For those who don't play Redside - why not?

[Sura]

Didn't vote, as I split my time much as you, but I'd play red 100% if it were easier to get teams.  Really I play my villains more a rogues, they're in it for the money and power, and most of the people they're beating up are either 'the man' or other villains so they all deserve it.  Mostly I just like to rob banks, it's like playing GTA.  I'd never act like that outside of a game.

 

Really I think they ought to get rid of the villain/hero thing, just make them another zone, and you could join anything anywhere.  I think that's the only way to save it.

 

If you choose Rogue or Vigilante you can join any TF/SF, use the market on both sides, team on both sides, and do newspapers/radios on both sides.  The only real limitations are on starting TF/SF's and that you have to be in the same zone as the group you're joining if it's on the "opposite" side as your association.  For example, Vigilantes are associated with heroes, so if they're going to join a villain group they have to be in the same zone as the group. 

[srmalloy]

Morality's a factor in a way, but how about, "I don't want to be one of the bad guys' legbreakers."

 

If I'd added a 6th option this would have been it, but I wanted to avoid an excess of options.

 

My objection is along this line, but more nuanced. I don't play reside because I don't want to be just a legbreaker. Look at the character progression -- you start out as a legbreaker for small-time thugs, then advance to being a legbreaker for bigger-time thugs, then for small-time villains, then for bigger villains, until you graduate to being a legbreaker for Arachnos. And then you have the incarnate content, for which it feels as if you need a higher degree of altruism than a truly villainous individual would have. I never feel as if the character is stepping out on their own to become an actor on the stage of the Rogue Isles.

[Rumors]

I'd have to echo the lack of proper villainy.  Redside is fine if I either want to A) Be a mercenary or B) Work for Arachnos.  But if I want to be the villain, you can't.  Villains are changers in most stories, they threaten and adjust the status quo.  They are proactive, they drive the plot and force the heroes and protagonists to react to them.  And usually the only times they try to protect the status quo is when they've already won before the story even starts.

 

As a villain in CoX, you can't change the status quo because MMOs of the time were all about maintaining the status quo for all players for a consistent experience.  If you get a cloning base, it has to be blown up at the end of the arc.  If you kill someone, they're minor and unimportant.  You can't destroy Paragon City, you can't rule the world, you can't actually accumulate all that money you're stealing or use all those weapons and artifacts and gadgets you're stealing.  And if you do manage to accomplish anything, the arc has to reset it or somehow use it up at the end so that the game world still makes sense.

 

 

 

In redside CoX, you either get to be a mercenary, a villain whose own plans and schemes always get foiled or amount to nothing, or someone who sets things aside for the greater good because there's a bigger bad than you.

[Leogunner]

Morality's a factor in a way, but how about, "I don't want to be one of the bad guys' legbreakers."

 

If I'd added a 6th option this would have been it, but I wanted to avoid an excess of options.

 

My objection is along this line, but more nuanced. I don't play reside because I don't want to be just a legbreaker. Look at the character progression -- you start out as a legbreaker for small-time thugs, then advance to being a legbreaker for bigger-time thugs, then for small-time villains, then for bigger villains, until you graduate to being a legbreaker for Arachnos. And then you have the incarnate content, for which it feels as if you need a higher degree of altruism than a truly villainous individual would have. I never feel as if the character is stepping out on their own to become an actor on the stage of the Rogue Isles.

 

Dissociative syndrome?

 

I think the reason people often feel like they are just mooks all the time is because they believe for their villains to feel truly villainous, they must be almighty, top dog, Joker-Lex Chessmaster plotting and so anything that doesn't accomplish this for them then write it off as side-work or a stepping stone to finally getting to the top.  These type of villains cannot have friends, must have alien emotions that cannot be comprehended, and likely become one dimensional.  How many players write their villains to run away when they're scared or hurt?  Smile and act smug when complimented?  Get angry when they don't comprehend? Feel sorrow when betrayed or foiled?  When you set out to make an entity that you cannot relate to, there's going to be difficulty relating a story, plot or motive. You're not just breaking legs, you need what that guy has and broken legs is the easiest means of getting it.

 

It's funny, many Heroes have harsh and tragic backstories and we idealize them because they took the path of most resistance and came out fresh on the other end (morally).  A villain can start the exact same just taking the path of least resistance instead...or the most resistance but came out not-so-fresh.  Personal preference, I suppose.

[Solarverse]

Red side has nothing to offer. I can play any AT I want on Blue side. There is no reason for me to play Red side anymore.

[retiarius]

I just don't find it as engaging, really.

This is the probably the main reason that I don't have more redside characters.

 

Other reasons include my feelings of discomfiture with its arbitrary nature, because CoV was meant to represent (in spirit, if not in actual practice) the moral polar opposite of its predecessor, CoH -- and I've always viewed morality as a grey-scale spectrum, not a binary choice between black and white.

 

There's as many different moral motivations to action as there are people who take said actions.  The human brain just wants to put everything into simple categories, even if what is being categorized doesn't lend itself to such.

 

[Clave Dark 5]

When they were redside only, all of my masterminds came to grief once they hit Sharkhead.  The zone was inescapable, and levelling a MM through one Scrapyarder mission after another was no fun at all.

 

I've always considered Sharkhead - due to the Scrapyarders - a kind of purgatory that MMs have to go through for five levels until they ascend to the heaven of a full set of pets at level 26.

 

Maybe because it's been too long, but with the MMs I've run through redside, I can't ever recall having any problem with them there, at least no more than the usual "my pets are weak, I'm too low level!" problems.

[PaxArcana]

As a player who DOES play redside - and whose sole pre-Sunset 50 was a villain (Robo/FF Mastermind) ...?

 

All of those, except morality, are downsides of playing redside.  But especially the low population.  Blueside, I can skyrocket from 1 to 16+ in two hours of running DFB, with minimal effort to find a team.

 

Redside, that's .... not so simple a thing.

 

As for morality, maybe it's just me, or maybe it's that I have forty years of experience with tabletop RPGs (like Dungeons and Dragons).  One of my favorites is Shadowrun - whose "good guy" player-characters are often worse than other genre's villains, and whose entire setting is horrifically grimdark, if played straight.  In D&D, I have a penchant for Lawful Evil characters, and/or, actual undead.

 

All of us have a dark side.  I find games to be a safe way to let mine out to stretch it's legs and get a bit of fresh air - keeping it more docile the rest of the time.  :)

[Murcielago]

Morality's a factor in a way, but how about, "I don't want to be one of the bad guys' legbreakers."

 

I love the Praetorian content because even though it's almost always clear who's giving my character orders, I feel like I have a lot of agency in interpreting them.  Some of the redside content tries to do this with optional objectives, and I appreciate that, but I still end up in a lot of situations where I feel like I'm playing a mook hitting random strangers for cash.

 

Most villains are the heroes of their own story, they're just 'driven to it' because 'nobody understands.'  I'd love to be a bank robber, a mad scientist, or a superspy.  I'd love to be a robin hood, someone who really is hitting strangers for cash but doing it to e.g. fund an orphanage or w/e.  I'd love to be one of the assassins in a John Wick universe.

 

I don't want to be Leg Breaker #6791.  I play Praetorian content solo, where the NPCs are literally telling me I am just a mook with a number but then the story makes me feel like I'm not, and that's fine.  Redside tells me I'm a super-being who is treated as a credible resource or threat by others, but makes me feel like I'm an interchangeable mook, and that's... obnoxious.

I think this hits home for me. This is my exact reason why.

[Clave Dark 5]

I find it interesting how subjective a sliver of these answers are.  Ask somebody a political question, and sometimes you get back answers that discuss numbers, get deep into the weeds about morality or something, but you also get some almost blank "nope, not ever ging to consider any other angle" answers.  Which is fine, that's how politics work.  I wouldn't have guessed that would work for red side vs. blue side, but here we are.

 

My answer to the above would be teams, again, the pop is just way too freaking low.  But I am going to be making more of an effort now to watch for redside teaming.  I suspect if we, villainously, held a gun to everyone's head and made them vote, this would be the most obvious answer, because how many groups you play on are actually stopping to read anything and being offended at being a leg-breaker for the mob or whatever?

[Xaeon]

It's clear that later on in the game's life the devs thought that redside needed the player character to have more agency and be allowed to be more heinous. The Villainside Pandora's box SSA is basically all about the player character becoming a big bad on par with Lord Recluse and Nemesis themselves and taking over the Sky Raiders and Warriors outright to make their own army to directly rival Arachnos and the Nemesis Army. You even essentially straight up humiliate Recluse in front of Arachnos by basically pissing in his cheerios way past even his patience with destined ones, turning one of his lieutenants against him as a spy for you, then when you need something from him you blatantly defy his order of expulsion and show up at his house and demand him for it like he's a neighbour you want some sugar from.  And in Who Will Die you can just straight up murder a helpless old lady in cold blood and psychologically torture Sister Psyche past the point of any hope of recovery and when Wade tries to control you you flip him the bird and punch Rularuu's powers straight out of him for having the audacity to ever think you were under his control.

 

Other GR and onward redside arcs also followed similar veins; you are an absolute monster who crushes people's lives purely for you own gain and its not even because someone like Westin Phipps is asking you to; you're doing it for the sake of your own power base and plans and there is no one to blame for things like driving Praetorian Penelope Yin to violent insanity simply to get a pet psyker in your pocket but you. Or in Dark Astoria where after the big warm happy power of friendship moment you repay Tielekku for all her help by murdering her and Mot and stealing what's left of their powers to the horror of everyone else.

 

If any future contacts and task forces are added to redside (and I can't see why not; contacts and TFs are by word of the OroDevs; not super hard to implement into the game) I think more should follow that vein. A Vigilante is a hero going way too far, a Rogue is in most cases; simply an asshole or someone willing to get dirty to get by. A villain though, going by the alignment missions, is a monster in the vague shape of a person.

[Legree]

Maybe because it's been too long, but with the MMs I've run through redside, I can't ever recall having any problem with them there, at least no more than the usual "my pets are weak, I'm too low level!" problems.

 

For me it was the first time I'd ran into a lot of enemies with AoE attacks (this was pre-GR, so no Destroyers) and after feeling like me and my ever growing entourage could take on anything in the later levels of Cap au Diable the first time all of my pets were basically obliterated in one shot by a Scrapyarder firebomb... that left a lasting impression.  The next time I took an MM in wasn't nearly so bad, but that was Bots/FF, which is sturdier than Thugs/Poison, and more importantly I knew what to expect.

 

 

[Solarverse]

P.S. I didn't vote, because the reason I don't play Red side wasn't listed. Some conversations I had about this subject in game seem to mirror my same reasons as well.

[Xaeon]

But seriously, I loved the 2010-2012 approach to redside content where the player character villain is an unstoppable force of basically unrelenting evil who bulldozes everything in their way and makes everyone they meet their lackey or punching bag. The last meeting with Recluse in Redside Pandora's box might as well be called "the Destined one T-poses on all of Arachnos to assert dominance and all Lord Recluse can do about it is make angry remarks about the sheer big dick energy you radiate before acquiescing."

[Rokkeb]

I live in a crappy rundown high crime area. I can just go outside and see that dont need it in my mmos.

[Clave Dark 5]

P.S. I didn't vote, because the reason I don't play Red side wasn't listed. Some conversations I had about this subject in game seem to mirror my same reasons as well.

I'm not sure I understood wqhat that was, just access to the different archetypes?

[Solarverse]

Before, if I wanted to play as a Brute, I went to Villain side and ran with the other Villains. It was unique. Now if I want to play a Brute, I can make one on Hero side. There is no real reason for me to play as a Villain. I can play all those ATs on Hero side.

 

They made a mistake allowing the ATs to be universal.

[Xaeon]

I live in a crappy rundown high crime area. I can just go outside and see that dont need it in my mmos.

Isn't Paragon a crappy rundown high crime era with armed neo-nazis and demon cultists on the streets in the open and something like half of the zones being uninhabitable wastelands full of monsters and gangsters?

[justicebeliever]

I find it interesting how subjective a sliver of these answers are.  Ask somebody a political question, and sometimes you get back answers that discuss numbers, get deep into the weeds about morality or something, but you also get some almost blank "nope, not ever ging to consider any other angle" answers.  Which is fine, that's how politics work.  I wouldn't have guessed that would work for red side vs. blue side, but here we are.

 

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying...I'm see any "intractable" positions here, at least not in the sense of "you are wrong, and I am right".  Please clarify?  (And I'm not asking you to tie it further to politics, more to understand what you are seeing that's negative in this thread).

[justicebeliever]

Before, if I wanted to play as a Brute, I went to Villain side and ran with the other Villains. It was unique. Now if I want to play a Brute, I can make one on Hero side. There is no real reason for me to play as a Villain. I can play all those ATs on Hero side.

 

They made a mistake allowing the ATs to be universal.

 

I'm not getting this Solarverse...There are tons of reasons for someone to play as a villain - want to be a villain, different content, different zones, etc.  I get that you want to play Villain AT's (like a brute).  And before, you could only play them on CoV and now you can do either side...So why pick Hero over Villain still?  To be clear, I am not criticizing, just curious...what do you NOT like about redside that causes you to not start a Brute there anymore...

[justicebeliever]

I live in a crappy rundown high crime area. I can just go outside and see that dont need it in my mmos.

Isn't Paragon a crappy rundown high crime era with armed neo-nazis and demon cultists on the streets in the open and something like half of the zones being uninhabitable wastelands full of monsters and gangsters?

 

I think that's very unfair...Have you spent anytime in Paragon City lately...There is a lovely park in the center (Perez Park), there are some nice condominiums in Eastgate (though I've heard they have a few sinkholes caused by trolls blowing up caves), there is Overbrook which is lovely (minus the occasional earthquake), Baumtown skyscrapers are quite tall (and resting on the ground horizontally), and besides the occasionally complaint of a haunting, Astoria is love to own a home in.  The citizens are very friendly, calling out what a great job I do (except when they are running down the street).  Occasionally, I even see 2 or 3 Hellions, or Skulls, or Outcasts, trying to return a purse or briefcase to a nice citizen who must have dropped it.  Its beautiful...haven't you read the lovely motto that the chamber of commerce came up with.  I got it in this email here - "Help...we are being held by a group of living plant monsters"

 

You really aren't giving it a fair shake...

[Solarverse]

Before, if I wanted to play as a Brute, I went to Villain side and ran with the other Villains. It was unique. Now if I want to play a Brute, I can make one on Hero side. There is no real reason for me to play as a Villain. I can play all those ATs on Hero side.

 

They made a mistake allowing the ATs to be universal.

 

I'm not getting this Solarverse...There are tons of reasons for someone to play as a villain - want to be a villain, different content, different zones, etc.  I get that you want to play Villain AT's (like a brute).  And before, you could only play them on CoV and now you can do either side...So why pick Hero over Villain still?  To be clear, I am not criticizing, just curious...what do you NOT like about redside that causes you to not start a Brute there anymore...

 

There is just no need. There is plenty of content hero side. I don't even mess with Preatoria. No new AT's to play, means no reason to go there. I have already done most content on Villain side anyway, like before the Devs let heroes play as Stalkers. I went there for the AT's...not the content. It's a different game, so much so it even has a different name. I like City of Heroes. I played City of Villains because that's what you played if you wanted to play the Villain ATs, or use the Villain costume options. Now, Villains has nothing to offer me.

[justicebeliever]

 

There is just no need. There is plenty of content hero side. I don't even mess with Preatoria. No new AT's to play, means no reason to go there. I have already done most content on Villain side anyway, like before the Devs let heroes play as Stalkers. I went there for the AT's...not the content. It's a different game, so much so it even has a different name. I like City of Heroes. I played City of Villains because that's what you played if you wanted to play the Villain ATs, or use the Villain costume options. Now, Villains has nothing to offer me.

 

Got it - there is nothing that redside offers that is as compelling as blue side.

 

Thanks for the response good sir!

[Ghost49X]

I chose content, but it's not the lack of quantity but rather the lack of appealing quality content that demotivates me from playing red. Playing red, especially lower level doesn't make me feel like a villain. At best I think the current red content fits a rogue alignment instead of a villain alignment. Villain aligned content should be the sort that would make heroes want to stop you or should be part of arcs leading to some villainous plans. Rob bank (get resources) > build super weapon > enact evil plan. Playing anti-hero type missions should be for Vigilantes, and Rogues missions should have anti-villain type missions. Make me feel like a villain early on and keep it up.

[wjrasmussen]

So I'm spinning this off from a topic in Suggestions about incentivising players to visit the Rogue Isles more often, because it occurred to me that while there's a lot of conjecture it's still not entirely clear exactly why some don't.

 

I'm not looking to start a debate on which side is best - just satisfy my own curiosity and maybe shed some light on why the divide is as large as it is.  I've always divided my time (somewhat unevenly) between the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, as I assumed many people did.  In a game a alt-friendly as this it never occurred to me that people would avoid all the content on redside, but apparently this is a thing that happens.

 

The Poll options aren't exhaustive, of course, but I've tried to list the most common points I've seen made about villain content over the years.

 

So if you don't play Redside - why not?  If you do, but rarely - what stops you playing it more?

i don't play to annoy those who wonder why people don't play red side.