I'm not cut out for villainy

[SaintD]

I've played around with some villain starts, it's been a long time. I just wanted to make a quick buck, you know? Be a bit mercenary. A couple of hours later and I've killed Fire Wire 'cause he tried framing me, then told Lt. Harris I used him to destroy Longbow while he was crying over the body of his little Longbow crush. Then killed him.

Some of the new storylines are making me feel bad, I'm going back to Paragon where I only have to worry about avoiding Security Chief and Perez Park missions! Waaaaaaa! 😭😭😭 I wanna be a hero agaaaaaaain!

Edited October 13, 2019 by SaintD

[Itikar]

Well, in both cases you had the option to spare them but chose not to, so perhaps you are indeed cut for villainy. 😛

 

I suggest you try perhaps the traditional starting contact with your next redside toon, they are much less extreme in that regard.

 

Also the Dr. Graves arcs are pretty badass and without villainous moral choices. Actually they were pretty tame, but still hella fun.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by Itikar

[Lines]

Most redside content isn't actually very villainous. You play the same kind of narrative role as you do blueside, being a protagonist rather than an antagonist, but in a scenario where goodness is actively discouraged.

 

I really love it, a lot more than blueside because I find that setting really interesting, but I can see why others wouldn't depending on their expectations.

Edited October 13, 2019 by Lines

[Hyperstrike]

Wait till you hit the Westin Phipps arcs.  You'll feel dirty, inside and out...

[SaintD]

44 minutes ago, Itikar said:

Well, in both cases you had the option to spare them but chose not to, so perhaps you are indeed cut for villainy. 😛

 

I suggest you try perhaps the traditional starting contact with your next redside toon, they are much less extreme in that regard.

 

Also the Dr. Graves arcs are pretty badass and without villainous moral choices. Actually they were pretty tame, but still hella fun.

 

 

I didn't spare them because I'm good at everything I do, even if I don't like it! 😡

It's actually only really Fire Wire and Harris who made me feel bad at that level. You kinda want to kill Fire Wire until you actually do it and he's kinda pathetic, which doesn't feel very good unless you're actually horrible. The Harris thing though, good God you're literally just nudging along this jilted mess of an idiot until he's staring at the corpse of the person he loved, and when he finally questions himself, you can straight up tell him that, yeah, he did it all to himself and you just used him. And then you kill him.

I do like Grave's arc. Objectively you're doing some ludicrously terrible stuff, and you do actually murder a fairly cowardly little man at the end.....but it's all delivered with Saturday Morning Cartoon levels of silly obliviousness.

People always complained that the stuff in Going Rogue wasn't very villainous, but I liked the down-to-Earth lack of pretentiousness throughout a lot of it. It was usually just a whole lot of beatin' faces for a bit of a payday, but everyone seemed to want to be Evil Superman and deserving of such respect and awe right from level 1. I saw, and still see, a lot of that in people's bios when they bother to write them. They can be so desperately grandiose.....buddy, you're fistfighting Hellions in groups of three in the street, reel it in, you're not there yet.

[Megajoule]

3 hours ago, Hyperstrike said:

Wait till you hit the Westin Phipps arcs.  You'll feel dirty, inside and out...

Oh yeah.  I read the thread title and thought, "met Phipps, huh?"

 

Edited October 13, 2019 by Megajoule

[MetaVileTerror]

People love to bring up Phipps, but he's so garishly cartoonish from my perspective that he comes off more of a parody of EVIL! than actually evil.  Now, Peter Themari.  There's a delightfully evil chap.

[ILIWAPCT]

Ha Ha

Forget about Hero's and Villains: 

Make a alt on Praetorian then tell me what you are cut out for... 

[MisterBernie]

As for Harris, I guess it depends a lot on your pov whether you consider killing Captain Friendzone villainous or not. 

 

My vigilant turned freshly „villain“ (it’s a misunderstanding over how to deal with irredeemable villains get off his back) saw working with him as a necessary evil to get Longbow off his trail, but he was certainly in need of punishment afterwards....

[Hyperstrike]

16 hours ago, SaintD said:

I didn't spare them because I'm good at everything I do, even if I don't like it! 😡

It's actually only really Fire Wire and Harris who made me feel bad at that level. You kinda want to kill Fire Wire until you actually do it and he's kinda pathetic, which doesn't feel very good unless you're actually horrible. The Harris thing though, good God you're literally just nudging along this jilted mess of an idiot until he's staring at the corpse of the person he loved, and when he finally questions himself, you can straight up tell him that, yeah, he did it all to himself and you just used him. And then you kill him.

I do like Grave's arc. Objectively you're doing some ludicrously terrible stuff, and you do actually murder a fairly cowardly little man at the end.....but it's all delivered with Saturday Morning Cartoon levels of silly obliviousness.

People always complained that the stuff in Going Rogue wasn't very villainous, but I liked the down-to-Earth lack of pretentiousness throughout a lot of it. It was usually just a whole lot of beatin' faces for a bit of a payday, but everyone seemed to want to be Evil Superman and deserving of such respect and awe right from level 1. I saw, and still see, a lot of that in people's bios when they bother to write them. They can be so desperately grandiose.....buddy, you're fistfighting Hellions in groups of three in the street, reel it in, you're not there yet.

Now if there was a mission arc that ended up with me killing Jenkins...
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Jenkins

I'd wax that fool like IT AIN'T NO THANG!

And I'd go out for ice cream and Disney World afterward!
 

[MetaVileTerror]

You leave Jeremy Jenkins alone!

Take out his father, sure.  Dirty scumbag lawyer that he is.  But JJ is a sweet, innocent (, dumb) angel!

 

And his existence in CoV Beta predates the Leeroy Jenkins meme, so can we please put that rumour to bed?

[Shred Monkey]

21 hours ago, ILIWAPCT said:

Ha Ha

Forget about Hero's and Villains: 

Make a alt on Praetorian then tell me what you are cut out for... 

Fine point.  The little I played over there on live, I can honestly say I don't know if I was a good guy or a bad guy.

[Lines]

1 minute ago, Shred Monkey said:

Fine point.  The little I played over there on live, I can honestly say I don't know if I was a good guy or a bad guy.

Yes, you are.

[eldriyth]

On 10/13/2019 at 5:19 AM, SaintD said:

I've played around with some villain starts, it's been a long time. I just wanted to make a quick buck, you know? Be a bit mercenary. A couple of hours later and I've killed Fire Wire 'cause he tried framing me, then told Lt. Harris I used him to destroy Longbow while he was crying over the body of his little Longbow crush. Then killed him.

Some of the new storylines are making me feel bad, I'm going back to Paragon where I only have to worry about avoiding Security Chief and Perez Park missions! Waaaaaaa! 😭😭😭 I wanna be a hero agaaaaaaain!

Villains are cold hearted and selfish criminals. However, they can have deep feelings about certain things. Look at Magneto or Kylo Ren for example.

Edited October 14, 2019 by eldriyth

[Trademarked Name]

I often wonder how this game would be if it actually kept a secret tally of your decision making and only notified you of an alignment change when you reached critical level. There are missions on blueside that sort of feel "vigilante" enough depending on your decision. Similar to the progression of some badges or the tip bar for hero/vill alignment mish (but not something you could view.)

Then when you do something(s) that tipped the scale from the choices you've chosen and the game gave you the alert "Boom! You're now a rogue!". "Boom! Society now sees you as a villain!" etc.

The way it is now, since you can see where you're at or avert the Alignment mish, you can technically call yourself whatever you want or play on either side you want. 

 

It would also be cool if, when you're a vigilante and going through blue side or red side cops con as enemies and attack you. Just a weird thought. I actually thought this happened with yellow cons in Brickstown (Crey?) when you took up mishes that targeted them, but I might be mis remembering it from live.

 

I too was turned-off by the villainous life-style and no longer have any red-side toons despite trying several times to be motivated to play there.

[MisterBernie]

1 hour ago, Trademarked Name said:

I often wonder how this game would be if it actually kept a secret tally of your decision making and only notified you of an alignment change when you reached critical level.

I doubt a secret tally would be well received by many people (we like to see our stats!), but I agree wholeheartedly that I think it'd be interesting if the alignment system could be better integrated with the rest of the game. Retrofit the old missions and story arcs with choice points, and voilà... in the Madeleine Casey arc, for example, do you try your best to save her, or do you decide not risk it and cut her down before she becomes a dangerous asset of the Carnival?

[Dafydd Hywel]

I always felt out of place Red side as well.

[Chris24601]

I have to carefully select my red-side missions to not get disgusted with it and just flip hero at the earliest opportunity.  I always stop the intro arcs after the Harris introduction (before he gives you his story arc) because I wouldn't care enough about Longbow to use some sucker to murder one of them (I also spare Fire Wire).

 

I also skip the Graves arcs because I don't want to have to deal with Crosscut; particularly the lackey explanation mission where you have to give him the Skull who just swore himself to you. There's villain and then there's being a dick. You treat your help well so you get a rep of being good to work with... otherwise you're stuck hiring the few people living under rocks who haven't heard of your glorious exploits yet.

 

On 10/13/2019 at 2:57 PM, ILIWAPCT said:

Ha Ha

Forget about Hero's and Villains: 

Make a alt on Praetorian then tell me what you are cut out for... 

I always appreciated that they managed to stick the two most extreme sub-factions (LG and CE essentially) into the same group while still managing an opposing axis for the other (LN and CN essentially).

 

My recommendation if you wanna get out of Praetoria with your morals intact; do Warden (Resistance) missions only until the last one, flip Loyalist there, then run the Responsibility (Loyalist) arcs (but take every Resistance mission option you can within them) and finally flip back Resistance at the moral choice point.

 

If you wanna feel even better, run First/Night Ward before leaving for Paragon City... putting the exit scenes with Katie and Noble after First/Night Ward feels a lot warmer than leaving and then going to First/Night Ward.

 

Conversely, if you want to really feel like a villain forget Red-side; go Crusader (Resistance) all the way then go join Arachnos like the proper psychopathic terrorist you are... you'll easily be more villainous than 99% of the most despicable villains of the Rogue Isles and you'll only be in your 20s.

[MTeague]

16 minutes ago, Chris24601 said:

.....

I always appreciated that they managed to stick the two most extreme sub-factions (LG and CE essentially) into the same group while still managing an opposing axis for the other (LN and CN essentially).

 

My recommendation if you wanna get out of Praetoria with your morals intact; do Warden (Resistance) missions only until the last one, flip Loyalist there, then run the Responsibility (Loyalist) arcs (but take every Resistance mission option you can within them) and finally flip back Resistance at the moral choice point.

.....

Loyalist (Responsibility) and Resistance (Warden) are both valid good-guy option. 

 

For the Responsibility option, You just have to look at it from the perspective of a character who grew up in Praetoria, and who truly believes deep down to their toenails that the entire human race was literally inches away from going EXTINCT until Cole stopped Hamidon.  It's very easy to forgive a lot, or to accept some things as unpleasant but as brutal necessities that the people just have to accept if you think the literal survival of your entire species depends on a few specific Praetors. 

 

You may be a PPD / Powers Division who's not comfortable with the Seers, and you may think Praetor TIlman is sick and that Praetor White is a thug.  But if they're part of the last defense of the human race... (at least until you learn about other options on Primal Earth....), you may find yourself in a "The Good of the Many Outweighs the Good of the Few, or the One" position, and feel like you have to stop at least the extreme elements of the Resistance, even if you may privately sympathize greatly with the more peaceful elements within the Resistance.  Inspector Kang is a great example of this.

Edited July 13, 2020 by MTeague

[Apparition]

6 minutes ago, MTeague said:

Loyalist (Responsibility) and Resistance (Warden) are both valid good-guy option. 

 

For the Responsibility option, You just have to look at it from the perspective of a character who grew up in Praetoria, and who truly believes deep down to their toenails that the entire human race was literally inches away from going EXTINCT until Cole stopped Hamidon.  It's very easy to forgive a lot, or to accept some things as unpleasant but as brutal necessities that the people just have to accept if you think the literal survival of your entire species depends on a few specific Praetors. 

 

You may be a PPD / Powers Division who's not comfortable with the Seers, and you may think Praetor TIlman is sick and that Praetor White is a thug.  But if they're part of the last defense of the human race... (at least until you learn about other options on Primal Earth....), you may find yourself in a "The Good of the Many Outweighs the Good of the Few, or the One" position, and feel like you have to stop at least the extreme elements of the Resistance, even if you may privately sympathize greatly with the more peaceful elements within the Resistance.  Inspector Kang is a great example of this.

 

Yep.  That's how I run it.  I side with the Resistance on the Seer 1381 mission arc to free the Seers, but my characters are ultimately Loyalist.  They see far more good than bad in the system, and work to maintain law and order while quietly working to remove the bad apples in the background, or at least work around them.

[MTeague]

17 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Yep.  That's how I run it.  I side with the Resistance on the Seer 1381 mission arc to free the Seers, but my characters are ultimately Loyalist.  They see far more good than bad in the system, and work to maintain law and order while quietly working to remove the bad apples in the background, or at least work around them.

Sounds about the same.  If I'm trying to play a decent person in Praetoria (ie, not someone who's rabidly in it for power ...)

 

Spoiler

• I back Cleo over Washington 5/6 times so far
• If I don't accidentally block myself from getting there by taking down Cutter Cain too early (sigh), then I help Katie Douglas
• If I do the power arc as well, I'm about 50/50 to let Belladona escape vs bringing her in.  I don't trust Sinclair by that point, but BV's not exactly screaming trustworthy, and I don't like having to take down Riptide
• I *always* let Vanessa DeVore escape when sent after her
• half the time I let Kang do his thing at the very very end of the Responsibilty arc.... but half the time I take him down in a tragic standoff.

[Sakura Tenshi]

On 10/13/2019 at 4:19 AM, SaintD said:

I've played around with some villain starts, it's been a long time. I just wanted to make a quick buck, you know? Be a bit mercenary. A couple of hours later and I've killed Fire Wire 'cause he tried framing me, then told Lt. Harris I used him to destroy Longbow while he was crying over the body of his little Longbow crush. Then killed him.

Some of the new storylines are making me feel bad, I'm going back to Paragon where I only have to worry about avoiding Security Chief and Perez Park missions! Waaaaaaa! 😭😭😭 I wanna be a hero agaaaaaaain!

Think of it this way: you kill fire wire because he's a sniveling little rat that sold you out and is probably going to keep doing it to others for his own self-gain. Lt. Harris is a freaking nut job where allowing him to live is probably a bad idea in general because he decided to murder a bunch of people because his 3d irl waifu sempai wouldn't notice him. Having either of these things running around in the world seems like a worse option.

[Scientist]

A friend and I recently duoed Praetoria following the "switch alignments every time" guide so we could see as many arcs as possible, and after that we went redside because there was no possible way we could consider those characters heroes.  We then looked for any arcs that involved (1) betrayal, or (2) Praetoria, and (3) anything with duplicates or clones since we were now presumably sharing Primal earth with our Primal "duplicates".  We think the Praetorian storytelling is better than redside, which is better than blueside, but it definitely doesn't fit for every character concept, and won't fit a lot of players in a superhero game.  

 

Regarding Phipps, I've had characters who ran all his missions, and ones who deliberately failed the most egregious one, depending on the character, but I hate to miss any content, so I really had to do both on SOMEBODY.  

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Scientist said:

A friend and I recently duoed Praetoria following the "switch alignments every time" guide so we could see as many arcs as possible, and after that we went redside because there was no possible way we could consider those characters heroes.  We then looked for any arcs that involved (1) betrayal, or (2) Praetoria, and (3) anything with duplicates or clones since we were now presumably sharing Primal earth with our Primal "duplicates".  We think the Praetorian storytelling is better than redside, which is better than blueside, but it definitely doesn't fit for every character concept, and won't fit a lot of players in a superhero game.  

 

Regarding Phipps, I've had characters who ran all his missions, and ones who deliberately failed the most egregious one, depending on the character, but I hate to miss any content, so I really had to do both on SOMEBODY.  

There's a nice Vigilante tip mission where you get to put PuppyKicker Weston Phipps in the hospital.

 

You don't get to actually KILL him (stupid railroad plot....),

and he manages to twist it for press coverage to garner sympathy....

But he'll be taking food by liquids only for a few weeks while he gets dentures and has his bones heal up in a full body cast.

It's *something*, anyway.

[Frostbiter]

The only thing that irks me about playing a Villian is the obsession with money. nowhere in the game even takes money and my characters are shoehorned into chasing it a little too often.