Decisions, Decisions

And I thought building a warshade was hard.

Looking at a peacebringer makes me grit my teeth even harder. They have great scrappery attacks, which suggests I should be taking the shield toggles and staying in human form. Except I have no mez resistance in that form, so it’s a semi-scrapper at best. I want dwarf form because it looks like it has an AoE and a self-heal and so can possibly tank a little better than the warshade dwarf, not to mention a mez resistance form is always good. But a kheldian without three forms is to me, gimp in concept, it’ll be nice to be a glowing squid, even if his aoe attacks aren’t as good as a warshade’s. PBs have no stygian circle, which means they need stamina, if I intend to be scrapping. Lightform = unstoppable = I want. Others may complain about unstopp, I happen to LIKE it. It all equals: one painful decision-filled build. I think I’ll end up going without the phase shift and the blastery attacks. Makes me a bit sad that I won’t have the pretty effects from those powers, but I suppose I can copy over to Test and try them and glow to my heart’s content.

Then there’s the future zone genre vote. Phew. That is HARD. Here’s the choices:
The Moon
Mars
Space Station
Rikti Home World
Arctic
Desert
Underwater
Post-apocalyptic
Jungle
Circus/Carnival
Gothic Horror

The only one I can strike off immeidately is circus/carnival. What’s so fun about elephants and clowns anyhow? Dumb. I’m not too thrilled with space station either. Gonna be more metallic lab settings, with windows looking out into the vast blackness of space? We got enough portal corp and lab missions, thank you. Jungle is meh…I keep thinking of Tarzan, and that’s not exactly cool. Either it’s cartoon jungle, or realistic Vietnam-style jungle, and that’s not hero-esque.

Now I happen to LOVE post-apocalyptic settings, Fallout-style, but how in the world do you fit that into a world of superheroes? Maybe future-earth settings, which would be quite cool. But Auto-Assault is also post-apocalyptic, so why compete with them when you have literally other genres to attack for now?

Next to follow are the Moon, Arctic and Desert. Don’t get me wrong. I think these are all darned cool settings, and I would love to see them explored eventually. They’re still quite real world, and perhaps not so fantastical.

Now space is a classic superhero trope. X-men went into space. Superman came from space. Alien invasions that superheroes fight off come from space. Space fits superheroes. A City of ____ sequel that involves space would be neat. So my vote for space goes to Mars – the Red Planet – thematically it’s still space, you gotta get through space to get to Mars, it involves considerable interplanetary distance, and you get a sweet red dusty planet in the bargain. And you can put in Martians too.

Here’s my dilemma. Gothic horror, underwater, and Rikti Home World are ALL fighting for top spot and I can only vote for one.

I love gothic punk. I can love gothic horror with the funky victorian haunted houses, the land of Dracula, ghosts, gypsies, vampires, and yes, werewolves. Call it being selfish. Form shifting into a lobster and squid is all very well. And thank you for including wolf-like options into the costume design. Now let me morph into a damn WEREWOLF, eh? Even if they aren’t superheroes or supervillains per se, they are supernatural beings. And it makes a great title too. City of Supernaturals. Play a ghost, werewolf, vampire, mage, hunter (oops, are we stomping all over White Wolf copyright here?) in the new sequel…Paragon City and the Rogue Isles By Night. (hem)

Underwater. Mea culpa. 8 years of being a sea-elf did major and permanent things to my imagination. Underwater cities RULE. Legends of Atlantis. Sea monsters, a real kraken, the leviathan, floating turtles, mermaids, even if you have no sea-elves per se. Come on, you already have the Coralax and the hybrids, and Mr Mako (ok, ok, don’t bite my arm off, Captain Mako!) - you got your own mythos of the sea. You have a great 3D engine that can handle flying already, doesn’t take too much to convert that to swimming, and a great exploration of underwater-style fighting. In 3 dimensions? Uber-cool. Submarines, diving suits, scuba gear, pretty corals and seaweeds, pirates, buried treasure, the Titanic, what’s NOT to like? And you can show off new graphics engine capability with underwater effects, waving seaweed, swarms, sorry, schools of fishes. Yadda yadda.

Last but certainly not the least. Rikti Home World. This is YOURS. This is your shtuff. Your intellectual property. No one can take it away from you. I want to see the world where Rikti come from. I want to know if they have any problems there. I want to know the reason for the invasion – did they come by choice (ie. any major generals/leaders we should be meeting?) or were they pushed (any other evil aliens, diseases, problems around the corner?)

Most importantly, I want to know what REALLY happened to Hero 1. I want to know what they did in the home world and if they had any effect. I want to know if they suffered, if they died gloriously or ignobly, if their actions changed millions of lives or were ultimately futile.

And yes, if you wanna let me PLAY Rikti, I would be happy too. We can be gradually mutating Lost, and eventually become psi-blasting mentalists, the huge Rikti sword waving soldiers, the defendery Guardians, etc. And I’m sure there’s epic Rikti at home that haven’t come visiting yet.

I guess I am going to end up with the last two. I’m sorry, Mars (and the rest of space) and Gothic Horror. I loved ya. I just couldn’t spare the votes for ya.