of Heroes version of Arcade/The Trickster, and a convenient go-to for holiday events in-game. What it was, I have no idea.
Cobalt Azurean: Would Statesman ever have returned?
Dr. Aeon: After I went through all the trouble of killing him, someone in the studio mentioned they wanted to bring him back eventually. I don't know if they were serious or trying to get a rise out of me, but I always got really angry because I worked so hard to kill him in the first place.
Positron: As you can see Sean never liked the idea of him returning, but he was 100% coming back (on my watch anyway). First let's make something super clear: Primal Statesman was dead-dead. Sean did go through a ton of work to kill him, and he did successfully do so.
But there is more than one Statesman in the multiverse, and you end up capturing one in an Incarnate Trial: Tyrant. The plan was, in a couple years, have Statesman "mysteriously return," but in reality it was Marcus Cole from Praetoria, now reformed (for now anyway). The Phalanx would know the truth, but the general populace would see it as a miracle in a time of desperate need.
Felderburg: What ideas for Signature Story Arcs beyond the two that were released were being floated around?
Dr. Aeon: I was working on a 3rd sig arc when we shut down. It was going to be a combo of a personal story and a sig story where the player played from the POV of Scirocco defecting to Paragon w/Ice Mistral, trying to become a hero with Serafina guiding him. He'd unlock his Incarnate powers, which was become a dual-wielder (because it's awesome) and earning the mantle of Scirocco. Ice Mistral would defect back to Arachnos because being the good guy was too hard. Scirocco would go back to try to rescue her, facing Mako in the Golden Giza and Black Scorpion in Grandville square. He'd be defeated by Ghost Widow, and in that moment he'd realize for everything he felt about Ghost Widow, she'd never betray Arachnos, not even for him. Lord Recluse orders Ghost Widow to finish him off, but Ms. Liberty and her team breaks in to save Scirocco. He and Ice Mistral escape through the tunnels beneath Grandville, where they'd have a final showdown with Lord Recluse. They beat him and retreat back to Paragon. The plan was an issue later to replace Scirocco with the Mu we introduced in Dark Astoria.
Blue Battler: In the Freedom Phalanx Novel, Positron and Synapse are long time friends before they got their powers and Synapse is an accountant. I remember an in-game plaque that implied Synapse was also a scientist like Positron and they don't get along very well. What was game canon? Was Synapse a scientist or accountant? Were he and Posi childhood friends who just liked to give each other a hard time?
Positron: Ah, the backstory paradox. I wrote the plaque based on what Sean Dornan-Fish and I came up with for Synapse and Positron's backstories when we launched City of Heroes.
Then we work-for-hired out the novel and Sean forgot all about that dumb plaque when giving the writer the backstories to work into the story.
Game canon was that Synapse was a scientist, not an accountant. While we usually tried to come up with some cockamamie answer to smooth over canon mistakes like this without dreadedly "ret-conning" stuff, some stuff is just too contradictory. Terrible answer I know, but you get what you pay for.
See Also
External Links
- The apparent first recorded use of the term "Loregasm" in the Signature Story Arc ViDoc Outtakes (The "loregasm" section is at 3:19)
- Dr. Aeon's blog detailing game industry stories, including City of Heroes behind the scenes insight.