Vic Raiden

Huh. Never thought I'd have Rudra of all people defending me. Either way, yeah. As far as I know, a lot of people just aren't comfortable with the fact the game's very structure forces them to play lackeys to a number of NPC villains, regardless of whether or not a given arc ends with a double-cross in the player character's favor. And having to spoil oneself by checking every single contact on the wiki before accepting their missions is a pretty clunky way to play because, in some edge cases, it may leave one with no sufficiently in-character options whatsoever. And well, let me reiterate: writing playable content for villains is just that much harder in the context of a video game, especially a static-world MMORPG maintained by a small circle of volunteers. There's ultimately a lot more villain archetypes than hero archetypes, and few of them would be morally bankrupt enough to be content doing literally any kind of evil they're asked to do.

I honestly dunno, but I do feel insulted right now because my first character here was made redside. It's just that it's not really as enjoyable as it may seem because of how all-over-the-place the questlines are in terms of the exact villainy you do. Villains are generally harder to play in a questgiver-based system simply because they're the proactive ones and vary so much in their goals, methods and values that it's far easier to say "my character would never do this!" mid-questline... and then have to do it anyway because there's no progressing otherwise. Sure, you can have the wiki at hand at all times and cherrypick the arcs you feel your villain is least unlikely to do, but in the end, sometimes it still feels like the "intended" way of playing redside is to be an absolute sociopath who'd do literally anything for the greater evil.

Ugh, trying to work out a solution to redside's shortcomings is never not gonna be pain. I suppose part of that comes from being tacked on top of what used to be a pure hero game until then, plus the original devs not really wanting players to enjoy villainy to begin with, I think? Anyhow, this is starting to feel like one of those situations where the closest thing to fixing it would be to remake it from the ground up with a different mindset.

Could you guys please NOT argue?

Not a Halloween work, but here's the latest revision of Major Liberty's costume.

Striga Isle overview

An old photo from the 20th anniversary, showing my girl Deka getting to hang out with the ghost of Statesman himself.

Arachnosifying visual novel backgrounds will never not look great.

It's been an interesting read so far.

So, does that mean redside as a concept is now completely beyond saving?

... I was trying to maintain a bi-weekly post schedule for this, but I've recently hit such a writer's block that I could barely get any work on chapter 3 done. Apologies for any inconveniences.

After all this, I think we could very well close this thread. If you lot really want to comment on something I posted, why not comment on my fanfic instead? (sorry for self-advertising) Also, @Laucianna wins the thread with her take on a minimal FX option.

On the other hand, the default assumption for the ATs was that the player character was an ordinary civilian nobody prior to merging with his or her Kheld partner, be it voluntarily (thus, Peacebringers were Natural-origin by default) or as a result of a mad science experiment (thus, Warshades were Science-origin by default). EDIT: No, I'm not objecting to the origin limitation being lifted.

Okay, sorry for making a dumb, purely cosmetic suggestion in the first place. Could you all PLEASE stop arguing over everything else pertaining to HEATs? Ideally ASAP?

... I created a monster.