redside Why is it so hard for me to play Red Side?

[Seed22]

14 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

To answer the OP, it's harder to play red side because it was designed that way. Villainy isn't easy nor should it be.

Kidnapping is harder than rescuing, bank robbing is harder than bank protecting.

More ambushes, more unexpected outcomes, life is just harder, but you have to feel that success will be sweeter when you finally achieve it. If you ever do, the odds are against  you.

 

Even if you go Rogue, and do an occasional ok thing, you're still in it for yourself, so there's that.

I agree 100% with all of this. I always feel more accomplished on vill side with mishs for these exact reasons. 

[ZemX]

20 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

To answer the OP, it's harder to play red side because it was designed that way. Villainy isn't easy nor should it be.

 

I don't think they meant harder as in difficulty.  Harder to maintain interest is how I read it.

 

But it's also an odd thread.  I don't delete a level 4 character and then wonder why I've done it.  If it really was repeated defeats wearing you down, you'd know that.  If the oppressive gloom was getting you down, you'd know that.   Or the villainous story arcs annoying your heroic sensibilities.  

 

If it's simply not being engaged by level 4 on a new character in Mercy, I can see that.  But I'd say the same about Atlas's original contact missions too if I had to judge them by the first four levels.  The only starter area that has grabbed me from level 1 all the way to 20 was Praetoria.  It obviously took that long for the Live devs to really figure out how to stretch this mission framework to its limits.  It's hard going back to the old content.  I gravitate to the newer additions blue and redside as well because of this.

[Herotu]

On 7/6/2021 at 2:54 PM, Apparition said:

 

5. The red side zones like St. Martial and Grandville are unique, and not yet another drab cityscape like Skyway City or blasted cityscape like Boomtown.

 

Still not sold on this. They seem to be drab brick and Arachnos buildings instead of drab cityscape skyscrapers.

 

On 7/7/2021 at 2:46 PM, JayboH said:

The environment makes me avoid it.

This. I've said before that it should be a party atmosphere, at least in some areas - lots of neon, lots of chaotic party - it's what Freakshow and Skuls and Outcasts all do on Blue side when you're 'arresting' them.

 

Aside from environment, I think the fundamental issue is the one which the OP puts their finger on, we all fundamentally see ourselves as good people, or at least doing bad things short term because it's necessary to achieve a good outcome long term. That is not what the text says when I'm doing red side missions, the story on red side is that of a villain seeking to become ever more powerful - that's a pre-scripted story that doesn't really work with most of the head-canon stuff people have going on when they create a character.

[Grouchybeast]

Have you tried the different low-level arcs on redside?  There's actually quite a variety, with the newer ones.  I really enjoy both Dr Graves and Lt Harris, but they start at level 5, so if you're deleting before then you won't have run into them.  

 

I also tend to play good characters, but when I'm playing redside I tend to look at it less as the charactering being an avatar for me, and more than I'm reading a story.  

[Hew]

3 hours ago, Seed22 said:

Also I hate all of Blueside’s story so theres that

I don't really like any of it either. The stuff from late + Going Rogue was palatable. Almost everything else was an endless relentless cavalcade of Be Good. This is not to say I think Be Good isn't OK, but then, a lot of it is Be Good, but not really, because it is really myopic Good, and not nuanced good. There never is some sort of, take someone in, rehab someone, so on so forth. The closest you get is Frostfire joining the good guys, and sortof, flamebait going vigilante? rogue? but def not Villain with a Big V, and that is all NEW content, compared to the many years that came before, where you just send endless streams of people to the hospital via mediports, while not asking yourself, mediport tech is EXPENSIVE, but every single one of these villains i blow up with my assault rifle or fire blast or whatever is absolutely going to be treated after a mediport call and be good as new. To me, thats BS.

 

Redside, people get more interesting "endings", and for all its urks, it at least is a little more realistic than what is pushed old-school blue. 

[oedipus_tex]

I suppose out of fairness I could criticize Blue side for not actually being that heroic. One thing about hero dungeons is that although you spend a lot of time being told you are rescuing various people, the actual rescuing part happens mostly without a strategy. A more realistic scenario would involve having to use restraint so that you don't end up hurting or killing the people you are trying to save.

 

I always thought that was a interesting thing about sets like Force Field and Empathy. In a real world scenario where you were trying to save bystanders, those abilities would be crucial. 

 

The old Freedom Force games did touch on this, incentivizing you not to damage property or innocent people.

 

That would have been a really interesting thematic split. Heroes forced to restrain themselves, villains free to cause damage freely, but always at risk of the law.

[ILIWAPCT]

What's not to love?

 

All of my 9 pages of Red Side alts start off breaking out of the Zig. The first breakout on live quickly set me up with the game mechanics and gave my alt a compelling  back story Arc. After I became a vet and the devs gave us to option to skip, I realized skipping just wouldn't be the same. Fast Forward to Homecoming opening up, I still felt the same excitement breaking out as I did on live.

 

The world is gray not black and white, so I never saw the allure of blue side. Back on live the blue side was always complaining about EVERYTHING. Real life called, so I missed when blue side finally got our Archtypes (Brutes and MM's). What did we get (Blasters?)  Anyway, with Homecoming I finally stepped into Blue Side in order to grab a Kheldian and bring him Red Side. They are challenging but it was easy to see why Blue Side just doesn't get them.

 

Not everyone has the perseverance and imagination to be Thanos (Red Side). Most need a team of Super Friends telling them what to do.   

[Clave Dark 5]

On 7/8/2021 at 9:19 AM, Herotu said:

They seem to be drab brick and Arachnos buildings instead of drab cityscape skyscrapers.

I don't see them as drab whatsoever, compared the soulless and detail-less sky scrapers of blueside.  For one thing, many of those structures feel like older architecture, which was more human-scale.  My subjective bias.  😃

[Herotu]

13 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I don't see them as drab whatsoever, compared the soulless and detail-less sky scrapers of blueside.  For one thing, many of those structures feel like older architecture, which was more human-scale.  My subjective bias.  😃

You've got a point, there's some merit there. 

 

Perhaps we can read it as the buildings being reflective of the character-feel they're supposed to evoke;

• Sky-scrapers were seen as grand accomplishments, towering monuments to human progress and suchlike, super-human effigies, taking us beyond our normal physical forms. Like heroes.
• The more human-scale brick dwellings, on the other hand, remind us of something more functional and mundane, restricted by the simple building materials and limited by affordability. That grim backdrop could perhaps be seen as justification or cause for criminal activity.

 

[Samsupra]

On 7/6/2021 at 9:52 AM, The_Warpact said:

This plus, I'm not really a nice person in rl and it irritates me pretending to be something I'm not. 

I could go into in much more detail but ultimately it would detract from your question. 

I feel the need to remind you that this is a role playing game. Explore other perspectives and motivations by role playing them. It doesn't mean you believe in them.

 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by Samsupra

[Seed22]

On 7/8/2021 at 10:19 AM, Herotu said:

Still not sold on this. They seem to be drab brick and Arachnos buildings instead of drab cityscape skyscrapers.

 

This. I've said before that it should be a party atmosphere, at least in some areas - lots of neon, lots of chaotic party - it's what Freakshow and Skuls and Outcasts all do on Blue side when you're 'arresting' them.

 

Aside from environment, I think the fundamental issue is the one which the OP puts their finger on, we all fundamentally see ourselves as good people, or at least doing bad things short term because it's necessary to achieve a good outcome long term. That is not what the text says when I'm doing red side missions, the story on red side is that of a villain seeking to become ever more powerful - that's a pre-scripted story that doesn't really work with most of the head-canon stuff people have going on when they create a character.

I mean, it works if you’re able to detach yourself somewhat. I mean it’s a game, and no one said you have to be a VILLAIN villain. I think people forget this cool alignment called “Rogue”. Does wonders for headcannon, well at least for me. I dunno for others, though.
 

without getting too far off topic and weird about, I think vill side is being seen as for some arcs, an introspective look( again, only for those who can’t fully detach themselves) and they don’t like it.  
 

CO made me HATE Hero-only thinking/play. It’s cookie cutter and turns boring fast. Preshutdown CoH had more interesting and dynamic splits between hero/villain with more varied depth and intrigue. It’s what I was looking forward to most upon return, I’m a bit sad to see that’s not the case.

Edited July 14, 2021 by Seed22

[Hew]

Blue side is hyper clean with just enough thugs to not be praetoria scary. Redside is like, pretty  normal. Aside from a higher than normal number of aggressive police (longbow), it seems fairly representative for a caribbean state, building et al wise.

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, Seed22 said:

I mean, it works if you’re able to detach yourself somewhat. I mean it’s a game, and no one said you have to be a VILLAIN villain. I think people forget this cool alignment called “Rogue”. Does wonders for headcannon, well at least for me. I dunno for others, though.
 

without getting too far off topic and weird about, I think vill side is being seen as for some arcs, an introspective look( again, only for those who can’t fully detach themselves) and they don’t like it.  
 

CO made me HATE Hero-only thinking/play. It’s cookie cutter and turns boring fast. Preshutdown CoH had more interesting and dynamic splits between hero/villain with more varied depth and intrigue. It’s what I was looking forward to most upon return, I’m a bit sad to see that’s not the case.

 

 

Agreed.  Why play a boring hero when I can play a rogue or villain?  To be fair to Homecoming, the dynamic split between hero and villain became weak with Going Rogue in late 2010, and then died when the game went free-to-play in late 2011.  It's just much more noticeable on Homecoming as none of us have any old characters to play.

[Ukase]

I keep reading that red side missions don't have you going to zone A, then B, then back to A.
Have you done Graves, one of the earliest arcs? Yeah, it does that. Done Black Scorpion patron arc? It does that too. There's a host of red side arcs that send you all over the place. 

I keep reading that the writing is better. Um..that's subjective. There are a couple of good arcs where the writing is decent, and that's really about it. Maybe 3 arcs total. Again, it's really subjective. I doubt anyone seriously expects quality writing in this game. If you do, (again, subjective) be prepared to be disappointed. There are no excellent stories in this game. None. A few mildly amusing ones, but that's really it. But, then again, who am I to say what's quality? I only know what I like, and none of the stories in this game are worth my time to read them. I play in spite of them, not because of them. 

The atmosphere/ambience on red side is dismal and depressing. No villain worth their salt would be there because there's no money there. The place is a slum. A real villain would be in Founders, where the loot is. Now, that's a nice neighborhood for a villain to have some fun! 

Those are just my thoughts, and well, they're shared by a number of people. 

There is one thing Apparition said that I do agree with: On average, the players on red side are typically more competent. You don't see villains standing around having their spandex assessed, that's for sure. They came to play and do so, on average, better than the blue siders. But, that's subjective, and a lot has to do with the gaming experience you're after. 

 

I personally feel like Red side should have been a pvp expansion. You go to rob a bank, and hero has to pop in to stop you. Actual player or an NPC that would give a fair challenge. The way it is now, the only difference between villain and hero is the alignment and the location and the npcs that are being fought. Other than that, it's pretty much the same gaming experience. 

[Tailcoat]

I like playing characters from all sides. It's nice to have a change of scenery if you've been doing the same missions for a while to avoid burning out on blueside content. It's also not such a big leap to play redside since a lot of your enemies are also bad guys. I also wanted to see how the Destined Ones plot played out. I do think there's an awful lot of "Kill Snakes" at the beginning, but if more people would run DFBs, that would be an efficient way to skip ahead. Dr. Graves has a cool arc about a secret contest. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but it's cool.

[Snarky]

To be serious for a moment.  What makes a villain.  Forget supervillain.  Just a villain.  Selfishness, craziness, bad personal hygiene, what is the deal? 

 

You have to have a certain "disregard for other's feelings" and/or "enjoy ruining people's lives"

 

There may be more, but that is what I boil it down to.  Now, the reasons for such a disregard for other's humanity.  That, the backstory, is where there are some great storytelling opportunities. 

 

You do not even have to write them, just insinuate. Example: Joker.  Do not talk to me about the recent movie. Calling that the backstory for the Joker was small, sad, and flaccid. The Joker was best done (in my opinion) by Heath Ledger with his everchanging stories about his past. The man did more with a few lines than some people can do with two hours screen time.  

 

You do need to have a REASON to be a villain however. You do not just go out to "take what is yours" because the tea wasn't quite right this morning.  Or, ...do you?

 

Being a SUPER Villain?  Add some powers, some spandex, a crazy bit of headgear.  You better have some moxie to walk around in that drag. Moxie and a TON of "I will show the world"  Whether you want to destroy the world, rule the world, or get the world to piss off and leave you alone it will require more than just super powers. It will require a super amount of indifference (or enjoyment) to the suffering of others. 

 

Look at Tony Soprano. Not Super. But what a villain. Broke his own code so many times. Dumped toxic waste in New Jersey streams. Stole whatever he wanted. Killed. Super selfish.

 

There are many great examples from fiction, movies of non super individuals who do great evil. Hannibal Lecter. The Minus Man (Owen Wilson serial killer), Hans Gruber (leader Die Hard criminals) and the list is endless.

 

Before you write a Super Villain you need to reach out with both hands and get a firm grip on the motivations of these individuals.

 

Then you can power up, slap on some spandex, bust out of the Zig, and take your place in the long line of schmucks we call Redsiders.

[Xiddo]

On 7/6/2021 at 2:40 PM, Retrobytz said:

What makes you play Red Side?
Tell me what Red Side offers you to keep playing, and perhaps it will help me play Red Side longer and find the fun in being a villain.

 

Mayhem missions where you fight your way to the bank. The 15-30s ones are the funnest I think.
The circular nature of the snakes arc. Irritating and boring in the low levels, they get a bit of a resolution in the 45-50 range.
Bane Spider Ruben's arc
Leonard's arc 
Psimon's missions
Bobby Curtain's arc - Fidelio is probably one of my favourite missions in the whole game. Smashing and grab. So many PPD about.
Piecemeal's arc holds a very fond place in my heart too.
The 45-50 arcs are more varied than blue's - the DE guy, TV, and the Arachnoids one.
The Wailers.
Silver Mantis SF + Virgil's - the oil rig/ water base map is utter CHAOS and I love fighting the chicken nuggets in the final mission of Virgil's TF.

Some suggestions from me 🙂 I know some of these are the newer ones from the end of game/HC team but they shine I think. If they're being advertised then I'm coming.

 

Edited July 15, 2021 by Xiddo

[RikOz]

On 7/6/2021 at 6:54 AM, Apparition said:

8. Not so much of a selling point now, but the ATs that originated red side are subjectively better designed to me than most of the ATs that originated blue side.

I like Brutes so much more than Scrappers. The main thing I dislike about Scrappers is that their main "feature" is "critical hits". Crits would be great if they were more dependable, but in my experience the RNG makes it feels like my big crits wait to proc when I already have my opponent down to 1 hit point. I always think, "That 500-point hit would have been a lot more useful earlier in the fight!"

 

Also, Brutes get Super Strength. I was boggled when I learned that, in the early days, only Tankers could have Super Strength. The most fundamental, iconic superpower, but you had to be a tank to use it? Bah! Spider-Man is super strong, and he's clearly a scrapper.

 

OTOH, I haven't managed to wrap my brain around Corruptors and Dominators.

 

 

On 7/6/2021 at 1:28 PM, ZorkNemesis said:

This is why I love tip missions, especially when red.  Tips feel like you're the one making the plan, even if it's by happenstance.  One thing I would love to have out of the Homecoming team is just a slew of new random tip missions to capitalise on the idea of free-thinking villainy (or heroism, both sides are great for tips).

I would absolutely love to see new tip missions! I'm a big fan of them. Ultimately, though, they're part of what led me to have a problem with Redside. The problem was the level 20-29 Villain morality mission, which had me straight up murdering somebody for no good reason. Lots of actual comic book supervillains are not deliberate murderers. Sure, their actions may result in deaths that would rightly be called "murder", but the murder(s) were not the goal. That morality mission is basically murdering somebody just for the laughs, and that's not the type of villain I want to play. Not all villains are The Joker.

 

My "main" villain has made the move over to hero because of this. Fortunately, I could easily justify her change of heart with her backstory. I originally rolled her as a villain, both on Live and on HC, but in her backstory she is the younger sister of one of my hero characters. She started out as a hero, working alongside her sister, but her methods were considerably more brutal than her sister's. She was more interested in "punishment" than in "justice" (the sisters shared an origin story, and the divide in their methods was due to the different psychological effects that origin had on them), and that ultimately led to her secretly relocating to the Rogue Isles. She still saw herself as a "hero"; her relocation simply provided her with more criminals to "punish". So I just had her gradually come to terms with her methods, where she eventually realized that she had become the monster herself.

 

 

On 7/6/2021 at 2:20 PM, DoctorDitko said:

Mayhem Missions, far and away the best part of Redside

And for me, I just don't enjoy them (nor do I partiularly enjoy Blueside Safeguard missions). So being forced to do them to unlock new contacts is a turnoff for me.

 

On 7/8/2021 at 2:10 AM, UltraAlt said:

The intentional additional vertical does make it harder to get around CoV.

Flight alway seems to be the superior travel power in superhero games. Always easier to use and general around in general.

Oh god, yes. It didn't take me long to notice that it would be incredibly painful to be a speedster in the Isles.

 

 

[Luminara]

On 7/6/2021 at 9:54 AM, Apparition said:

1. The stories red side are much better written.  I mean, they're not prize winning, but compared to blue side?  Night and day difference in quality.

You're correct that there's a difference in quality, but from my perspective, it's not because the quality was bundled up and hidden away in villain arcs, it's because arcs written later in the game's life tend to be more interesting, more engaging and made better use of old mechanics while adding new ones.  And those are available on both sides of the fence.  Both sides have bad writing and good writing.  Of the villain arcs which I've enjoyed, such as Leonard's, they're not notably better in any way, by any objective analysis, than some hero arcs, such as the Nance/Adair arcs, or the entirety of the revamped Faultline content.

 

On 7/6/2021 at 9:54 AM, Apparition said:

2. You aren't routinely sent to zones A, B, C, then back to B, then back to A during a red side story arc or SF.

 

Contacts do send you to other zones, though.  They don't typically send you on a looped zone crawl, this is true, but is it, in any way, better to be sent to zone A, then called back to zone C, only to be sent back to zone A (Hardcase, for instance)?  It doesn't make any difference if you cut B out of the loop, you're still zoning multiple times.  The gated contact system requiring X newspaper missions each time one wishes to unlock a contact also skews the metric, since you're obviously not going to be sent to a different zone while doing that.  Even if you're using the contact finder to bypass the gate, you're still going to end up digging into newspaper missions to compensate for the paucity of arcs at certain points, and instead of running from zone to zone, you're running from mission door to mission door.  If merits are your goal, you're going to be running even more, since villain arc rewards are atrocious and you're going to fill the gap with tip missions, which can and do send you to other zones.  Time spent running is time spent running, and it doesn't matter whether it's to A/B/C/B/A, or A/C/A/A/C or A/A/A/A/A.

 

I also dislike the basic concept of using newspaper missions as fillers between arcs because it acts against the narrative which would otherwise develop.  As a hero, one can progress from one story arc to the next, and use story-related missions from contacts, to level all the way from 1 to 50+, and create a detailed and self-contained narrative without ever touching the police scanner, thus creating a complete personal story which neatly fits within the fabric of the overarching story.  That's difficult to accomplish as a villain due to the comparative dearth of contacts and arcs, and the requirement that one supplements the journey with newspaper mission filler content.  Hero journeys in this game are fully-fledged and -fleshed out Choose Your Own Adventure stories, while villain journeys, in my experience, are slapdash pastiches poorly stuck together with paper-mâché.  Good writing, as I know it (at the risk of sounding immodest, I think I know it rather well), shouldn't be comparable to an empty piñata.

[Shred Monkey]

For me, it's the Arachnos art style.  It just does nothing for me.  I get that there needs to be a red side "government" role for story purposes, and their backstories are all fine.  It's purely a visual thing to me, I just don't enjoy it.

[TombTyrant]

Honestly, blue side seems super weird to me. 

[Snarky]

On 7/13/2021 at 1:58 AM, Samsupra said:

I feel the need to remind you that this is a role playing game. Explore other perspectives and motivations by role playing them. It doesn't mean you believe in them.

 

 

so.... i don't really need to construct a kill room then?

[Luminara]

18 minutes ago, Shred Monkey said:

For me, it's the Arachnos art style.  It just does nothing for me.  I get that there needs to be a red side "government" role for story purposes, and their backstories are all fine.  It's purely a visual thing to me, I just don't enjoy it.

 

Yeah, having their bases made of chicken wire and sheet metal probably wasn't the best plan for aesthetics... or security... or impenetrability... but you know the janitor who finds all of the loose change under the floor has got to be the happiest employee in the world.

[Sir Myshkin]

On 7/7/2021 at 9:35 AM, ZemX said:

I'm convinced a large part of the "drab and unappealing" complaint is literally the weather.  It's ALWAYS overcast.  Sunlight, even virtual sunlight, has a large affect on a person's mood.

 

Bingo. This right here is exactly why I don't play Redside.

 

It quite literally depresses the crap out of me to be on that side of the game and it is directly connected with the overall environment/weather/sky of the zones. If they replaced the sky box with a standard sunny day I'd probably be fine, but I have a hard time spending more than five or ten minutes running around before I start to feel like the sky is falling in on me.

[GraspingVileTerror]

I feel like I'm going to need to brush up on the research related to mood-weather interrelations. 

 

 . . . 

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6704634/

Only 24 subjects?

Pha!

Need more research!

 

 

Ahem!

Anyway.

The weather complaint always struck me as odd . . . but then I realized; I'm one of those "weirdos" who much prefers a good rainy day (or, dare to dream, a thunderstorm and heavy shower!), or a good snowy gloom in -real life,- let alone the game.

As far as I'm concerned, the sun can fuck right off, if not for all that life-facilitating photosynthesis going on.

 

If things started getting as sunny in the Isles as they do on Blueside, I'd be pretty miffed, personally.

But I'm not against more diverse weather in -all- zones!  Bonus points if players can opt-in/opt-out of being exposed to certain weather phenomena on a personal basis.