Eva Destruction

Nice try, but get with the times, man. These days 1) nearly everything is co-op, and 2) every group of meddling do-gooders includes a few trigger-happy Vigilantes.

Ew, I hope not. Rularuu is cool. The Well is stupid.

That would mean the echoes and the reflections are the essences of defeated enemies drawn from the Well, since the Lore pets use the same visual and their description clearly states that's what they are.

I don't think they have to be from the same source at all. I have an Invul who is tech origin and wears power armor. You have an Invul who is a mutant. Same result, different source. Of course making them the same would give the devs an excuse to tie Rularuu to the puddle of annoyance, which would diminish his coolness, and then he'll probably turn out to be another alternate Marcus Cole, so I fully expect them to do it, but that doesn't mean I think it's the only option.

Do we actually know what the Dream Doctor's powers are? We do know he was able to trap Rularuu in the Shadow Shard, although he needed the Midnighters' help, and it's established that you can use magic to transverse dimensions....and that's the beauty of magic. Mechanically, magic origin characters are limited as much as the rest of us, but storywise, it can do anything.

So she's Dominatrix?

Those of us who do a Lambda > BAF > Watch the league scatter when the leader suggests Keyes about once a week would also be completely unaffected.

It would be nice to have a "no powers" room and a "powers" room, preferably with target dummies so you can see how your attacks look in the real world and allied target dummies so you can see how your buffs look.

Yes yes YES to better lighting.

Alternate reality versions of you clearly follow the game's established rules regarding alternate reality versions of people; they are as similar to or different from the original as the plot demands. They're no more "you" than Neuron is Synapse. That doesn't make it good storytelling, but at least it's consistent.

Future you on the other hand...tell me, would you buy future Fusionette as the letter writer? Would you buy future Mako? There's a difference between character development due to unknown circumstances and a total personality rewrite. What about stupid characters? Or nihilistic villains?

If I was writing the story, I'd have him just rebuild Ubelmann's time machine. It would make sense and wouldn't require any convoluted plot contrivances. As for the time cancer, the Council's resident mad biologist was one of Requiem's original recruits; what's to stop Requiem from recruiting him back, and having him come up with a cure? Or his Nictus half could protect him. Or Dirge of Entropy is really calling the shots, and doesn't care if his host bites it.

I'm still incredibly disappointed that the opportunity to expand the Path of the Dark storyline with Cimerora was wasted in favor of some Origin of Power/alternate Statesman/time-**** crap.

I do like the idea of Requiem being the letter writer. It was my original guess, actually, because the first thing I thought of when we started getting the letters was the souvenir from the Ubelmann the Unknown arc.

There is also the one from the villain morality mission who hung out with Frostfire, drank from the Well, became a god, and destroyed everything. I don't blame you for forgetting that one. Not only is it massive character hijacking just to show off the fancy new doppelganger options, the whole mission is buggy and terribly designed and doesn't even make any sense unless you ignore about 90% of what's going on.

Note that I fully expect the letter writer to be future me. The devs seem to love writing our characters for us lately.

Because he's dying from time cancer. In my older characters' personal storylines, he's dead by now. I'd totally buy Requiem though. How did Requiem get to Cimerora anyway?

Lowbie friendly AE missions appeal to vets more than new players. New players don't need them. They still have developer-created content to experience. The vets who have already done said content a million times can, like you said, easily reach Kings Row or Port Oakes and use the AE there. It's certainly a lot easier than finding an actual lowbie-friendly arc in the morass of 1-54 custom group arcs with Extreme Archvillain warnings.

But if there's no black guy, and there's no tough chick, and there's no bad*** old guy....

....then it must be the girlfriend. Which means Numina, since Sister Psyche's assets are too valuable to waste.

That's also the old era when "unsoloable" didn't translate to "I double triple dog dare you" to some players.

I think it's pretty strongly implied that Nemesis was responsible for the Superdyne experiments in the '80s, which led to breaking the dimensional barrier (sort of), which allowed casual extradimensional travel, which has caused us nothing but trouble.

He basically has super-charisma/super-leadership powers of some kind. I can't remember where this is mentioned specifically, but I'm pretty sure it's in-game somewhere.

I think it's still very likely. The more recent letters being tossed around are kind of like the Smoking Man showing up at the end of a Weird Occurrence of the Week X-Files episode and saying something deliberately cryptic, just to remind the viewer that there's an overarching plot line and what they just saw may or may not be relevant to it, but don't worry, we'll get back to the big plot next week.

I think his name is Plot Device and his true motive is to inspire repeated forum threads regarding his identity and motives.

Dr. Aeon the dev wasn't a dev until we'd already spent months sticking our heads into Dr. Aeon the mad scientist's creation.

All characters who have run any of the Crey arcs should know this. By the time you've finished Janet Kellum's arc, you know the corruption goes all the way to the top....and from that character's point of view, everyone else knows this too, or at least suspects. And yet you're supposed to sit back and let the innocent and ignorant stick their heads in something designed by a mad scientist (which you also know, if you've done the STF) and distributed by....a corporation that from your viewpoint doesn't officially exist anymore, at least not in Paragon. That's not very heroic, now is it?

That's what happens when you keep pulling plot elements out of your behind.

Oh, but we can affect them. I'm sure 48 of Primal Earth's greatest heroes will eventually be able to resolve this mess, in a power-delay filled slideshow of epic proportions.

Nothing. You will get lots of levels really fast so you'll be ready when it's time to stick your head in an energy source that can't decide if it's sentient or not and can't decide if it's insane or just acting out of self-preservation and is probably doing the cosmic force equivalent of Curly spinning around on the floor going "wubwubwubwubwub."

What could possibly go wrong?

I agree. That's why I hate the muddy white GFX soup you get when you have more than maybe four high level characters in the same place at the same time.

Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Not in and of itself, no. But as a part of the whole, definitely.
In many cases, yes. In some cases, no.
No. One ***-pull after another. One story that railroads the player character after another. Even CoV gives the player character better motivation to continue than the Incarnate storyline. The lore is secondary to gameplay and it is very glaringly obvious. It's at the point where I'm wondering how many story elements are being dictated by marketing, and that's a very bad sign.

No, I'd rather they spend a significant amount of time researching the old lore so they can stop contradicting it. The game lore didn't become a right mess until fairly recently.