Battle of Detroit 30th Anniversary

jaazaniah1

July 23rd, 2022, marks the 30th anniversary of the horrific Battle of Detroit. Should it be marked by some in-game event?

galactickiri

Definitely.

flyingfinn

We could celebrate by shooting Ironclad into some giant spaceships rearexhaust.

bulgarex

Good time to do something with Dr. Destroyer. The Battle of Detroit revolved around him, and he and many of his forces are existing assets in the game, so it wouldn't necessarily require building much that's new.

I would suggest that PCs get caught up in a campaign by DD to capture and kill Shadow Destroyer in revenge for the Doctor's humiliation at his hands. That perfectly suits Albert Zerstoiten's spiteful, vindictive character, and if he succeeds it would be big enough to demonstrate that the true Destroyer is the one to fear, without upending the rest of the game.

jaazaniah1

It's always seemed sad and strange to me that in all the years CO has been around players have never got to fight against Dr. Destroyer himself. Instead we get to *help* him fight an evil version of James Harmon, fight against Harmon himself, and beat up Destroyer's robots. I'd sure like to fight Destoryer, his puppet Grond, minor villains and robot minions.

bulgarex

It seems that in the days when the devs were available and dedicated to working on CO, they were committed to their Shadow Destroyer as the Big Bad of the setting and their metaplot. The reveal of Albert Zerstoiten's status may have come too late to elaborate him in game as his stature warrants.

And that's why anyone wanting to use him should think about how. Destroyer doesn't rob banks or beat up UNTIL agents for laughs. He plans for the long term, and whatever he plans is going to be BIG. If he does something that appears random or pointless, it's usually because either it will advance his master plan in some way, or else distract attention from advancing his master plan. His entire asteroid scheme leading to the Battle of Detroit was just to fake his own death.

OTOH Destroyer is spiteful and petty to an extraordinary degree. He's killed people just for writing derogatory articles about him. If you do something that inconveniences or actually angers him, his revenge will be worse than death. As an example, after DD's apparent death in the Battle of Detroit, UNTIL's Project Shiva devoted to fighting him was disbanded. Its commander, Steven Thesken, didn't believe the Doctor was dead, and resigned from UNTIL to find proof on his own. After years of searching, he was getting closer to the truth than Destroyer liked. Rather than just killing him DD had Thesken kidnapped, and through a year of torture and experimentation wiped away his memories and personality, replacing them with total loyalty to himself; while imbuing him with superhuman strength and the power to grow to giant size, and dubbing Thesken "Titanos."

jaazaniah1

One of the events connected to the anniversay can be to go around to all the statues of the heroes who fell during the Battle of Detroit. Would give the devs an excuse to put plaques indentifying the heroes on the statues .

The anniversary will be dubbed "The Battle for Millennium City."

jaazaniah1

BTW, did any "villains" aid the superheroes in battling Destroyer? Some probably didn't want to see the world smacked with asteroids and experience an end of the Cretaceous level event.

bulgarex

I haven't been able to find any reference to specific villains who assisted the heroes in battling Destroyer. I agree that it's likely some would have helped if they discovered the magnitude of the threat during the hours-long fight in Detroit, but Destroyer's plan didn't leave much opportunity for that. For one thing, a few days before the execution of his asteroid plan, DD sent out a coded message to dozens of villains and villain teams across America, hiring them to go on a rampage of destruction. This was intended to distract the heroes from his preparations in Detroit. When the Doctor arranged to "leak" his plans to some of the students at Ravenswood Academy, the school contacted all the heroes they're connected to, but there doesn't seem to have been time to issue a general warning and call for assistance, which probably would have drawn some villains.

To be sure, there have been multiple occasions when villains fought alongside heroes to combat epic-scale threats such as the invasions by the Qularr, the Gadroon, and Istvatha V'han. Particular villains are notable for offering assistance at such times, including Sunburst and Dr. Yin Wu. Even Dr. Destroyer himself has sided with superheroes against invaders in the past.

metalheart

Champions storyline is so dark itself.

I know this will never happen. But how about a Destroyer faction war? Heroes or Villains may decide the out come of the story progress 'temporarily'. At the end they can end the world or not.

I just want content.

Edit:
*Faction wars are usually done with turn in progress meter.
*Would be nice to see the city in a state of panic for the event.
*Faction war doesn't necessarily mean PvP but something along the lines.
*I would call it a big End Game finale that brings new beginnings, storylines extra
*Sadly or devs are limited

bulgarex

That is an intriguing, and potentially epic, suggestion, metalheart. But I agree, the resources CO currently has access to wouldn't be up to executing anything that big.

Champions Online has indeed tended to present a "dark" story line, what with emphasizing the Qliphoth (or rather, their interpretation of the Qliphoth). The tabletop RPG that CO is based on is much more positive and optimistic. To be sure, there are horrific and terrifying threats aplenty in the Champions Universe, and no shortage of tragic events, notably including the Battle of Detroit; but as in the comics, superheroes have so far been able to vanquish every major challenge, and keep the world on a fairly even keel, maybe even more so than the real world.