Incentivize playing a villian

[Steampunkette]

I play a few villains, and the thing I've always noticed is that it just feels the same as blueside, just with different stories.

 

There's a fundamental issue that I see:

 

Heroes are (generally) altruistic. They do good for the sake of doing good. Any tangible rewards are just bonuses, not the primary motivation.

 

Villains, on the other hand are (generally) greedy. They do crime in order to gain some tangible benefit. They rob a bank to make money. Except, robbing a bank or stealing an object for the purpose of selling it ends up feeling like wasted effort when the only evidence of "loot" is that it says "loot" in the mission completion text, but the character doesn't actually obtain any loot beyond the same standard rewards a hero gets for doing the opposite mission. Villainous "victories" are hollow.

 

Even if the villain's goal is to obtain "power", to become the most powerful villain ... why? Just for the sake of being more powerful? A hero obtains more power so that he/she can help more people and defeat bigger threats. Villains obtain more power to ultimately benefit themselves in the material sense, but that never happens.

 

It's one of the unfortunate side effects of the MMO genre, that neither opposing faction can ever actually "win". The status quo has to be maintained for gameplay/balance reasons.

 

I'd like to add a tiny bit to this?

 

There's also the issue that not all Villains are motivated by Greed. Take Mr. Freeze, for example. He wants to save his wife. Or the Joker who has the primary motivation of causing hilarious mayhem. Poison Ivy wants to stop people from screwing up the planet and destroying plantlife. Meanwhile Thanos wants to "Save the Universe" in the most inane manner imaginable, Vulture is sticking it to the people who stole his ideas, and Magneto wants to protect all Mutants from the Humans.

 

Heroes typically have one or two motivations: "Do Good to Do Good" or "Do Good for Money".

 

Villains? It's bananas how many individual motivations they have. Some are greedy, some just want to exercise their power, others cause harm because they enjoy it (either sadistically for killers or cathartically for characters who want to smash buildings and ideas) and plenty do it out of some perverse sense of Justice that either they were denied or feel must be upheld thanks to twisted morality.

 

90% of the Redside content is "Okay, $name, I've got a deal for you where I tell you where to go and you smash shit up and bring me the $objective!"

 

Instead of "Origins" for villains they should have approached it as "Motivations". Then there'd have been a plethora of narrative choices...

 

[Steampunkette]

Steam, you actually did throw around numbers to validate your point. And, you're doing exactly what you accuse others of. So, toast is correct.

 

No. I didn't. I threw around numbers to say "You're right that I was wrong. But also look at this! We could try to recruit these people!"

 

See, it's this thing where in searching for myself to learn that Toast was right I also found something interesting and decided to share it. But I can see how it might be misconstrued as trying to bolster a position I'd abandoned.

 

[khy]

Honestly I find that Red-Side content is more engaging, entertaining, and enjoyable than blue-side stuff as it is. Because of that I already play a ton of red side, and so I don't need to be incentivized. That said, I think that what would really be great would be to make villain side more villainous.

 

Make more hero groups to fight against (I have some great ideas here, I want to experiment with AE and see if I can put some of those into play), especially for high-level villains. Way too much of the time villains are fighting other villains and feel like there's no real difference between them and the heroes.

 

Grant more rewards after missions. When pulling off big arcs and doing crazy plots, have them pay off with temp powers. Mayhem, vaults, and stuff like that should reward a 'briefcase' temp power that grants some bonus infamy. Have steal-tech missions grant a few charges of a raygun that does bonus damage, or summon a clone to fight alongside you for a few minutes, or things like that. Grant small bonuses (5% recharge for 2 hours or so) from various missions. Villains are in it for the rewards, unlike heroes who do it for the good of the city. So for Villains, giving them the tangible rewards makes a lot more sense. If I'm assaulting a Circle Hideout to steal their powerful artifacts, showing that as a 5% bonus damage for 60 minutes in-game is going to make me feel like I accomplished something.

 

I'd also like to see Mayhem missions become more chaotic for large teams, with reasons for teams to want to destroy everything on the map. As it is with the amount of stuff you have to destroy scaling up way too much, there's no point in blowing up cars or parking meters or crates or whatever; an 8-person team will almost never get any of the time bonuses because you have to destroy too many. So instead have repeatable smaller time bonuses, or maybe an 'insurance adjuster' granting you bonuses after the mission the more you destroy (As thanks for letting them boost premiums) or other things like that. Something to encourage Villains to go nuts on the town instead of just rushing the bank and ending it there.

 

Just a few thoughts I had is all.

[Midnight Mystique]

I haven't had a chance to read thorugh all 11 pages of this post, so if someone has already suggested this then I second it, but I see 2 real problems here:

 

1) Players perception of how hard it is to move from red->blue and back. I saw at least one early poster who mentioned how he had to get his VEAT to L20 to go blueside, which is untrue. You can go blue side (and vice versa) as soon as you can get to Pocket D (which I have done at L2, but I suspect you could at L1) and talk to null the gull, who will change your alignment to any of the 4 on command.

2) Ease of group invitation. If you are running your rogue or vigilante on blue side (which I do to at least get in some groups) you can't be invited by anyone on redside, even if you technically could group with them. The same problem shows up in coop zones if you are vigilante/rogue - you can only be invited by folks in your nativezones or already in the coop zone. If you know what you are doing, it doesn't take much time to travel red side but it still puts a kink into accepting invites.

 

We can fix one by making it a little more obvious how easy it is to move around. Put copies of Nul the Gull in atlas and mercy (obviously not offering to make you a full hero in mercy or a full villain in atlas) or even better, add the functionality to the P2W vendor - everyone knows to stop there anyway.

 

The second one may not be possible to fix, but it would be nice to be able to invite anyone who is eligible to join your group whatever zone you and the inviter are in. This would also make it easier to form up RWZ ship raids and ITF's for Cimmerora. This change is likely to be a lot more code intense and also a lot more lilkely to break things, but it would be nice.

 

Both of these options don't require designing new content, which cuts down on the work the homecoming team has to do. The only kicker is whether the code for handling invites is complicated enough that this can't be done and making sure you don't end up with full on villains in atlas (and full on heroes in mercy).

 

My 2 cents,

Midnight Mystique

[Chaos Ex Machina]

Two exclusive factions is just a bad gameplay mechanic that many MMOs repeated because WoW got lucky with it and in every single case, low population ended up making that choice a pain in the ass later on.

 

This.

 

Yes, but as pointed out, it wasn't this anemic before shut-down.

 

Why are there 5 times as many Brutes as Tankers?

 

Same reason.  No faction specific ATs which artificially increased the number of villains and tankers.

[Legree]

Why are there 5 times as many Brutes as Tankers?

 

I still can't quite get alongside the idea that Brutes = Tankers.  I daresay that an optimised IO'd Brute can tank as well as a Tanker but levelling with SOs or even basic IOs a Brute really compares more to a Scrapper (only a bit tougher) than an actual Tanker.  Not for nothing were Masterminds regarded as the original redside tanks, and I recall more than one occassion on live when a Brute had to explain to the rest of their team that soaking up alphas and holding all the aggro wasn't really part of their job description.

 

Which is to say I think both ATs still have a role - certainly my experience on a Tanker is different from a Brute in many ways.  Still I guess Brutes are the new hotness (literally in the case of spines/fire...)

[Xaeon]

Why are there 5 times as many Brutes as Tankers?

 

I still can't quite get alongside the idea that Brutes = Tankers.  I daresay that an optimised IO'd Brute can tank as well as a Tanker but levelling with SOs or even basic IOs a Brute really compares more to a Scrapper (only a bit tougher) than an actual Tanker.  Not for nothing were Masterminds regarded as the original redside tanks, and I recall more than one occassion on live when a Brute had to explain to the rest of their team that soaking up alphas and holding all the aggro wasn't really part of their job description.

 

Which is to say I think both ATs still have a role - certainly my experience on a Tanker is different from a Brute in many ways.  Still I guess Brutes are the new hotness (literally in the case of spines/fire...)

 

Jack wanted MMs to be the Redside tanks but didn't give them any aggro management so almost nobody actually used them for tanking, especially when most MMs in the early CoV days were skittish with their minions and would tend to pull them back out of danger rather than risk them getting defeated to tank for team mates.  Leaving the Brute who actually had the taunt power to aggro manage as well as solid survivability stats to do all the tanking on a team. Because Jack is a weird man with weird ideas like that the Shadow Shard is good level design, you should feel weaker as you get higher in level, and a well built character should be able to take on three minions maximum when solo.

 

As for Brutes and Scrappers. The issue is that Stalkers also exist and much more cleanly compare to Scrappers than Brutes do. 

 

With the end of side exclusive ATs the four melee ATs though all settled into rather separate niches. The Tanker is a tarpit who locks down enemies and slowly drowns them while the rest of the team pounds on the stuck enemies, the Brute is a chainsaw that gradually eats through obstacles and stops for no obstacles, the Scrapper is a fast moving sledgehammer and the Stalker is a very keenly aimed rapier that eliminates any priority target. 

 

They all play very differently and occupy different roles on the team. The issue with tankers though is that they just don't really do a lot of damage on their own and later on in the game Brutes and Scrappers can replicate Gauntlet pretty well with a decent Taunt aura.  They also have to compete with Kheldians who are also extremely versatile. The difference between an purpled out Tanker and a purpled out Khedian or Brute in terms of survivability is generally not an appreciably large one in most content, and they bring other stuff to the table.

 

Some people on the discord and I have brainstormed a concept for the Tanker that puts a bit more emphasis on Bruising. Spreading it to every attack tankers get to varying degrees, the first attack getting a -30 debuff, the others getting a -20, AOEs getting a -5 and the debuff lasting a bit longer. This means that the tanker holding down a large spawn of enemies has the added benefit of making them easier to down and also helps the tanker have a way to do more damage on their own; making them both more solo and team friendly without treading on the other melee AT's toes. 

 

 

 

 

[Alexvrb]

Suggestion: Try various incentives to try and balance the server. IE: An additional experience or infamy passive and always on boost. Reduced prices at the stores. These incentives can swap back to heroes if there are more villains than heroes playing.

Agreed. I would also add that if you do an XP incentive, it could be per character on the team, with a cap. Like 2-3% per team member, to encourage groups. If you have it "swap back" it should only do so once the imbalance is >15% or something so it's not like a see-saw. Further, the buff should have a 1 hr timer and refresh if the conditions are met. That way you don't form a group on the lower population side and then have your buff yanked away after 5 minutes.

I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here, but I actually thought it worked better when AT's and Powersets were restricted by hero/villain. I liked that there was something to differentiate them.

Actually I agree with you. Alternatively I also wouldn't mind restricting (some) powersets or offering hero/villain variants of powersets. But at this point I don't think anything like that is ever going to materialize, for a number of reasons. Villains are heroes are villains.

Grant more rewards after missions. When pulling off big arcs and doing crazy plots, have them pay off with temp powers. Mayhem, vaults, and stuff like that should reward a 'briefcase' temp power that grants some bonus infamy. Have steal-tech missions grant a few charges of a raygun that does bonus damage, or summon a clone to fight alongside you for a few minutes, or things like that. Grant small bonuses (5% recharge for 2 hours or so) from various missions. Villains are in it for the rewards, unlike heroes who do it for the good of the city. So for Villains, giving them the tangible rewards makes a lot more sense. If I'm assaulting a Circle Hideout to steal their powerful artifacts, showing that as a 5% bonus damage for 60 minutes in-game is going to make me feel like I accomplished something.

I like this suggestion as well! Though I don't think this will change things much, I still like it conceptually.

We can fix one by making it a little more obvious how easy it is to move around. Put copies of Nul the Gull in atlas and mercy (obviously not offering to make you a full hero in mercy or a full villain in atlas) or even better, add the functionality to the P2W vendor - everyone knows to stop there anyway.

Honestly I feel like Null just exacerbates the issue. Not enough villains? Join blueside and reduce redside population further! Uh, did that fix the problem yet??!? ADD MORE GULLS! It's well-intentioned but it doesn't address the imbalance. Gull should be used to help people play a particular character (which they feel like playing or fits a role needed) with whichever side their buddies are on at the moment, rather than as some sort of population imbalance panacea. Might as well just delete redside.