Agonus

>.>

*cough*

<.<

I was referring to what I've been told in-game though, not this thread.

I agree that it -is- about the journey, which is why I like the pre-determined fight outcome I mentioned earlier. And it keeps going back to fights because of conflict resolution, and more often than not, especially in a comic book type setting, the conflict is ultimately resolved by the hero fighting the villain.

But I look at the whole thing on a smaller scale, not every villain plot is world domination or mass genocide. Let's remove things like total world domination and PC death (at the hands of another PC) from the picture here. While the former isn't reasonable in terms of the game, I still don't see anything wrong in claiming that's what your character's goal is. Sure it'll never happen in-game, but so what? There are all kinds of things one -should- do to work towards that goal, and plenty of those are reasonable accomplishments in the relatively static CoH world. The latter, while it can be done, is just really tricky to do. But I digress. That aside, let's go back to the simpler accomplishments, and lemme explain what I mean when I refer to getting a "win" against a hero. We do seem to be on the same page here, mostly, anyway.

In my humble opinion, a villain needs to succeed in their goals once in a while to establish credibility. Generally this happens when a new villain debuts, a recentish example would be like Morlun beating the tar out of Spider-Man the first time they fought. Or back in the day when Sabretooth hunted down Wolverine wherever he was Wolverine's birthday and beat the hell out of him. It's not limited to fights though. Apocalypse has kidnapped various characters over the years to turn them into Horsemen. The Hand brainwashing Elektra. The Hood becoming the new kingpin of crime. Sinestro forming his own Corps. Various thief characters stealing whatever.

Stuff like that is what I meant by getting a "win." Being able to plan something, AND pull it off, either without a hero's involvement, or being able to succeed despite heroic interference. Maybe it's just some small thing that doesn't matter to the villain's goals like a destructive rampage. Maybe it's the 17th part of a 36 part plan that requires stealing some widget. But primarily it's the little things that advance the grand plot of "This is why this hero should stop this villain."

If a villain is thwarted too much, they're in danger of losing credibility to the point that there's no reason to take them as a threat to, well, anything. Then where's the tension in the story? Why bother? Let the police handle the villain. Like the Hand, and how it's even joked in-universe in Marvel that their ninjas are cannon fodder. Or Apocalypse, who preaches about survival of the fittest, but he's constantly getting his *** kicked. Or Catman, who became an overweight slob after getting utterly humiliated by some D list hero. (Until he became a pet character for Gail Simone and she turned him into an evil "badass" Steve Irwin.) Or, much as I hate to ever bring up the character, Dr. Light pre-Identity Crisis, where he was seen as a goofball that the Teen Titans could send their trainees after.

The way some people here talk, a villain shouldn't ever be able to succeed at anything, ever, no matter how small a thing it is. And that boggles my mind. I'm not looking to be unbeatable, I'm looking to give the hero a reason to come after me, and to keep coming after me. Or even reasons for me to want to go after the hero.

Wasn't there some sort of game about who got to tape or untape her or something?

You don't think doing
-Villain A tries something
-Hero A stops Villain A before they succeed.
-Villain B tries something
-Hero A stops Villain B before they succeed.
-and on and on
over and over is a little boring?

Sure the kind of RP I'm advocating takes a little cherry-picking of RPers and a lot of pre and post planning, but it... usually... saves a ton of headaches from all the problems one runs into with an open call open ended gathering.

Sienna Miller's Baroness costumes in the GI Joe movie were padded. Director's orders, if memory serves.

I don't really do RP threads here, but I have my theories on the in-game aspect. YMMV and all that, 'course.

The simplest one is that scheduling multiple players across umpteen timezones can be a hassle and a half. Especially if one player in particular is necessary to move the story along, and they're late, or don't show, or just flat out disappear. And then you move to a back-up plan, since you can't advance the main plot without that player. Then someone else can't make it next time. And after so many botched "events" players start losing interest.

Then there's all sorts of RP style shenanigans, but this is also by no means a definite list.
-Players who don't pay attention to character level as a measure of power, versus those who do. (My level 5 SS brute can hurt your level 50 Inv tank! o.0?)
-Nevermind the godmodders who slip in unnoticed. Or the normally good RPers who don't like how something is turning out, and "lash out" in a godmodish fashion.
-50's in and of themselves are something of an issue. Some players just don't feel comfortable RPing their lowbie against a 50, and vice versa.
-There's also the players who stick to playing that one level 50. Which in and of itself is fine, except when they have friends with nasty cases of alt-itis who are constantly leveling up new characters (or who just don't care to level). It's difficult to build ongoing plots when characters are constantly disappearing due to loss of interest, or having to meet yet another new character because something struck a player's fancy that week resulting in yet another character.
-Players who want to textfight to resolve conflict vs those who don't.
-Players who want to do pure, no-holds-barred PVP to resolve conflict vs those who don't.
-Players, (like my RPVG) who had fun with a casual RPVP type format. We did it sort of like pro-wrestling; work out who would win beforehand, then draw out the fight, taunting and challenging and such the whole time. It was a ton of fun, the one time it worked. Sadly, we could never repeat those results. Far as I can tell, too many RPers get scared off any time they see the letters "p" "v" and "p" connected to anything.
-Or the players who are content to just sit around in D and have "Yo mama!" fights.
-Or the players who utterly and totally refuse to go to any location outside of the base, for fear of someone breaking RP immersion.
-Conversely, the players who feel the need to negatively interrupt public RP gatherings.
-And last but most definitely not least, there's the general issue of player ego. Some RPers don't like giving ground to another RPer in any way, shape, or form. (Which doesn't happen against NPCs, but NPCs have their own strengths and weaknesses.) Hell, I've had hero players tell me that the way they resolve conflict, a villain is locked up the first time (permanently, I guess?) and that's the end of it. Or they call in their superduperundefeatable attack squad, and they take out the villains.

Me, I don't mind losing. I also understand that world domination isn't really possible in the grand scheme of what a player can do in the game. But a villain PC can do all kinds of things reasonably within the gameworld without attracting the full ire of the Freedom Phalanx or Arachnos or Crey or whathaveyou.

As such I do expect to be able to "win" at least once in a while to give the hero(es) a reason to come after me. Batman, Spider-Man, Dredd, the X-Men, the Justice League, they all have losses on their belts. Even Superman gets beaten every now and then.

Mind you, even considering all that, I'd still love to have a hero to RP against on a regular basis. When it -works-, it's all kinds of fun.

Add Zenoscope and especially their Grimm Fairy Tales covers to that list.

I don't have any names, but a friend of mine repeatedly tells me the concept of an MMO was created by a guy looking to take advantage of addictive behavior.

I'll stick with a line from the Superman books, that Clark pretty much plays along with Bruce, letting him -think- that among other things, he can sneak around Clark.

The initial plan with the RPVG I mentioned before, The Supreme Society, was that it was a comic booky group intent on world domination. But I knew that would never be possible in CoV, as players don't have that much affect on the game world. The problem is that regardless of how many times I even explicitly stated that the group was always going to be working towards the goal but unable to accomplish (it for any one of a number of reasons) it never really sunk in.

-I- was fine with the VG's end goal being so far off down the line, that it would essentially never happen in-game.

What we did try to do though, was orchestrate more reasonable plots to that end. Kidnap someone here. Steal something there. Attack a small foreign country. Go get some magical doo-hickey that could unlock power. Go fight some heroes who who were pestering us. Or try to stop in-group fighting and coups.

The IC main problem that I encountered trying to work with groups outside ours was when it came to the whole back-and-forth aspect. Most hero PCs were ungodly reluctant to let a villain PC get any sort of "win" type accomplishment, (especially at the heroes expense) which was intended to help establish the villain as a threat. In my opinion, a villain who never succeeds at anything, no matter how minor it is, isn't worth it.

I think Fox has desensitized some us to how badly they're manhandling the X-Men franchise with X3 and Wolverine Origins. And First Class looks to continue the trend.

That's the prevailing fan theory I've read.

I like DC as much as the the next guy, but they're the one's bringing all the Silver Age characters back. How is that not relying on old ideas?

Sure Marvel regressed most of the character development Peter Parker's had in the last 20-30 odd years, Thor's going back to the Kirby status quo and all the cool stuff that happened to Hulk 'round Planet Hulk was swept under the rug to bring back the mindless brute Hulk and introduce the ******* Red Hulk.

BUT!

The X-Men have -finally- moved on from West Chester. Dr. Strange is no longer Sorcerer Supreme. The Hulk's supporting cast is nigh unrecognizable compared to what it was 3 years ago. And they've actually stuck to their guns, keeping Brock as Anti-Venom (I think?) and now they're giving the Venom symbiote a military purpose, which is pretty far off from what Brock was doing with it back in the day.

Rumor has it that Catwoman steps in for Batman -after- Bats gets a beatdown from Bane. In that case, -if- Bruce spends some of the movie recovering to make a triumphant return at the end, the title makes perfect sense.

Forgot about her. Yeah, that's probably it.

Preferring to play villains (and having run a RPVG) I've tried, numerous times with different SGs and VGs and handfuls of players and just single players to set up ongoing rivalries between PC heroes and PC villains. And it's failed. Every. Single. Time.

I think it's an awesome idea, to set up something comic booky where there's a back and forth between heroes and villains. Say the villain goes to rob a bank. The hero stops them. Villain then attacks the hero, hero gets away. Hero regroups to stop the villain. Villain gets away. And so on and so forth, you get the idea. But in my experience, only myself and the handful of remaining players of my RPVG are interested in that sort of thing.

You seem to be stuck on the only kind of "real" evil being a complete monster type character, and I think you're limiting yourself far too much that way. In my case, my two main villains are both irredeemably evil, but they see the value of working and associating with others, albeit for different reasons.

Agonus is a manipulator type, in the mold of Dr. Doom with (among others) a bit of Destro thrown in. He prefers talking over fighting. IC, the character's even been called a gentleman.

He's utterly convinced he's meant to rule the world, but he realizes he can't accomplish that goal on his own, so he finds others to work with to that end. While he's willing to work with almost anyone, he still views people as pawns in his greater schemes. As such, he'll treat someone he views as valuable to his goals with a lot of respect, but as soon as he doesn't think they're useful, he'll dispose of them.

And I know it's cliche, but he's also killed (almost) everyone he has any relation to in an effort to hide his true name and old life. There's no real benefit to finding out who Agonus was, but if he thinks someone knows, it's his berserk button. It shatters his normally calm demeanor, making him reckless.

And on the other end of the spectrum, I have Aaron Tetherson. In an effort to gain power, he formed a demon worshipping cult, then slaughtered them all to complete the final ritual. Dealing with demons is never easy though, and the final price he had to pay was essentially damning his own bloodline to get the power he craved. So Aaron's all about power, and doing what he wants, when he wants. If you're on his level, or even above it, he'll respect you. (He's a bit stuck on old world idealogy though, and doesn't have the greatest view of women. Sometimes that goes over well IC, sometimes it doesn't. >.> I think I know enough of when to play it up and when to ignore it though.)

And there's Praetorian Aaron (the Caelesian, no VV page), who went about things a little differently. Instead of gaining a massive amount of power at once and stopping there, he's gone about his ascension slowly. After all, the Caelesian has a higher goal than Primal Aaron, he wants to become a god. And he's willing to do almost anything to that end.

I have other villains all over the place too.
Starscourge is an alien energy vampire, who views organic beings as little more than "walking hamburgers."

The Silver Scourge is a time traveling AI out to eradicate all organic life. However, it's information on the "Age of Heroes" was woefully inadequate, and the organics of this time are significantly stronger than it can handle alone. As such, it realizes it needs to adapt to be able to complete its mission.

Johnny and Jane Nix are the ghosts of pre-tween twins intent on winning the game of being the greatest killers ever.

Johhny Reaper is a Praetorian anarchist punk. Essentially made to match the extreme of the Crusader arc. Thing is, in Johnny's case, he just doesn't care, he does it for fun.

I'm pretty sure Bane's never been given a real name in the comics.

I'm pretty sure it says "Moore after MacFarlane" which means that the penciler of the picture, Tony Moore, is doing an homage to the MacFarlane drawn ASM 300 cover. Common industry practice to put in little notes like that.

Oh god. It -is- the horrible fly girl that got it on with Beak.

No, it will not be okay, regardless of the mindset you have going into the movie. Yes, this is a "we gotta keep the rights" movie, and as I've read, Fox has no desire to ever let the rights go. And as I understand, unless Disney shells out a ridiculous amount of money to buy the rights back, Fox has the rights for as long as they want.

So if people keep going to these movies, Fox will think it's profitable and will keep destroying the property.

I forget his exact reasoning (which made sense when I read it like 10 years ago) but when he was drawing the book McFarlane intentionally put Spider-Man in as many limb breaking poses as he could.