Samuel_Tow

Nice straw man, but what you're hearing is actually a consumer mentality - I have the money, let me buy what I want. And I, for one, approve.

If I wanted to stoop to your level, I could throw around words like elitism and jealousy, but it really doesn't come to that. These are simply people willing to use the Paragon Market for what it was designed - to buy things they would previously have had to unlock in other ways.

Personally, the fewer our "status symbols" became, the happier I'll be. Uniqueness should come from what a player has created, not what a player has bought, hence why I'd rather let everyone buy everything.

I'll trade you - the Rikti rifle I'll never unlock from my Bots MM for a whole bunch of Beam Rifle weapons for Bots in return

Actually, it was bAss ackwards, but yes, it was a Vanguard energy weapon.

While we're on the subject of Rikti Weapons, can we please get those for sale in the Paragon Store? Pretty please?

I agree wholeheartedly. I have a sneaking suspicion that we've never had quote-unquote "writers" work on City of Heroes probably since Rick Dakan, so much as we've had "mission designers." That's not a dig against Doc Aeon or the others, mind you - newer content in this game has been quite amazing. But at the same time, what we're getting isn't stories, it's "story arcs" in the in-game definitions of it. We're not so much getting stories represented by game mechanics as we are getting game mechanics strung together into a story, and that's not the right way to do it. Why? Well, allow me to elaborate.

A "story" is not just a sequence of events listed in chronological order. That's a script or a storyBOARD. A story is something we care about, it has characters with unique personalities, it has a setting, it has history, it has a broader world that it exists in, it has emotion, it has a whole number of things that go beyond just game mechanics. That's the difference between City of Heroes and Praetoria. City of Heroes has its "story bible," and yes I'm sure it exists, even if not many people reference it. It has a LOT of background information about things that happened before, history, setting, established characters and old events. It feels like a world that we're only seeing a small part of. It represents its own established fictional universe that our writers ought to draw more from. Prateotia, by contrast, is wholly and entirely limited to what's onscreen. There's only as much "story" as can be explored through arcs and nothing beyond. When new ideas are introduced, they're introduced completely out of nowhere because Praetoria has absolutely no backstory or history or broader fictional universe to draw on. It's not a world, it's just a series of story arcs.

To me, designing a story arc first and then trying to tie a story around it is akin to designing a character costume first and then trying to come up with a concept for that costume. It's not necessarily "bad" or "wrong" so much as it misses out on having a real, organic story behind it. When you're trying to explain away gameplay, you typically do only as much as it's necessary for gameplay to make sense and move on, whereas when you're writing a story first to draw gameplay out of, you get the context of a world that exists beyond just the confines of the game. And that's where a professional writer can shine in ways a mission designer who's just good at writing really can't, not for lack of skill but for the nature of the design approach.

I'll close by saying this: I like the old Launch City of Heroes story arcs the best of the whole game. I know the Nethergoat and the Techbot will kick me in the shins and say they're horrible gameplay, and they are. But I like the STORIES they tell and the way they tie into the broader world. I like the City of Heroes of old less because it was good at letting me punch things in the face or good at having characters die dramatically, but more because it was a well-crafted, tightly-woven world within which stories made sense and motivated me to want to learn more.

Personally, I'd like to see Celestial fixed first since that's already on the table, and if that works fine, then we'll campaign for more. I have a sneaking suspicion this is being done at least semi on the down-low as a good gesture from our kind character artist and I'd rather we, as a community, didn't come off as always asking more but rather as appreciative. We can always ask for more later, but for now that ought to be enough. And I DO want the old pieces back, bind you.

As far as Celestial - I'd imagine the non-pretinted ones would come as alternate variants. I can't imagine replacing the pieces being a good idea. Even if I don't like them, I'm sure there are many who do like them pretinted and it makes no sense to steal from Jack to pay Jill, as it were. Add them in as options instead of replacements. It makes sense.

I'm with this guy. I can see the benefit of exclusivity, but I also feel it needs to end eventually. After a set amount of time, just sell the damn thing. People who got it "exclusive" will have already gotten a lot of mileage out of it and by the time it comes out for sale, I'm sure there will be new stuff to be exclusive to take its place for that time.

And no, I have no problem with everything in the store being earnable in-game, perhaps with the exception of "inventory" slot increases. Costume pieces, tempermanent powers, content access, the works. If people want to waste their time unlocking those per-character "for free," then so be it. I'll still pay to have them globally unlocked. In fact, I'd pay to have badge-locked costume pieces globally unlocked. Come on, sell me the Rularuu Weapons. Sell me the Rikti weapons. I'll buy 'em.

Honestly? I should. It's actually what I'd do for people who asked me to test-run their story arcs - basically make a huge list of everything from the text I had a comment on, with reasons why it stands out and suggestions to improve it. That's not a bad idea.

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This isn't why I came to post right now, though. Something occurred to me just now, a praise I gave the game in chat a few minutes ago that... I don't think I've ever given it before. I ran through some of Night Ward, and for as grim as the setting is, there are a lot of decent jokes, too. I found myself reading along and laughing out loud, and commenting that this was actually pretty funny... And then it struck me that I don't think I've ever - EVER - praised the game's writing for being funny. Good, yes. Imaginative, often. Inspiring, sometimes. Funny? Not really. In fact, every attempt at humour I've run into, such as *spit* Dillo have come off as more aggravating, the way genuinely good and funny voice actors devolve into irritating pests when they try to do a "funny" voice for a children's cartoon. But First Ward actually had me laughing along with the characters, and that's new to me.

I have to say, the Animus Arcana are probably my favourite so far, pun-dropping Lightning Storms notwithstanding. They all sound so earnest, so honest. "Hey, I like you! Let me help you! I like helping you! I like everybody!" It's making me chuckle even as I think about it To some extent, it's probably residual humour left over from the Aperture Science turrets which would say things like "Hello, friend." before opening fire or "I don't blame you." when defeated, all in this tiny, earnest voice, but a Fireball eager to make friends and setting everything on fire in the process was just too good to resist.

Honestly, I like the structure of the zone and I like the way it's being treated seriously, but at the same time with a nod towards the goofier aspects that are pretty much unavoidable. If there's one thing that RUINS a dramatic story and turns it into angst is when you realise it's infinitely goofy, but the author is still adamant about selling it with a straight face. You can tell he's both trying WAAAY too hard and you can tell it's not working. Night Ward doesn't have that problem. It is, at its heart, a serious story, but it has a very, very good balance of drama to levity. At least so far, I'm only an arc in. But I liked what was done with Katie, I liked what was done with the Midnighters, I REALLY like what's done with the Drudges... I like Night Ward. So much, in fact, that I wonder where this person who wrote it was when we were waiting for First Ward, because the two stories could not be more diametrically opposite if you drew them on either side of a circle. Good Lord!

That's what I was going to say. Almost everything people cite as "good villain content" - Dean McArthur, Leonard, Vincent Ross, Ruben, Hammond - all of it has the overriding motif of letting the villain win. None of it is particularly gruesome or vile, but all of it is empowering in the sense that we met with opposition and we showed them. Even though the end of Leonard's arc is pretty much a total loss, I still left that one feeling pumped because I kicked Protean's ***, I ruined his plan AND I stole all of his money! Ha! Recover from that, loser! You'll shining shoes in the 5th Column now! I love it!

And this is why we love you, Dink! Well, part of why

*edit*
Also, again: Thank you! This is bigger than you suspect, I'd wager. Fixing Celestial after we made such furore about it and got nowhere before is big, don't get me wrong. It's an awesome change. But fixing a long-standing problem by player request is arguably even bigger, because it gives me and others the feeling that we actually ARE being heard and that we actually CAN appeal to the development team. It reminds us that you guys care, and that's BIG.

Yes, exactly. It's precisely this kind of customization that I'm looking to achieve. Being able to layer clothes on top of a base skin would open many doors, especially if they're designed to be skin-tight clothes. What I mean by "skintigh" is clothes that fit tightly over the skin and don't leave any visible gaps between skin and clothing article, and specifically that aren't loose. As you said, jackets and shirts work sometimes, but their problem is they're loose and baggy a lot of the time, and mostly that you can see under them. If we had a variety of "tights" that acted like shirts but had the gaps closed and were smaller and in more varied shapes, that might replace a good three quarters of might tights-with-skin-wearing females. It sure would help all of my non-human ones, I can tell you that much.

That would be incredibly cool of you, actually. I assume it'll take a lot of work so I can see how that might need permission, and I assume it would come as alternate versions, but believe me, Dink - if you can pull that off, I am going to be ecstatic.

I have a couple of characters whom this affects: Stardiver who's using non-matching shoulders, chest and belt and Lighteater who's wearing chest, gloves, boots and belt that I really couldn't colour anything but grey because the set doesn't take colour well. If we get a version of Celestial that takes colour more, I will redo both of their costumes and actually go back to playing them again

Right, right, right, of course. But I mean as a means of getting base skin customization AND dual-colour customization on the actual costume pieces AND solving the problem of "the wet t-shirt." I'm never in favour of taking things out of the editor, I'm just brainstorming a way we can have everything nice.

I don't disagree at all. You're entirely correct that the developers assuming why my heroes are being heroes is a bad idea, and it's actually a lot of what sinks Twinshot despite being an otherwise OK story. However, what I'm getting at is that writing for heroes needs to extend past the themes of "Something is happening! You hero! Go stop it!" Like villains, heroes also need arcs that span more of the realm of motivations. For instance, Hero Corps would have been a great opportunity to expand this. Do you remember what Hero Corps used to be? Basically, heroes for hire. Mercenaries. You go to the station, get a job that law enforcement can't handle, you do it, go back, get paid and go about your way.

Is such a character not a hero? Well, it depends on your interpretation, and Hero Corps itself was under heavy criticism in storyline, but it was still one way to present a version of heroism that wasn't goody two-shoes. Villains have a mission that allows them to gain (if temporarily) their own clone factory. Why can't heroes have a mission where they gain (again, temporarily) their own munitions factory or ninja training school or high-yield all-purpose power source? Why can't heroes ever go in search of a mystic artefact that would give them great power? Why can't heroes ever do anything for money?

The trick here is that you don't tell people WHY they're doing things, you just tell them WHAT they're doing and let people figure out if that's something they'd proceed. Is your hero idealistic to a fault and refuses to take money for his good deeds? That's fine, pick stories that don't have you be hired. Is your hero afraid of ninja? That's fine, don't try to secure your own Definitely Not Ninja High School. Give heroes options that cover a broader range of motivations, then let players figure out how the story interacts with what's in their head. For as much as we badmouth villainous writing, at least that it has to a decent degree by this point.

Look at your basic Paper mission. You can gain artefacts, find information, gain power, get back at people, gain favour with people and so forth. Now look at your basic Scanner mission. There's a threat and it needs to be stopped. Go stop it. That's it.

Indeed, they've been getting a LOT better about this recently. In fact, it's been so good of late (at least in terms of what's actually ON the Isles), that the whole "feel" of that side of the game has changed. Once upon a time, City of Villains, to quote Z, "made me feel... Insignificant." I was just just one grunt in an army, a face in the crowd, and the world was always bigger, badder and more imposing than I was. I was always a flunky, always a servant and always worried about what the NPCs were doing. But then came Dean McArthur, and with him came a "What about MY needs, Alice? What about ME?" moment. All of a sudden I wasn't just some random faceless nobody. People were asking for my input, people were offering to help me, I was putting people over and people were angry at me. All of a sudden... I was the star of the story, and loving every minute of it! Vincent Ross had a similar slant, though with a considerably lesser story, as did Bane Spider Ruben and Brother Hammond. Pretty much all the villain-only content added recently, NOT counting Dr. Graves.

As I've always said and as Venture liked to snark wouldn't matter - it's all about how the story is told. You can present the contact as someone offering to work for the player, you can present the player as the one in control, and you can put over the player strong enough to make it feel like he screwed over everyone else. And it's glorious when it works... Which is more or less every time they try.

It wouldn't be a paying job if it were easy or simple. But at the same time, it's not so much a question of workload as it is a question of approach. For both heroes and villains, I have a few suggestions:

1. When designing dialogues, don't fill in the syntax of the player character's response. Don't write speech for me, write reactions and let me put words to the character. "Accept" as opposed to "Sure, holmes, I'm game for whatever!"

2. Provide stories that could accommodate a number of motivations, but NEVER try to explain the motivation. Tell people what they're required to do, let them figure out why they're doing it.

3. Either make the player character the centre of the story or put him over strong. A story about an opportunity or about an ill effect on the player character is player-centric. A story where the player defies the odds, shows people up and stands strong and tall puts over the player strongly.

Stick to those and stories will usually be a lot more satisfying and a lot less specific.

Show of hands - how many people would be OK with "painted-on" clothes and masks being turned into actual separate 3D meshes that apply as details AND NOT parts of the base texture? I actually wouldn't mind, because this retains the utility of "painted-on" clothes, in that you can apply them over a variety of base textures, but it also stops them looking like paint.

While I don't disagree, that's still IF you team for them. The beauty of places like Dark Astoria and story arcs like Belladonna's is that I can play the game my way and still make progress, and solo progress by shards sucks.

That's fine that you don't like the power, but that still doesn't justify taking it out. I agree that Unstoppable is not a good "min-max power," but what I look for in the game aren't min-max powers, but rather powers which "feel" good, and Unstoppable certainly does. I almost never use it, myself, partly because of its timer and partly because of its crash, but I still keep it and love it because when I DO use that power, it's awesome. My Invulnerability Brutes aren't terribly sturdy because their builds aren't that great. They're good enough for most stuff, but they can get overwhelmed. And when they are, I fire off Unstoppable and giggle like a schoolgirl while nothing can hurt me.

When I ran the Stop the Army of Romulus mission a while back, I busted my *** fighting the huge spawns. Finally, when I got to the last spawn that's two EBs and something like 10 bosses, I knew I didn't have even a fraction of the survivability it would take to last through that. So I popped on Unstoppable and wiped the floor with the Keres, with Romulus and with all the Monsters. And I couldn't have felt better about it. That was awesome and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Also, when I fought Marauder, I was clearly not strong enough to outlast his Unstoppable (his attacks are too strong) nor kill him through it (my attacks weren't strong enough) so I fought the man regularly. I went through almost all my inspirations, got him down in health, he fired off Unstoppable and I waited. I waited a good minute, expending the last of my inspirations before I throw on Unstoppable of my own. For around two minutes, we couldn't hurt each other. Then his unstoppable dropped, his endurance crashed and his resistances went away. At that point, I had a full minute left on mine, full health and full endurance, so I kicked Marauder's *** the remainder of the way. And again, I wouldn't trade this for the world, nor would it have happened without Unstoppable.

I don't try to get maximum use out of my powers. The numbers game isn't the game I signed up for. I use my powers to the extent that I need to and that's just fine. Beyond that, having a power that caps all my resistances is much appreciated. I like these powers for the strength of the survivability they offer, and I WOULD NOT want to have them drop in power. Not at the cost of making them faster, not at the cost of getting rid of the crash.

That's where I am, and the problem I have with an apology phrased like this is it sounds insincere. "I apologise" has the connotation of "I'm sorry" in it, and when you specifically and deliberately state that "but I'm not sorry," you're delivering only the courtesy of an apology without the substance of it. Hence why it comes off as less powerful than it may have been intended.

Well, if you're just going for courtesy and are apologising not because you regret what you did (which is what an apology is typically issued for), then my advise would be to simply hold back the explanation that you're not really sorry and you're just apologising to be polite, but you people that took offence, I'm still not sorry I offended you.

Basically, a half-and-half apology is actually worse than no apology at all, because whether you intended it or not, it comes off like mockery. I get what you're trying to do and I do appreciate it, but I'm really not convinced the same won't happen next time "This is a comic book game!" comes up. And it will, and I and others who aren't big comic book fans will make the exact same arguments. Feelings aren't necessarily hurt, but what's most important is whether we can work together in the future.

Something else occurred to me when you quoted this: We already have artwork for a "wall made up of scrap materials to protect a compound," as seen in the various Freakshow forts. I suspect we can just borrow a Freakshow Fort wall, replace the stone wall around Villa Montrose with that, and then stuff Turrets on top of the rampart towers to shoot at critters nearby in the same way as the turrets around the Vanguard compound shoot at nearby Rikti. That might cut down some of the artwork time since the wall wouldn't have to be made from scratch (no pun intended) and would actually look the part.

That is an excellent idea. People often ask: "Are you so evil you'd let the world burn? What would YOUR villain be doing instead of saving himself?" Um... The same thing a lot of people do during great disasters - capitalise on the breakdown of law enforcement. Pick any disaster that has depopulated a large area and you'll see looters, murderers, squatters, even drug dealers move in to capitalise. A villain who doesn't care about the Praetorians and figures "Meh, the heroes will handle it. And while they fight and bleed, I'll benefit!"

I'm not sure why I didn't see this angle before, but it's brilliant. Have villains go to a war zone and start stealing things, kidnapping people, extracting secret, gaining power and generally being unhelpful up to occasionally getting in the way of the greater good for personal gain. Because, Mr. Hero, are you going to be chasing after me for simply steaming the Quadruple McGuffin, or are you going to fight an elder god who threatens to destroy all life on the planet? Yeah, I thought so. Have fun being driven mad! Oh, what's the matter, is my syphoning power from the city grid to run my teleportation machine making the lights at your base flicker? Boo-hoo. What are you going to do about it? Attack me while monsters take over your base? Yeah, I didn't think so. Go fight the good fight, hero. I'll give you your power back when I don't need it any more.

Maybe I'm over-generalising here, but isn't that what a villain should be doing?

Wrong. Heroes do more than stop villains, and focusing JUST on stories like that makes for a boring game. In fact, focusing on stories like that makes for a boring hero. Again, a hero who does nothing but sit around and wait for crime to happen is not interesting, and that's not what most heroes in comic books are. It is, moreover, not all heroes could be.

Examples are easy enough to come by and I can cite many off my own roster. Sam Tow himself is constantly wrestling with a foreign consciousness inside his mind, and looking for a way to either rid himself of it, or end his own life by undertaking ridiculous risks, with "hero stuff" being just the result of his antics. Ren is a time-traveller from a future which has disappeared due to someone messing with the time stream, and everything she does is aimed at finding who that is and restoring the proper timeline. Morten, by contrast, is a succubus demon who feeds on people's essences, recovering from evil habits and looking for real emotions to give her grounding in the world. She spends most of her time trying to help the people she likes. And then there's Stardiver, who has just returned from a trip to the core of our sun and is spending her time on Earth until her core cools down enough for space fight and looking for friends in the meantime.

Heroes who stand around waiting for bad stuff to happen and then reacting to it is only one small subset of a much larger dynamic. In itself, that's not a bad story, but JUST that story is really very boring.

It's exactly the same, actually. A good hero and a good villain both need to have a goal, they both need to have an approach to achieving that goal and they both need to be proactive towards achieving that goal. If not, you have characters that are rarely interesting to read about. Let's go with something simple: "Obtain an artefact." A villain might need it because it's the last piece in his invention, while a hero might need it because without its magic he will die or transform into a monster, or because he wants to achieve ultimate power. A villain might be courteous and not torture people, he might be ruthless and kill anyone who gets in his way, or he may be sadistic and take time away to make people suffer. In much the same way, a hero could be naive and only hurt villains when they won't back off, he could be ruthless and just kill villains for being villains, or he may be vengeful and go out of his way to hurt villains to send a message.

Heroes and villains are not dissimilar characters. How they differ is in their personalities, not in the nature of the stories you can tell about them.

Wrong. If all the villains shipped off to Alpha Centauri, then the Spirit of Light will simply sheathe his sword and continue his quest to return his soul to life. If all the villains disappeared, Kim would continue her life of looking for personal gain and will, in fact, have a much easier time of it when she doesn't accidentally keep bringing the wrath of evil men onto innocent people by association and doesn't keep getting dragged into saving people she put in danger in the first place. If all the villains spontaneously combusted, the Steel Rook will keep doing what he's been doing - run his corpotation and develop autonomous androids, though he may need to swap business models and retrofit them for manual labour instead of as gun platforms. If there were no villains to fight, this would make no difference to 13, who's quest in life is to to understand herself and come to terms with being a synthetic, created form of life with no real purpose. If there were no evil, then Captain Indivisible, he corny super hero, and Grimwall, the alien demon queen from another planet, would simply settle down and have a family like they always wanted. If there were no evil anywhere, Inna would live up to her destiny as the holder of the Power of Creation and work to reseal that into a new elemental forge where it doesn't threaten life again.

Heroes don't need villains to be interesting. Granted, action stories of combat and adventure need... Well, action, combat and adventure, and this requires people to oppose each other, but this doesn't mean that's ALL heroes are about, that's all they want and that's all they ever do. If anything, creating characters who don't extend past the specific narrative is a mistake. Again, watch any anime series and you'll see proactive heroes. Naruto has the titular stupid kid questing to become the leader of his village and be recognised by his peers, Shaman King has Yoh Asakura questing to win the Shaman Tournament, DBZ has Son Goku, Son Gohan and Vegeta questing to be the strongest warriors and find ever more challenging opponents. Baldur's Gate protagonists quest to find the person who murdered the father. Most D&D parties quest to find treasure or slay dragons. Any story which focuses on a hero needs to give that hero something he wants to achieve, or otherwise tell a VERY compelling story because without that, you have a forgettable tale.

Aku may be the cause, but that cause only shows up in the opening theme song. Literally the extent of the setup is "Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku - the shapshifting master of darkness - unleased an unspeakable evil. But, a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck I tore open a portal in time and flung him into the future. Now the fool seeks to return to the past and undo the future that is Aku! *wacha*" That's it, that's the whole setup, and it never comes up again until, like, 10 seasons in when we get a pretty underwhelming flashback.

So while I might concede that the overall framing device is reactive, the actual story told within it is not. Every episode starts with Samuari Jack having heard about a time portal here, or a well that grants wishes here, or he learns how he could find Aku in the future or what have you. The story has Jack as the proactive protagonist who goes out on a quest, who has an objective, who moves the story, with Aku waiting for him to act and then reacting. "Oh, Jack is at a crossroads, better make him go into this dangerous graveyard." "Oh, Jack found a time portal, better go fly it away." "Oh, Jack is gathering allies, better go kill them." Almost all Aku does, aside from one or two episodes, is react to things Jack is doing.

You can argue that that's still a reactive story, at which point you're arguing semantics. This is a hero on a quest shaping his own storyline, such that he doesn't have to wait for the villain to act before the episode begins.

Wrong. That's a boring, limited hero and, frankly, one that needs a re-write or an exceptionally strong story to work. I honestly don't get why you continuously insist that a hero has no goals but to react, when all you need to do is look at myth and legend. Beowulf is on a quest for fortune and glory, essentially. Achiles is on a quest to conquer Troy. King Arthur is on a quest to become kind. And even without going into real myths that I admittedly don't know enough about, why should a hero NOT have a real objective?

Take, for instance, Oban: Star Racers. It's a race, and the Earth Team is in the race to win "a single wish" for their own species. None of the characters are there to "stop evil." None of them even want to be there in the first place. Don Wei is there because he's a broken old man given one last chance to salvage his life, Rick Thunderbolt is there because he's a washed-up old racer given one last chance to return to the glory days of his youth and Molly is there because she's conflicted between wanting to be with her father and hating her father for abandoning and not recognising her. And it's a very well-told story of personal development and competition without devolving into "he's evil, we have to stop him!" right until a twist ending in the final episode. And even then, how it's resolved has less to do with stopping evil than it has with resolving people's emotional drama.

"Villain initiates, hero responds" is nothing more than the easy framework of storytelling, but that doesn't make it good, nor does it make it the only one. There's a reason why people say Batman is the least interesting thing he shows up in and why both Batman and Batman Returns have so little Batman in them and spend so much time focusing on the villains - because that makes for a boring, underdeveloped hero. There's also a reason why X-Men: First Class was so well-received. Despite that movie having a clear villain that the X-Men ultimately had to stop, this isn't a movie "about" the villain. It's a movie about the X-Men's struggle against prejudice, between each other and with themselves. It's a movie about their maturity and change uncontrolled deviants into grown men and women with a mission.

A story that has a hero and a villain in it does not have to follow the same tired old story that's easiest to write. A story, very often, does not even need to have a villain to begin with. Watch almost any Hayao Miyazaki movie - Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke - and you'll see a hero burdened with a mission and thrust into a harsh world where his greatest adversity is survival. Princess Mononke, especially, lacks a bad guy of any real variety. There are harsh, violent people, yes, but they are not your typical villains and the movie doesn't revolve around stopping them. Hell, go with most D&D games and you'll see a party of heroes motivated by fortune and glory, or by their own personal backstory.

The Spoony One actually has a good video on the matter, even if you'll have to be patient with it since the guy rambles on more than I do. The point, though, is a quote from him that goes along the lines of "OK, but what does he do when there are no dungeons to crawl? Does he have a job? He has to have SOMETHING." The point of this is that to create a hero whose only motivation in life is to respond to villains if they happen to show up and then spend the rest of his time, err... Sitting on a throne like the Volturi? Being emo and delivering pizzas by swinging through the city? If you want a decent hero, you have to give that hero SOMETHING to do when he's not fighting crime, and if you're really clever about it, it'll be the thing that keeps getting him into situations where he has to fight crime.

A hero is not a police officer. A hero is not 911. A hero is not just someone who stands by and waits for crime to happen. A hero has a life outside of being a hero. Even someone like my characters, none of whom have secret identities and whose daily lives involve fighting and super powers, still needs a goal that is not defined by what other people do. You can't create every hero as a co-dependent, needy individual whose life has no meaning if crime isn't happening. That's boring, it's cheap, it's repetitive and it's not necessary. More than anything else, THIS IS NOT GOOD WRITING. A good writer can create a legitimate, believable hero who nevertheless has a life's goal to rival any villain's grand master plan. Because that's what makes a character interesting.

Yes, and if you ever find yourself in a situation where you can swap out one hero for another and not notice much of a change in a story, then you've not written a very good hero. As a point of fact, you've pretty much written a horrible one, and I'd question why you didn't more to give this hero his or her own personal identity, approach and goals in life. Once upon a time, I ran a thought experiment through the RP forums: I gave people a basic setup (guarded warehouse, soldiers inside, outside and on the roof, hostages inside that need to be rescued, kidnapper leader that needs to be taken out) and asked people to tell me a story about how one of the heroes on their roster would handle this situation. Yes, it's reactive, I admit, but the stories people told me were starkly different. Some rushed the door, some climbed through the air ducts, some teleported in, some mind-controlled the guards, some walked away and didn't even bother. Each person who contributed brought a hero with a personality sufficiently different to make a unique story out of the exact same situation.

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I'll make this simple: A hero who only ever reacts to what villains do is not an interesting hero and requires an incredibly capable writer to make that character interesting. A hero with his own goal NOT defined by the villains is considerably more interesting.