The Champions themselves

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Ok, I brought this up in Local Chat last night before the Tako fight and no one really had an answer for me.

Ok, if you take into account it happens right near the Champions building:

Kinetic is on the corner across the street
Defender and Silverback are in Ren Cen
Witchcraft's Projection is actually in 2 places within earshot
Sapphire and Iron Clad appear to be missing

So why the hell are these guys not helping fight Takofanes? He's attacking their home base. They're right nearby.

Lazy Super Group.... :D

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The Champions have notoriously outdated computers and just can't handle the lag.

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The Champions have notoriously outdated computers and just can't handle the lag.
Best explanation ever. :D

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Defender cannot take down Black Talon solo. I believe Takokeeper is a touch tougher. Additionally Defender only has concerns about those beacons driving the Qulaar crazy
.

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The Champions have notoriously outdated computers and just can't handle the lag.

Mine's six years old and I could still fight him.

...well, not really fight, just autoattack with my energy builder while weeping at an FPS of 1 and warily eyeing my PC fanspeed and temp monitors, but still I was there!

And for (sort of) helping beat back the Dark Lord of Undeath... I got a rock.

Maybe that's why the Champions don't wanna fight him - his loot-table sucks eggs.

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Defender cannot take down Black Talon solo. I believe Takokeeper is a touch tougher. Additionally Defender only has concerns about those beacons driving the Qulaar crazy
.

no kidding (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLr2CF_tQr0)

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Nah Defenders out clubbing............

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Ironclad is on Monster Island so he's got an excuse.

Sapphire is...touring? Hard to believe she has a music career after hearing that anniversary "song".

Defender is still reeling from his bout with Black Talon. However if someone were to tell him there's a pool of lava by the Champs building I'm sure he wouldn't pass up the chance at perfecting his swan dive.

Witchcraft is having issues with being in four different places at one time. Stuck in an abandoned mine, projecting outside the mine, projecting near the bookstore and projecting next to Defender. She probably thinks she's at the Champs HQ as well.

Kinetik has been present at the Tacoface fights. He's just zipping back and forth so fast that nobody notices. Little does he realize HE is responsible for all the lag during the showdowns. Neither our systems nor the server can handle his full speed.

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It's not like anyone has ever taken out the League Watchtower or the Avenger's HQ before, right?

This is just pointing out that, technically speaking, just because a supergroup is based somewhere doesn't mean they're all 'present' or not out handling things of some nature elsewhere. In an MMO, we have to deal with displacement like that as a function of the game (and every online game does this with important or semi-important NPCs to some extent) and making a big deal out of it is kind of silly. There's a certain bit of extra suspension of disbelief that needs to be taken into account when something becomes a multi-player game that doesn't bind all of the characters to one specific location (IE: online play).

EDIT: Silly me, I superimposed the far superior Legion of Superheroes over the Justice League. Pre-coffee, busy, etc.

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Mine's six years old and I could still fight him.

...well, not really fight, just autoattack with my energy builder while weeping at an FPS of 1 and warily eyeing my PC fanspeed and temp monitors, but still I was there!

And for (sort of) helping beat back the Dark Lord of Undeath... I got a rock.

Maybe that's why the Champions don't wanna fight him - his loot-table sucks eggs.
My computer has a graphics card with 1 GB of video memory and my FPS drops to 3.
If you want an increase, zoom all the way in and stare at the ground for the whole fight. Trust me it works.

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Kinetik has been present at the Tacoface fights. He's just zipping back and forth so fast that nobody notices. Little does he realize HE is responsible for all the lag during the showdowns. Neither our systems nor the server can handle his full speed.

Now I want someone to kite Takofanes over to Kinetik to see if he does anything!

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Now I want someone to kite Takofanes over to Kinetik to see if he does anything!

Since Kinetik fought a monster when I got a trick from a trick-or-treater nearby him, most likely.

Unless I am wrong about how things work, Kinetik might be invincible as a contact NPC, so he might be able to take Takofanes down alone.

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He's just not important enough for the Champions to fight.

In the tutorial the Champions are MIA so we, the newbies, have to save the city.
After that they start giving us missions that are too unimportant for them to care about: stop a gang war in Westside, check out the commotion in Canada, fight down an Irradiate uprising in the Desert. Finally, on Monster Island Ironclad helps us. But, we're back on our own for the Lemurian civil war.

Then there's the Vibora Bay Apocalypse where the seasoned heroes fail and the newbie and goofball inventor have to save the world.

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It's not like anyone has ever taken out the League Watchtower or the Avenger's HQ before, right?

This is just pointing out that, technically speaking, just because a supergroup is based somewhere doesn't mean they're all 'present' or not out handling things of some nature elsewhere. In an MMO, we have to deal with displacement like that as a function of the game (and every online game does this with important or semi-important NPCs to some extent) and making a big deal out of it is kind of silly. There's a certain bit of extra suspension of disbelief that needs to be taken into account when something becomes a multi-player game that doesn't bind all of the characters to one specific location (IE: online play).

EDIT: Silly me, I superimposed the far superior Legion of Superheroes over the Justice League. Pre-coffee, busy, etc.
RE: your edit - I think the Legion has lost the Clubhouse a time or two as well - it's been a while since I last followed the title.

As the OP points out, however, when the Lord of Evil arises from his crypts to directly assault Millennium City, their hometown, at least three of the Champions are nearby (Defender and Silverback are about a block and a half away, in RenCen, and Kinetik is literally across the street!), and two of Witchcraft's projections are close enough to (probably) hear all the hubbub, yet not one of them can be arsed to come save the freaking world, leaving the job to the noobs.

This would be comparable to Superman and J'onn J'onzz being in orbit, and Batman monitoring the situation while standing right next to a League teleporter, yet the three of them counting on the Teen Titans to go save the Watchtower without backup.

In my mind, this ties in to the fact that Defender is pretty helpless in the Black Talon fight, can't shut down the beacons even when you (at fifth level) have taken out the robots, and needs you to fire the cannon in the tutorial. The Champions are all puff-piece, no power, from all we've seen of them...

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Covered that in the black text. I could do some more specific case examples, but figured I'd skip that this time around.

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Covered that in the black text. I could do some more specific case examples, but figured I'd skip that this time around.
But, as I pointed out, three of them are present and not engaged in, well, pretty much anything at the moment. Dr. Silverback is manning (well, gorilla-ing) a desk at the Science Training Center, Defender is standing at a station near the Powerhouse giving directions to new heroes, and Kinetik appears to be signing autographs. Certainly at least one of them could stop what they're doing for a moment to come and prevent the Apocalypse, no?

(Although as a player, I'm kind of glad they're too lazy/impotent to come help; it would be disappointing to me to have the Big Guys swing in and save the day, leaving my contribution even smaller than it usually is...) :)

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But, as I pointed out, three of them are present and not engaged in, well, pretty much anything at the moment. Dr. Silverback is manning (well, gorilla-ing) a desk at the Science Training Center, Defender is standing at a station near the Powerhouse giving directions to new heroes, and Kinetik appears to be signing autographs. Certainly at least one of them could stop what they're doing for a moment to come and prevent the Apocalypse, no?

(Although as a player, I'm kind of glad they're too lazy/impotent to come help; it would be disappointing to me to have the Big Guys swing in and save the day, leaving my contribution even smaller than it usually is...) :)

Specific case examples: I can (and have) blown up faction leaders right in front of another leader's face in WoW, and in full view of a WIDE swath of guards, and had nothing but inaction from everyone there (right up until I and my group personally engaged them). Simply because we were outside the aggro and link range of those people. If I'm going to go set fire to the figurehead of your species, or alternately what we can assume is a 'friend' to you personally, don't you think that seeing me blow them apart in front of your very eyes would cause the least bit of contention? Doesn't happen, believe it or not.

A few things have changed since then, but this is still easily doable in Burning Crusade (I can set fire to Honor Hold's main building and have none of the so-called 'heroes' or infantry stationed there give a damn). And there's other specific examples in a few places still, as well (why can I set fire to Greymane and not have anyone else in Darnassus care? Similarly, why can I take out Tyrande and Velen, two spiritual centers of their respective peoples, and still get out like nothing happened if I can and do avoid most of the guards?).

It's something you have to accept in an MMO environment. If they had the Champions actually show up and help in that fight, that would create even more copies of them (at best) or, at worst, remove them from their current locations in that zone and prevent other people from actually getting anything done until either the Halloween event was over, or that specific mission was finished in that instance. And it would all just start up again later.

Nevermind that there would be complaints if they were there, and could close the mission by themselves through their damage output/etc. and thus prevent anyone from getting any credit for that run of it (which is entirely likely to happen, unless they're coded not to; Which creates the problem of the mission constantly resetting at a certain point, and so on). The easiest way to get it done and have people participate meaningfully is to have it a) In a location that anyone can get to easily (right outside Champions HQ is incredibly safe, all things considered, considering where the rest of the Open Missions for the event are) and b) limit NPC interaction as much as possible so that players can actually get things done.

If we really want to start picking nits about it, why doesn't the Astral Projection for Witchcraft change after you complete SiniSister? She's no longer trapped, and it's kind of weird to have her just up and leave only to project in exactly the same location. Why am I doing all the lightwork for Kinetik when he can move far faster then I can in the first place to do these things? How the heck does Harmon change into his Defender outfit so fast after I safely escort him out of harm's way, and how does he not only manage that, but beat me back to the Ren Center every single time? For that matter, why is there so much repetition in quests in general when feasibly the majority of them were completed two years ago by other heroes? How does Poe constantly break out of jail such as to be in four places at once himself (the jail, the Red Banner HQ, a sewer, and a secret base where he's constantly building a bomb but never seeming to finish it until someone personally stops him from doing so every time).

Is this really the one thing you want to complain about? Certain concessions have to be made for the 'game' aspect of MMORPGs that don't make sense from a roleplay perspective. It smacks of being intentionally and selectively obtuse.

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Complain? Oh, heavens, no, it's not something I want to complain about, certainly. I understand fully why the NPCs can't engage the villains circa 95% of the time.

But it is something I can nitpick at, for my own amusement... :)

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Awesome lol. :D

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Complain? Oh, heavens, no, it's not something I want to complain about, certainly. I understand fully why the NPCs can't engage the villains circa 95% of the time.

But it is something I can nitpick at, for my own amusement... :)

Kinetic gets stuck in all the time when Viper goons come too near! - but yeah, Hero NPCs standing around doing nothing to help /was / is in the finest of tradition.... remember Miss Liberty?, zombie apocalypse, rikti invasion, and she stands around as if nothing is happening!.

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Kinetic gets stuck in all the time when Viper goons come too near! - but yeah, Hero NPCs standing around doing nothing to help /was / is in the finest of tradition.... remember Miss Liberty?, zombie apocalypse, rikti invasion, and she stands around as if nothing is happening!.
Friends and I assumed her super power was invulnerability so long as she does not move.

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Ok, I brought this up in Local Chat last night before the Tako fight and no one really had an answer for me.

Ok, if you take into account it happens right near the Champions building:

Kinetic is on the corner across the street
Defender and Silverback are in Ren Cen
Witchcraft's Projection is actually in 2 places within earshot
Sapphire and Iron Clad appear to be missing

So why the hell are these guys not helping fight Takofanes? He's attacking their home base. They're right nearby.

Lazy Super Group.... :D

You have to remember that the rest of us far outclass the Champs (Chumps?) at this point, so they're making like Booster and controlling the crowd, which mostly seems to not care about the end of times happening accross the street.