Opinion: More players should see Null the Gull

[Mansome]

The bulk of the issue is that they made redside too hard for the Villain ATs. From the types of critters to the way the ATs were setup. Too much effort for the reward. The villain ATs were nerfed out of the box. They have to lean on their inherent powers more than the heroes. Then there isn't as many TFs as heroside too. Now that heroes can go red the damage had already been done and the playerbase mind won't be changed.

[Murcielago]

I don't like redside because I don't like being a lackey. I would have rather the live devs make the game so it was like you were an actual villain than a villians b****

[Williwaw]

49 minutes ago, Murcielago said:

I don't like redside because I don't like being a lackey. I would have rather the live devs make the game so it was like you were an actual villain than a villians b****

They started adding villain arcs like that in Issue 17, where they made it perfectly clear that the contact was working for you, not the other way around.  Newspaper missions, Mayhem missions, Tip Missions, and Morality Missions also do not involve working for anyone.  (Incarnate missions, as well, but you're also sort of doing the whole "greater good" thing with them rather than being a true villain, but I love that you can just betray everyone at the end of the Mot arcs)

[Yomo Kimyata]

I can’t stand so many of the missions, which seem to be in dismal black and dark red.  They were hard on my eyes ten years ago, and my eyes didn’t get any better.

 

I’d rather have a mission finding sixteen glowies in an CoT cave map than being in an Arachnos base map.

[Myrmidon]

Going to the Rogue Isles to take power from Ghost Widow is well within the purview of a master of the mystic arts.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 8/30/2019 at 9:41 PM, PaxArcana said:

Don't assume they are heroes only because they don't know they have options.  Many - arguably, most - of those characters are heroes, because their players want them to be.

It's worth keeping in mind that a recent poll we took here showed the majority said they didn't play due to low pop.  It's kept me out, but yeah, like the OP, I'll hop over at the drop of a hat if I need a team and someone redside is recruiting.

 

It's a problem with many angles though, and no one answer is 100% right or wrong.

Edited September 1, 2019 by Clave Dark 5

[MnemonicLight]

I mean, for people saying you're just a henchman well yea, that's kind of the point of being a low-tier villain being introduced into a criminal city ruled by King Villain himself. All the other villain groups are well established in the world, it also would be hard for the game to actually make you a big named villain since it's an MMO.

Spoiler

There is also the progress, you start out as a low leveled goon working for Arachnos before eventually getting to the point of assisting one of the higher ups in Arachnos. As for being a lackey, I haven't played blueside since well before 2009 but as I recall you were still pretty much a lackey of the other heroes and contacts instead of just finding things yourself or doing your own leg work to take out villain groups like a true hero would do.

 

City of Villains is true to it's name, you're a villain. You're not lord high villain mastermind but you're still a villain. Not all villains are the leaders of their own organization nor are they always independent.

[PaxArcana]

4 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

It's worth keeping in mind that a recent poll we took here showed the majority said they didn't play due to low pop. 

Yep.  As with most MMOs, "low population" is a death spiral.  😢

[boggo2300]

17 minutes ago, MnemonicLight said:

City of Villains is true to it's name, you're a villain. You're not lord high villain mastermind but you're still a villain. Not all villains are the leaders of their own organization nor are they always independent.

No CoV you don't really do anything villainous at all, if anything you are a sucker being used as a patsy,  NONE of my villains in live had a back story that worked with any of the mission arcs in the way they were written

[Boltess]

2 minutes ago, boggo2300 said:

No CoV you don't really do anything villainous at all, if anything you are a sucker being used as a patsy,  NONE of my villains in live had a back story that worked with any of the mission arcs in the way they were written

Well that's a constraint of the game's rating and audience. In order to keep the game family friendly and below an M rating, you can't actually do any awful things to innocent people.  Remember you don't actually kill any one in this game, you defeat them.   There are no kids to kidnap, no cute furry animals to stomp. The worst you do is rob a bank, and that's it.

 In some ways, I think COV shouldn't have existed at all, instead they took the time and resources to build it into beefing up the hero content, which generally is poorer than redside(compare Virgil Tarikoss SF to Synapse TF, for example).  

[boggo2300]

7 minutes ago, Boltess said:

Well that's a constraint of the game's rating and audience. In order to keep the game family friendly and below an M rating, you can't actually do any awful things to innocent people.  Remember you don't actually kill any one in this game, you defeat them.   There are no kids to kidnap, no cute furry animals to stomp. The worst you do is rob a bank, and that's it.

 In some ways, I think COV shouldn't have existed at all, instead they took the time and resources to build it into beefing up the hero content, which generally is poorer than redside(compare Virgil Tarikoss SF to Synapse TF, for example).  

Well part of that though is how much later in the games life it was written...

 

It's not even the lack of truly evil things you do, it's the whole fetch and carry, and fight this villain group, oh, and then fight this villain group, oh, and this villain group you are part of (Arachnos) will attack you on site, even if you are a VEAT...  that is probably the most jarring thing about red side

[PaxArcana]

55 minutes ago, boggo2300 said:

fetch and carry,

... that's an MMORPG for you, really.

 

If you want to be truly villainous, and hatch your own schemes ...?

 

The Architect is waiting for you ...

Edited September 1, 2019 by PaxArcana

[jubakumbi]

On 8/30/2019 at 11:37 PM, Dying Breath said:

Storytelling is actually much better redside, but I've never actually felt like a villain - more of a lackey or cat's paw than a real evil-doer.  I understand that it's hard to make content where you are the driver, but always carrying out someone else's nefarious plot just doesn't seem villainous enough to me.

 

Also the scenery kinda depresses me.  I prefer the bright sunny skies and inviting colour palate blue side.

Thanks, you sum up my PoV in three sentences.

 

18 hours ago, RikOz said:

I am, by choice, mostly a solo player, so availability of teams doesn't factor into my faction choices. I just ... genuinely prefer to play a hero. I'll agree that the writing and storytelling on redside is really good. Alas, it doesn't offset what I see as downsides.

 

As others have pointed out, playing a "villain" doesn't really feel "villainous". Aside from a handful of missions attacking Longbow, you spend most of your time beating up other criminals. That doesn't feel like being the most villainous, that just feels like being a bully. Most well-written villains in comics (and other media) aren't just evil for the sake of being evil, they have a genuine, worthwhile (if only in their own mind) end goal. As it is, our villains have no goal beyond becoming the most villainous villain. We don't even have the option of a goal as simple as "getting rich", because even the missions that are framed as robbing a bank or stealing a bunch of stuff don't actually result in a "haul". We just get the same Inf and salvage drops we'd get from any other mission. To "get rich" we have to play the AH market the same way the heroes do.

 

The environment also annoys me. After a while, "dark and gritty" just gets tiresome. I had a related problem with playing Horde in WoW, because while the writing was great, the environment was "all orcs, all the time" regardless of what race you actually played. This was really driven home for me during the Warlords of Draenor expansion, where we went back to the orc homeworld and saw that orcs are perfectly capable of impressive architecture, but our Horde orc aesthetic seemed to call for nothing but round, red-roofed hut after round, red-roofed hut. The actually impressive orc architecture on Azeroth, meanwhile, was all actually designed by a freaking goblin.

And thank you, the flavor you add to these outlooks is mine as well.

 

IMO, the villain side of the game is flawed at the core because it was made by people who like to play heroes that created what they thought villains would want to do.

Add to that this idea that villains would create nothing more than an 'industrial prison island system' to live and it fails miserably...villians love posh.

Ever been to Monte Carlo? Where did that money come from, hm? 😉

 

IMO, the 'red-side' was created trying to make all villains look like Benny Hill / Keystone Cops 'bad guys' as well, placing yet another constraint, forcing them into being comic relief as well...

 

Good execution, but a flawed plan.

[RikOz]

7 hours ago, Boltess said:

Remember you don't actually kill any one in this game, you defeat them.

I was rather surprised while doing a Safeguard not long ago. I was fighting the Lost vandals who were busy slaughtering parking meters and trash cans, when a panicked civilian ran right past ... and one of the Lost pulled out his shotgun and blew him away. Like, whoa, did that just happen? I mean, the civilians are usually completely ignored.

[boggo2300]

6 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

... that's an MMORPG for you, really.

 

If you want to be truly villainous, and hatch your own schemes ...?

 

The Architect is waiting for you ...

True, but my point was more red side content is the same as blue side content even when that makes little sense for a villain.

 

And I have no interest in making villain content for red side, I'm just saying the content you need red side to level isn't very villainous

Edited September 1, 2019 by boggo2300

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, boggo2300 said:

True, but my point was more red side content is the same as blue side content even when that makes little sense for a villain.

 

And I have no interest in making villain content for red side, I'm just saying the content you need red side to level isn't very villainous

Again, "that's an MMORPG for you".  In this case, one that had to maintain it's T / PEGI 12 rating.

 

Having the missions be truly villainous, would have entailed a rating of at least M / PEGI 16 (cutting out 12-, 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids worldwide, and 16-year-old kids in the U.S.), or even all the way to an A / PEGI 18 rating (the kiss of death, at least in the U.S. - I have no idea if shops will carry PEGI 18 titles in Europe, but they very very rarely carry A rated titles here in the States).  Real-world villainy tends to involve not just theft and bank robbery, but things like pornography, prostitution, and drugs.  Including some of the worst, most horrible forms of those.  Can you just imagine the global furor, if a previously "Rated T for Teen" game, considered entirely okay for 13 and 14 year old kids to play, suddenly included missions where the player would be involved in human trafficking, maybe even of children...?  Or acts of actual, overt terrorism, possibly using WMDs or biological weapons?  (Keep in mind, even CoV's launch wasn't all that many years after 9/11 ...!)

 

It would have killed the entire game.  Possibly overnight.

Well, to avoid that whole minefield, they just had to keep the villain missions "suitable for 12 year old kids", through and through.  Which, yes, limits just how villainous you can feel, if you're an adult.  But, it's a price that had to be paid, to have City of Villains at all.

 

...

What I wish is, that there had been a way for you to construct your own schemes, with a sort of "Mad-Lib" system.  Pick the overall scheme and general location.  Intentionally add in some "plot twists / complications" to set the difficulty and reward levels.  Then have the system procedurally generate the mission (e.g., you choose "bank robbery" and "Paragon City", with complications being "Signature Hero with Sidekick" and "High Security".  The system has lists of a couple dozen or more items to fill in the specifics of each - bank name, neighborhood/area of the chosen area, a whole roster of heroes and potential sidekicks, etc.

So maybe your 15th level character gets sent to rob Paragon Savings & Loan, in King's Row; it turns out to be a front for Family money laundering operation, so surprise there's Family goons inside, allied to the usual bank security types.  And on your way out, along comes "Red Falcon" and his plucky young sidekick, Sparrow, to try and foil your dastardly plot.  If you succeed, you'll get quite a bit of Infamy and Experience (after all, you just knocked over a Mob bank and kicked a Cape's teeth in).

 

THAT, instead of the Paper, would have let people feel truly like their own villain, instead of being a lackey.  And really, the Newspaper almost does that.  It just doesn't let you fill out any of hte "broad framework" parts of the Mad Lib yourself.  You only get "rob a bank", if the system pulls that one out of the hat as one of the three options ... so you're still not really in control of what kinds of crimes you commit, let alone where or against who.

 

For example, if you have a Fire/Poison Corruptor, named Arsonic, maybe you almost always go for "Arson" overall mission types ... or you have a Cold/Cold Dominator named The Krampus and always go for Kidnapping missions ... or a Brute, any sort of Brute, named Dyzaster Zone who always goes for mayhem-style "break all the things" Rampage missions ... and OH HEY, now the crimes you commit, fit your concept for what kind of villain you've decided to play!

Sadly, that's not what we got, so that only compounds the "must be suitable for a 12 year old" limitations of Villain storylines. 😞 

[boggo2300]

19 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

19 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

 

So maybe your 15th level character gets sent to rob Paragon Savings & Loan, in King's Row; it turns out to be a front for Family money laundering operation, so surprise there's Family goons inside, allied to the usual bank security types.  And on your way out, along comes "Red Falcon" and his plucky young sidekick, Sparrow, to try and foil your dastardly plot.  If you succeed, you'll get quite a bit of Infamy and Experience (after all, you just knocked over a Mob bank and kicked a Cape's teeth in).

 

THAT, instead of the Paper, would have let people feel truly like their own villain, instead of being a lackey.  And really, the Newspaper almost does that.  It just doesn't let you fill out any of hte "broad framework" parts of the Mad Lib yourself.  You only get "rob a bank", if the system pulls that one out of the hat as one of the three options ... so you're still not really in control of what kinds of crimes you commit, let alone where or against who.

 

For example, if you have a Fire/Poison Corruptor, named Arsonic, maybe you almost always go for "Arson" overall mission types ... or you have a Cold/Cold Dominator named The Krampus and always go for Kidnapping missions ... or a Brute, any sort of Brute, named Dyzaster Zone who always goes for mayhem-style "break all the things" Rampage missions ... and OH HEY, now the crimes you commit, fit your concept for what kind of villain you've decided to play!

Sadly, that's not what we got, so that only compounds the "must be suitable for a 12 year old" limitations of Villain storylines. 😞 

Again, I wasn't talking about more real world style content that would increase the rating of the game, just content that was written in a way that made you feel like you were in control of your destiny rather than doing hero missions (usually against the same opponents even) with the serial numbers filed off.

 

Your idea that I kept in the quote above would be a perfect solution to that.

 

My first 50 villain on live was an independent mad scientist MM who had no interest in Arachnos or any of the other villain groups, he was only a villain because he wanted resources to perfect his inventions, he was amoral, so had no qualms about killing to get his way, but he also never would have gone out of his way to hurt anyone, the entire story arc red side didn't work with his character (even the pointless chose a Merc or Arachnos thing on Mercy, which holds true for a single contacts worth of content)

 

I would have loved your idea to have been around, but I suppose my main gripe is red side content has you actually doing the exact same thing as heroes do, with some very poorly written justifications in the mish text.

Edited September 1, 2019 by boggo2300

[PaxArcana]

Just now, boggo2300 said:

Again, I wasn't talking about more real world style content that would increase the rating of the game, just content that was written in a way that made you feel like you were in control of your destiny rather than doing hero missions (usually against the same opponents even) with the serial numbers filed off.

Rivalries between different criminal factions is entirely reasonable, IMO.  So one of the options in my idea would be, say ... "Steal Something", and maybe wind up facing another criminal group, not the police.  The costumed opposition you might have picked, might then be a fellow Villain - and, nothin' personal, but he's on a payroll and has a rep to uphold, so it's fightin' time. 😄 

 

... by the way, you double-quoted me.  Nested in itself.  Might want to clean that up.  🙂

 

 

[boggo2300]

4 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Rivalries between different criminal factions is entirely reasonable, IMO.  So one of the options in my idea would be, say ... "Steal Something", and maybe wind up facing another criminal group, not the police.  The costumed opposition you might have picked, might then be a fellow Villain - and, nothin' personal, but he's on a payroll and has a rep to uphold, so it's fightin' time. 😄 

 

... by the way, you double-quoted me.  Nested in itself.  Might want to clean that up.  🙂

 

 

I cleaned up the double quote as well as my phone would let me 🙂

 

i don't mind villain rivalries, but honestly apart from a very few robberies or even fewer visit an instance of Paragon mishes that's pretty much ALL there is red side,  I just don't want all my villains running around being used as not even henchmen, just dupes for Arachnos, getting to raid CoT or Family etc time after time it's not immersive to me, plus I hate the zones of the ri the whole point of villain play to me would be playing outside societies rules to get what you want, and honestly to me, villains in this games just feel like heroes with poor attitude

[PaxArcana]

Yeah.  That's where my idea would have been SO much better.  Don't want to rampage in the Isles?  Just always pick Paragon (or even, other signature cities) as your Plot's location.

 

And not just "Rogue Isles or Paragon City" either.  Picture having signature real-world locations as possible maps.  Times Square, the Champs-Elysees, Fanneuil Hall and the Quincy Market in Boston, the Tower of London, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and so on.  🙂

... man, letting my Brute go on a rampage on Liberty Island, with a to-scale Statue of Liberty and looooots of destructible scenery ... ::drool:: ... or maybe my Mastermind goes to the Louvre, to kidnap a visiting diplomat (for leverage/whatever) ... 🙂

Edited September 1, 2019 by PaxArcana

[boggo2300]

Awesome

7 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Yeah.  That's where my idea would have been SO much better.  Don't want to rampage in the Isles?  Just always pick Paragon (or even, other signature cities) as your Plot's location.

 

And not just "Rogue Isles or Paragon City" either.  Picture having signature real-world locations as possible maps.  Times Square, the Champs-Elysees, Fanneuil Hall and the Quincy Market in Boston, the Tower of London, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and so on.  🙂

... man, letting my Brute go on a rampage on Liberty Island, with a to-scale Statue of Liberty and looooots of destructible scenery ... ::drool:: ... or maybe my Mastermind goes to the Louvre, to kidnap a visiting diplomat (for leverage/whatever) ... 🙂

Would be awesome, but man would that require some Dev assets, honestly I'd be happy with being restricted to existing game maps for the select a mission it's more the flavour that is missing fore.red side than anything else (and the whole poor zone design of the RI)

[MnemonicLight]

2 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

Again, "that's an MMORPG for you".  In this case, one that had to maintain it's T / PEGI 12 rating.

 

Having the missions be truly villainous, would have entailed a rating of at least M / PEGI 16 (cutting out 12-, 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids worldwide, and 16-year-old kids in the U.S.), or even all the way to an A / PEGI 18 rating (the kiss of death, at least in the U.S. - I have no idea if shops will carry PEGI 18 titles in Europe, but they very very rarely carry A rated titles here in the States).  Real-world villainy tends to involve not just theft and bank robbery, but things like pornography, prostitution, and drugs.  Including some of the worst, most horrible forms of those.  Can you just imagine the global furor, if a previously "Rated T for Teen" game, considered entirely okay for 13 and 14 year old kids to play, suddenly included missions where the player would be involved in human trafficking, maybe even of children...?  Or acts of actual, overt terrorism, possibly using WMDs or biological weapons?  (Keep in mind, even CoV's launch wasn't all that many years after 9/11 ...!)

 

It would have killed the entire game.  Possibly overnight.

Well, to avoid that whole minefield, they just had to keep the villain missions "suitable for 12 year old kids", through and through.  Which, yes, limits just how villainous you can feel, if you're an adult.  But, it's a price that had to be paid, to have City of Villains at all.

 

...

What I wish is, that there had been a way for you to construct your own schemes, with a sort of "Mad-Lib" system.  Pick the overall scheme and general location.  Intentionally add in some "plot twists / complications" to set the difficulty and reward levels.  Then have the system procedurally generate the mission (e.g., you choose "bank robbery" and "Paragon City", with complications being "Signature Hero with Sidekick" and "High Security".  The system has lists of a couple dozen or more items to fill in the specifics of each - bank name, neighborhood/area of the chosen area, a whole roster of heroes and potential sidekicks, etc.

So maybe your 15th level character gets sent to rob Paragon Savings & Loan, in King's Row; it turns out to be a front for Family money laundering operation, so surprise there's Family goons inside, allied to the usual bank security types.  And on your way out, along comes "Red Falcon" and his plucky young sidekick, Sparrow, to try and foil your dastardly plot.  If you succeed, you'll get quite a bit of Infamy and Experience (after all, you just knocked over a Mob bank and kicked a Cape's teeth in).

 

THAT, instead of the Paper, would have let people feel truly like their own villain, instead of being a lackey.  And really, the Newspaper almost does that.  It just doesn't let you fill out any of hte "broad framework" parts of the Mad Lib yourself.  You only get "rob a bank", if the system pulls that one out of the hat as one of the three options ... so you're still not really in control of what kinds of crimes you commit, let alone where or against who.

 

For example, if you have a Fire/Poison Corruptor, named Arsonic, maybe you almost always go for "Arson" overall mission types ... or you have a Cold/Cold Dominator named The Krampus and always go for Kidnapping missions ... or a Brute, any sort of Brute, named Dyzaster Zone who always goes for mayhem-style "break all the things" Rampage missions ... and OH HEY, now the crimes you commit, fit your concept for what kind of villain you've decided to play!

Sadly, that's not what we got, so that only compounds the "must be suitable for a 12 year old" limitations of Villain storylines. 😞 

To be fair a lot of them would lead away from the cartoony aspect of City of Heroes/Villains. I know comics did a lot of dark stuff but also a lot of the times villains were either always trying to rob a bank, kill people, cause calamity, take over the world. While in the real world sure villainy would be more dark like prostitution, gambling, drugs etc etc, in a world where a man in spandex bursts through fighting an army of goons with their cape blowing in a building with just their fists is a common sight, idunno. I honestly don't see real world villainy work in this universe nor be a thing that would translate well into an MMO.

 

City of Heroes hasn't hit the 90s era yet, basically 😛

[DSorrow]

As many others have stated, red side just doesn't feel as villainous as I'd like. Most of my characters end up being vigilantes for convenience, but that's also the morality I'd mostly gravitate towards anyway: don't go out of my way to be the bad guy, but sometimes doing a morally dubious thing might be needed for the greater good. As far as game design goes, CoX doesn't really work with villainy anyway. The way I see it, being a hero is mostly reactive (new threat appears, you go and deal with it) while being a villain is proactive (you have your own goal which you want to further, heroes appear to stop you), but sadly both sides are limited to the same mechanics where the game dictates what you do and thus villains end up being lackeys.

 

In addition there are a couple of personal reasons, but mostly I'd say I don't feel like progressing as a villain as much as I do as a hero. My heroes start their career fighting small time thugs such as Hellions and eventually end up fighting foes like Nemesis and the whole progression feels very natural. As a villain, it seems like I'm fighting Longbow/Arachnos most of the way 1-50. Still, my biggest gripe with redside is that I can't avoid feeling like my character is just an asshole with no will of his own who does bad things just because which is something that's really hard to relate to.

[boggo2300]

20 hours ago, DSorrow said:

Still, my biggest gripe with redside is that I can't avoid feeling like my character is just an asshole with no will of his own who does bad things just because which is something that's really hard to relate to.

This perfectly sums up my issues with redside content!

[Marine X]

Started a Villain last week, Xeniram, ( Marine X backwards )Bio Armor/Titan Weopon Tank on Reunion. Instead of using Kalinda or Burke I did a " Find Contact " and started from an entirely new place for me, no snake hunts etc. Has actually been pretty cool so far, and already to 12, like this Defensive set and Titan going well. Have yet to see more than a handful of players and none were social. Trying to play him as not so Villainish but more just trying to survive in a very Lawless hostile place, missions are giving me Morality choices so I have been taking the high road when possible.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Marine X