CoH Loregasm: 2013 Edition
On April 28th, 2013, 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. If you have a laundry list of questions, come back later and see if your question was asked by someone else, if a few days have gone by and it’s still not asked, then add a couple more questions.
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.
This document will be open for editing until 12:00pm PST, 4/20/13
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]
A)
Note the Q) line is bolded, the A) line remains unbolded. The A) line is where your answer will appear.``````````````````````````
QUESTIONS ONLY BELOW HERE```````````````````````````````
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)
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)
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)
B) 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)
B) 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)
B)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).
B)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)
B) 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)
B) 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)
B)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?)
B) 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)
C) 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.
B) 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)
B) 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)
B) 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)
B) 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)
B) Well there was also John “Protean” Hegner’s idea.....(Hosun)
C) 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)
D) 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)
B) 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)
B)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)
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)
B) Sally was real in my heart. <3 (John)
C) 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)
B) 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)
13/04/2013, 18h14
