Samuel_Tow
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Posts
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Quote:I already do that, truth be told. I mentioned skipping quite a few arcs, and I'm sure there are quite a few more I forgot to mention. And I try not to mess with the "alignment" system, for the most part because I disagree with the writers as to what each alignment constitutes. This is just my own personal aesthetics talking here, but the alignments seem to be *******/*******/Unwilling hero/Hero. These days I keep my characters in their fundamental extremist factions and instead write their subtleties in their bios or in stories on the subject.Originally Posted by Lothic
Maybe for your purposes it'd be good to re-categorize the game's various legacy mission stories in terms of Hero, Vigilante, Villain and Rogue. No one says you have to like everything the game provides so maybe you can pigeon-hole what you might call "disgusting" as Villainous and what you'd call "glamorous" more Roguish.
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Actually, something of an aside (yet again), but one reason I started this thread was I firmly believe I DON'T like disgusting villains, yet looking down my roster of characters and reading the stories I've been writing recently... They all are!
Other people's opinions, logic and contemplation on matters always helps settles these dissonant conflicts, though, which is one reason why I really like our community. I hope to see more people's take on the matter in the future, because this is honestly exciting stuff
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Quote:No, I agree, there's no one right way to write a villain... But by the same token, there actually IS one right to write a villain such that I, personally, will want to play it. I'm really not trying to define some universal law here. The truth of the matter is I don't actually comprehend exactly what I want, and I hope to gather the opinions of others, examine them and in those find the inspiration to define what I like for myself.Originally Posted by Lothic
Again I think your concern over "disgusting versus glamorous" is an approach to how you judge villains and there's nothing wrong with that. But in a big picture view I don't really think there's a "right" kind of villain as far as that goes. I've seen well written villains be either disgusting or glamorous, and sometimes even both at the same time.
Choice in villainy is always important, and I enjoy that I can skip both Westin Phipps and Peter Thermai (and Angello Vendetti and Darla Mavis while we're at it) and the option to NOT run the Mortimer Kal tip mission. However, to know what I want to repeat and what I want to skip, I need to know what it is that I'm after, and "gut feeling" isn't nearly as reliable as I'd like. -
Quote:You know, the more I hear about this, the more I like it as an idea... But for another characterOriginally Posted by Valorin
Scrappers/Brutes/Stalkers: /Energy Aura does have a techy/cloaking device kinda look to it and I bet you could come up with an explanation for it that doesn't have to be big and bulky. I'm trying to juggle multiple character creation processes at all times, so sometimes genuinely good ideas will get usurped by other, unrelated projects, and I think this is one that'll suffer just that. I have another Scrapper I wanted to make Katana/Something, but Katana/Everything that makes sense was already taken. Now that Scrappers are getting Energy Aura, she can be Katana/That
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Quote:Again - if it seems like I don't know exactly what I'm asking... It's because I don't. I'm trying to make sense of villains, what they represent and how they should be written. I'm not trying to argue that people are wrong or right in how they make villains, I'm just trying to find a good way to put into words a decent summary of what makes for a good villain that I can play as while at the same time not feeling sick and reluctant to log in a second time.Originally Posted by Texarkana
Well-written and all, but your original question appears to be more about execution of that justification (in a glamorous or monstrous way) and if it should matter how it is done.
And, yes, my question is sideways of what I discussed there. As I noted, it was a sideways tangent, more or less. I'm trying to patch up holes in my argument as I find them, and it really did seem like I was advocating for villains to be cartoony and one-dimensional with the "villain by choice" comment. That wasn't what I meant
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Quote:I disagree, but it's very possible I didn't explain that well at all. When I divide villains between "glamorous" and "disgusting," I'm actually speaking more about the way in which they are written than specifically who and what they are. In a sense, it's more a regard for the story author than for the story characters. I've had the miserable misfortune to unwittingly read a few snuff comics in my youth, so I've developed a pretty keen sense for situations in which the author is simply using his story and characters to deliver shock and disgust to the audience, sometimes at the expense of the actual story itself. I don't know if that's because some authors get off on that (and considering the "genre" of most of the comics in question, I'd wager the answer is "yes") or if they're operating under the belief that true art is offensive, but I've seen that quite a few times.Originally Posted by FlashToo
Actually, I don't think that the glamorous/disgusting continuum is a good way to describe it. The glamorous and disgusting categories you describe don't leave room for villains who have big, world-changing goals, powerful PR departments, the uncanny ability to keep coming back, and all the stuff you call glamorous but also have zero regard for human life, dignity, or beauty, and may be using all that power to shore up the empty, evil, depressing shell that you describe the "disgusting" villain as being. Characters like that are everywhere: Lord Voldemort, for instance, is a genocidal maniac and self-styled demigod with a cadre of minions and an obsession with grandeur, who tried to murder a baby because he'd heard that maybe the kid would grow up to be a threat, who thinks love, honor, remorse, and pretty much all concepts associated with good are delusions held by the weak, and who is driven by his own fear of death. I can't think which category to put a character like that in, but I'd lean towards the "disgusting" side. Others like this include the Jack Nicholson Joker (as opposed to Heath Ledger on the disgusting end and Mark Hamill/Bruce Timm on the glamorous end), Doctor Vazhilok (who's not far from what Voldemort would be if he were a mad scientist instead of a wizard), and Jabba the Hutt (you think he commits crime to help him sleep at night? Not unless it's smothering, or eating, a crying baby that's keeping him awake).
This, more or less, is where I draw the difference. Is this villain written to thrill and amaze me, or is he written to upset my stomach? And this can vary between writers writing for the SAME villain, mind you. In many ways, it comes down to a fundamental question to the writer in person: Do you actually LIKE your villains, or do you HATE them? Do you want to make your villains awesome and enviable, or do you want to destroy their image and make them hated and reviled? I ask, because I actually do like all of my villains, messed-up as they may be, but I don't get the same sense from everybody I come across.
In some ways, it's like the old dichotomy of "horror vs. gore," and how one isn't necessarily synonymous with the other. There's a reason a new genre was coined recently, dubbed "torture porn," and why people will often complain that true horror no longer exists in movies today. I bring this up because building a decent, non-glorified villain is kind of like making a decent horror flick - you want something that's unnerving and scary, but at the same time exciting and interesting. Go too far in either direction and you end up with schlock. -
Quote:No, no, I agree with you. What I'm speaking against is villains whose judgement is somehow impaired or that they are somehow forced to do evil. If the villain is just crazy and doesn't know what he's doing, just nihilistic and doesn't care what he's doing or somehow pressed into evil by circumstance, then that's not really a very interesting villain. Confused/insane/compelled villains can be cured. Take away what's making them evil and they're good people underneath it all.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
See, to my way of thinking, nothing is more evil than the person who commits evil acts in the unshakable belief that they are doing what's best for the people they are committing the acts against.
When I write a villain, I want this villain's evil to not be attributed to any one factor that can be removed from the character, but rather to be attributed to the character himself. You can treat mental illness (with magic science, if need be), but you can't cure a rotten *******. A person who kills for money, you can given him a stable job with a guaranteed income and he won't have any other reason to kill, but you can't cure a false messiah who KNOWS that his enemies need to die. When I say "willingly and knowingly," I simply mean that who and what the villain is is a result of said villains personal, intentional, aware choice and is not something that can be "fixed" if the villain were just cured or shown the light. These are bad people, not merely good people trapped in bad circumstances.
I think you misunderstand. When I say someone is "evil," I don't mean anything in particular. When I say "He is evil willingly and knowingly" I merely mean "He is what he is by conscious choice." This doesn't have to be a Dr. Evil type of parody villain who wants to "Rul ze vorld mit science!" who has an otherwise realistic personality.Quote:Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I've always thought the villains who are knowingly and intentionally evil are a little one dimensional. Evil for the sake of being evil is the most cliched motivation there is, and i lose interest in any story that has a villain like that.
The thing to remember is that there's a very real difference between giving villains "justifications" for being evil and giving them excuses. "Your world is chaotic and I can rule it better than you can" is a justification. The villain feels that the world needs order of the kind only he can provide. "Mommy didn't hug me so now I stab people," on the other hand, is an excuse. The latter doesn't follow from the former. Instead, this is a person who couldn't handle the former and is doing the latter out of spite.
What I'm saying is I try to make villains who have solid justifications for why they chose to walk down the road to villainy, but specifically and intentionally NOT give them excuses for why it's OK for them to do so and why we should feel sorry for them and sympathise. Every villain deserves a motivation, but very, very few villains (and I dare say none of them) deserve actual sympathy.
This isn't so much about a villain being evil for the sake of being evil, merely a villain whose actions make sense but still cannot be excused or forgiven. That, to me, is what makes for a good villain and where the border between villain and anti-hero is. -
I hate to keep bringing this up, but once more the servers are online and available for public use, I've downloaded and applied a patch... And I still don't know what it does. The last Patch Notes are from the 16th, so a week old. I looked at the Test patch notes, and there are no new ones there, and I honestly doubt we'd be getting any patch notes from Beta.
So what the devil was in that last patch I just downloaded, anyway? -
Quote:I both agree and disagree. I disagree, in that I feel both Atlas Park and Mercy Island NEED a tailor. Because our costume creator is... Eccentric, you can never really tell how a costume will look in the real world, and it's those crucial first few levels of a character's lifespan that give you a good sense of what about the costume works and what doesn't. Some problems are almost immediately apparent, others take time to really bug you, but they all add up in the end.Originally Posted by Rubyred
I don't like the tailor/trainer (tinker/spy?) idea either. If one of my lowbies needs a tailor when I'm in Atlas Park, I just run down to the Vanguard building and use the one in RWZ. No need for an Icon there imo.
I agree, however, in the sense that if there were a Tailor in the zone, running off to that one is no big deal, and there's no real reason that can convince me otherwise why this is so laborious that Trainers have to offer that service, too. I mean, what's next? Are the Freedom Corps trainers that sell Training enhancements all of 50 yards too far away from Miss Liberty? Should we make her sell enhancements, too? Should we make her redeem Reward Merits? Should we make her give access to the Auction House? Should we make her transport us to the various zones in the game? Should we be able to contact all our contacts through her?
Once you start adding functionality to NPCs that they have no logical reason to have access to, where do you stop? Once we start making arguments why provably simple, quick tasks are too inconvenient, where do we draw the line? Because I guarantee that this won't be the last thing people ask to be added to Trainers, nor the last convenience people as in relation to Tailors. And I know this is a reducto ab absurdum argument, but my point here is - if we're not going to respect what makes sense for contacts to be able to do logically, then HOW do we do we decide what they can and can't do? Because I'm pretty certain that Paragon Studios could make all contacts give access to all things if they really wanted to, so there has to be a reason why some contacts DO NOT offer some things. -
Quote:This is something of an aside (again), but I've found that it's much easier to play despicable characters if you write them as the underling of a more glamorous, easier-to-play villain. Sure, the despicable villains are still disgusting, but they always operate as an extension to the cooler global agenda of the smooth criminal, and this goes a long way towards mitigating their unpleasantness. It's gotten to the point where I have about three large villain factions all to myself, and at least 2/3 of all my villains belong to these. One even has matching uniformsOriginally Posted by halfflat
Personally, I can't bring myself to play a thoroughly despicable character.
I'm not sure if this is helpful, but it's worked for me, at last. -
Quote:That's actually the one thing I would NEVER do for a villain, for no reason other than I consider it to be the "easy way out" in making a villain. Why is she evil? She's crazy! Reason enough? I think now. I try to make my villains be willingly and knowingly evil. Evil by choice, rather than evil by circumstance, as it were. Villains who were made into villains but could become heroes if the world would just stop being mean to them just aren't villains to me, not in the sense of characters I'd like to make as villains. If I do make characters like these (and I do) I start them straight onto hero-side.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
This story could easily turn into her becoming a monster, killing innocent people because she's twisted it in her head that she's actually doing the right thing. If she twists her definition of what "evil" is enough, she'd be a mass murderer in short order, all the while completely convinced that SHE is in the right and the rest of the world is evil and twisted.
For the character in question, I was looking for a very careful balancing act where the world would provide the circumstances - in this case her being built as a ruthless killing machine - but she would make the final choice to embrace these circumstances, rather than combat them or learn to live with them. In the case of said cult, every member is convinced they're doing the right thing, so you're more or less close to what I was talking about, but in this villainess' case, she believes she's doing the right thing by following her leader, and killing being justifiable is only a consequence of that, rather than believing the killing itself is her mission. It's more a "license to kill" than "a religion to kill," if that makes sense.
No, nothing of the sort, and I'm actually somewhat confused why you inferred that this is what I was saying in light of my repeated insistence that I will only make characters villain-side if they are evil by choice and with full knowledge. Risking this coming off as insulting, I urge you to read my posts again and try to give me a little more credit.Quote:Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
You seem to have separated "Villains" into 2 categories
A) Villains that aren't really Villains, and are more Anti-hero.
B) Raving homicidal sociopaths with no redeeming/interesting qualities.
I split villains into two camps based on how much their narrative focuses on grossing out the reader vs. how much it focuses on impressing said reader. One villain who wants to destroy all humans is technically as bad as another, but it's the manner in which a villain approaches this that makes a difference. A glamorous villain would build himself a space station, discover a mineral that breaks the laws of physics and figure out a way to harness extra-dimensional magic to power a global death ray. A disgusting villain would go on a killing spree, rip the legs off pregnant women, eat the heads of small children, step on cute puppies and then belly laugh as the world's last hero wails over his dead parents. In end result, both achieve the same result - kill all people. The former, however, is far easier to read about. -
Quote:1984, so I'm primarily a child of the 90s, yesOriginally Posted by Twisted Toon
you are much younger than I thought. I think the first game I played with any real memory and understanding was Captain Comic in 16 colours, but I did play a bunch of old titles on the ZX Spectrim, like Army Moves, Attic Attack, Jetpack and a few others that I don't remember the names of. And that's around 10 years before I actually spoke a word of English, too
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Quote:This is something of an aside, and I'm probably burying my own thread by going into it, but you have a point here. Once upon a time, I did my utmost to make my villains relatable, such that if you listen to them talk, you can kind of see where they're coming from. I even had a villain I had to argue with my friends was a real villain, because the way I presented him, he came off like a good guy (all that "fight against evil" rhetoric), all because people didn't really know the things the guy ACTUALLY did.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
A real villain should be one that, even after you beat them, you are left wondering if you really, really did the right thing. Were they, just maybe...kind of right?
However... Then came people who played "misunderstood" heroes or fallen heroes or anti-heroes or heroes undercover in the Rogue isles, and then came Rogues and Vigilantes, and at one point I realised I wanted to make my villains evil by choice, not evil by circumstance. Anything less than that felt like a cop out. The thing is - if I'm just going to be writing good guys anyway, I might as well use the villain ATs to make good guys and cut to the chase. If I was going to make villains, they HAD to be evil, and they had to have chosen their path in life willingly and knowingly. I ended up making a few villains who were so unpleasant my friends asked me to tone their stories down significantly or they refused to read them.
Right now, the only real way you can sympathise with my villains is if you can accept the... "Evil" mentality that they are using. For example, a recent villainess I wrote a story for was an engineered super soldier who was compelled to killed and exhibit aggression because that's what she was bred for. A hero might look for a way to control those impulses. This villainess, instead, found a cause (abovementioned "fight against evil" villain) where she could indulge in her compulsions AND feel morally justified in doing so, because her "saviour" insists it's OK to murder "evil" people brutally and in cold blood.
I'm not sure where that lies on the scale of believable villains vs. grotesque villains, even if I like to think her story is more a tragedy than a parody. And, yes, she is a pretty "disgusting" villain all told, but I've tried to keep a lid on this by having her work as the lieutenant of a much more "glamorous" villain.
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If it sounds like my opinion is confusing, that's because it is. I'm trying to figure these things out for myself... Pretty much first and foremost I envy you guys who can just go out and say "Meh, I like these and these kinds of villains. Period." because I honestly couldn't do that. I'm trying to go through my rogues' gallery, so to speak, and figure out why some of those villains don't seem to conform to the kind of villains I claim I like.
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Some conversations actually have a placeholder final text screen that the ambush occurs on with only a couple of words of text like "You head enemies approaching!" with the last line of dialogue happening in the text screen before it. I think this is a good solution to the problem without requiring new tech to handle this. Just pad all conversations that spawn ambushes with one final placeholder screen.
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Every time I see Dios quoted, I'm reminded of why I have him on ignore.
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Quote:I disagree with you on that point... Not about liking the arc, I love it!Originally Posted by Supernumiphone
Not everything has to be either one though. Take for example the relatively new arc that has you taking over a cloning facility. I guess you could say that's on the glamorous end of things, but I'd say it's neither. It is a great arc though because it has you acting on your own initiative to seek power. The first time I played that arc I gained new hope that we could get real quality villain content in this game. I disagree that this is anything but pure glamour. The reason I say this is that the arc involves no murder (OK, almost none), no torture, no kidnapping, no extortion, no mindrape, not slaves, no depravity and really nothing that's designed to shock. I guess unless you consider cloning to be somehow vile and despicable - and I don't - it's essentially a story about "villain finds windfall, villain loses windfall, villain makes enemies fail harder." Both in spirit and execution, the D-Mac/Leonard arc is designed to make you - the player - feel awesome, accomplished and vindicated, whereas something like Westin Phipps is specifically designed to make you regret doing it.
I suppose if you don't like the "disgusting vs. glamorous" dichotomy, I could present the question in terms of "creation vs. destruction." Think about existing fiction and note how almost without fail, villains who work towards building something are almost always easier to swallow than villains who work towards destroying something. Even if the thing they're building is horrible, like building a bomb to destroy the world or engineering a virus to wipe out all life or building a ray gun to make everyone ugly (thank you, Johnny Bravo...), the way the story works out still comes off somewhat more positive than a villain who actively destroys things. Why? Well...
Put it like this - if a villain is building something bad and disgusting, that something will only actually act out disgusting once it's built. While it's being built, the worst that can happen from heroes failing is a progress bar being filled and the threat becoming more real, but nothing is actually accomplished right until the end. With a villain working at destruction, every time he succeeds, things become worse and worse. In a sense, both glamorous and disgusting villains are inherently disgusting BECAUSE they are villainous, but where the former only represents a threat that can be scary but not visceral, the latter represents actual damage done in real time.
Granted, there should be room for all of these and more, just so players have a choice. But by the same token, players can't be expected to like all of them. -
I agree with this every time it comes up. Both of these powers are garbage, and I feel like an idiot for taking them. They need to either be better at not having me rekilled by the time I turn on my toggles, or otherwise give me some kind of an advantage. I don't want to have to spend a power pick on what is effectively an Awaken + Break Free combo.
The funny thing is that Return to Battle puts both of these powers to shame, and when a temp power is many times superior to your own powerset powers... There's something wrong. -
Quote:You make a suggestion. It's ridiculous to expect that people won't say that they agree or disagree. Whether they say "/sign," "I agree," "This!" or elaborate over the span of a paragraph. You're still telling people how to post, and this is nothing but disruptive to your thread. Please avoid doing this in the future.Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy
I fixed this part for you.
The point of implementing the line policy wasn't to tell anyone how to post--- I'm against that, but at the same time I am against people roleplaying suggestions as petitions. I thought the line system was a good workaround (granted, a bit abrasive, for which I apologize) to allow people to say what they please in their preferred demeanor whilst not subjecting me to reading it.
Personally, I disagree with calling anything in City of Heroes a puzzle or a maze. Almost all instanced maps are incredibly simple and straightforward. I'm more or less opposed to making them even more simple and straightforward, and shudder to think that the ungodly linear maps of Praetoria may well be the way of the future. I love maps with intersections, loops and a complex floor plan.
You cite repetition, yet you suggest a system which makes the game even more repetitive. Ask any person who's driven a vehicle while tired when they most doze off - it's not on complex fast corners, it's on the monotonous straightaway. Complex maps that you have to give a bit of a thought to in order to help break the monotony more than most things in this game. Figuring out where you've been, where the current path is going, where it might re-merge with the rest of the map and how to sweep larger instances for clickies and enemies is part of the fun of the game.
I feel that having all objectives highlighted on the map as soon as you walk in won't at all help make the game less monotonous. It will just make us have to be less involved, which just makes the game feel that much more repetitive. The most that needs to happen is for the system we already have which shows the last few enemies and objectives to actually work. That one's good enough. -
Quote:I should have phrased the question difficulty, but I was more interested in which kind you prefer and why.Originally Posted by Zortel
There's no, or shouldn't be, one path of villainy.
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Quote:I should also note something of a personal request: If you're going to answer "both," please take the time to explain that answer. My point in making this wasn't just to start a poll (not only because those are against the rules, imagine that), but rather to start a discussion on what kind of villains we like and want and why we like and want them. I'm trying to dissect the issue as well as one can on an online forum, both so I can have a better idea of what we're dealing and, hopefully, so we can be better prepared to make suggestions to the developers when that situation comes around again.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Both. Just like reality, frankly.
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We seem to be having this argument a lot recently, but it seems to me that the core question at the bottom of it gets overlooked in favour of arguing whatever the most current example is. I thought it was prudent that we should address this question on its own, outside of any specific context.
So how do YOU feel? Should villains be disgusting or should they be glamorous? Here's what I mean:
"Disgusting" villains are pretty much what Golden Girl would tell you all villains are. It's villains written in such a way that we end up hating our own characters. Everything is depraved, everything is uncomfortable, everything is sad and depressing, the world is bleak, crime doesn't pay but instead only gives a hollow sense of victory that helps us sleep at night and forget about the pain and darkness inside our hearts. It's the writing approach towards villainy that makes us feel bad for playing them. For years people have been asking for villains to be "more villainous" and inferred that this meant that villains should be nastier and more revolting.
The upside to this approach to villainy is that it's fairly realistic. Villains are not good people pretty much by definition, and we want to live in a world where good always triumphs and evil always loses, and even when it wins, it's only a Pyrrhic victory. The downside to this is that it makes the whole game very unpleasant to play for long periods of time, and actually even depressing at times.
By contrast, "glamorous" villains are generally a good thing. These are villains who, while unpleasant, are much more famous for being cool. These are the villains who don't focus on ruining lives and instead focus on doing amazing things, on overcoming great odds, on breaking new ground and generally on being cool. They have cool lairs, they have sexy minions, they have stylish outfits and they have this unerring knack for accomplishing what everyone would consider impossible. These are the kind of villains that, while most wouldn't admit it, people kind of sort of want to be.
The upside to this approach is that it makes the game much easier to play and much more pleasant besides. After all, we want to play games to have fun and not torture ourselves, right? The downside to it, though, is that I suspect not everyone would see robbing banks, building death rays and having volcano island lairs is villainous enough if you're not feeling the visceral revulsion at your villain.
Now, for the sake of honesty, I will admit that I'm not exactly objective on the topic. Personally, I prefer glamorous villains every time, simply because disgusting villains are difficult for me to play for any stretch of time. But this isn't about me. I want to hear what you guys think.
*edit*
Let me rephrase the question:
What kind of villains do you prefer to play as, what kind of villains do you prefer to watch movies and read comics about and why? -
Quote:The thing is, there's no "absence of rewards." No-one runs the Honoree mission for the Inf and no-one who can run it gets experience. No-one who's just now running the Honoree mission is running it for the Incarnate shards since you need to finish the arc before those can drop. If you're running Ramiel's arc, you're running it to complete it and unlock Incarnates. THAT is the reward, and that reward you will still get.Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I think that with the new 'convenience is king' approach to the game, this would be viewed as a good thing. With The Honoree, the absence of death would make completing it easier, but the absence of rewards would balance that out somewhat.
Convenience is one thing. An "I win!" button is quite another. Even as a thought exercise, I'm still uncomfortable with discussing it in any realistic context. -
Quote:Well that was uncalled for.Originally Posted by Nyx
I don't know what this thread is...but it's breaking my in game immersion
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That's what the Mission Drop feature is (partially) for. This sounds too abusable in my opinion, since you can't void the unlocks that specific missions provide. For instance, you can run your Trapdoor or Honoree mission from Ramiel with this on and though you won't get the influence from the mission that you don't even need, you'll still progress through the arc.
Personally, I'd rather see about making more missions possible to run proper than giving such an out. -
I didn't know that was an Arcade game, but I suppose I should have figured. The reason I inferred that was the only system I ever played Gaintlet for was the ZX Spectrum when I was, like, four years old. Understandably, I did not do very well at it
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Quote:That's the bad thing for Spines - they're POISON spines. I've been using them for mutants and monsters and other biological threats, but for technological machines... I'm not really sure.Originally Posted by Auroxis
There's the metal spikes option, but the green goo effect remains.