VulnaviaPhibes

I'm glad this means the Paladin event will trigger more than once per server reset, but I did rather like the new event, it was dynamic and fun and it came with a cool temporary summon power! This reversion is just until the trigger behavior on the new event can be fixed, right? I still get to summon my good good clockwork boy again someday, right? 🥺

I always go evil if a game will let me (DCUO has some very nice villain missions), but yeah, it definitely seems like the less popular choice. The only MMO I can think of that's an exception is AQWorlds, where the evil faction is so overwhelmingly popular that the developers completely abandoned any kind of good vs evil competition and events just have various evil sub-factions competing among themselves. Even the story has sidelined the good guys in favor of a dark, sprawling evil-vs-evil plot, since most players are just so profoundly disinterested in being heroes. (The game is famous for hosting live emo/goth concerts so that might be an influence on the kinds of players they get, to be fair.)

I will say that a lot of debate on this topic seems extremely stuck in the past, which is to be expected given how long it's been going on. The problem isn't a lack of dedicated "redside" players. Everyone's in the same world, and we can change alignment with the push of a button! The problem people have actually identified is that it's difficult to find groups to do villain content with, compared to hero content. Villain content is on average better written and generally more story-focused than hero content, and that's part of the problem. You're more likely to want to take it slow with a small group and roleplay a little than rush through the missions with a big group and not read anything, or level too fast and miss your favorite story arc or zone. Praetoria has this same situation but more so. Rapidly leveling and rushing through in big teams kind of ruins the point. There is villain content designed for big teams, but it's the exception, not the rule. As supporting evidence for this: Everlasting. it's the unofficial RP server and as far as I know has the largest villain population of all of Homecoming's servers. I'm almost exclusively on Everlasting and I rarely have trouble finding a villain team, and they're often in-character teams as well.

I do agree that if the Rogue Isles did feel a little more lawless, and Arachnos' role in governing them was somewhat toned down, that might open up the experience a little bit more. If the rogue isles politics stories focused more on factionalism and competition rather than Arachnos' superiority, or even if Arachnos were more visibly fractious and its power over the isles required more direct enforcement instead of being ambient, this would make those stories more interesting and give them more hooks. I wouldn't get rid of Arachnos though, they're my favorite part of the CoX games, easily. As it is, there are plenty of ways to reject working with or outright screw over Arachnos, and until you seek their Patronage (as they are the Big Dogs on the Isles, after all) you can be hostile/avoidant very easily. and when you do get Patronage, you're a couple story arcs away from cutting off alt!Recluse's head and slapping it down on his desk. It just reinforces a theme: You're in the water with the sharks, and whether you swim in their shadow or break off on your own, you need to eat, get bigger, and not get eaten.

That makes sense, but I feel like the developers were smart to try and shape the narrative around a specific concept (ie: super-powered criminal) instead of trying to make a narrative that works equally well if you're Catwoman or Galactus. And I think it paid off. It's not a great experience if you're playing Thanos, but it works extremely well if you're playing Taskmaster or Bullseye.

I don't know how long it's been since some of you have played villains, but the modern Kuzmin > Fire Wire or Weber > Harris path in Mercy Island definitely has you feeling like a villain. Weber betrays Arachnos to side with you, and you can murder two out of three contacts in the cold blood. You also get to be reasonable and clever, rescuing a villain to get help from them later, manipulating your contact, etc. From there you either do Bocor and the Radio or a single paper > mayhem loop and you're in Cap au Diable, where you're in a bigger pond and doing more contract/job stuff, but there's enough variety for you to reasonably pick and choose. Then you're off to Sharkhead, where you're intimidating and blackmailing your own contacts again, and you've got Dean and Vincent Ross and all that good stuff, and if you want there's high-level mega villain stuff with Mr G or the Pandora's Box SSA, where you can form your own organization. But City of Villains isn't about being like, Doctor Doom. City of Villains is about being like, Titania or Two-Face or the Beetle, and eventually like Circe or the Penguin. You're a crook, a con trying to make your living on the wrong side of the law. You gradually build up your rep and your resources and become a big deal, but you're a criminal, not a cosmic force of pure evil that everyone bows down to. You might strive to be that eventually, but RPGs by design involve starting in a place of weakness and slowly getting stronger. A lot of supervillain tropes have their roots in like, Dillinger-Gang era criminal culture, and that's the kind of vibe CoV is trying to capture. You're like one of the ambitious young guns in an old crime movie, trying to make your living and cut your way to the top of the criminal underworld through intimidation and manipulation and guile. Dr Graves' arc rightly gets a lot of guff for characterizing the player character too specifically, but it's also a perfect look into the kind of character the developers envisioned as the "default" city of villains protagonist. I like the tone of CoV as it is. 18 of my 20 characters are full-on villains. I wouldn't want to play the version of CoV some of you claim to want.

The most interesting thing about this thread for me has been the number of people who play at absurd difficulty levels. Even my incarnate level controller doesn't go higher than +1/x2. I find the game's combat system a little tedious, honestly? I enjoy some combat to help with the rp experience, so it can create cool emergent moments and awesome animations and stuff, but I can get that spectacle easily without turning up with difficulty, and NPC allies tend to be a really fun part of it! (Plus, it gives me someone to heal and buff when I'm not teaming)

Ominous! I shiver with anticipation... ❤️

I tried it out on a few characters but I always feel bad about missing my fav story arcs and zones, and plus when I use it I have a lot of trouble keeping up my enhancements and feeling useful to the team when I don't get infamy drops from enemies.

I think it's based on archetype and difficulty, honestly. I usually play support characters and typically on default difficulty or slightly higher, and I often find the NPC allies kind of carry me! Especially once buffed they're usually stronger and tougher than I am so I can hang back and let them do a lot of the fighting. So I both really love them and kind of rely on them. Plus the missions can be so lonely without them! I love having like, Becky or Ohmtown to hang out with as we brawl through some losers together.

Piecemeal has been working on some changes, and the recent "what to expect for the future" update had some pics of them (not the pic that shows up in the link preview). They were soliciting advice on what the revamped warriors ought to be like in the linked thread, but I missed the chance to submit this cool little tidbit. I feel like it's really important to their vibe and character, and even though it's not in the lore bible or any of the supplementary content I feel the Night Ward and Pandora's box missions with the warriors reflect it.

You're thinking of Victoria Phibes! Vulnavia No-Last-Name-Given is the doctor's implacable assistant and absolute fashion icon. Excited someone else knows about the movies though! They're both very good. ^_^

Honestly I think the problem is that Montague's arc is the only lost-centric story arc heroes get, period. They show up occasionally in one or two other story arcs, but only after you get access to Montague and they're never the focus of the story, just "also there." Montague's arc is basically where the player is formally introduced to the Lost, and then you immediately learn everything there is to know about them very quickly and by the end of the story they're on the way to being cured. It's like they thought they had already written some kind of low-level Lost content that Montague was tying up loose ends for, but they never actually did. To be fair, this was part of Issue 12, which was packed with so much stuff that basically everything feels rushed through at 80% completion. I always thought it was kind of weird how Montague's greeting text is just "Hello" with no color or punctuation, and how he just rushes you into rescuing Percy without like, explaining who Percy is or what's happening. And then the VEAT arcs were part of Issue 12 too... it's a whole deal.

OK, so the warriors are getting an update! Very cool. BUT! I found this. http://www.cityofheroes.ca/game_info/know_your_adversary/top_secret_the_warriors.html I KNEW I remembered this from somewhere, but I couldn't find it before Piecemeal's thread closed. It's absolutely worth a read. Especially this. We know Odysseus doesn't just traffic magic artifacts, he's an old-school antiquities dealer, and the Warriors are his private club. It seems like they're a little more sophisticated than their image lets on. In addition to preserving ancient combat techniques and what they see as the superior and more honorable cultures of antiquity, they also preserve ancient art and knowledge otherwise lost to time, and don't share it with anyone. And why should they? They have the discipline to be legendary warriors, to be superior linguists and scholars, they keep honor and dignity alive when nobody else is willing to. Doesn't that make them better, more worthy, than all the lazy idiots who sit around watching television and waiting for so-called heroes to save them? And the fact that they maybe drink a little from something like the well of the furies probably helps with those visions of antique glory and superiority. They don't just sit around bonfires eating Ancient Greek recipes and reciting lost poetic epics, mourning the world that was lost. But they definitely do that, in addition to killing people with swords and complimenting one another's gains. TL;DR: The Warriors preserve ancient culture and secrets. They definitely have like, Damascus steel and greek fire and other cool stuff they would never imagine selling to anyone unworthy.

Oh my god... are those new warriors mobs... is that nemesis' pandora lab all busted up.... ... ... Is the illuminati coming back?

Oooh, lots of good stuff! I like the travel power pool changes, and I'm very excited to play with sorcery. ^_^ Also ohmigod, 400 tip missions. I'm so sorry. I haven't gotten around to playing Watkins' arc yet (I don't really play blueside that often >_>), but I am super curious as to what the old mission fail dialogue was that they decided to change! I'm fully imagining that Dr Phil video where he's like "You're ugly, you're disgusting, I'm gonna kill you, give me 200 dollars."

I finally got a chance to play the new Issue 27 arc and I LOVE what you've done. ^_^ Dr Buzzsaw and the Vaz are my absolute favs and it's AMAZING to see them get some higher level love! You really built on their personalities and gave them some more meat while drilling in on what made them so wonderful. 😄 And the tone and style of the writing is just perfect! It has the wacky fun and deranged ambition of all the best redside arcs, the sense that you're building something beautiful and horrible and gathering all your diabolical friends around to watch it go KA-BLOOSH. (The fact that the mission prompt literally calls them your friends made me so happy heheh.) I can't WAIT to see what you do next! ❤️❤️❤️

I restarted and tried a few different key combinations. Control+Enter and Command+Enter both failed, but Shift+Control+Command+F got it in full screen for about half a second before it crashed. I'll do a fresh install and fiddle around a little, and I'll post here if I figure out what went wrong and how to fix it! ^_^

This guide was super helpful, thank you so much for making it! But unfortunately the command+enter combo didn't work! The game window is still that unusable little block with the tantalizing game music, and no method of forcing full screen I've tried has helped! Do you have any troubleshooting tips?

I've recently switched over to a new M1 Chip Mac laptop. I've reinstalled Island rum, the client, and homebrew according to the instructions, and everything seems in order. But when the game launches, there's no window, just the little bar with the red, yellow, and green buttons in the upper left hand corner. If I try to change it to full screen, the window is just black. The music works fine, and I can sometimes see the login screen when I'm in the process of changing to full screen, so I think it's a scaling/window problem. Has anyone else had this issue and solved it?