I agree with you - the plots have been overpowering, to say the least. In a way, they have been for about a year now, though in more subtle ways. Even running and hiding isn't a viable strategy anymore. There's no way to keep the characters organised because something always breaks them up, no matter what. There's even no way to get information about NPCs' actions to plan a viable strategy (unless the other players I've been talking to IC on the mailing lists have the membership class of god and started off with characters with mastery of at least two spheres). How is it that so many other domains can just, for example, 'hack into the local Technocracy construct and find out what's happening', when around here there's no way in hell any character has enough traits/attributes/hardware to make it happen.