Villains where you at!?!

[Nihilistik]

Where we at? I really want to roll some villain characters and hate seeing us so out numbered! Tell me what shard and what times ur playing! Let's be evillllll! 

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Nihilistik said:

Where we at? I really want to roll some villain characters and hate seeing us so out numbered! Tell me what shard and what times ur playing! Let's be evillllll! 

Freedumb.  Fort Darwin.  Double experience weekend about 15 years ago.   Can you make it?  (Maybe thru Ouro…?)

[Scarlet Shocker]

Sadly there's too few of us villainous types around. That said, if I hear a call for villain stuff and I'm not already booked up I'm usually quite happy to help out!

 

If you want to start something give it a go. I'm also open to starting a regular event/team night for the bad guys

[Clave Dark 5]

I know right?!  Three red dots and I still can't find a team red side. 

 

So far I've teamed twice, with the same brute I bumped into there.  But yeah, just keep plugging away.  I too am more than happy to swap if a call goes out and I'm not already doing something else.  Worst case scenario, you can go to Pocket D and start a SBB.

[Ghost]

Most of the villains have had their butts kicked and been locked away in prison (where they belong)

🙂

 

[Gdead909]

6 hours ago, Nihilistik said:

Where we at? I really want to roll some villain characters and hate seeing us so out numbered! Tell me what shard and what times ur playing! Let's be evillllll! 

What server? I am just coming back and more than happy to roll up a villian

[starro]

I used to run “Sunday Villainy” at noon or 6pm on Sundays Liberty server.  Mayhems, story arcs, strike forces, new villains, incarnates, holiday content…. or just plain old street sweeping.  There is always a reason for villainy.

[Gdead909]

Hmmmm time to craft a villain on liberty you say?

[High_Beam]

1 hour ago, Gdead909 said:

What server? I am just coming back and more than happy to roll up a villian

The server isn't really relevant, it is simply the fact that as the game has shaken out, less people, regardless of the population play on the villain side, even less on the Praetorian side.   I will not presume to burden everyone with my opinions as to why but suffice it to say, blue is where most people congregate.

 

Now you can tweak things a little, go to Null the Gull and become a Rogue vice a villain which will allow you to cross back and forth between blue and red while still maintaining access to the Red content but able to participate in Blue TFs and such.  Or you go Vigilante but that kills off access to regular Red content (you can still do Strike Forces).  Its a lot easier to catch a DFB on Blue than Red.

 

But if you are wanting to stay hard core red then perhaps be a booster, make calls for Red side work.  Strike Forces and stuff that grants badges come to mind.  Keep track of the Weekly Strike Targets and run those as they are incentivized with greater rewards; this week is Silver Mantis and next week is Operative Renault.  When Mortimer Kal comes up everyone is in Sharkhead.

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, Ghost said:

Most of the villains have had their butts kicked and been locked away in prison (where they belong)

🙂

 

 

 

Were that even remotely true, City of Heroes would be entirely redundant. Our job would be done, there would be nothing left to achieve!

[Skyhawke]

Redside is nowhere near as busy at Blue, but I have noticed it's busier than I've ever seen it (on Excelsior, at least) over the past weekish. My problem is I usually build solo Villains because I like seeing the stories, so I rarely bother teaming. That's a me thing, though.

[Gdead909]

we need to pump these villains numbers up. BTW it still throws me for a loop that i can be a villain tanker

[cranebump]

You know...Torch is still searching for an identity. 

 

Unofficial bad guys & (misunderstood) douche bag server, anyone?:-)

Edited January 9 by cranebump

[gameboy1234]

8 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Sadly there's too few of us villainous types around. That said, if I hear a call for villain stuff and I'm not already booked up I'm usually quite happy to help out!

 

I'd like to see some support for red side, especially now that HC has an official license and can develop the game more.  Some ideas of mine:

 

- Send heroes red side.  Part of the problem is, not sure, something like "first mover advantage."  Blue side was first, it has more population and more people to play with, so everyone just ends up there because that's where all the people already are.  If missions and content send more people red side, there'd at least be more people on red side and more reasons to choose it.

 

- There's still some "you cannot invite an enemy to your team" code in the game.  This should be rooted out.  It's part of the "first mover advantage" again, blue side is easier just because you're less likely to have problems like inviting people to your team.

 

- Red side missions should allow some morale choice.  If you're going to be a hero, you might not want to play actual villain missions.  This doesn't have to be every mission red side, but it does have to be all missions that heroes are directed to take.  This doesn't have to be every level and every zone either, it's ok for example to start with levels 1 through 10 and make sure there's enough content for heroes to play through.  Then once a level range has enough content, move on to the next level range.  This could take quite a while to implement all of it, but it's ok to do this incrementally.

 

- Personally I think heroes going to red side and "making a difference" would be great new content for a lot of people.  Right now it's all "defeat villains" but a more personal side to missions and objects would be a refreshing break imo.

 

 

[Snarky]

Let us get down to it.   Redside has ALWAYS been solo, or mostly solo.  When we had Fort Darwin and it was a busy weekend there would be teams on Mercy.  And then about what you get now.  On Mercy folks teamed for getting through the bank mission especially.  That could be mined for 3-4 levels, but required a Darwinistic first ten minutes.  The drop off plaque canisters in Port Oakes was a good place to encourage a few villains to team up and start clearing Longbow.  But after that it was sporadic at best.  Always has been.  Nothing new.  

[Gdead909]

ah that makes sense

[cranebump]

Red side is excellent, overall. It does hew toward I'm going to be the power on the throne here, eventually, though. That whole "Destined Ones" thing. Driving up numbers there as far as teaming goes requires someone really dedicated to running the content, to include drumming up Strike Force teams. I'd include bank mishes in there, because you can just trash everything on the map, which is its own special, special thing.:-) 

Edited January 9 by cranebump

[Gdead909]

Ya man I am here for it. I love making new toons. Made a SJ/WP scrapper villain today

[sykoholic001]

The problem I see with red side is lack of content. Before you grab the torches and pitchforks, hear me out.... On blue side, pre-Freedom, you had TWO starting zones, each with one beginning contact per Origin... that's 10 different starting points. Red side... one zone, two contacts. That's it. Each of those two only introduces you to one new contact. Not one of a possible two or three (per contact) but one and only one.

Move on to Port Oakes, run your newspaper mishes, rob the bank, get your first actual Port Oakes contact (picking one of a possible three), run their mishes, and... get sent to The Radio. Doesn't matter which of the three contacts, you picked, they all hand you off to The Radio. Mr Bocor... The Radio. Billie Heck... The Radio. Angelo Vendetti.... The Radio.

Cap au Diable.... pick one of three, do their mishes, get handed off to one of three. Shelly Percey, Dimitri Krylov, or Peter Themari >>> Marshal Brass, Golden Roller, or Willie Wheeler.

Blue side simply had/has more contacts, thus more content and more to do. More to play = more people playing.

[Lunar Ronin]

6 minutes ago, sykoholic001 said:

The problem I see with red side is lack of content. Before you grab the torches and pitchforks, hear me out.... On blue side, pre-Freedom, you had TWO starting zones, each with one beginning contact per Origin... that's 10 different starting points. Red side... one zone, two contacts. That's it. Each of those two only introduces you to one new contact. Not one of a possible two or three (per contact) but one and only one.

Move on to Port Oakes, run your newspaper mishes, rob the bank, get your first actual Port Oakes contact (picking one of a possible three), run their mishes, and... get sent to The Radio. Doesn't matter which of the three contacts, you picked, they all hand you off to The Radio. Mr Bocor... The Radio. Billie Heck... The Radio. Angelo Vendetti.... The Radio.

Cap au Diable.... pick one of three, do their mishes, get handed off to one of three. Shelly Percey, Dimitri Krylov, or Peter Themari >>> Marshal Brass, Golden Roller, or Willie Wheeler.

Blue side simply had/has more contacts, thus more content and more to do. More to play = more people playing.

 

Yes, and no.  A lot of the Issue 0 contacts are duplicates, and the majority of Issue 0 and Issue 1 content is terrible.  The writing in City of Heroes didn't start getting good until Issue 2 with the Hollows, then had a marked improvement with Issue 6 and City of Villains, and then a marked improvement again with Issue 18 and Going Rogue.  Everything from Issues 0 and 1 are mostly forgettable "Go to Perez Park and defeat ten Hellions, and then go to Boomtown and defeat ten Trolls," or "Beat Fifth Column The Council in this office building."  Once you remove Issues 0 and 1 content, City of Villains has a similar amount.

[Go0gleplex]

Yeah. I agree. At low levels the contacts really don't link up...a lot of the MI to CD seems to rely on Dr. Graves missions or you get stuck doing a lot of newspaper stuff to get introduced to contacts. And there really doesn't seem to be that many of those. At least in my experience so far.  

 

But...back to OP topic:

I'm in the red zone about 50% of the time I'm playing, though I pretty much stick to solo though willing to help out if I have time. On Excelsior General Killerwatt or Cerebral Scarab are causing mayhem while on Torchbearer Major Holocaust is tearing up St. Martial while Fusillade has just started busting heads in Cap au Diable. 

[Snarky]

IF. If you turn off exp at 4, 7, 8, 9 , 14, 19, 24, 29, 34, 39, 44 and do every contact and arc.  As i have done many times.   You will find there is quite a LOT of redside content.  And quite a bit of it is backstory for characters and Strike Forces, and plotlines.  

[Clave Dark 5]

7 hours ago, Snarky said:

Let us get down to it.   Redside has ALWAYS been solo, or mostly solo.  When we had Fort Darwin and it was a busy weekend there would be teams on Mercy.  And then about what you get now.  On Mercy folks teamed for getting through the bank mission especially.  That could be mined for 3-4 levels, but required a Darwinistic first ten minutes.  The drop off plaque canisters in Port Oakes was a good place to encourage a few villains to team up and start clearing Longbow.  But after that it was sporadic at best.  Always has been.  Nothing new.  

Have to disagree with you there. 

 

I dabbled in both blue and red side on Live when I started about Issue 6, until the day I rolled my first stalker, then I didn't look back (until I had to, but we'll get to that).  At first I only soloed because I wasn't sure what I was doing and didn't wanna fail in front of others, but then I did start to team and was able to team often, pretty much all the time, even playing during overnight hours. 

 

As things went along, the pop started fading away a bit, so I had to switch to Freedom, but still was able to PUG to my stupid heart's content.  Then, nearish the end, one night I rolled a new redside toon, popped into Mercy to look for a team... and I was just about alone.  After some researching, I found was there about a hundred red-siders online (at like 1 in the morning!), and about 80% of them were 50s and standing around in Pocket D for the endless reruns of Incarnate content (thank god our new Devs broke that hold).  I never did anything with that toon and had to give up playing redside completely, because I like teaming.

 

Perhaps the current focus on merit- and other farming, speedruns for well known TFs (redside doesn't seem to have too many "well known" TFs, or at leats they never get run as often, so maybe there's a perception that they don't) etc. is having creating the same effect that Incarnate content did.  Heck, maybe Null The Gull is making it too easy for people to think "I'll go do some red side later, I can always switch" and then never getting round to it; maybe people needed to be more "stuck" redside to dedicate themselves to it.  Maybe, just thinking out loud here.

[Lunar Ronin]

The severe lack of a red side population on Homecoming compared to live is down to two things:

 

• The ability to create red side AT characters blue side
• Null the Gull

Before, if you wanted to play a Brute, Corruptor, Dominator, Mastermind, or Stalker, you had to play red side.  There was no choice.  Now there is.  With Null the Gull, people can take ten minute trips red side instead of spending a minimum of a week red side.  The combination of the two has effectively gutted red side, at least in comparison to live.

[gameboy1234]

As much as I hate to admit it, you're probably right.  The flexibility we have now is very nice, but it's probably contributed to people just skipping red side and playing their Brute or Dom on blue side from the get-go.