Garielle

Thank you, Storm. I was making the point that the villain side is less restrictive than the hero side. You just reinforced the point. And I say that, not in a smart alek sort of way. I mean exactly what I said, "Thank you."

I don't see how this is any different than heroes being tied to the Freedom Phalanx/Freedom Corps. Players frequently just ignore that if it doesn't fit their concept. In fact, they freely and openly play villains who, by all rights, Freedom Corp would certainly hunt down and arrest. They don't give it a second thought.

This is even EASIER to do in the Rogue Isles since the group you are supposedly tethered to is one which is frequently trying to kill you, and you are frequently trying to kill them. Not much of a stretch to imagine that you aren't part of that organization.

I do, however, hope that when they get around to doing the CoH2 project, they try to stay away from black and white and go more with the shades of grey they are introducing with Going Rogue. A faction-based system seems like a logical choice here. Get in good with The Family and they give you better and better jobs and are less likely to shoot you when they see you around the city. Go up against them too often and they'll go out of their way to take you down.

Not sure of the accuracy of this, but I remember hearing back during the CoV beta that they had deliberately not created any minions with a female appearance. Among the reasons for this was to avoid the inevitable influx of "Pimp" themed characters with colorful pet names. This, of course, would lead to a lot of work removing inappropriate toons when the inevitable complaints rolled in.

I'm sure you can also imagine the completely unoriginal "fun" people would have with the petsay command.

So yeah, this would be nice, but given what players could and would do with it.... I don't think it's worth the headaches.

With Going Rogue, you will be able to start in Paragon City, the Rogue Isles, or a new area called Praetoria. If you start in Paragon or the Isles, you will be limited to the appropriate character archetypes. If you start in Praetoria, you will be able to choose any Archetype you like.

Praetoria is all new content for levels 1 through 20. By the time you get to Level 20, you will have made certain morality choices which will determine if you become a hero (and go to Paragon City) or a Villain (and go the Rogue Isles).

If you have an existing Hero or Villain (or start a new one in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles) and want to switch sides, you will need to wait until level 20. At level 20, you can begin to run morality missions that will help you to adjust your level. It's meant to be a gradual transition. It is not designed to be used as "Today I am a hero! Today I am a villain!", just at the flip of a switch.

There is actually a transitional "alignment" in between the shift. If you are Hero turning into a Villain, you will first become a Vigilante. From there you can become a Villain.

If you are Villain trying to redeem yourself to become a hero, you first become a Rogue, and from there can continue to redeem yourself to become a Hero.

The advantage of Vigilantes and Rogues is that they can visit both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. You can join teams on both sides, but you can only get contacts on one side. Vigilantes can get contacts in Paragon, and Rogues can get them in the Rogue Isles.

Note: I am not in the beta. All of the above is based on my own understanding of how things will work based on various information that has been made public by the developers. As it is my own understanding, it may not be 100% accurate, but if so, someone should be along shortly to correct me and tell me I'm a moron. Please note, they may be just as wrong as I am unless their name is in Red.

Now, about whether or not you should be worrying about whether or not to leave the Rogue Isles, I would wait 10 more days and see what happens. If you actually read through the thread, there are going to be quite a few people moving toons TO the villain side. The Villain side has always been quieter than the hero side. Part of this has to do with the fact that City of Heroes was out well before City of Villains. By the time it came out, people had established themselves on the Heroside and could easily give new alts a boost with money to get em started (as of the release of Going Rogue and Issue 18 this will no longer be a barrier. Even without the expansion, you will be able to send cash back and forth between your heros and villains). Another part is that some people just find the Rogue Isles dark and dreary. They prefer the bright and shining streets of Paragon City. It's a matter of preference.

A large part is also that there are a lot more zones and a lot more content on the Blue side. This is ironic since a lot of people (I said a LOT not ALL, so if you don't do this I am not talking about you) completely ignore the content and just run radio missions.

For me, I find the Blue Side content to be much more time consuming and that there are lot more "filler" quests in the chains. For example, go to your contact...pick up the mission...go talk to some content at the far side of a zone 3 zones away...go back to your contact cause you can't call em yet...pick up a mission.... go back to the zone you just came from 3 zones away, to the far side of the zone, and kill 45 of some random NPC group...go back to your contact (cause you still can't call em yet)...

With fewer zones you don't see that on the villain side. Of the 7 Red Side Zones, 5 of them are accessible from one ferry. The other two are both directly accessible from Cap au Diable (Port Oakes through a separate ferry, and Mercy Island through the Black Helicopter). For this reason, even if you DO have to go to another zone on the Villain side, you are never more than 2 hops away. These numbers exclude PvP and Co-Op zones, but the maximum number of hops to get from ANY zone to ANY of those zones is only 3, and that assumes that you are in either Mercy Island or Port Oakes. If you are anywhere else, you can get literally anywhere in 2 hops.

And yes, I know the blue side can use base teleporters. The Red Side can too. The difference is, on the Blue Side they are almost a requirement in order to get around quickly.

Somehow, I think the bare-chested women may present a bit of an issue with the Teen rating of the game.


Not a hugely bad idea, but I would say instead of removing them, have them always be paired with some other mission. In other words "Go talk this PvP Zone Liason OR Go Check Out This Warehouse".

The missions themselves are meant to expose first timers to the different PvP zones. Where they are, what the "theme" and "objective" is, etc. Assuming, of course, the first timer actually READS them.

The problem, obviously, is that you are only a first timer once. After that, it's just an annoyance that you have to suffer through before you can get a "real" mission.

I swear, I am NOT intentionally trying to pick on you. Just consider me the "Devil's Advocate" presenting an alternative viewpoint.

Again, not a hugely bad idea, but I see this working much better on the Red Side than the Blue Side. The Red Side has fewer zones and less overlap so what the "proper zone" for your level is is a bit more straight forward. This is not so true on the Blue Side.

It also gives the player less control over what zones they run radio missions in. Remember, there are paper missions in Faultline. Faultline is a great zone, but it's hardly a zone you want to arbitrarily be sent to with a team that is just out to run a few radio missions for XP, is it? Some of the doors for the radio missions there are a total PITA to get to.

You can already do this. There is a cooldown for it, but for most missions, you can autocomplete. If you are simply saying allow people to autocomplete stuff like the cape mission, aura missions, SO Store unlock missions, etc, I am with you.

If I am reading you right though, you also want to remove the cooldown. If that's the case, what would be the point of the abandon option? They already reduced the cooldown a few issues ago from 7 days to something like 3. I don't even use it enough to know, honestly.

You know, I could have sworn I saw this on a list of stuff that WAS being added (as in the work was done and it was scheduled to be part of an Issue) several months back.

Okay, as a completely objective bystander here, I can see how the statement sounds contradictory. I think it is more a case of the second part being poorly worded.

He was responding to Satantic Hamster's statement that Isos may not want to start in Praetoria. When taken in context with the rest of what he was saying, it looks like when says "skip it with isos" he means for isos to skip it and not take advantage of it as a starting point.

So while I can see both sides of this very clearly, I have to think it's more of a case of not communicating clearly than being self-contradictory.

You're forgetting the issues where we got new MM secondaries, so (discounting issue 6 since that was our starting point), the actual list of issues since then where MMs have gotten some love are...

Issue 7 - Thugs

Issue 12 - Storm Summoning

Issue 13 - Pain Domination

Issue 16 - Thermal Radiation

Issue 18 - Demon Summoning


The largest gap we see is actually 5 issues, and it should be noted that no other ATs got any new powers during those issues either. Those are the issues that brought us new toys on the systems end like the Market, the Invention System, Ouroboros, Mission Architect, and the Mayhem Missions.

So yeah, while I certainly won't be complaining when MMs pick up new sets, I don't feel the need to complain now either. ATs are one of the few things Red Side that have NOT been neglected since issue 6.

Considering the fact that the developers, logically, tend to concentrate their development resources where it will benefit the most players, I am happy to see that MMs haven't been forgotten. After all, when they make a new MM primary set, they know it's never gonna be able to be used anywhere else except by MMs (unless of course they introduce some new ATs at some point). When they develop a new primary set for just about any other AT, they know they will be able to put it to use as a primary--or at the very least a secondary--on at least one other AT.

There is only one group of characters that someone might be able to argue have been somewhat neglected when it comes to powersets--Kheldian. That, by the way, is a completely unbiased opinion from someone who does NOT play a Kheldian. On the other hand, there is a good reason, thematically, why Peacebringers and Warshades each have only one primary set and one secondary set. The lack of flexibility in powersets is also greatly made up for by their high level of flexibility in how they utilize those sets. So even this is open for debate.

Okay. Yeah, pretty much what I expected to hear. Will try to keep on top of this thread so I know where to create the character.