Merits: How to drum up redside activity

[Apparition]

13 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

I like the idea, but it has to be recognized that despite what the original devs may have intended, Red and Gold sides are in fact effectively side content/increased challenge and alternative starting areas, NOT separate but equal factions.

 

Gold side was originally intended as an alternative starting area but red side was clearly designed as a separate and equal faction, and remains so.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Apparition said:

 

Gold side was originally intended as an alternative starting area but red side was clearly designed as a separate and equal faction, and remains so.

 

It was clearly designed that way, but realistically it is not.

 

If it was then Heroes would have to help Villains as often as Villains help Heroes in the 35-50+ game.

[Apparition]

4 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

 

It was clearly designed that way, but realistically it is not.

 

If it was then Heroes would have to help Villains as often as Villains help Heroes in the 35-50+ game.

 

Villains aren’t helping heroes.  They’re using the saps… err… I mean heroes to help eliminate the competition from Rikti and Praetoria.  Why do all of the hard labor when you can get the heroes to do it for you, and get softened up in the process?

Edited May 26, 2021 by Apparition

[Wavicle]

Just now, Apparition said:

 

Villains aren’t helping heroes.  They’re using the saps… err… I mean heroes to help eliminate the competition from Rikti and Praetoria.

But to what end?

[Apparition]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

But to what end?

 

Less labor and competition for the villains, and the heroes get softened up in the process.

[Wavicle]

3 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

Less labor and competition for the villains, and the heroes get softened up in the process.

Then there should be missions where we betray them...

[Luminara]

Hey, look, brown.  And over there, more brown.  There's some reddish... brown.  And that spot has a little green... in the brown.

 

Eh, I'll hop on top of this building... oh, the windows are just textures, not windows with ledges, so I can't hop.

 

Okay, I'll run over here and... fuck me standing, it's a dead end.  There isn't a single dead end anywhere in Paragon City.  Why are these three buildings jammed together like this?  Who decided it would be awesome to have blind alleys and dead ends with no way out unless you have a vertical movement power?

 

Ugh.  Never mind, I'll go- what the hell happened to my framerate?  How... THIS FUCKING PLACE HAS FLAT TEXTURES FOR WINDOWS AND STILL TANKS MY FRAMERATE?!

 

Deep breath.  I can tolerate this.  The writing is "better" on this side... except, at no point am I actually a villain, I'm just a stooge, a shill, a lackey, a toady, a C-lister... this is better writing?  Who came to that conclusion and was that person actually literate, or... not in a fucking coma?

 

That's my annual five minutes in Browntown.  Back to being a hero.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

NOT separate but equal factions.

Well of course not.  They're separate and Even Bettah! 

[Pdxk]

Luminara mentions a big factor regarding why Redside just doesn't interest me. Some people say it's because "we don't want to play bad guys", but the truth is a bit more complicated. Let's get into the mindset of someone who's not a long-time player for a second, and talk about the experience of someone playing a new character for the first hour or so: Blueside has a relatively bland, but readable first area, something that doesn't have a strong identity and therefore doesn't railroad you much. It has quest givers with various enemies depending on what you fancy beating up, you can play the kind of hero that you want to play, from the street-level vigilante who beats up thugs to the benevolent alien that fights against robots. Then you've got Redside: Mercy is a much more complicated map with sinuous streets and culs-de-sac, a strong aesthetic theme, grey and brown, darkness and bleakness everywhere, already under the thumb of an evil dictator. And contrary to Blueside, you just don't have *that* many possibilities when it comes to playing a bad guy at first. Hell, out of the three initial quest givers, two order you to kill snakes in dark ugly tunnels. Apart from a handful of factions, you don't get to fight good guys, you just fight other kinds of thugs and baddies. While City of Heroes is amazing at giving you the hero experience you want, City of Villains struggles to offer a setting open enough for you to thrive in it. It gives you a very specific type of villainy, but that's not the one you might expect in the first place. Add the confusing starting map on top of it, and the new player who just joined Redside is going to be put off by the experience.

 

It's not that I don't want to play a bad guy, I'd love to. It's just that I think Redside doesn't give me the room to do so in an enjoyable manner. I don't think throwing more rewards at players will change that feeling.

[cranebump]

People may not dig villains, but they do dig their ATs. Often wish they’d kept them separate and that you had to cross over through play, rather than talking to a seagull (or just, you know, choosing blue at chargen). But...that’s life, I guess. 

[UltraAlt]

8 minutes ago, cranebump said:

Often wish they’d kept them separate

 

Oh, now the villains are for actual segregation.

Standard.

[cranebump]

8 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Oh, now the villains are for actual segregation.

Standard.

Yessss....our precioussss ATs!

[Christopher Robin]

9 hours ago, cranebump said:

People may not dig villains, but they do dig their ATs.

 

Meh it's just Brutes really and mainly for Spines/Fiery Aura.

Masterminds are ranked higher in playtime than defenders for some

strange reason (laziness probably ) but other than that it's all heroes topping

the board then the other villains below with Widows & Warshades bringing up the ass-end.

 

9 hours ago, cranebump said:

Often wish they’d kept them separate

 

You and me both!

I can't tell you the number of times I've seen an obvious villain hanging out in Atlas

and sat there clicking my auto target bind "What's wrong with this stupid thing!"

Why wooaSCREEEAAAEEAAAAAGHHHHH!!! Oh COME ON! That is clearly a

demon summoning other demons up from the bowels of Hades right in the middle

of Atlas! Why the Babu Frik can't I punch him straight into the Zig via Next Week

avenue with a slight detour through Oblivion?! Is my targeting device broken?

 

That's life indeed... oh snap, I feel like Thor waiting for Loki to say...

 

 

15 hours ago, Clawdebt said:

I don't like playing as a villain sorry.

 

No need to apologize Clawdebt. Each to his/her own.

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by Christopher Robin

[Aeroprism]

Personally, akin to what @Luminara said, it's the zone design. If you pick super speed, your life will be miserable.  Aside from that, I prefer CoV in about every aspect.

@Christopher Robin a quick question, and I really, really mean no disrespect but I want to ask: why do you force carriage returns (you press the Enter key) at the end of each of your lines instead of letting the forum engine do the line change for you?  You write good posts, your arguments are well explained and, let's be honest, Orange IS the best color in the universe, but since not everyone use the same screen resolution, deciding where your line ends instead of letting the post script do it for you makes your posts feel dislocated and it makes it very hard to read.

I used to do that, actually, a long long time ago, until someone pointed out to me and I realized what they meant.

[TemporalVileTerror]

I know I just linked it in the last thread from UAlt, and I initially decided against it in this thread because I had thought it would be a bit redundant, but ...

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/19655-weekly-discussion-53-how-to-increase-villain-population/

These arguments and ideas expressed in this thread are all very similar, if not identical, to the ones in that thread.  Which were largely the same retreads from earlier in Homecoming's many threads on the subject, which were retreads going all the way back to shortly after Issue 6 was released and there wasn't any initial swell of players joining Redside.  The fact that people had to pay for the  "expansalone"  was probably an initial factor, but beyond that . . . yeah.  A lot of people have different reasons.

But the reason I personally find the most laughable, even if it -is- true, is "people don't want to be a villain.  They want to be a hero!"

City of Heroes has generally failed as hard at accurately portraying heroics as City of Villains has failed at portraying villainy.

Largely due to the limitations of the production and the engine used, and then perpetuated by a captive audience, we've got to admit that in BOTH cases, players are largely just taking on the roles of violence-disseminating lackeys.

There is precious little content which really delivers on anything beyond that.  Praetoria continued that metatypical ludonarrative, but did a MUCH better job at keeping it coherent and avoiding dissonance with the gameplay.  The addition of choices to switch sociopolitcal factions within Praetoria helped tremendously.

 

City of Heroes (and City of Villains) has always had immense potential to deliver on the idea of playing the role of a hero (or a villain), and having been at least an active observer in the Legacy/Retail forums as well, I can confidently state that players have been offering suggestions on how to tap in to that potential for ages.  Many of the ideas were excellent, if their specific implementation would need to be tweaked to fit the limitations of the game.

But the gameplay formula for the whole of City remains largely the same.  Go to place.  Push buttons.  Watch humanoid (or occasionally non-humanoid) critters ragdoll on to the floor (or against a wall if you have Knockback).

The narrative is largely told -at- us, not with us.  We're not making choices that reinforce the heroic or villainous identity.  We're on narrative railroads that remove agency, and ultimately deny the possibility of actually exploring Heroics and Villainy in a meaningful way.

 

And there is just enough content already in the game that demonstrates that it doesn't need to be that way.

There are some arcs with great writing.  There are some missions with great mechanics.  Rarely do both bolts of lightning strike in the same place, though.

 

So, my personal theory is that those of us who chose Redside did so for many reasons, just as many as the reasons that people chose Blueside.

But . . . one of those reasons is agency.  Self-determination.  Redside has always made the undelivered promise that we would get to be our own villains, some day.  It was part of the initial marketing push for the whole thing.  "Villains Act, Heroes React."  And yes, I will keep repeating it.  It's a damned good market blurb because it's a damn good sentiment.  It's worth pursuing.

Ultimately, when all the game is equally incapable of delivering on the ludonarrative promise of agency, then yeah.  People will default on their choice, and in this game's case, City of Heroes is definitely the default.  Hell, it's even coded that way:  "Unaligned" characters are just coded as Heroes without the little blue star logo.

 

Personal choice is important, and people have made their choices.  If things change, people may make different choices.  That's not just for this game, but a part of being alive.

Extra Merits will incentivize people who want Merits.  It won't change enough of the equation to attract people to play Redside in any terms of sustainable numbers.  

And really, that's fine.  We should probably just lean HARD in to the fact that there are far fewer Redside players than there are Blueside.  There's some justifiable narrative for that anyway.

Create future Redside content with the knowledge that the people playing it are CHOOSING to play it, and make damned sure you respect that choice.  Give the Villains some real villainy to commit.  Give the Rogues some opportunities for opportunism.  Give the Vigilantes someone to blame for their anger and self-loathing.

 

I am super-late for work now, so proof-reading will have to wait.  Buh-bye!

[Snarky]

On 5/25/2021 at 10:07 AM, ZemX said:

Blueside has more people because it has more people.  It's self-perpetuating. 

and that's numberwang.  WoW figured this out.  and they are bone headed stupid.  they now all but force players to congregate on certain maps through quest givers and transportation access.  

 

Atlas Park, Ouro, they are "the" places to be.  You out somewhere else?  You are running something.  You not running something....guess where you are?  Its not a law, its a trend.  And, as pointed out, it is self perpetuating.

 

There has never been a "the" place Redside.  the absolute closest I ever saw was Cap Black Market on live.  And it was never that crowded.  Now we have /ah.  People do not gather, which perpetuates the illusion there is no players redside, which causes there to be less players wanting to do anything there.

 

The best possible solution?  Have a Pocket D close that is exclusively Redside.  Not the "D", some random Supervillain map.  Have it loaded with Portals to every Red zone, an Ouro portal, every ATM, AH, tailor, every danged service you could offer.  Maybe even contact clones for SFs.  A Redside villain Bazaar.  Accessible from every Base portals.  THen the villains would at least have a AP equivalent.  

[Ukase]

15 hours ago, Luminara said:

Hey, look, brown.  And over there, more brown.  There's some reddish... brown.  And that spot has a little green... in the brown.

 

Eh, I'll hop on top of this building... oh, the windows are just textures, not windows with ledges, so I can't hop.

 

Okay, I'll run over here and... fuck me standing, it's a dead end.  There isn't a single dead end anywhere in Paragon City.  Why are these three buildings jammed together like this?  Who decided it would be awesome to have blind alleys and dead ends with no way out unless you have a vertical movement power?

 

Ugh.  Never mind, I'll go- what the hell happened to my framerate?  How... THIS FUCKING PLACE HAS FLAT TEXTURES FOR WINDOWS AND STILL TANKS MY FRAMERATE?!

 

Deep breath.  I can tolerate this.  The writing is "better" on this side... except, at no point am I actually a villain, I'm just a stooge, a shill, a lackey, a toady, a C-lister... this is better writing?  Who came to that conclusion and was that person actually literate, or... not in a fucking coma?

 

That's my annual five minutes in Browntown.  Back to being a hero.

Some of you may disagree - but this post covers it perfectly. 

While it is subjective, Red side content is NOT better writing. It is indeed trite, and overdone and downright campy in some instances. But that's just my opinion, worth less than a fart in an enclosed space. 
 

Redside was poorly imagined. Spiders? Really? This is the type of villain you want people to identify with? The NPCs, the scenery, they are all pretty darn gross. Who said Villains had to be dank and dark? If they'd had the red side content in zones like Praetoria, then you'd have something. But with the landscape and geometry laid out like a ghost town, it should remain a ghost town. 

They start you off with arcs like Graves that are quite annoying to collaborate with because all members of the team have to do all the zone hopping and talking with contacts. Red side was always bragging how story arcs didn't send you all over the place. WRONG! They're worse than blue side! 

Now Praetoria is where it's at. Even fewer people play there. But the zones are beautiful. Most story arcs are only 4-5 missions, and can be done quickly. 

All that to say this: If you want more people to do red side content, simply form a super team of some sort at a time when you KNOW you can make it, post said time somewhere, advertise for it, and you can probably get two teams together routinely, and consistently. 

 

[UltraAlt]

34 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

I want to ask: why do you force carriage returns (you press the Enter key) at the end of each of your lines instead of letting the forum engine do the line change for you?

 

Some kind of free verse poetry thing on their part?

[Snarky]

40 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

 why do you force carriage returns (you press the Enter key) at the end of each of your lines instead of letting the forum engine do the line change for you?  

obviously some type of undead who trained on a live typewriter and habitually writes a certain number of characters and hits return,

 

why can you not see these things?

[UltraAlt]

32 minutes ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

But the reason I personally find the most laughable, even if it -is- true, is "people don't want to be a villain.  They want to be a hero!"

City of Heroes has generally failed as hard at accurately portraying heroics as City of Villains has failed at portraying villainy.

 

You find it laughable because you can't accept the truth.

 

It really doesn't make any difference about what the game tries to make you feel about fighting villains and saving the City.

As long as you are playing your character like you are defeating villains and saving the City that is what you are doing in your gameplay.

 

City of Heroes succeeded. It is the best MMORPG Superhero game of all time.

 

City of Villains succeeded in doing the same thing for villains. CoV did fail in duplicating City of Heroes success. That is a fact. Villain population is much smaller that the Hero population always has been and most likely always will be.

 

if you think the game has failed, then why are you playing it at all?

I'm just wondering, since you say it has failed.

[Aeroprism]

18 minutes ago, Snarky said:

obviously some type of undead who trained on a live typewriter and habitually writes a certain number of characters and hits return,

 

why can you not see these things?

 

I have a poor build. Terrible perception.

 

Should have focused on that instead of forum post-proccing.

[Snarky]

City of Villains failed?   Bwah hah hah.  Look, if only one villain rolled through and felt the gestalt of being super wicked...that is a success.  commercial?  no.  artistic.  dam right.  and art is what we are talking about here.

 

I have NEVER completed all Blueside story arcs.  Much less done them all on one character.  I take a 1st level Redsider and run every contact, every side mission, every story arc until they stop wanting to ever talk to me again once or twice a year.  Have since I started playing.  It is well written, immersive, and on point.

 

Is it heavily populated?  No.  Honestly, neither is skid row.  Hear me out.  From a population standpoint in any major city skid row is a miniscule portion of the people.  But if you go down to skid row and hang out for a few hours you will find the experience quite immersive.  For those that live there it seems like the entire world is reflecting their view.  It is an entirety of an experience.  Organized crime...how many actual "made men" in one city?  Not that many.  But if you were part of that network that would be all you could see or think about.  That would be your world, nothing else matters.  

 

Drama.  Redside created drama.  it did so quite well.  Could really use a freaking villain hub.  

[ZemX]

34 minutes ago, Snarky said:

and that's numberwang

 

I don't even know what that means but it sounds bad, so I'll just assume you disagreed with me.    It's not...er...  numberwang.  Nor is the lack of villain population an illusion.  Anyone can check server stats and see there are around 3-8x more people at any given moment playing heroes as playing villains.  

 

So having checked population, most people will say to themselves, "My goodness!  If I want an easy time getting a team, I should start blueside, definitely!"   So yes, it's self-perpetuating.  The larger population attracts more population in a game where people want to team up (which I usually figure most people want to do in an MMO).

 

40 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Atlas Park, Ouro, they are "the" places to be.

 

Are they?  I usually join teams advertised on LFG (yeah, I'm a follower... sue me) not shouted out in a zone like Atlas or Ouro.  I don't farm, so if this is how farmers coordinate, it's not something I know about.   It's not that there aren't more people hanging around those places, but it's hardly what I'd call a big crowd.   I'm on Everlasting, so I know the RPers tend to hang in Pocket D, but that's about it.

 

As for what "WoW figured out" really, I don't know why everyone wants to ignore the amount of content available but I keep being told "nobody" cares about it.  And yet, MMOs with largely balanced content for their factions tend to have *gasp* reasonably balanced factions!  At least better balanced then we have here.  What an odd coincidence eh?

[Carnifax]

9 minutes ago, ZemX said:

I don't even know what that means but it sounds bad, so I'll just assume you disagreed with me.    It's not...er...  numberwang

Actually it means "You've hit the right answer"

 

Although since Numberwang is made up, obtuse and people hit the right answer randomly I'm not sure it's a compliment either

 

[ZemX]

11 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Actually it means "You've hit the right answer"

 

I mean, I did try to google it and I found the game show reference which sounded like a joke about people who make up nonsense with numbers so... it didn't SOUND like a compliment. 🤪