Picking up from Chat

[LegionAlpha]

I have noticed every once in a while the general chat will delve into the conversation of the future or present lore of the game and "where we are" as story goes. Some theorize that we are picking up where left off, while others think we are in the future(2021 as oppose to 2012) as the "coming storm" never came. One of my favorite pass times or guilty pleasures are reading people's origins and one caught my eye and described the whole shut down as a "blink" to explain what happened.  This has intrigued me ( as three drinks in) and has made me rather curious as what many think of the gap in time(if there is one for many)  or never happened and are still on the road to the war with the "coming storm"? Or has that idea has been abandoned?

[Sakai]

I started fresh with all new characters so there was no gap for me.   The Coming Storm is just over the horizon. 

[cranebump]

I posited that the storm did come, the heroes were losing, and ended up shunting 7 years of war into a “time strip” called the Mobius. I then scripted a 10-arc AE metastory to take the player through it (which one player actually played). Then I pulled it all down to recompose it. Shorter this time...:-)

[Blackbird71]

Had HC set out a canon explanation at the beginning, it would have been helpful and given us a common point to go off of.  But in the absence of that, people made up their own solutions.  Now everyone's got a different interpretation/explanation for what happened (if it even did happen), and attempting to put together a consolidated idea on this is futile.
 

[GraspingVileTerror]

Boop!

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/1433-the-big-question-of-continuity/

 

My personal head-canon these days is that time travel has totally fubar'd the concept of temporal continuity in the City of Heroes universe, and people simultaneously exist in disparate timelines while maintaining relative physical consistency.

 

It's the sort of situation that would cause someone like Einstein to rip his hair out in frustration trying to establish a General Relativity around, but it's the world we've got.

[Darmian]

I've had various notions on this, rethought things and come at it from different angles, but the one I'm currently favoring, and if the devs were to do a version of this I'd be well pleased, is that we HAVE moved on but it's not 2021.  If they were to advance things just enough, 2 or 3 years, so that 2012 events are still relatively "fresh", perhaps a time fracture event continues to envelope the final stages of the Galaxy City evacuation or something, for instance.  Setting it a few years forward but not to our now would allow the devs to plan out the net few years and effectively always be ahead of the game, so to speak.

[Dusty Longshot]

I never gave any attention to the absence of the game in the bio's of my characters. When HC came online I started creating my characters as if they never left and nothing happened. Their bio's are nearly similar to what they were in 2012. Only minor changes to refine details or shorten them.

 

I do like the idea of a "blink", like Thanos snapped his fingers and all of Paragon City/Rogue Isles vanished for 7 years.

[Techwright]

Initially upon joining HC, I'd pointed out the dated technology, which meant I was thinking like Paragon City needed to update to 2021.  But after discussion, I settled into the idea that, like the 1989 Batman movie, multiple decades exist in the city around us.  I finally felt that reached its best expression by treating the CoH universe like Narnia: time just moves completely differently there to our existence.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Techwright

[Tachstar]

It's my electric/ice tanker's fault. He put experimental magnets made of solidified nitrous oxide and 'some kinda crazy space metal' in the pickups of his 1957 Gibson ES-335 and hit a big old E major chord, which not only gave him his powers but caused a local Dimensional Redaction/Temporal Infarction (depends on who you ask) event type thingee. So in Paragon City (and relevant adjacent areas) time and space are like a sequence of chords repeating infinitely on one of those newfangled looper pedal doohickeys (with an old school spring reverb set on 10), but you can still play new licks along with/over it. Or something.

 

"Like, uh. Hey, man. Sorry 'bout that." ~ Office Rocker

[GraspingVileTerror]

A perfectly valid explanation, @Tachstar.

[Snarky]

I am insane a good 60% of the time. Tracking reality is hard for me.  Did something happen?

[Player2]

 

8 hours ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

Boop!

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/1433-the-big-question-of-continuity/

 

My personal head-canon these days is that time travel has totally fubar'd the concept of temporal continuity in the City of Heroes universe, and people simultaneously exist in disparate timelines while maintaining relative physical consistency.

 

It's the sort of situation that would cause someone like Einstein to rip his hair out in frustration trying to establish a General Relativity around, but it's the world we've got.

This is why I created an Anti-Mender character.  He feels it's his responsibility to undo all the time travel stuff causing the inconsistencies we're stuck with now.  Now I want to script some AE missions with Ouroboros and the Menders as the antagonists for the hero to stop, perhaps revisiting some key events in COH lore history.

 

16 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I am insane a good 60% of the time. Tracking reality is hard for me.  Did something happen?

Nothing worth remembering, Snarky.

[Marshal_General]

Due to Oriborus the Coming Storm both happened and has yet to happen.

 

With a bit of a mind flip
You're into the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same

[Aracknight]

I play as if sunset was the snap, and due to some unfortunate math all of the Co* universe fell into the 50% of everything that vanished.  I also, without referencing it by name, play as if the Avengers' actions brought us back.

 

Per a piece of my bio:  "It's like someone, somewhere snapped their fingers and said "Everyone.  Comes.  Home."

 

Per hcwiki: Homecoming: City of Heroes has been in operation since April 2019.

 

Per google: Avengers Endgame release date: April 26 2019

 

Coincidence?  I think not.  

 

 

[DoctorDitko]

If the database of old characters had been restored, I'd go for a snap!

 

Since it wasn't, I assume the universe is new, and because they devoted much of their energy to anti-gravity, sorcery, mad science and the like, their cellphones are a bit bulkier, their monitors are CRT, and their elevators only serve one person at a time.

[Shred Monkey]

We're all stuck in a time loop anyway... that's why we have to run the same TFs over and over... they never stay completed.

[Placta]

I think of the (first) Rikti invasion as happening 5-10 years ago, whatever's needed to make a character's backstory work, and my characters don't really age (and generally are in their mid-20s). The Coming Storm is still Coming, even if there's been a long delay between the Galaxy City meteor incident and further visits from the Batallion.

 

Coherent timelines are more trouble than they're worth.