Merits: How to drum up redside activity

[MTeague]

26 minutes ago, ZemX said:

The problem, as stated, is that more people choose blueside than redside.  It's not a solution to simply say, "Well then, more people should choose to play redside! That would fix it!"

I do not recognize this as being a problem. 

 

Look, I prefer redside over blueside. Heck, I prefer goldside over redside, but that's a separate animal.  But other players are under absolutely no obligation to like what I like. The devs are under absolutely no obligation to try to make everyone like all content equally, or to play in a nice distributed manner across factions.

 

Yes, humans often make what I consider sub-optimal choices for reasons that I think are bad reasons.  That doesn't mean I get to redo their choices for them to what they "should have" chosen.  And it doesn't mean that a referee needs to put their thumb on the scales in a lopsided enough fashion until players change their minds. The devs may choose to do so, of course. But I don't recognize it as a problem, or a need. If redside isn't as populated as you might prefer, lure some fresh meat new blood over. Or mentally start treating it as a more exclusive area for those willing to make the leap. 

[Ironblade]

38 minutes ago, ZemX said:

That game had the best bugs I've ever seen.   I once watched a Great Lord (max reputation) give a coin to a beggar and be instantly executed by a teleporting guard because reputation was an 8-bit number and it had just rolled over with that last act of charity.

One of the Civilization games had a similar bug.  Each NPC leader had a hostility rating.  Gandhi's was the lowest possible at 1.  If you had a Democratic government, all other leaders were slightly less hostile, with 2 being subtracted from their reaction rating.  This rolled Gandhi over to 255 and made him more hostile/violent than Genghis Khan.

[Apparition]

27 minutes ago, Hew said:

HAHAHAhahaha.

 

"LFM for Black Scorpion Arc, (on last mish, speeding, take your pick of flavor)"
"I'll join! Let me null the gull it real fast, get the badge, and convert right back!"

Nobody is leaving blue side to get the patron pool _and staying_.

 

The worst is that some people honestly think that if you are advertising something red side (no matter what it is), that you must be running a patron badge mission arc because that is the only thing done red side.

 

I am not making this up.  Twice when I have advertised a LRSF on the LFG channel…  “Speedy LRSF forming in Grandville, level 45+.  *RED SIDE*.  Room for X.  Send me a tell if interested.”…. People messaged me asking if they could join my patron badge team.  It made me so sad both times that there are people that absolutely clueless who have no idea what the LRSF is and believe that if you are advertising something red side, it must be a patron badge mission.

[ZemX]

12 minutes ago, MTeague said:

But other players are under absolutely no obligation to like what I like. The devs are under absolutely no obligation to try to make everyone like all content equally, or to play in a nice distributed manner across factions.

 

Who said anything about obligation?   This thread is about suggestions.   Nobody is making demands.  Nobody is telling you what to like or taking anything from you.

 

21 minutes ago, MTeague said:

That doesn't mean I get to redo their choices for them

 

How on Earth does anything suggested in this entire thread "redo" anyone's choices?  If you're trying to suggest that giving rewards for villain play is "redoing" their choices then why aren't you beating the war drums to have ALL rewards in the game removed?  Isn't the point of any reward to incentivize that particular activity?

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Correct.  More people eat crappy food than vegetables.  There are many reasons: taste, ease of access, cost, but one reason is advertising. 

 

People can be convinced to do almost anything with the right pitch.  I'm not telling people to like vegetables.  I'm telling people who like vegetables to advertise. 

 

Obvious obviousness aside, "advertising" can often have an overreaching and opposite effect.

 

How many out there have met an obnoxious vegan?  I still eat vegetables but nothing motivates me to relish in a bleeding steak more than some verbal pressure from an overly zealous grass muncher.

 

And you might reply "you don't have to be anti-meat" or "no one said you're pushing for ONLY vegetables" to which I can hold up a mirror to the discussion at hand.  I'm not a redside "vegan" in that I only play redside or I feel redside is better.  No, I'm a *player* that can do BOTH but those other that do both are often drowned out by the rhetoric of anti-red as if going redside somehow excludes you from doing anything else.  I find it very bizarre, especially the many excuses put forth why people won't touch villain content.  

 

As for the suggestion at hand: no, I don't think I'll do that.  I'm content just soloing and getting my teams whereever I can find them.  I'm not about to put even MORE effort when I'm already forced to do so much else just to squeeze a few extra drops of enjoyment out of this game.  I'd much rather they add some more incentives so that I can gain just a little bit more for what I do do and if some extra capitalizing players want to get in on that, then at least some of us will have gained a benefit out here without being told to do backflips through flaming hoops.

[MTeague]

36 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

One of the Civilization games had a similar bug.  Each NPC leader had a hostility rating.  Gandhi's was the lowest possible at 1.  If you had a Democratic government, all other leaders were slightly less hostile, with 2 being subtracted from their reaction rating.  This rolled Gandhi over to 255 and made him more hostile/violent than Genghis Khan.

Ah yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Gandhi

 

[RageusQuitus2]

On 5/26/2021 at 11:26 AM, Christopher Robin said:

Look no one speaks for the entire player base

Beg to differ.  Some time ago RaqeusQuitus was voted by the vast majority as their rep on the forums.  So when Rageus talks, he has the might of the vast majority behind him.

[Hew]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

What leading?  Picking the next mission?  Most people that play this game have been doing it long enough that they don't need detailed instructions. 

So, I thought like you do, that this was kind of a no brainer. 

 

Yet team after team I join (blueside of course) when someone else is leading, as soon as the leader quits, almost noone steps up to lead. Its just play damn whackamole with mishs, you know? Not hard.

 

But somehow, (randompersonhere) started a thread not long ago about "why are people allergic to the star". 

 

I have a habit of running teams doing either tips, SSA, or whackamole mishs in the list. It is, in my opinion, exactly as you say: not complicated, easy to do.

 

This indirectly relates to redside. If it only works when one of a few dedicated redside team runners spins something up, then if blueside teams are anything to judge by, as soon as that person quits, there goes most, if not all the rest of the team. That isnt exactly building red team players!!

 

 

edit: I tried lfg'ing the new freaklok arc, and only got one taker that wasn't a gfriend. Which ultimately was fine, since I was teamed with gfriends, but that was depressing. It's new, pretty content with some FREAKY new  mobs that I would love to see in future missions. But nobody was interested. There was more interest in dfb or randommishhereforxp...

Edited May 28, 2021 by Hew

[siolfir]

2 hours ago, JJDrakken said:

Wanna make Redside more popular, put a couple Portal Corp like Contacts for 50 content. Tina Macintyre or Unai Kemen.  Large open maps filled with LOTS of mobs to take down. Folks use those lvl/make cash.  Redside has literal maps with like 2 mobs on it and a bunch of Pillars worth 0 xp on them.  I'm looking at you Vernon Von Grun or stupid 0 xp Mole Machines that are required to be taken down, but like a jillion HP missions...

 

Thus it's less frugal to make funds over on Red, I still prefer the content, but at end day when I need to make that cash, I use all Blue Contacts, which are a lot.

Television has a farming arc, starting with Freaks and DE, then Nemesis and Family, then Nemesis on the Dreck map. As for the pillars in Von Grun's arc or Mole Machines in Black Scorpion's, the rewards were removed from those because the OG devs didn't like that people were farming them and resetting the mission since the pillars and mole machines didn't have attacks; it's the same logic that removed the xp from summoning (and Rikti) portals. Those same missions also have "large open maps filled with lots of mobs to take down," though it's not quite fall-asleep-on-the-keyboard-and-still-complete-the-mission level of mobs like Council or 5th, and the spawn density is lower because the maps are larger.

 

I doubt a lack of farms is causing the issue.

[JJDrakken]

14 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Television has a farming arc, starting with Freaks and DE, then Nemesis and Family, then Nemesis on the Dreck map. As for the pillars in Von Grun's arc or Mole Machines in Black Scorpion's, the rewards were removed from those because the OG devs didn't like that people were farming them and resetting the mission since the pillars and mole machines didn't have attacks; it's the same logic that removed the xp from summoning (and Rikti) portals. Those same missions also have "large open maps filled with lots of mobs to take down," though it's not quite fall-asleep-on-the-keyboard-and-still-complete-the-mission level of mobs like Council or 5th, and the spawn density is lower because the maps are larger.

 

I doubt a lack of farms is causing the issue.

 

Still has nothing on Blue, I know for a fact. 🙂  Something I kept poking Devs about, especially Castle, since I talked to him the most. But yah, you add more of those, you'd be surprised. I remember when 1 Mole Machine on Double XP weekend would take a lvl 1 to like lvl 40.. 😛

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, Naraka said:

 

Obvious obviousness aside, "advertising" can often have an overreaching and opposite effect.

 

How many out there have met an obnoxious vegan?  I still eat vegetables but nothing motivates me to relish in a bleeding steak more than some verbal pressure from an overly zealous grass muncher.

 

And you might reply "you don't have to be anti-meat" or "no one said you're pushing for ONLY vegetables" to which I can hold up a mirror to the discussion at hand.  I'm not a redside "vegan" in that I only play redside or I feel redside is better.  No, I'm a *player* that can do BOTH but those other that do both are often drowned out by the rhetoric of anti-red as if going redside somehow excludes you from doing anything else.  I find it very bizarre, especially the many excuses put forth why people won't touch villain content.  

 

As for the suggestion at hand: no, I don't think I'll do that.  I'm content just soloing and getting my teams whereever I can find them.  I'm not about to put even MORE effort when I'm already forced to do so much else just to squeeze a few extra drops of enjoyment out of this game.  I'd much rather they add some more incentives so that I can gain just a little bit more for what I do do and if some extra capitalizing players want to get in on that, then at least some of us will have gained a benefit out here without being told to do backflips through flaming hoops.

Hey, you do you.  I'm not selling vegetables or redside.  I'm not arguing against better rewards.  I like better rewards too!  All I'm saying is if you want to do a certain kind of thing in game, tell other people what you want to do and you will find like minded people.  It may take some work, but anything worth doing requires some effort . . . except sleep . . . maybe.

 

If you want to solo, obvious obviousness aside, no advertising required.  Just go Kil Skuls, or Luddites, or whatever.

[Shadowsleuth]

54 minutes ago, siolfir said:

As for the pillars in Von Grun's arc or Mole Machines in Black Scorpion's, the rewards were removed from those because the OG devs didn't like that people were farming them and resetting the mission since the pillars and mole machines didn't have attacks

 

Since the devs didn't want people resetting the mission to farm these items, the rewards should have been moved to mission complete and/or a big fat bonus at story arc complete.

[golstat2003]

50 minutes ago, JJDrakken said:

 

Still has nothing on Blue, I know for a fact. 🙂  Something I kept poking Devs about, especially Castle, since I talked to him the most. But yah, you add more of those, you'd be surprised. I remember when 1 Mole Machine on Double XP weekend would take a lvl 1 to like lvl 40.. 😛

 

Why is the number of farmable missions on each side even relevant in this discussion when the AE exists literally EVERYWHERE. I don't get this line of discussion. LOL

[JJDrakken]

5 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

 

Why is the number of farmable missions on each side even relevant in this discussion when the AE exists literally EVERYWHERE. I don't get this line of discussion. LOL

 

I and others of the like minded, despise AE 🙂  Concept was great in theory, the execution was terrible(As in letting xp/rewards from anything in it). Should of stuck to their guns and kept that stuff for Dev selected content from the player base.

[Wavicle]

6 hours ago, Heraclea said:

Back when I was playing WoW, every so often we would spontaneously go on a tear and get a league together and kill the leaders in Stiormwind and Iromforge, or make similar incursions into Orgrimmar and Silvermoon.  Killing cats in the blood elf city was particularly satisfying.  There was no loot and no reward for killing the leaders.  We did it simply 'for the Horde' or whatever.  It would probably be great fun to invade Atlas Park, kill Ms. Liberty and Azuria for gits and shiggles, and so forth.  Recluse's Victory is a pale substitute.  On the other hand, it would be rather annoying to run a Manticore and be sent to talk to Ms Liberty and find her indisposed as a result of an incursion like this, so it surely can't happen. 

no, that clearly won’t happen. But Arachnos  invasions of paragon and Longbow invasions of the rogue isles sure seem like a fun idea.

[Wavicle]

5 hours ago, JJDrakken said:

So yah, with current state of game, least on Excelsior. Folks are frigging lazy and wanna sit in an A,E. Farm all day. Listen, I understand wanting to get 50, but WTF you going do when you get there?

Not everyone on Excelsior is like that.

[Wavicle]

4 hours ago, Hew said:

HAHAHAhahaha.

 

"LFM for Black Scorpion Arc, (on last mish, speeding, take your pick of flavor)"
"I'll join! Let me null the gull it real fast, get the badge, and convert right back!"

Nobody is leaving blue side to get the patron pool _and staying_.

Of course, I know that. It doesn’t invalidate my point.

[Naraka]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Hey, you do you.  I'm not selling vegetables or redside.  I'm not arguing against better rewards.  I like better rewards too!  All I'm saying is if you want to do a certain kind of thing in game, tell other people what you want to do and you will find like minded people.  It may take some work, but anything worth doing requires some effort . . . except sleep . . . maybe.

 

If you want to solo, obvious obviousness aside, no advertising required.  Just go Kil Skuls, or Luddites, or whatever.

 

That's why I was saying "obvious obviousness aside".  The main reason I replied to your point, though, was I'm pretty sure there's someone else out there that either understands where I'm coming from or agrees but either aren't replying to this thread or don't read the forums.  I'm basically just putting my opinion out there so it is covered among the discourse.

 

That being said, I see no one objected to my point that swinging over to red doesn't require any sacrifice.  So when any of you are possibly looking for something to do and you hear someone "advertising" on red, perhaps some due diligence is required every now and then to hop on a villain character (or just gull it) to help out so their efforts aren't all for naught.

[Apparition]

21 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Not everyone on Excelsior is like that.

 

No, but a lot are.  Too many, IMO.  Excelsior has earned the nickname Freedumb Redux for a reason.  It’s why after nearly two years of playing exclusively on Excelsior, I set up shop on another shard two months ago.

[JJDrakken]

28 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Not everyone on Excelsior is like that.

 

I know, trust me I know. But it gets harder to find them, but I keep trying 🙂

[Wavicle]

7 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

No, but a lot are.  Too many, IMO.  Excelsior has earned the nickname Freedumb Redux for a reason.  It’s why after nearly two years of playing exclusively on Excelsior, I set up shop on another shard two months ago.

Do you think I would find more people to do non-AE stuff on torch?

Edited May 29, 2021 by Wavicle

[Naraka]

1 minute ago, Wavicle said:

Do you think I would find more people to do non-AE stuff on torch?Do you think I would find more people to do non-AE stuff on torch?

Probably not the first time but there's a better chance the 2nd time.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, JJDrakken said:

 

I and others of the like minded, despise AE 🙂  Concept was great in theory, the execution was terrible(As in letting xp/rewards from anything in it). Should of stuck to their guns and kept that stuff for Dev selected content from the player base.

 

I will never enjoy AE farming, and I will never do an AE farm.

I see no challenge and no point in fighting mobs perfectly custom tailored to be weak to my strengths.

 

That said, it's a valid part of the game.  And has been.  Both during LIVE and here on HC, the devs are very well aware of it's capacties and have obviously not decided to remove the ability to create such missions. If has such a tacit stamp of developer approval, then I'm not going to rag on it any more than my first two sentences. I try to see it like "Okay, I loathe mushrooms on pizza, and see no idea why you'd want to ruin a pizza by putting fungus on it"...... but probably more than half the forums would say the same to me about the awesome wonderfulness that is Hawaiian Pizza.  Different tastes for all.

 

My only real regret with AE is that Homecoming did not and probably could not keep the vast library of Story-Focused Missions that AE had had in LIVE. 

• The Moonbase Laser villian mission where you ransomed Paragon for One Meeeeeelion Influence was just fantastic.
• There was a rogue-to-hero themed AE mission I loved too, "Tangled Vines" where you had to get everybody's favorite WSPDR reporter out of the isles to the safety of Paragon City. 
• And a very Matrix-y / TRON-y story arc I remmeber from Live where there was an NPC who had been a hero and had been.... trapped within the AE system.... and forces within wanted to try to get out to the "real" Paragon City.  

So many other really good ones I remember thoroughly enjoying that...  we couldn't get a copy of. 

Those are the breaks. But AE in principle CAN be used for great storytelling as well as mass farming.

[Snarky]

Heroes....Blueside....bah.  Bunch of capes who are just looking for power, glory and cash.  At least Redside is honest about what is happening.  Arrest?  Apprehend?  Curb stomp is more like it.  The low level guards in Atlas use flamethrowers.  

 

Everyone just go play Blueside.  Leave Redside open for the dedicated, the few, the villains.  But for the love of the powers above, and your own personal safety, stop F-ing whining about it.

[RageusQuitus2]

3 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Heroes....Blueside....bah.  Bunch of capes who are just looking for power, glory and cash.  At least Redside is honest about what is happening.  Arrest?  Apprehend?  Curb stomp is more like it.  The low level guards in Atlas use flamethrowers.  

 

Everyone just go play Blueside.  Leave Redside open for the dedicated, the few, the villains.  But for the love of the powers above, and your own personal safety, stop F-ing whining about it.

Love it but the reality is most of em cant play well and need training wheels.  Hence blueside.  Villains are the evolution of the playerbase.  Have been since cov left beta and first villains hit sirens call.