Vic Raiden

Thanks! I do admit that I didn't think much on the bios. I was simply trying to frame the Watch as a heroic organization with large presence similar to Longbow (European counterpart, perhaps?), so I decided it wasn't worth going into too much detail on individual units' descriptions. As for returning to mission exit, it was purely for flavor reasons - the idea was that the player would escape the base by submarine and then detonate the bombs from a safe distance. Which yeah, doesn't work all that well with a map as large as the one I picked. Maybe if I added someone the player would need to kidnap... EDIT: Fridge thought: I could probably have added an optional "defeat all enemies in the final room" objective which'd then spawn some ambushes trying to stop the player from escaping the base, or placed some patrols in the middle in addition to the static spawns, to make the experience more dynamic. And maybe add some basic dialogue, too.

Okay, now that you elaborated upon your point like this, I do understand where you're coming from. Admittedly, playing a bad guy as long as they're presented as good is a problem in this game, because aside from a small handful of dedicated Rogue arcs and tip/alignment missions, Rogues are basically stuck doing purely villainous stuff, only with the ability to visit Paragon City at will outside of instanced missions. I can't really think of any solution to that beyond eventually making more content dedicated to the two intermediate alignments. That said, I still suspect redside content isn't seen as all that fun by most, and I think playing a villain could be more appealing if villains got more interesting things to do, both in terms of quantity and interestingness... but then bluesiders would still only go redside temporarily to do this particular content before switching back to blueside, thereby perpetuating the problem. Therefore, I propose another solution: dispose of Null, or at least revoke his power to change player alignments on a whim.

I don't like to play devil's advocate, and I apologize for how late to this I am, but I believe you're missing the original poster's point. It's less about superheroes and supervillains in particular and more just about morality in general. Grand Theft Auto is a series where the protagonists are all criminals (and thus villains, however sympathetic) to start with, which nobody would ever play if your statement about nobody liking to play a villain was completely true. And yet these games exist and are well-liked, simply because messing around as a gangster can be just that fun, a nice change of pace from both the typically uneventful everyday life and the tendency of other games to cast the player as a hero. Similarly, Warhammer 40,000 is a setting populated nigh-exclusively by various shades of evil forces, with the Salamanders chapter of Space Marines (as well as Ultramarines, Blood Angels and Lamenters, to name a few others) being one of the few active forces of genuine good, memes about their burn-on-sight racism against Eldar children notwithstanding. But good and evil aren't even the main draw of any 4OK faction - it's their aesthetics and combat doctrines, or even simpler, how cool they can be. Now tying this back to the main topic, it's not at all uncommon for villains of various works, superhero works included, to gain significant fanbases simply because of their inherent cool factor. And let's face it, who wouldn't enjoy being the cool bad guy who doesn't have to obey all the rules, even if just from time to time? Unfortunately, that kind of coolness is kinda hard to find in City of Villains because all the real supervillainy is handled by NPC factions, leaving players as errand-runners with little to no agency in the game world. And I don't doubt that this is at least one of the reasons why people don't stick much to redside: they come in expecting to be awesome supervillains like Lord Recluse and his cronies, get disappointed by the contact-and-mission system still being in effect, and decide to stay blueside because there they at least know what to expect.

I'm not sure how many of you remember that Attack on Stahlheim project I wrote about on this subforum quite some time ago. It's still being worked on, albeit slowly because a) I ended up having to restructure the entire antagonistic force, and b) I feel like it should be bigger than just one five-mission arc. But anyway, the point of this topic is to share assorted lesser things I make. Let's start with my first published arc, literally just titled Liberty Watch Test. As its name implies, it's just a single mission with hardly any story, meant to test a custom enemy group obviously called Liberty Watch. ID is 59603, in case anyone wanted to check it out for themselves and provide feedback.

On that note, let us create custom Rikti NPC costumes. Also, more map proposals: - the farm from Trilogy's missions (both normal and ruined) - all the Signature Story Arc maps that haven't been already added - the lava-filled 5th Column base from Dark Astoria - the various floating sea bases from certain TFs - Longbow warship from no idea what arc - Council skin for every unique 5th Column map, and vice versa

While I can make a full evil organization via Mission Architect, and in fact I have already made one, I just don't really feel like it's enough. Sure, I could make a couple arcs which would let players fight against my forces, but... well, it's just being a punching bag. Can't even flaunt my army much in roleplaying, it's all stuck on my hard drive and a maximum of three arcs I can have up online at a time. ...think posting a folder with all the subgroups forming my empire would be enough? And again, I do respect that keeping the game fair is a considerable limiting factor for player villains' influence on the world, I'm just trying to have ideas.

Once again, true that. People have their comfort zones, and most aren't comfortable being the villains of their own stories. But on the other hand, given it's really not uncommon for viewers to actually enjoy seeing the bad guys in action (if not outright cheering for them)... ... ... Maybe that's one solution? Note how redside contacts, with a handful exceptions, tend to treat players like deniable associates at best and downright garbage at worst. But if there were more people like Dean MacArthur, who actually do get along with the player and don't act like their bosses, perhaps that'd be at least a little less discouraging. There's also these well-discussed older ideas of creating 1-50 arcs which could let one actually realize themselves as an independent player in the Rogue Isles instead of being a minion for hire, but I'm not going to reiterate them.

Kinda bumping this, but yeah, I do agree more co-op content would be neat... just as long as it doesn't pigeonhole villains into clearly heroic jobs.

That's one way I could go about it, thanks.

Sounds interesting, but I'm not sure if it'd work out in this particular game. And to my recollection, GW wasn't above outright ignoring player achievements and forcing an outcome they were more in favor of.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. But it still doesn't answer my question of how even to roleplay a ruler-type villain while complying with the game's limitations and the fact most people aren't in the know on who my character is. I mean, I can't just keep the "ex-overlord who lost everything once and is STILL trying to recover" story going on forever, can I?

Like I said, I'm sorry for the necromancy, but I genuinely didn't use to know this thread even existed, let alone that nobody replied to it before.

OK, maybe that wasn't the best example, but you get the point. I just wanted to say gaining actual, tangible in-game benefits from completing certain arcs could be neat.

Oh yeah, it's mostly the minions bit I'm concerned about. As said in one other thread, my redside main (Elec/Energy dominator) is an ex-archvillain who once got busted so hard he lost his entire evil empire. And I'm not even sure how long to keep that narrative - I really want him to gain an army to command around, but I don't know how to go about it beyond rerolling him as a mastermind or multiboxing with a henchman toon who is indeed a MM. And of course, there's the matter of this fridge logic of why an evil overlord would do everything in person when he could as well just sit back and watch from his lair as his minions do all the dirty work.

The good: the game world feels much less desolate with all these other players running about. Especially in Praetoria, where I used to feel completely alone. The bad: the game is also more prone to crashing when I zone in to a more populated area.

Sorry for not replying to this further, but... I assume power here means not just physical power, but also things like status, wealth etc., correct?

I've taken the time to browse the wiki, and found that there's a few villain arcs which do put enough emphasis on the player to make them feel actually in charge of the operation... except a good few of those then pull the rug from under you just before anything seriously status quo-shattering can happen, with the most the player gets in the end being a consolation prize of sorts. Not much of an incentive to play, if you ask me. However, were some of the achievements to provide some, I don't know, temporary powers... Take Bane Spider Ruben's arc, for example. You end it in possession of a mind control device, and only get to use it during a single multiple-choice-but-still-scripted speech. Why not make a temporary mass-Confuse power out of it? Or anything, really, so long as one can actually feel like they're gaining something from doing all that work. Another thing, a more far-fetched one, could be expanding the Rogue Isles archipelago. The official parchment map includes a couple landmasses to the south, why not make some use of them? That way, redside players could gain at least some more variety, with more places and contacts to find at a given level range.

As far as new map additions go, here's what I'd love: - Dollface's mansion from the end of the Dr. Graves arc - the final Shining Stars HQ from the end of Twinshot's arc - Neuron's lab, both the normal and ruined version - Reichsman's base with the big empowerment machine - the missing second Council giant robot base map - a version of the giant robot base 3 map without the giant robot - the Arachnos base from Aaron Thiery's arc - the Ministry of Technology from the very first non-tutorial Praetorian mission - at least some of the lava-filled Circle of Thorns lairs - a dose of generic mansion maps That's all I can think of at the moment.

I, for one, don't mind the general run-down oppressive style of the Rogue Isles. It kinda suits the place's history as a colonial outlaw haven which eventually became the seat of power for the world's premier nebulous evil organization... that said, Cap au Diable and St. Martial could both use some redesigning because they simply don't feel that much like what they're supposed to be. I do also mind just how few zones there are, with few contacts to do missions for. Could make for a pretty repetitive experience if you roll multiple villains. Furthermore, like a lot of people in this thread, I too am frustrated by how the game always treats the player as a lackey for hire who doesn't have a personality beyond what the contacts need of them, as well as how little actual villainy you get to do - it's all either petty and small in scope, or fighting the more established villain factions like a hero except with edgy "evil" reasons slapped on it. There's just so few moments where I could really feel like I'm my own villain running my own evil plans... Regarding what could be done to increase the appeal, I'd just second the suggestions of adding more non-cooperative SFs and - in a much longer term - setting up longer story arcs where a player could actually realize their own evil agenda, even if to a limited extent.

I don't think the Freedom Corps Jet Pack is supposed to clip that much into the body of a Huge character, and yet it does. Always.

Double feature this time. 1. Server: Everlasting Zone/Mission: Faultline Position: [890.5 138.0 2301.8] A piece of the southern war wall just a little west of the dam is misaligned, showing the area behind it. 2. Server: Everlasting Zone/Mission: "Stop Arbiter Sands and get the PCM" from Agent G Position: Boss chamber All three of the docked submarines are clipping into the dock floor, which I doubt is supposed to be the case.

Awesome! I've always wanted to see a Clockwork Prince in higher definition than what we see in-game. Any chance of the model files being publicly released? Or maybe also printing some add-ons to make a Paladin or Babbage?

Major Liberty is back after minor reworks.

Weird how they're still mentioned in help pop-ups when they don't exist anymore.

What were generic enhancements like, actually? I think I joined long after they got removed.