Making Villian side more attractive?

[erdos]

We have TF's and missions where we face clones of ourselves, would it be possible to make bosses in some groups clones of active players on the servers? 

 

You are in a mission or TF and in the groups are Villains pulled from the Red side servers. The same would be true on Red side they could face Heroes actively playing. I think overall this might make the Red side more attractive as people can see actual players from that side and face them.

[tidge]

A few things.

 

1) There is effectively a "no player tributes via NPC" policy in place (for HC-created content); this would extend to making enemies from PCs.

 

2) Players that don't want to go to red side will not go to red side. Some players cannot be drawn to red side (or gold side) by any incentive, some players only go reluctantly.

 

I don't want to be too critical of players that make that choice, but I'd prefer to not read the umpteenth version of "The buildings are ugly" and "But I have no agency!" reasons. I get it, some folks just want to stay blueside... it's a valid choice but it is one that prevents them from seeing a lot more of the game.

[Troo]

Redside is close to perfection.

 

Folks don't have to do anything. There are some contacts and stories we can choose to participate in. Some arguably better than what is offered elsewhere. Many we may choose to skip.

 

While the title of your post is.. lacking. I find the suggestion intriguing.

 

"would it be possible to make bosses in some groups clones of active players on the servers?"

"on Red side they could face Heroes actively playing."

 

This is what I believe made Brigg's comic con farms so popular.

[Doc_Scorpion]

3 hours ago, erdos said:

I think overall this might make the Red side more attractive

It wouldn't because it wouldn't outweigh the 1,234,917,547,832 other reasons that people dislike redside.  (Some of which @tidge alluded to and which we need not further belabor as the details are irrelevant.)

[Stormwalker]

You could make redside more attractive to me by turning Grandville into a parking lot.  No, really, my one level 50 redsider has Infiltration as her travel power, and that really is kind of utterly miserable to the point of being demotivating, so I don't play her very much because of that.  I do have a Psi Melee/WP brute with Mystic Flight that just hit 40, so maybe I'll be able to stop hating Grandville so much soon.

 

To be honest, the other thing that keeps me away from redside is... I don't really enjoy being evil.  I hardly ever played Sith in Star Wars: The Old Republic, either.  Pretty much the only way I've ever been able to enjoy being the "bad guy" is by being cartoonishly over the top about it.  My Sith Marauder in The Old Republic was the one Sith-side character I actually played, and it's because she was all rage all the time and that made her entertaining.  (Incidentally, the aforementioned Psi/WP Brute is a lot like that, too).  Other than that, my redsiders are either "only-in-it-for-the-money" (my level 50 DB/WP street samurai scrapper) or "I was framed for a crime I didn't commit and now I'm a fugitive" (my EM/Inv Brute who is a re-creation of a character from Live and who I only run radio missions on because all of the story arcs would be absurdly out-of-character for her).

 

Honestly, my one redside hope is Catastrophe, my recently-created Claws/EA catgirl hoverbrute who is... not really evil, because she's basically a force of nature.  As she would tell you, "I am Catastrophe," and she is.  Since she's not actively malicious, she's just a walking hovering disaster in progress (who doesn't understand why people don't understand that and stay away from her when she tells them that she is Catastrophe!), I can have fun with her.  Of course, she's something like level 15 right now so she's got a long way to go.

 

But, well.. the point of all that is that making redside appealing to someone who doesn't generally like playing evil characters is... actually pretty difficult, you know?

 

Regarding the suggestion about NPC's that are copies of player characters, honestly... the roleplayer in me really dislikes it.  I don't really want my character appearing in places that are out of my control.

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, erdos said:

We have TF's and missions where we face clones of ourselves, would it be possible to make bosses in some groups clones of active players on the servers? 

 

You are in a mission or TF and in the groups are Villains pulled from the Red side servers. The same would be true on Red side they could face Heroes actively playing. I think overall this might make the Red side more attractive as people can see actual players from that side and face them.

 

PvP zones?

 

30 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

You could make redside more attractive to me by turning Grandville into a parking lot.  No, really, my one level 50 redsider has Infiltration as her travel power, and that really is kind of utterly miserable to the point of being demotivating, so I don't play her very much because of that.  I do have a Psi Melee/WP brute with Mystic Flight that just hit 40, so maybe I'll be able to stop hating Grandville so much soon.

 

When the DEVs made CoV, they had decided that they needed to make it more vertical.

And, yes, agree that flight seems to be the only truly usable travel power in Granville. (It does make a good bit of the rest of the game easier as well - as compared to other travel powers.)

The first villain, that I leveled up after COV went live, had super speed (if I recall correctly). Super speed was pretty much useless trying to run the webs.

 

However, I did have the same experience in the Shadow Shard. I had to /respec a character that had super lead to flight ... not entirely because of the geysers ... but, mainly, to be able to get to the Chantry and the Storm Palace

 

38 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

But, well.. the point of all that is that making redside appealing to someone who doesn't generally like playing evil characters is... actually pretty difficult, you know?

 

👍

 

[Rudra]

42 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

my one level 50 redsider has Infiltration as her travel power, and that really is kind of utterly miserable to the point of being demotivating

I don't know about powers like Infiltration, but I've made it a sort of mini-game for my super jumping characters to get to the high points missions like to send me even from the Gutter without using Double Jump. I just sort of turn the zone into a platforming game and move from ledge/metal web/balcony/whatever to the next one. I even use the Web as a sort of sky highway to get around. I just have to make sure I land on one of the web strand looking supports and then run up those as needed to be able to launch myself to the next point.

 

This probably won't change your opinion about Grandville, but I found myself starting to enjoy Grandville more when I started platforming it. (Though flight and teleporting are still the best means of getting around there. There are lots of elevators, but for the life of me, I can't remember where they are or which one goes where.)

[DoctorDitko]

If there was an option to play redside as a good guy in deep cover, I would like that.

If I could flag my bad guys as potential opponents of my good guys*, I'd love that!

 

My main beef with redside is the mission arcs. You want to be Lex Luthor and you're stuck licking boots to someone who got hold of one of Bruno Manheim's second-rate Apokalips weapons instead. 

 

And you never really get to graduate!

 

 

* And vice versa.

 

 

Edited February 12 by DoctorDitko
Obsession with proofreading. Sigh.

[Stormwalker]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

I don't know about powers like Infiltration, but I've made it a sort of mini-game for my super jumping characters to get to the high points missions like to send me even from the Gutter without using Double Jump. I just sort of turn the zone into a platforming game and move from ledge/metal web/balcony/whatever to the next one. I even use the Web as a sort of sky highway to get around. I just have to make sure I land on one of the web strand looking supports and then run up those as needed to be able to launch myself to the next point.

 

This probably won't change your opinion about Grandville, but I found myself starting to enjoy Grandville more when I started platforming it. (Though flight and teleporting are still the best means of getting around there. There are lots of elevators, but for the life of me, I can't remember where they are or which one goes where.)

 

I tried that for a little while, but with Infiltration I found I couldn't make a lot of the jumps that would be needed to make it even passably efficient - that, and some of the ones I could make, I could just barely make, and if I missed it and fell all the way down and had to start back over again... yeah, I don't have the patience for that.  So I just started keeping around a temp power rocket pack.  It's slow, but at least it's reliable.  Of course, the one she's using right now is a *Longbow*-design rocket pack, so I guess she must have stolen it.

 

SJ is probably a lot more viable in that regard.

 

As I've said elsewhere, I generally choose my travel powers by concept, but if I can justify a character having flight, that's my preference even on blueside.  But on redside flight or SJ feel like the only really viable options.  I shudder to think what is going to happen when my Natural Katana/Ninjutsu Stalker (who is, predictably, a ninja) makes it to high level - her travel power is... Ninja Run!  Yeah, that's gonna suck.

 

I did forget that I have one other relatively new redside character that has proven to be fun to play so far, but in the case of Gun Bunny (DP/Martial Blaster), it's because my headcanon for her story is that she's obfuscating stupidity ("Everyone assumes I'm just a dumb bunny, so I'll just let them go on thinking that until I take them for everything they're worth.") which makes her voice in my head entertaining as I play her.  Sometimes making a character work in any setting is just a matter of finding that something that makes them feel unique.  

[Rudra]

15 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

  I shudder to think what is going to happen when my Natural Katana/Ninjutsu Stalker (who is, predictably, a ninja) makes it to high level - her travel power is... Ninja Run!  Yeah, that's gonna suck.

If you have a free power slot, that character can grab Teleport as the character's "ninja vanish" move.

[Stormwalker]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

However, I did have the same experience in the Shadow Shard. I had to /respec a character that had super lead to flight ... not entirely because of the geysers ... but, mainly, to be able to get to the Chantry and the Storm Palace

 

👍

 

 

Yeah, the Shard might be even worse without Flight than Grandville is.  The only upside is it's a lot easier to just not go to the Shard.  It's kind of hard to avoid going to Grandville.

[Stormwalker]

3 minutes ago, Rudra said:

If you have a free power slot, that character can grab Teleport as the character's "ninja vanish" move.

 

She might have a free slot, but she definitely doesn't have a free pool, I'm afraid.  I might be able to find something I can live without in her planned build.

Edited February 13 by Stormwalker

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

 

She might have a free slot, but she definitely doesn't have a free pool, I'm afraid.  I might be able to find something I can live without in her planned build.

If all else fails, pay a visit to the Middle East and check out their variety of flying carpets for sale. 😜

[Stormwalker]

2 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

If there was an option to play redside as a good guy in deep cover, I would like that.

If I could flag my bad guys as potential opponents of my good guys*, I'd love that!

 

 

Phantasy Star Online 2 has an interesting thing called "Emergency Code: Clone", where you could find yourself fighting clones of other players' characters  There was actually a story behind it, in that the villains were abducting ARKS and making clones of them.  In order to show up in an Emergency Code: Clone", you first had to actually get your character abducted (there was, of course, a trick to this) and then fight your way out of the enemy's hive/nest/thing (which was not an easy mission by any stretch).  If you succeeded that quest, it flagged you for Emergency Code: Clone.

 

There was an interesting twist on it, in that you were more likely to encounter clones of characters from people on your Friends' List than from other random players.  And it created a bit of an "arms race" for a while where people would try to figure out the best combinations of equipment and Photon Arts to make their clones as overpowered as possible to try to kill their friends.

 

It was actually pretty fun.  The only downsides to doing something like that in CoH are that 1) we've already done the evil doppelganger thing to death here, and 2). unlike in PSO2, not everyone's character has the same background, and some characters should really not be clone-able (for example, many Science heroes whose powers are not in-born).

 

Actually, if it was something you could designate which of your characters were eligible to appear in (for example, in PSO2 you had to "register" your character for it by getting them abducted and completing that mission), I wouldn't mind something like that here.

Edited February 13 by Stormwalker

[DoctorDitko]

1 hour ago, Stormwalker said:

 

Yeah, the Shard might be even worse without Flight than Grandville is.

The upside of the Shard is the Day Job: when you log out there, your character gets a free jetpack, which gains charges the longer you stay*.

 

So hang out in the Shard for a couple weeks before you hit Grandville.

 

 

* The other upside is, it looks like something Steve Ditko would design. Or an album cover.

 

 

 

Edited February 13 by DoctorDitko
footnote

[Troo]

59 minutes ago, Stormwalker said:

It was actually pretty fun.

 

This is the way.

[lemming]

4 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

The upside of the Shard is the Day Job: when you log out there, your character gets a free jetpack, which gains charges the longer you stay*.

 

So hang out in the Shard for a couple weeks before you hit Grandville.

Day Job in Grandville gives you a flight pack as well.  It's the redside version.

Commuter plus Dimensional Explorer will get you time at either location once you have the accolade, or Pilot plus Arachnos Official

[tidge]

Despite the one major complaint I have had about the way the zones in CoV were constructed (TLDR: the zones drew a LOT of stuff that wasn't visible/accessible on the map, which needlessly stressed commonly used video cards at launch),  for the most part I find the red-side zones to be much more cleverly built and a better showcase for map design talents.

 

Also: I think the decision to try to make a "vertical" zone like Grandville was a bad one (*1), but it is clear that it was something that the team specifically wanted to try, and they pretty much learned their lesson. See also the color palette choices for "Arachnos' base" The closest we ever got after CoV to open-world "vertical challenges" were the very limited First/Night Ward.

 

(*1) Grandville has a more annoying issue than "being vertical" IMO: It's the layout/doors/elevators to get to the Patrons/Lord Recluse. I think I see what they were going for, but I find getting to them to be annoying.

 

[Mystoc]

I was actually thinking of posting about this, but this topic is just way to similar to my idea not to comment on it.

 

I will say this I think the main reason redside is avoided so much is the mostly true perception that forming teams is way harder cause there's less players and that perception just infinitely loops on itself and makes less and less players want to even roll a villain, the first step to making redside more appealing is giving it a clear advantage over blueside which at some point can be removed once the ratio of blue to red evens out.

 

I was thinking why not just double merit rewards for all villain content that is not 50 yes, it's very forced but would work completing contact story arc and SFs villain side is now more rewarding so more people now have a reason to give redside a chance and stay for good.

 

Edited February 13 by Mystoc

[tidge]

My experience starting solo red-sider has been that the red-siders do accumulate merits "faster" (that is. by level) than blue-siders. The primary advantages that blue side has , in terms of merits, is:

• It is easier to get (more) zone exploration merits (partially because it is trivial for blue side to get an Ouro portal), but also more zones.
• It is easier to get on a TF blue side (because population), and TF merit rewards are pretty good!

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Mystoc said:

I will say this I think the main reason redside is avoided so much is the mostly true perception that forming teams is way harder cause there's less players and that perception just infinitely loops on itself and makes less and less players want to even roll a villain,

While forming larger teams can be problematic now red side, it wasn't always so. And even when red side had a large population and forming teams to do anything was easy, the red side population was still only a small fraction of the blue side population. So while your statement is valid, I have a problem with the way it is presented. Because teaming itself wasn't what kept players from coming red side.

[JKCarrier]

I like to alternate between blue- and red-side, just for the sake of variety. Null the Gull makes it trivially easy to switch back and forth whenever you feel like it. Of course, I know a lot of people take their character concepts and stories very seriously, and switching sides willy-nilly would spoil their immersion. I think a lot of people just don't want to play the bad guy, period.

In another thread, someone suggested that there could be special Hero contacts in the red zones, with story arcs that were flavored as "stealth" or "undercover" missions in enemy territory. It's a neat idea, but I'm not sure even that would move the needle much in terms of population.

 

[Mystoc]

3 hours ago, Rudra said:

While forming larger teams can be problematic now red side, it wasn't always so. And even when red side had a large population and forming teams to do anything was easy, the red side population was still only a small fraction of the blue side population. So while your statement is valid, I have a problem with the way it is presented. Because teaming itself wasn't what kept players from coming red side.

I think I'm representing this fairly

 

just try to form a DFB redside then do it blueside and you will know what I mean. the problem is not getting people to switch villain at PD or stay just vig to do redside content the problem is making more people want to level and start as a villain or rogue at level 1 very few players are doing that.

 

the more people who level as villain the more people who will form groups in LFG for redside content, having blueside hoppers that are willing to join in does not fix the issue because they aren't the ones starting the groups.

 

 

 

[Rudra]

35 minutes ago, Mystoc said:

4 hours ago, Rudra said:

While forming larger teams can be problematic now red side, it wasn't always so. And even when red side had a large population and forming teams to do anything was easy, the red side population was still only a small fraction of the blue side population. So while your statement is valid, I have a problem with the way it is presented. Because teaming itself wasn't what kept players from coming red side.

I think I'm representing this fairly

 

just try to form a DFB redside then do it blueside and you will know what I mean. the problem is not getting people to switch villain at PD or stay just vig to do redside content the problem is making more people want to level and start as a villain or rogue at level 1 very few players are doing that.

 

the more people who level as villain the more people who will form groups in LFG for redside content, having blueside hoppers that are willing to join in does not fix the issue because they aren't the ones starting the groups.

 

4 hours ago, Rudra said:

While forming larger teams can be problematic now red side, it wasn't always so. <snip> So while your statement is valid, <snip>

 

You missed my point. Like I said, that is a problem now. What I am also saying is that even when it wasn't difficult to form teams red side, the vast majority of players refused to play red side. So like I said, you have a valid point, but there is more to it than was presented.

 

Edit: Case in point: back on Live there were discussions about red side's lack of players compared to blue side. One of the arguments that got repeated was that it was harder to form teams red side. When it was pointed out that there were ample players red side to immediately form a team for anything, as was demonstrated by red side players in their arguments, the players stating that it was the lack of team availability shifted their argument to it being difficult to form teams with the friends they routinely played with. When it was pointed out they could invite said friends over and show them how much fun red side could be, the argument then shifted to their friends refused to play red side and because their friends refused to play red side they couldn't find teams they wanted to be on so they wouldn't play red side either. So it was never about forming teams on red side for those arguments. Now it actually can be but is not necessarily difficult to form teams red side. It depends on how many players are currently on and of those how many want to team as opposed to run solo. (Or are currently doing raids, TFs/SFs, and/or iTrials already so aren't available to team with others.)

 

Edited Thursday at 10:52 PM by Rudra

[DrRocket]

Mmm, tough topic here...

 

I seen a lot of comments complaining on the downsides of red side, and maybe they are done so with the intent if removed red side would be appealing.

 

Frankly, I don't believe that if we were to redraw Grandville, players would flock to plat red side.

 

I have made by now over 50 alts, and not once did I remotely consider starting them red or gold side, why is that?

 

Mainly because, I truly master blue side, and thus its easy for me to get around , find contacts, etc. So its not because red side is inferiorly made, its because of my great familiarity with blue side.

 

In fact many of the SFs are rather witty, the exception is Ice Mistral which has the kill all after kill all in much keeping with the idiotic synapse, and it has the travel tour requirement like Citadel, so its a double bad whammy! But besides the stupid inter zone travel used as a time sink, and the kill all, the last mission is a treasure! In fact many of the SFs have remarkable good ending missions.

 

I give credit to developers for the use of the Sheer Will Accolade has done some help in giving reason in doing the SFs, which is a good step towards revitalizing red side.

 

I would think, that doing more things like Sheer Will, which addresses a major vulnerability for support types, would be the key to making red vigorous again. For example select a repeatable red thread that anyone can do (please do not force it to be thru Oro) and get some other useful Accolade that for example provides protection against terror, and another for taunt would be minor beanies that might make red more worth while. Perhaps defeating the ugly spider men gives naturally double exp, could be an incentive

 

As i see it, red needs an incentive to make it more appealing that blue and yes, using accolades as bribes seems a way to accomplish that

 

Regards