Samuel_Tow

I have no problem with discussion, really. I actually prefer it. But there's a fine line between discussion and "You're stupid and wrong and stupid!" Discussing why we dislike the ATs we do might actually be fun

Actually, that's not as far from my idea for a "glamorous" villain by that much, but that's probably hard to tell from the way I described it. Again, we're just proving that my original post was crap. Oh, well

You make a very good point, though. When a villain - in this case a slasher - is so absurd and fantastical that we take him/her/it as more of a force of nature and less as just a very depraved individual, this does tend towards the glamour side of things. Someone already mentioned watching slasher flicks to see the annoying, horrible people that serve as victims killed off and cheering for the killer, and that's not a sentiment I'm hearing for the first time. But think about it - hen you're cheering for the villain, like the villain and want him to succeed... You're buying into the glamour of the presentation, rather than the revulsion of the reality of the story.

Let me put it this way - if a cloven, chainsaw-wielding maniac were trudging through your house looking to saw you in half, you wouldn't cheer him on. No-one wants to die a violent death, after all. But when it's on the screen and it's drawn up in such a way that the horror becomes exciting and even entertaining, that in itself becomes glamorous. It's Happy Tree Friends all over again.

Now, granted, I may not appreciate the same kind of glamour as you do, and that's to be expected. Some find glamour in posh cars and expensive clothes, some find it in absurdly overpowered computers, some find international fame, and some indeed find it in hard work and dedication. What we find glamorous is unique to who we are as people, and if you can find glamour in a masked man knifing annoying people in a movie, then more power to you. But at the end of the day, that's still a villain we enjoy watching, isn't it? And that, I feel, is what makes him glamorous.

Now flip that around and go watch something like Salo - the movie that even the Cinema Snob had to review while throwing up in his bathroom (for comedy!) - and see the stark difference. Some villains we're meant to like, or at the very least respect. Some villains we're meant to simply hate and revile.

I don't disagree with your general idea, but I'm not sure I can agree with your premise. I like the fact that I can't fail in City of Heroes. Some of the WORST missions for me are those with running bosses, killable escorts or breakable objects I have to protect. I'd personally like even the ones that exist stricken from the game, but even if that won't happen, I honestly wouldn't support adding MORE of them.

I like your idea in general still, but not as a consequence for failure. I'd definitely play a mission like that, but I'd want to know this is what was intended to happen, not something which happened because I screwed up.

I don't like failing

That IS kind of a problem I agree on, though. I'll be the first to admit that Stalkers are far from broken or unplayable. They're actually pretty good in at least a few fields. But at the same time, they've had a whole host of niggling, cumbersome problems and a few odd balance choice, and they've been carrying those around for years. The old-old Stalker buffs made a WORLD of difference and turned them from a joke AT into something well workable, but I always thought they deserved more. Like the Kheldian changes, Stalkers just didn't get enough to make them truly desirable to anyone who can't admit they're really not the best choice for almost anything in the game. They're almost never a BAD choice, mind you, but they have their problems.

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I'm actually playing a Stalker pretty much in real time now as I'm typing this, so some of my ideas are born of the things that pass through my head as I play. Like this last one:

Leo suggested making Stalker Build Up last longer. I like it, but I'd suggest the reverse - make Stalker Build Up recharge faster, instead. A Stalker with Placate and Build Up is a scary sight indeed, but that's kind of the problem - a Stalker doesn't really have both of those available for every fight. Right now, I have my Build Up double-slotted for recharge and it's down to about 40-50 seconds recharge, I think. Trouble is that most of my fights only last 20 seconds or so, and I'm left having to leapfrog Build Up from one spawn to the one after the next. Making it faster and allowing me to open every fight with decent burst damage would help greatly. I'll see about appending this to the original post, probably after Leo's.

I also have to wonder if we can't have a random chance that our attacks will just suddenly recharge Build Up, say a 20% or thereabout chance for this to occur from any random, non-hidden Critical or some such. I may be retreading Leo's idea with this one, though. Basically, it seems to me that Stalkers are the one AT which benefits from Build Up the most just because of how focused they are on burst damage. That might be a good direction to go in to improve them a bit without going overboard or redefining the whole AT.

I'm not sure if that's what you're saying, but I think you just put your finger one of the biggest problems of classic CoV-side - our villains' obsession with Paragon City and, by extension, Longbow. See, for Recluse, it kind of sort of works that he's having a constant relationship breakdown with his boyfriend, Statesman. They have a lot of history together, they probably hugged a few times and now that Recluse is evil and Statesman is good, it's natural that Recluse's biggest goal in life is to blueball Statesman and Statesman is prone to flying into a fir of jealous rage every time Recluse shows up at his front door unannounced. It works for these guys.

It doesn't work for any of MY guys. And, OK, granted, the game can't work for ALL villains, but ask yourself this question - you're a villain in the Rogue Isles. Suppose you don't care about Paragon City, Longbow or Jack Emmert #1. What then? Your biggest two goals in the whole game are showing up Recluse and beating up Statesman, but why? I get that this is just a case of reusing existing game resources, but it feels like every villain on the Rogue Isles is secretly in love with Paragon City, wants to go there and live there and beat up cops but he's just not BIG TIME enough to do that aside from short picnic visits to knock over the same bank about eleventy times.

Why are my villains obsessed with Paragon City? Why are they obsessed with the US in general? Wouldn't knocking over a bank in the UK or, hell, one of those Swiss banks that hold all of the criminal world's dirty money, be somewhat easier? Our villains come off less as wanting to be big-time and more as wanting to be just big-time enough to thumb their noses at Paragon City. We so very rarely have any ambitions beyond wanting to spite them American heroes that our villains just come off as hollow.

It hasn't been mentioned yet, actually, and you make a very good point. I've spend the last... *finger-counting* Six years poopooing the City of Villains writing, but I have to admit, some of the latest stuff to show up there is very, very good. Dean McArthur may well be my favourite contact in the entire game (and that's saying something considering I hate fun and loath annoying contacts) and his and Leonard's arc is amazing. Vincent Ross' arc comes off a bit like someone pulling plot points out of the air, but even that has a very satisfying, very uplifting feel to it. This is what I want my villain to be doing - shoot for those cloning factories and those godlike powers, shoot for the bigtime. And when you fail, make sure everyone else fails ten times harder. This is quite literally exactly what I've been asking for since 2005.

I haven't actually run the new Villain early levels on Beta (lost patience when the wipe happened), but I hear you're able to off quite a few of your new contacts. I always approve of villains having that as an option, especially now that the game actually supports it. I would SO love to slap Daos upside the head when he tries to threaten me, I gotta' tell ya! So, yes, I agree. The developers are definitely listening, and that's very much a good thing.

That, though, is kind of why I want to discuss this now. If they're listening to us, we should probably sit down and talk about what to tell them I'm obviously not speaking about having any kind of organised player consensus - that won't happen. I just mean that it feels like a good idea to sit down and discuss this just so that we have a few more arguments and, possibly, a bit of a better understanding of what we want.

I do, actually. The border between Old Haven and Aeon City is depressing, because as I look down on the poor people being taken apart by Vahzilok and robbed by Gold Brickers, I am constantly reminded of the horrors I'm only just barely safe from because Aeon City is exclusive. The TVtropes article on Crapsack World had a very good illustrative example. It's a child having a tea party in a bubble of blue skies, green grass and happiness amid a dead, ruined, horrible world, as if the child is either unaware of the doom of all things or is simply choosing to ignore it for a few last moments of false happiness before the inevitable end.

The Rogue Isles depress me, because even in its nicest parts, I'm still reminded of its worst parts constantly. Because even in my ivory tower in Aeon City, I can still see the rest of the world down there living in pain and misery. Because any comfort I might find in the few not-so-dirty places in the Rogue Isles is ruined in knowing I'm still living in a hellhole, I'm just pretending I don't see out my window. And believe me - I know enough about that in real life to not want it in my games.

There is a historical story about Vlad the Impaler, talking about how he ate breakfast next to a field of stakes with thousands of people impaled on them, dead or dying. This is how I see City of Villains - my small bubble of comfort only works if I put my hands on the sides of my head and don't look out, because if I DO look out, I'll realise how rotten everything is.

In Paragon City, things are entirely different. The whole city is nice, clean and optimistic. Sure, there are bad areas, like there are in any real city, but those only serve to contrast the GOOD sections. And while, yes, hazard zones do exist and they have to be cordoned off, there generally aren't people living in there, commuting with murderers and monsters. The city is neat and clean and where danger exists, it is contained. Granted, there are still areas like Brickstown and Kings Row and Independence Port, but those only serve to contrast areas like Steel Canyon and Atlas Park and Talos Island. City of Heroes has a variety of themes from nice and friendly to dark and dangerous. City of Villains has a variety of dirt, from horrible to just sort of uncomfortable. What City of Villains singularly lacks, however, is a place I can go to that doesn't constantly remind me of the crime, corruption and horror of the place. Not even the Golden Giza, because if there's one place that DOESN'T put my mind at ease, it's a casino.

I feel there's much more to it than that. To my eyes, the Rogue Isles look depressing because they're almost entirely drawn in heavy black shadows with dark grey shades, contrasted by sterile whites and everything which isn't monochrome is brown. The whole game makes me feel like I'm playing Limbo, which by the way, if you're looking for a damn depressing game, try that one. You'll see a man hang himself before five minutes have elapsed. It's just that all of the Rogue Isles look like one of those cubist WW1 anti-war that show soldiers soldiers sleeping and chatting next to the mangled bodies of their comrades. Art can influence emotion with more than just the content it shows. It can influence us with the very style it uses.

There's also the fact that in Paragon City, the good and the bad are kept separate. If you go to Kings Row, it's pretty much all glum and depressing, but that's the zone's thing. It's a bad, run-down neighbourhood that went to hell when the factories closed down. However, when you leave and go to Steel Canyon, that's the business district. It's where everything's brighter and sunnier. I get a much more comfortable feeling in Paragon City because even though not all places are perfect, at least SOME places are. In the Rogue Isles, by contrast, the juxtaposition of nice and nasty is such that there really is no "nice." Just like you wouldn't like to sit down at a nice posh cafe if your table were next to the stinking, filthy garbage container, so living in Aeon City where I see human misery out of at least ONE window in every single building there undermines any nice quality it might have. And it doesn't help that the place looks like a hospital, with that strangely white concrete and strangely black stone.

I haven't seen muggings, either, but that doesn't really mean much, all things considered. People of the isles simply don't have much to mug. About 20 years ago when communism "ended" in my country, cars were an amazingly expensive commodity, and car theft was rampant. Crime rates here these days are far worse than they were back in 1989, but you almost never see cars stolen. I've accidentally left my car unlocked a few times and my mother even left the keys in the ignition once. No-one has ever stolen it. And that isn't because there's less crime, but more because no-one cares about my 20-year-old beaten up rusty Fiat.

Besides, if I had to choose between muggings and what actually takes places in the isles, I'd choose muggings. Instead what I've seen is police brutality by the RIP who don't seem to have any professional ethics, people killed and cut up for spare parts and all of those lovely men hopping around with hands tied behind their backs and their feet encased in a bucket of concrete. Not 100 yards from the front door of the Golden Giza. I recall a piece of NPC dialogue that shocked me, once a long time ago. A bunch of Family goons were digging a hole in the sand under the bridge that leads to the Golden Giza and one said to the other: "Are you sure this spot is clear? I hate it when we dig into one of our old graves." That is worse than having your purse tugged out of your hands.

Besides, the bright idea of making this a city of villains means that there really aren't any actual civilians. Everyone's a criminal of some sort, even if most are very small time.

This is something I can never, ever agree with. You're suggesting that a corrupt, criminal government led by people who murder other people and bury them in shallow graves is better than an ineffectual government - at least that's how it seems - and I just can't agree with this. I may be biassed in this regard because of where I live and what my government is doing, but I still disagree. *unnecessary political rambling removed*

Again, this is probably my personal bias talking here, but I don't care if a local government brings down the stars from the night sky for me, I still won't see them as a good alternative when their methods might just include dragging me out of my house, shooting me in the face and throwing me in the bay with a boat anchor chained to my neck. I simply can't accept the argument that "Oh, sure, they murder people, but look at how clean the streets are!" I don't care how good they are, they still murder people. They're still criminals. The entirety of Going Rogue is built on precisely this premise.

I'm saying the latter, actually I don't know if the original CoV writers actually intended to make playing villains a bitter-sweet experience or if they honestly believed that the horrors of villainy was an integral part to PLAYING a villain, but that's how it came out. The original City of Villains content seems almost purpose-designed to humiliate my villains and show me that "crime doesn't pay." I don't like this one bit, because when I play a game, I want to enjoy myself, not be hurt and saddened for the sake of teaching me a life lesson. I want my villains to be cool and inspiring, not horrible and repulsive. Or both, if need be, but never only the latter.


And this, in a nutshell, is my problem. I don't know whose bright idea it was to make all the I6 contacts (save for maybe a couple) talk down to us, but it was a BAD idea. Sure, have a few of those (and add in an option to kill them and end the arc), but why have that be ALL contacts? Why write a story where our entire villain's journey is as someone's lackey? Why put a mission briefing text that says, word for word: "This should earn you some brownie points with the Spider?" These days it's a lot better, but it's still very hard to play a glamorous villain because CoV was written with a singular lack of glamour of any kind.

This goes back to my problem with the design of the Rogue Isles... They aren't glamorous. Ever and anywhere. The closest you could come to glamour is the fake glitter of being to top dog in a rotten slum. Yes, you're "glamorous" as compared to the drecks of society that you rule over, but compared to even Countess ******* Crey, you're still a dirty unwashed peasant who has to take lip from god damn Darla Mavis and be brainwashed by a ratty old TV set like some chump.

You know who I want to grow up to be like? Clarissa Von Dorn, the Nemesis, the Centre, even Stephen Richter. Because those guys have glamour on their side. Because those guys are masters of their own destiny. Because when Terrance Dobbs realises he's messing with Crey, he backs off. This is too big for just a simple monster killer. We're playing with the big boys now. Crey, they're too big to handle, so we'll just tell Arachnos and let them handle it. Because they're big boys, too. When am I going to be one of the big boys?

Michael Myers is something of a body horror, in the sense that he plays on our innate fears. We like to think our homes are safe and secure and we can sleep soundly at night. But Michael Myers is the kind of villain who violates that safety and makes us face the very real fear that not only is this uncomfortable to watch, our real life homes aren't really all that secure, either, and that if a real guy like that snapped, the results may not be too terribly different. And if you watch enough crime documentaries, you'll likely know that things like these have happened before.

The thing, though, is that this is the kind of villain who's mostly... Only, really, good as an antagonist. And as such, he's very good. I don't really need to know why he's evil or what he's thinking because that's not what the movie is about. This isn't a "villain" so much as it's a force of nature. Whether you're running away from a slasher villain, from a forest fire or from Geiger's Alien, the point of the movie is on the survival - or lack thereof - of the victims.

Turn that around and make that the protagonist, though, and you have problems... The same problems a lot of modern remakes of classic horror films and prequels to modern horror films suffer. If you try to give depth to these villains and actually make the movies about them, you simply sink the franchise like an anchor chained to a very large rock. What was the latest I saw... Oh, yes, Film Brain's review of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. No link, because this is not a good movie and probably one that breaks the forums' age rating.

My point, though, is that having these villains kill random people for a movie and then die or disappear is fun once. But make too many movies out of them, and it starts to resemble an MMO kill quest, and in turn starts getting boring.

Well, I didn't try to be objective in the slightest so quite a few of my points may have been greatly overstated In the end, though, after seven years, I've just found that I want to stick to the ATs that can be easily and directly self-sufficient and who don't give up anything for enhanced team play. They don't have to be GREAT (Stalkers sure aren't), but as long as they're decent without making me try very hard, that's good enough.

The problem is that with anything that doesn't give me a lot of leeway, I end up having to trade concept and awesome for performance and optimization, that's where my patience ends.

That's really what's so disappointing about Westin, though, and something I probably didn't get across very well - I'm not sure if whoever was writing him intended him to come off as effectively a parody of a villain, and I do suspect he was a genuine attempt to make the game more evil. But it's a very... Awkward attempt, and a good display of a writing team profoundly missing the point, at least from where I'm sitting. They wrote a game they thought was good and cool, we made a big stink about it and someone on writing duty went: "Oh yeah? Fine! How about THIS! Is THAT evil enough for you?" It smacks of forcing a writer to write something he's not only not comfortable with, but doesn't actually even get.

I mean, you can tell the story is genuinely trying to impress us with Westin's villainy, but it completely fails to impress and instead just disgusts. This is not the kind of villain I want to play for 750 hours.

Heh, I agree with you there. I'm generally a person who hates fun, and even I chuckled at Vernin's antics But more than that, Vernon is one of the few contacts in City of Villains who actually makes my villain feel like a bigshot and, even though the plan is still horrible and repugnant, it comes off as more high-profile excitement than mean-spirited drudgery.

Indeed, and that's a good distinction to make - is this a villain we hate and want to see die a horrible death, or is this a villain we kind of sort of secretly like and want to see more of? Purely personally speaking, the former is a good antagonist, but the latter is the kind of villainous protagonist I want - nay, NEED - in order to be able to enjoy a villain-centric game.

And this, really, is the central issue we keep dancing around - are we supposed to enjoy playing as villains? Should we be allowed to commit evil acts and STILL enjoy ourselves? The original CoV writers would say "no," at least judging by the tone of their writing. Back in I6, City of Heroes was the place where you went if you wanted enjoyment while City of Villains was the place to get downer ending drama, per chance your life was a little too happy and joyful.

Now, I don't argue that unpleasant, repulsive villain SHOULD exist as an option for those with stronger stomachs than I have. I'm not trying to dismiss that. But what I am going to argue for is that villains can be, and indeed SHOULD be, about much more. Again I got back to literally the first response I got in this thread - I'm going to be playing these villains. I need to enjoy playing them or it's no longer a fun game. Designing villains primarily as objects of scorn seems - to me at least - to be missing the point of making a player-villain-centric game.

I don't disagree that this could be done in a (somewhat) tasteful manner, but game rule limitations actually ARE a pretty big factor in what we can ask for our villains to be. I generally have no problem with Mature RP, but the thing is, it sort of exists in this game on a "don't make a problem and you won't have a problem" basis, in that it's not officially allowed, but no-one is going to bother you for engaging in it if you don't bother other people. It's sort of the exception to the rule of what is still a PG13 game.

All I was really saying with that example, though, is that there actually ARE at least a few hard lines that we can't really afford to cross regardless of our personal opinions, and those are PlayNC's regulations on content.

Isn't that kind of the point, though? I mean, if you've known many actual real-life evil people, then I'm sure you'll agree that we don't want to sympathise with them and work to help them succeed. The reason I personally vouch for glamorous villains is exactly because that's the only kind of villain I don't instinctively hate. And when I have to play said villain and work to succeed, I want... NEED to be able to like him. If I can't, I lose my motivation to log into said character, and if I leave a character sitting unused for too long because I dread logging him in, I delete him to make room for another one I like more.

I think it comes down to a pretty simple matter of choice. I get to choose what I play every time I type my account name and password. And so long as I have a choice, I will always choose the characters that make me happy over the ones that depress me. Sometimes, that means choosing obviously unrealistic fantasy over grounded reality, but isn't that what games are for?

I know I just wanted to mention it, both to pad out the list and to acknowledge a positive change.

I was not aware of this... I have Super Reflexes, Ninjutsu, Willpower and Electric Stalkers, but I haven't taken any damage auras on mine yet. I didn't think the damage aura would self-break Hide from Placate. Never really thought about it, even. In that case, yes, I agree something needs to happen. In fact, I'll put your suggestion in the original post.

The -Stealth debuff actually doesn't do anything these days. It's just an idle icon that sits in your tray and does nothing. The reason hostages can't see you when you're Hidden is precisely because you retain your Stealth Radius and they can't see you when you move more than four inches away from them.

I agree, it's hideously annoying. I'd really like to see some sort of fix for this that allows us to sacrifice our stealth but keep our ability to score Hidden criticals.


Yeah, that's why I brought this up. I know it's something of a controversial topic, whether Stalkers should be able to hide from ambushes or whether they should just deal with them. And indeed, a SINGLE ambush is rarely a meaningful problem. It's when the game throws 10 at you (I counted the ones in Vincent Ross' mission to find the Coralax Shapers) that it becomes kind of a problem since you're effectively never using Assassin's Strike for the duration of the fight, unless you happen to have access to Smoke Flash.

I'm not really sure what could and indeed should be done about this, but I keep thinking SOMETHING ought to happen.

Hey, I saw your chat about it over Global I was running the Crimson Revenant mission to defeat BABs and was forcibly disconnected a third of the way through. I'll be restarting it when I get home from work today.

I see this completely the opposite. Yes, all villain zones have places that are meant to be nice... But really aren't. Places like Villa Requin, Aeon City and Jackpot don't - to my eyes - serve to counter-balance the misery and depression of the rest of the zones. On the contrary, the serve to highlight it and make it worse. Because all of these supposedly "nice" places still depress me. They're still grey and black and white, they're still cold and sterile and they're still overrun with trigger-happy "police" that delight in harassing the populus.

Aeon Has to be the worst of the lot. The place looks like a hospital, all manner of thieves and vandals still thrive in there, and one of the biggest things in sight is that HUUUGE Arachnos banner. And if that weren't bad enough, it's an almost literal ivory tower that sticks out of the brown slums on both sides, the small refuge of the select few rich and powerful ones.

Even the best, most optimistic, prettiest parts of the Rogue Isles still come off as depressing and sad, a fine mirror for the fortunes of the villains there. It doesn't matter how hard you work and how well you succeed, because the best you can hope for is the hollow lie of a better life. Because there is no better life for villains. They're the bad guys. They're repugnant. You're not supposed to enjoy yourself playing one. You're supposed to suffer and understand that evil is bad.

And that bugs me, because when properly-written, evil can be COOL! And that, really, is what I feel the Rogue Isles should be about - all the ways in which you can make evil cool and desirable. It's escapist fantasy, after all. We can afford to root for the bad guys. We play them, after all, don't we?

Actually, on second thought, let me cut a somewhat tangential argument short on my part and just say that this is probably where we disagree on a fundamental level - I'm not a political person. At all. I don't watch the news for the most part, I rarely vote, I don't much care what government is supposed to be doing wrong or doing right, and I honestly try to avoid politics as best I can in my escapist fiction. I'm much more interested in heroes punching villains' goons in the face while villains are busy putting the final pieces in their grand master plans than I am about the political structure of the land of evil or how the common men pay their taxes.

This isn't just idle musings, by the way, but is rather quite a bit crucial in determining what kind of villains we like. If you're interested in the political structure of the broader world, you're more likely to favour the more grounded villains who are still subject to those rules, and in so doing you're bound to favour the less "pleasant" ones just by virtue of what the reality of evil is. Personally, I intentionally favour the more unrealistic villains who operate outside of any real political system and who don't even need an established civilised society to operate. Because these are rarely concerned with controlling the populus, they're much more rarely given opportunities to be monstrous, as most atrocities tend to be committed against the defenceless people one has dominion over.

Once you rob a villain of his hard grounding in reality, you also rob him of a LOT of opportunities to be disgusting and leave him not much else to do BUT be glamorous. And I actually feel that's a good way of putting it, now that you bring it up.

I disagree. I see Arachnos as anything BUT control. In fact, Recluse and Arachnos are about as close to the antithesis of control as one gets while still supporting a governed society. Villains run around rampant and do whatever they damn please, sanctioned Arachnos operatives are routinely raiding US territory, the whole place is a rotten, depressing slum and Recluse doesn't really give a damn about any of it. He's too preoccupied with his divorce from the Statesman and he's essentially sucking the Etoile Islands dry for power and resources while at the same time giving nothing back. Yes, the islands more or less govern themselves, mostly because Recluse doesn't care to govern them. He cares about his Operation: Destiny, he cares about the PCM, he cares about Statesman, the love of his life... But the Isles are just chaos.

So what if random people get access to the Warburg nukes? Random people have been getting access to them since Warburg first existed and the world is still alive. Hell, if Mender Tesseract's TF is anything to go by, the Etoile Islands were doing just fine under the rule of President Marchand. The place was decent and clean. Then Recluse took over and now look what it was - a crime-ridden, chaotic mess. I don't see Arachnos as any sort of stable authority. I see them as a parasite on top of barely functioning system.

If we want to talk about order and control, Praetoria is the right example. This is not just a city, but a world well under the control of a dictator. Sure, crime still exists and sure, it's still rotten to the core, but if you're a law-abiding citizen or even a respected member of Powers Division, you won't get to see all that much of it. Because Tyrant cares about running a tight shift. Recluse, by contrast, lets everyone do what he pleases, so Kirk Cage steals red coral, Dr. Aion fiddles with demons, Johnny Sonata sells his soul and who knows what else.

I don't really think that if Arachnos up and disappeared one day that you'll see much of a difference. The banners will be another colour, but the mess will still be the same.

And that's a problem, the same one I have with Praetoria - this interpretation of events assumes that my villains care about the Etoile Islands and keeping them safe, or indeed that they care about keeping the place safe. Mine don't, but I suspect you and I are speaking of entirely different types of villains. In fact, if... Let me think... Yeah, if any of the villains I have were held to task with the various ways he or she has harmed the people of the rogue isles, all of them would shrug and do the "Yeah, and?" look. Because they care about their own agendas. The Isles are a means to an end. If they have to burn in the process, then well... That's a small price to pay. And that's speaking of my more reserved villains. Remember, I'm also talking about those that want to kill all life on the planet, and even one particular one who wants to destroy all created things and start creation anew.

One story arc (I think it's the Wheel of Destruction) has the contact explain that the Banished Pantheon have no respect for the local gangs. This struck me as something that's very cool about the gang - they serve a dark god who means to consume the entire world. What do they care if they upset the local rough necks? The will of Lughebu is so much greater than that.

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This really doesn't fit into the "glamorous vs. disgusting" duality, but it is a good point to make: Some villains are much more involved in the world around them and much more interested in both playing by its rules and affecting the people in it. Other villains, on the other hand, simply feel their purpose is more important than anyone and anything else. I suspect most people might disagree, but it is the latter type of villains that really works for me.

There's an old quote from the chief antagonist from the Monster Warriors (crappy) series that I like to use in situations like these: "I make ze monsters BIG!"

*edit*
I apologise if my post comes off as mean or dismissive. That wasn't the point. I honestly was looking for something a lot like this discussion, and now that it's going, I find it a bit more interested to stick to personal preference than try to be objective, and I encourage others to do the same.

This is probably where, and indeed WHY, we differ - I've almost never... Come to think of it never ever created a character within the context of this game, or any game for that matter. I always develop and progress my characters in my own, personal, made-up world where they aren't really subject to anything City of Heroes might do. What I have in-game is a basic, best-case approximation of what they should be, and as such I understand that my City of Heroes characters will pretty much never be complete inside of City of Heroes itself.

And yet, this is still BY FAR the closest I've ever been able to get

That's the point, though. When people asked - nay, demanded - that City of Villains have a more "villainous" option, Westin Phipps was the response. And I agree with you completely: Westin is pathetic. He is weak, slimy, ugly and his whole life is a hollow lie. He is the epitome of the hateful, failed villain that we're all supposed to be disgusted by... And he's our example of "evil?" And, yeah, he is, since Westing more than any other contact leaves a lasting impression on people.

I mostly bring Phipps up to illustrate that the original City of Villains writers really did see villains as repugnant and made their stories accordingly. I6-I7 City of Villains IS Westin Phipps, because it's just one giant depressing, dirty, repulsive, unpleasant experience as though purposely designed to make people regret ever choosing to play it. It's like the authors wanted to tell is "Evil is bad! Don't be evil! Don't support evil! See how unpleasant it is!" but it ends up sinking the entire gaming experience because to get the point across, they had to make all of CoV unpleasant.

Contrast this to City of Heroes, where even in the lowest of points - the death of Sefu Tendaji, the transformation of Terra, the ruined life of Melvin - the game is still positive and satisfying. Even at its darkest, City of Heroes is still more positive than almost all of City of Villains at its brightest. Save for a small handful of stories, that is: D-Mac/Leonard, Time After Time, Vincent Ross and I'm out of ideas. Pretty much everything else is, if not intentionally designed, then unintentionally made to depress us and make us regret playing though content.

And that's precisely what I DON'T want to get out of playing a villain.

Sorry, I just wanted to quote that because that mental image is at once hilarious and awesome! Thanks

Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying in terms of my own preferences. Even so, I'd swap that out for a bit: Truly monstrous, unpleasant villains are often good as antagonists where the audience is not intended to be invested in all characters. I can, for instance, watch a slasher flick and want to see the slasher set on fire, shot, impaled, crushed and run over in the end, before having to be dropped of a cliff anyway and not really be that much appalled at how unpleasant that antagonist is. That's kind of the point.

However, these are NOT something I want to play as, especially for long periods of time. That, really, is the fine line I'm trying to trod: What I'd accept as someone else's antagonist and what I'd actually make as my own player-controlled character.

And I honestly respect that option. I simply choose to not use it. This is purely me talking here, purely personal opinion, but I keep my writing and my gameplay separate. When I write for my characters, I typically do that once, either before I make said character or soon thereafter, and I tend to stick to what I've written. If this sounds limiting, it's because it is, but we all choose how we play, after all. I paid for GR, and I simply choose to not use all of it. Like Incarnates

I'm mostly speaking about personal preference, here, though. I'm aware of what "could" be, technically and realistically speaking, but at the same time... I really wouldn't invest much time in such a story, myself, be it writing it or reading it. When I ask what villains "should" be, I'm really asking what we (I, you, the others) want them to be, not necessarily what kind of villain one person should make another experience in a story.

I say this to give context to the following: I don't roll that way. When I plan stories, I plan them on speed dial. What things could potentially happen have already happened, what changes could have occurred have already occurred and the characters I make start their gaming careers with their entire story already written. As such, if a villain's concept has any room for redemption, then I'll have handled that in his backstory and had him already redeemed. To leave said villain with a redemption hook and NOT have it followed up on in backstory bugs me.

In a much bigger way, leaving a villain with a redemption hook and simply not using it is about the quickest way to sour me on an whole story. Personal taste talking here, obviously, but a redeemable villain who is simply never redeemed bugs me. I can't hate him because he's redeemable, I can't like him because he's a villain, and if the story does manage to get a rise out of me, I end up hating the AUTHOR, instead. Oh, hey! Easy example!

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Naruto: If you're not a fan, skip this paragraph. If you end up disagreeing with me, then that's OK. But to me, kind-of-sort-of fallen hero/redeemable villain Sasuke is the single WORST, most damaging aspect to that entire show, and has been a boat anchor around its plot for... Damn... Four years? Five years? I've lost count. At one point, he was a sympathetic character - he lost his way and turned to the dark side, but he could be saved. Then he spent the next five years being emo and yet managing to stay both just redeemable enough to think it's possible and yet just evil enough to be considered a pariah. In the end, I'm sick and tired of hearing about the ******, I'm sick and tired of watching Sasuke Shippuden and I'm sick and tired of that stupid loose plot thread dangling in front of my nose YEARS now. That one single "misunderstood villain" was enough to sour me on the entire show, and that's after surviving 150 episodes of straight filler without complaining once.

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Example done, all I'm really saying is that I don't like redeemable villains used as villains in much the same way as I don't like anti-heroes used for legitimate heroes. They're fun once, they're tolerable for a while, but they grow old FAST. And if I'm going to spend 750 hours of my life playing a character (like I did with my primary villain), then I'm going to want a character I can like for the long run and a character who can stand the test of time, at least in my eyes. And the only ones who manage that are the stable, confident ones that don't flip-flop between alignments and don't constantly hint that maybe they can be saved.

Again, this is all personal opinion here, but that's just what I pick for my own villains and usually what I pick my stories by.

Ha! Thank you, and I agree

Of course not. You're a villain, after all, and you're going to kill me. Naturally, I disagree and naturally, you don't care that I do. What I mean is you fully realise that your Cosmic Burst to my face will most likely kill me and you do it anyway. You're not convinced that your Cosmic Burst to my face will actually cure my cancer and strengthen my immune system and you're not surprise when I walk away without a head. You understand what you're doing, that's the point.

P.S. "You" here refers to the villain in question, and I'm just following the quote wording. Just thought I should mention that

Granted, it's a question of scale. With enough deus ex machina, you can retcon any villain into a hero. I can't think of any comic book examples, but off-hand I want to say Ben10's Kevin Levin. In the original series, he's a bad guy, he's malicious, he's jealous, he has a serious problem with Ben and spends most of the series trying to kill him. Come Ben10: Alien Force and Kevin is voice by Greg Cipes who always seems to play good guys, he has a crush on Ben's cousin and all of a sudden he's a good guy, just misunderstood and only a slight bit unruly. This is a character shift so sudden my brain suffered whiplash when I saw the Alien Force pilot episode. So, yeah, I fully believe that EVERY villain can be redeemed if the author isn't afraid of trodding all over his character.

What I mean is more a question of scales. If a villain is a villain because of some reason that appears to be fixable to a casual observer and the story doesn't make it a point to explain why that CAN'T happen, then said villain comes off like a broken hero who could be fixed. Not only does this undermine the villain's presence, dignity and believability, but it also serves to make it even more absurd when said villain keeps killing people, blowing up countries and kicking puppies.

This is personal taste talking here, I admit, but I actually have a problem with "misunderstood heroes" acting as consistent villains, because it eventually makes me hate the WRITER. A misunderstood villain is someone you more or less end up sympathising with, because he CAN be fixed. But how many times can he violently murder the good guy's family and still be sympathetic? Not many. At which point you end up with a villain with a flimsy justification for being a villain, yet who is no longer sympathetic or redeemable, and the story just turns mean-spirited all around. This is probably my own failing as a member of the audience, but I have a fairly low tolerance for stories actually being uncomfortable. Since I always have a chance to just stop reading/watching/playing, if a story puts me in a position where I don't want to go on... I don't. And a that's one of the types of villains that make me fast-forward to see if there's any resolution and eventually give up altogether.

See, the problem with these is... They're not "glamorous" in the least, partly because I define "glamour" in large part as a villain's self-consciousness, presence emotional stability. This is probably a thread I want to pick up, actually. Good idea!

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I value emotional stability in a villain more than most other things. Sure, mad, schizophrenic, confused, possessed, brainwashed and suchforth villains are dangerous, threatening, scary, etc., but... I can't really respect them as much. A lot of the time these guys are villains because of their problems, and even more often said problems come off as, if not sympathetic, then at least pitiful. This is actually my problem with City of Villains, as well - our villains operate in humility. They're wretched beings only worthy of pity.

Now contrast this with the stable, secure, comfortable villain who understands his own psyche and is comfortable in his own skin. You tell him of all the things he's done wrong and he pretty much agrees with you. You tell him how repugnant he is and he just shrugs his shoulders. You tell him he should stop, and he says "No." then proceeds to explain - at length or in a few words - why he simply chooses not to. Yes, he hurts people, yes he causes indescribable damage, yes what he does has turned him into a reviled individual. "Yeah, and?"

To me, any villain who has the emotional stability to accept who and what he is and the dignity nevertheless respect himself and still believe in what he's doing without doubt or second-guessing is already well on the way to being glamorous, even if he doesn't have money, lairs and armies. That's actually a lot of what makes people like Dr. Doom, the Kingpin, Lex Luthor and the others on that list so cool. These guys strike a balance between being comfortable in their own skins and not shy of brutality, yet at the same time not specifically taking any manic enjoyment in the pain they cause, aside from that of a few specific "rivals." These are guys who do evil, they recognise that the things they do hurt people, but they still do them because they feel they have to, not out of some sense of perverse satisfaction.

Any stable, dignified, self-controlled villain is a villain I'd class as "glamorous" in at least that aspect of his personality.