Robert Kogan's Arc (Major Benjamin's writing quality)

[Rudra]

11 minutes ago, Vic Raiden said:

Perhaps? All signs so far are pointing to this elusive Emil Christie guy who apparently repaired the whole district all by himself, but who knows what he actually is. Could be a Crey agent, a Nemesis automaton or even a Malta officer for all we know.

Emil isn't elusive. He is the current mayor(?) of Paragon City.

[Vic Raiden]

No, all I can find about him on the wiki is he's the head of a tech company called Christie Consolidated, with a suspicious lot of money and influence to make Kallisti Wharf into his personal playground.

[lemming]

I think Mayor Morales is the current mayor.   (How long is a term?  It's been years!)

[Snarky]

Emil ....  Marcone

[Rudra]

52 minutes ago, Vic Raiden said:

No, all I can find about him on the wiki is he's the head of a tech company called Christie Consolidated, with a suspicious lot of money and influence to make Kallisti Wharf into his personal playground.

Then he may have been the previous mayor. He has notes of being re-elected and the only elections I can find about him are mayoral.

[Koopak]

I haven't cleared the khalisti arcs yet so cant make significant assessments yet, but i will say that this and some of the history plaques are very jarring compared to the rest of the homecoming writing iv experienced. While CoH has always had its stinkers, I think overall the standard of writing the retail team did was at worst serviceable, and while id say a lot of homecoming's writing is better than that and rivals some of the better retail stories, some of it has been a disappointment like this.

What bugs me is these disappointments seem to focus around contentious political topics and that frustrates me more, as such topics I feel call for a more deft hand, as misfires hit harder.

[Vanden]

My issue with Major Benjamin's writing is that while it's perfectly believable that a real-life bigot would out themselves as an idiot while thinking they're making a great point, fiction should strive to be a little more realistic than that.

Edited 9 hours ago by Vanden

[Snarky]

I cannot believe you guys ard going in about this.  
 

It is bad story writing.  It is CoH.  
 

There are around 400? CoH contacts.  Name 20 that gave well written stories.  
 

I bet you cannot. They are either bland or way off kilter.  
 

Nor do I think this is a problem in CoH.  I grew up with 4 color comics and sci fi novels. The conics were cool… but the stories?  Pretty weak compared to real writing. 

[Vic Raiden]

Then again, most of the earlier content isn't as readily bad, though maybe that's just because the descriptions are shorter. A couple sentences detailing what's going on and what you need to do about it, nothing more. There just didn't use to be as much space for bad writing. Compare that to modern content, where every talkable NPC has a whole novel's worth of text, and problems only become more glaring that way.

[TerroirNoir3]

If you want bad writing have a look at what the AE offers!  The amount of dross I have to wade through to find good stories is incredible.  So, for those who think they can do better, try there and then see if you can match what HC's output is, and no, I'm not automatically saying HC's output is amazing or anything of the sort. Ok, you won't have the same resources to do certain things but players make allowance for style over substance.  At least in my experience.  

 

(I deliberately haven't mentioned farms because farms are farms, they're not story.)

[LightMaster]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

I cannot believe you guys ard going in about this.  
 

It is bad story writing.  It is CoH.  
 

There are around 400? CoH contacts.  Name 20 that gave well written stories.  
 

I bet you cannot. They are either bland or way off kilter.  
 

Nor do I think this is a problem in CoH.  I grew up with 4 color comics and sci fi novels. The conics were cool… but the stories?  Pretty weak compared to real writing. 

Good point, but keep in mind that the subject of this thread is a different kind of way off kilter in that it’s too topical compared to what came before.

 

Live CoH’s writing may be weak, but at least it tries it’s best to be consistent in characters and lore for the most part. The PPD is meant to be the idealized police compared to real life’s own issues on police departments, while it’s the Longbow that has an occasional use of excessive measures like *gasp* murder and such when they could just arrest the fugitives and criminals.

 

And the reason the PPD is like that? The Back Alley Brawler singlehandedly put the corrupt polices in their place (non-lethally of course) and slowly build it up into the PPD of Paragon City with the help of Blue Steel iirc.

 

And suddenly the PPD have corrupted members we are never told about during at least some of the Homecoming’s KW arcs? I might miss some details in Live’s contact arcs but it is downright jarring with how sudden it is. Have there been simply the PPD forced to do such by an external source, or if it was Longbow doing their excessive brutality instead, then the fondation of P.E.A.C.E. will he much more believable and much less topical.

 

If the Back Alley Brawler and Blue Steel saw what’s going on with the PPD at the KW? If I were to write this scene, they’ll be disappointed and have to sort it out before it goes out of control.

Edited 4 hours ago by LightMaster

[Snarky]

19 minutes ago, LightMaster said:

Good point, but keep in mind that the subject of this thread is a different kind of way off kilter in that it’s too topical compared to what came before.

 

Live CoH’s writing may be weak, but at least it tries it’s best to be consistent in characters and lore for the most part. The PPD is meant to be the idealized police compared to real life’s own issues on police departments, while it’s the Longbow that has an occasional use of excessive measures like *gasp* murder and such when they could just arrest the fugitives and criminals.

 

And the reason the PPD is like that? The Back Alley Brawler singlehandedly put the corrupt polices in their place (non-lethally of course) and slowly build it up into the PPD of Paragon City with the help of Blue Steel iirc.

 

And suddenly the PPD have corrupted members we are never told about during at least some of the Homecoming’s KW arcs? I might miss some details in Live’s contact arcs but it is downright jarring with how sudden it is. Have there been simply the PPD forced to do such by an external source, or if it was Longbow doing their excessive brutality instead, then the fondation of P.E.A.C.E. will he much more believable and much less topical.

 

If the Back Alley Brawler and Blue Steel saw what’s going on with the PPD at the KW? If I were to write this scene, they’ll be disappointed and have to sort it out before it goes out of control.

in another twenty years, if i have not been staked, i will look back with nostalgia on this topic.  because the writing will not be topical.  it will be cliche and the entire social convo will have moved on.  it will look tired, old, and corny.  hmmm, .... like a lot of CoH writing....

 

look, good writing is hard.  Game of Thrones is a great example. yes, the author writes at a glacial pace, but... it is good.  have a bunch of "pros" committee write a final season and sling it out the door.  hmmm, ... results may be different.

 

i have not dont the Khallisti Wharf arcs yet.  still finishing my solo every contact stupidity.  where i do not read hardly anything besides mission titles and mission goals.  and that is what i will do in Khallisti.  so, all the bad writing will be totally wasted on me.

 

But this thread's whine?  i could offer...

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Snarky

[Forager]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

But this thread's whine?  i could offer...

 

Yeah you've made it pretty clear that this topic is uninteresting to you and doesn't affect you... about 6 or 7 times.

 

In fact, you haven't even done the content being discussed, which is probably why you've spent a large portion of your posts talking about yourself.

[Vic Raiden]

Could we please not turn this thread into a personal fight? The starting point was that the writing in Robert Kogan's arc is wonky and should be changed to something more tasteful and less out-of-place.

[Snarky]

1 minute ago, Forager said:

 

Yeah you've made it pretty clear that this topic is uninteresting to you and doesn't affect you... about 6 or 7 times.

 

In fact, you haven't even done the content being discussed, which is probably why you've spent a large portion of your posts talking about yourself.

nah, i spend a large portion of all of my posts talking about myself.  that has nothing to do with you whiners or (OMFG this is the 900th time!) another poorly written CoH Arc.

 

Oh, Taking donations for a writing assignmenm I am starting   Donate 200 mil to @Snarky and be a founding member of the Snarky Library Foundation!

[El D]

On 8/22/2025 at 9:29 AM, Chris24601 said:

The biggest issue I have with the writing is that “present-day politics” and speech patterns ages like milk sitting on a summer porch.

 

 It’s not going to be timeless, it’s going to feel painfully dated in just a few years.

 

In terms of fictional writing, particularly in a world with alternate history, sticking to more settled historical and setting-specific references is a good way to keep the world feeling timeless.

 

Yes, the timeless CoH stories like the politics of World Wide Red - perfectly reflective of 2025 just as it was in 2004. Same with the timeless nature of 'secret American agency super spies you can totally trust' like Crimson and Indigo. There's also the timeless 'literal former Soviet agents' like Boris the Russian and Dimitri Krylov with dialogue stolen straight from the bad guys in Rocky and Bullwinkle. Or the amaranthine, eternally relevant l33tsp34k for the Freakshow.

 

I really want to understand where this fascination with 'Yeah, we can depict militant fascists - but only if they all sound cool and persuasive!' comes from. Especially when the game already has a canon arc where the other major fascist organization talks about their super soldier serum being strawberry flavored. Also it's not like the game doesn't have plenty of 5th Column and Council villains that it already takes seriously. Requiem and the Center aren't forum-posting modern recruits who talk like alt-right film critic videos, but for an arc directly dealing with someone that, shouldn't we expect the character involved to be depicted that way?

 

Heck, that's not even new to the game. The Warriors had that 'He-Man Women Hater's Club' stuff as part their gimmick since they showed up. The Freakshow too, with the whole 'disaffected, rage-filled young men' thing. It's only odd because this is the first time it's actually been depicted directly in-game, rather than just motioned at in bio sections and then ignored outside of the villain groups coincidentally being entirely male.