Red side..no wonder the place is mostly empty.

[Crasical]

15 hours ago, Ukase said:

You villains have an odd definition of fun.

 

Okay.

[Shenanigunner]

14 minutes ago, Placta said:

PI's small, and Crimson's not far from the ferry, TUNNEL, and Ouro drop point. Now, Crimson having you go talk to Indigo in her remote corner of FF...

 

It's a long, tedious jaunt from the base portal, and I use the various TP powers for most travel. It's just the fairly stupid element of having to travel all that way just to click on an NPC and get a block of text. Most visits don't even involve "showing" Crimson something, just "checking in." There are worse, some NPCs in really inaccessible corners of Bricks and FF and so forth, but having to go tap Crimson on his shoulder between every mission... sigh.

[srmalloy]

48 minutes ago, Placta said:

PI's small, and Crimson's not far from the ferry, TUNNEL, and Ouro drop point. Now, Crimson having you go talk to Indigo in her remote corner of FF...

This is an artifact of the cleanup that the HC staff (or SCORE) did to the SG portal drop locations -- it was much less painful getting to Indigo when the base zone drop for Founder's Falls left you at the traffic loop just east of the gate to Eden, and she was a short jaunt east from there. Having the SG and LRT drop points being at the base portal near the university makes it much slower.

[CaptA]

5 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

My biggest issue with Red side is the environment.  It's dark, dreary, blacks, grays, browns, with a little bit of red thrown in here and there.  It's depressing for lack of a better word.  It looks and feels like a ghetto.  Like there's no crime bosses living in Park Place.  Lets all go hide out on a bunch of islands that look like the remains after a war.  Yup, that's where I would want to live as a great criminal.  I get that for low level criminals, but once you get some money and power, most crime bosses move to someplace a bit nicer just saying.

 

For me the missions are fine although again why do all Arachnos bases look like they can't afford a lightbulb?

 

I think the Strike Forces are probably better done than the Hero side Task Forces as far as time spent and story line.  It's pretty obvious that the team had learned a lot from the first 5 Issues that they put to use in designing City of Villains.   I just wish that I didn't have to play It's a Small World After All on repeat to stay happy in order to play through it.

 

This is pretty much it for me. 

[Cancrusher]

The only gripe I have with red-side is trying to maneuver in Grandville.  Don't misunderstand me:  I LOVE the LOOK of Grandville.  All of the Rogue Isles has the proper, grimy, gritty look of I would expect from a nation ruled by an arch-villain.  I also enjoy the story arcs and challenging enemies you interact with (Arachnoids are quite nasty in gangs!).

 

Grandville can be quite challenging if you don't have a fly power, though.  Even with a fly power, it can be a bit tedious.  Still, all-in-all, worth it for the trouble.  👍

[PeregrineFalcon]

I can see Granville looking the way it does. Lord Recluse is clearly a psycho with a spider fetish, and he's a stereotypical pulp fiction/golden age comic book villain, so that's to be expected I guess.

 

However, the rest of the "Rogue Isles" should be clean and tourist friendly. More like San Angeles from Demolition Man, instead of looking like a war torn third world nation. This would not only provide Arachnos with a huge income but it would provide them with the veneer of affluence and respectability they would need to prevent the US from simply invading them and imprisoning or terminating all of the rogue personalities present on an island chain so close to the US borders.

 

Also, why is it always overcast there? I kinda get what the devs were originally going for, but the idea that "people are bad so the sun never shines" just makes no sense to me. On top of which people don't like it when places are dull and gloomy, so players not enjoying being there is really not something that should have been much of a surprise.

[Snarky]

42 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I can see Granville looking the way it does. Lord Recluse is clearly a psycho with a spider fetish, and he's a stereotypical pulp fiction/golden age comic book villain, so that's to be expected I guess.

 

However, the rest of the "Rogue Isles" should be clean and tourist friendly. More like San Angeles from Demolition Man, instead of looking like a war torn third world nation. This would not only provide Arachnos with a huge income but it would provide them with the veneer of affluence and respectability they would need to prevent the US from simply invading them and imprisoning or terminating all of the rogue personalities present on an island chain so close to the US borders.

 

Also, why is it always overcast there? I kinda get what the devs were originally going for, but the idea that "people are bad so the sun never shines" just makes no sense to me. On top of which people don't like it when places are dull and gloomy, so players not enjoying being there is really not something that should have been much of a surprise.

you make a good point and Lord Recluse is quite aware of it.  There are cities (Cap au Diable) and neighborhoods (one in Sharkhead!) that are gentrified and orderly.  But there is only so much lipstick and there is a LOT of pig...

[Luminara]

45 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

However, the rest of the "Rogue Isles" should be clean and tourist friendly. More like San Angeles from Demolition Man

 

[Haijinx]

20 hours ago, biostem said:

 

In a sense, I agree - the implementation of CoV did divide the playerbase.  A better implementation, IMO, would have been to keep things on one side, but have the villains operate "underground" within Paragon City, with you being able to eventually opt to become a full-fledged villain and leave the city altogether, (much like the vigitlante/rogue implementation).

 

I agree with this.  All MMO's with "Sides" eventually become so underpopulated that the sides no longer make sense. 

 

But anyone who might be annoyed over that choice in COH is kind of crying over fozzilized spilled milk at this point.  It was done almost 20 years ago.  

[Haijinx]

11 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

My biggest issue with Red side is the environment.  It's dark, dreary, blacks, grays, browns, with a little bit of red thrown in here and there.  It's depressing for lack of a better word.  It looks and feels like a ghetto. 

 

King's Row is the Best Row.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I agree with this.  All MMO's with "Sides" eventually become so underpopulated that the sides no longer make sense. 

 

But anyone who might be annoyed over that choice in COH is kind of crying over fozzilized spilled milk at this point.  It was done almost 20 years ago.  

No doubt - we absolutely have the benefit of hindsight at this point.  I still wonder what the game would have been like if heroes & villains had always traveled the same streets, only 1 would enter a warehouse to rob it, and the other to thwart said crime...

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

No doubt - we absolutely have the benefit of hindsight at this point.  I still wonder what the game would have been like if heroes & villains had always traveled the same streets, only 1 would enter a warehouse to rob it, and the other to thwart said crime...

 

You talkin constant red-blue PvP? Cuz that would not have ended well.

[Darmian]

13 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

why do all Arachnos bases look like they can't afford a lightbulb?

Ah, AFAIK that's a narrative thing. Recluse has light sensitive eyes and all bases are dim. Detailed in the novel "The Web of Arachnos". And we have to put up with it in game, despite the fact he has a helmet that mitigates for that.  Oh well.

[biostem]

7 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

You talkin constant red-blue PvP? Cuz that would not have ended well.

 

Not out in the open city streets, but perhaps in certain zones/instances/areas, (purely voluntary, and with plenty of warning).

[Luminara]

13 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

For me the missions are fine although again why do all Arachnos bases look like they can't afford a lightbulb?

 

They don't need light bulbs, they have ambient light coming through the chicken wire they use for the "walls".

[Cancrusher]

I always assumed the outdoor gloom was due to smog/air pollution, mostly via the mining/smelting operations on Sharkhead Isle- although there are plenty of grimy-looking factories all over the Rogue Isles.

 

Arachnos bases are very dark, but I just assumed that was because they all wear those helmets (which, one would assume, are equipped with thermal and/or low light optics).  No disadvantage for the Arachnos forces, but a pain in the ass for anyone trying to infiltrate their bases.

[Techwright]

1 hour ago, Darmian said:

Ah, AFAIK that's a narrative thing. Recluse has light sensitive eyes and all bases are dim. Detailed in the novel "The Web of Arachnos". And we have to put up with it in game, despite the fact he has a helmet that mitigates for that.  Oh well.

As dark as those things are, even increasing luminosity by 50% would still make it dark.

 

Frankly, would the game allow it, I'd be going into every spider hole with a full backpack of magnesium flares.  Lets me see, probably blinds the night vision helmets of Arachnos, and is tricky to put out. 

[Clave Dark 5]

11 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

However, the rest of the "Rogue Isles" should be clean and tourist friendly. More like San Angeles from Demolition Man, instead of looking like a war torn third world nation.

Nah, this is like Cuba, the government really doesn't want people coming and going, it erodes their grip on their populace.  And hey, the spider guy just got done building his massive spider-base in Grandville, give him some time to tidy everything else up... probably with more spider bases sure, but still.  Plus more of its architecture is more human-scale.

 

[Haijinx]

I was always a fan of the Gotham / Gritty / Dark Aesthetic in comics so I never found Red side all that grungy. 

 

Putting the bad guys in nice neighborhoods seems weirder to me I guess.

[AShyStarspawn]

On 1/15/2022 at 2:41 AM, Haijinx said:

I was always a fan of the Gotham / Gritty / Dark Aesthetic in comics so I never found Red side all that grungy. 

 

Putting the bad guys in nice neighborhoods seems weirder to me I guess.

Redside does have some nice neighborhoods. Port Oakes has some decent looking areas (and some bad ones). Cap Au Diable looks all nice, just ignore the constant burglaries going on. Nerva is also pretty chill if you don't go to the northern part of the zone. St. Martial also looks okay barring that one area that was destroyed by the Wailers.

 

Mercy Island, Sharkhead and Grandville definitely have a lot of slums and impoverished areas though. Grandville's setup is pretty bizarre to me as you'd think it'd be less slummy in certain places and more just a big techno city with a high tech looking slum at the bottom. I guess they didn't want to go for Arachnos architecture for most of the zone.

 

[Redletter]

On 1/14/2022 at 4:12 AM, Snarky said:

there are a couple 35-39 St Mart arcs that send you back and forth St Mart to Nerva back and forth mission after mission.   But you have travel powers, etc.

It's also highly likely youll have an exploration badge in at least one of those ones by the time you're getting these missions? So all it takes is like... what? 10 minutes in Pocket D to get your Long Range Teleporter so you NEVER have to navigate to the (immeasurably superior) ferry.

[Redletter]

On 1/13/2022 at 5:29 PM, Ukase said:

So, let me try to convey this with transparency. I've always preferred blue side. Why? Because I find all the roaches, snakes, spiders ...well, unsavory. That, and the initial implementation ripped my SG in half, when half bailed on blue to go check out the red side. Never saw those folks again. So, never did like red side. 

Years have elapse, and well, I've done all the blue stuff. There's still some things I'll re-visit, either for kicks or for accolades, but figured I'd start doing some red side stuff in the 20's, 30s & 40's. 

Hey, I'm trying to give red side equal time. But, just like on blue side, I'm sent from Granville to St. Martial, to Grandville, to Mercy, back to Grandville, back to St. Martial. Add to that - it took the 3rd mission before Vernon Von Grun would give me his number. 

This notion that red side doesn't send you zone hopping is clearly false. 

My missions were set to +4/3 on my fire blaster, level 47, and I just took down 15 Spires in a pseudo-Eden map. Just big bags of HP. I didn't even see any mobs, lol. Just 15 chunks of HP to knock out. And none of them gave any XP! 

You villains have an odd definition of fun. 

 

Are you the clown who made that post about how people SHOULDNT be using LFG to let people know when a group is full?

 

...

 

Could it be? No... that person surely doesnt exist anymore...

 

 

... jranger? Is... is that you?

[Ukase]

17 hours ago, Redletter said:

Are you the clown who made that post about how people SHOULDNT be using LFG to let people know when a group is full?

No. I am the clown that says people should reply to a message if sent one. A common courtesy. Yes, you should use lfg to let others who haven't yet sent a tell that you're full. But the folks who sent a recruiter a tell, the recruiter should reply in kind. 

[RikOz]

On 1/14/2022 at 1:30 PM, Cancrusher said:

The only gripe I have with red-side is trying to maneuver in Grandville.  Don't misunderstand me:  I LOVE the LOOK of Grandville.  All of the Rogue Isles has the proper, grimy, gritty look of I would expect from a nation ruled by an arch-villain.  I also enjoy the story arcs and challenging enemies you interact with (Arachnoids are quite nasty in gangs!).

 

Grandville can be quite challenging if you don't have a fly power, though.  Even with a fly power, it can be a bit tedious.  Still, all-in-all, worth it for the trouble.  👍

It didn't take me long, while leveling a villain, that the Rogue Isles are a terrible place for speedsters. I wasn't playing a speedster - I just looked at the layouts and realized that trying to play one there would really suck.

[Solarverse]

To be honest? I enjoyed red side, until they changed where you first zone in and what missions you do in Mercy. i rather enjoyed it the way it was, I really don't understand why it needed to change. I just can't get passed Mercy to even get to the rest of the content. So I simply never play Red side. And yes, I know, I can always switch back and forth, nah...if I am playing a Villain, it stays a villain unless I need something from Blue side and vice versa. Just the way I am programmed I guess.