Seldom

The funny thing with 'villains' is that they run a huge gamut, from the "noble intent but violent in action" villains to the "torture the righteous whose very existence is a personal insult to me" villains.

The one thing that they have in common? They will do whatever they please to get to their objective; they blatantly do their own thing, despite what those in authority tell them they should/should not do, and people get hurt in the process.

The trouble that I, and I think on some level other people have is this: CoV villains do NOT do their own thing. They receive orders. And their orders? These do not result in chaos and destruction that makes others frown upon them, or respect their might. Rather, their orders are to bring respect or fear to those giving them orders..it's all directly going in the face of what super-villains are about.

Me? My villains tend towards the 'are villains as they do what they please, regardless of law' type, but have many from different views. Here's some varied examples:

My main character is not 'evil' but stays alive by drinking the dreams of creatures, leaving their souls dry of care, expectations, love, or hope. As such the victims' souls wither to nothing, leaving breathing corpses behind. This is a more 'force of nature' villain, doing what it does without spite, but causing suffering nonetheless.

I have another character that is a penitent villain, his wife died when a vigilante killed his wife to get to him. He wants nothing to do with crime. And yet he'll do anything, burn anyone if it will lead him to what he wants. (Said vigilante)

I have a mad scientist character that won't rest until he pops all those annoying but smushy kittens, turns the world into a toxic heap, and can blow every city to kingdom come in fireworks explosions so grand they'll stick that way in the sky forever.

What's the commonality? Stuff gets hurt, the villains are driven to their own goals no matter what. CoV hasn't really had things where the player's character is working to build up stuff for themselves.

So on the evil scale? I don't care. Just make sure the villain isn't being bossed around, they are gaining for themselves all they can, and not just a paycheck. And anything that gets in the way gets its comeuppance.

Radiation emission/pain domination.

It was an easy fight.

I've had to change colors as well...the odd thing is that invulnerability's 'invulnerability' seems stuck at purple for me, even when a new color is selected.

Nemesis' homage to Ulysses hit a dead end (nyuk nyuk) when it included heavy metal plating, white-hot rockets, a steam boiler, and a whole garrison of his troops. On the plus side, it made an interesting art piece for DJ zero's events, and the scintillation smell from within made snacks at Pocket D's bar and grill sell like mad.

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My main did it, Mind/Psi dom.

Step 1: build up domination. Step 2:greet clone mob with mass confuse. Step 3: sit back and watch the hilarity ensue. (Or take advantage and wipe them out. All out them.)

It was fun, mostly because clones don't have domination. If they did...

Things I'm not looking forward to:
EM/Dark brute. My own weakness, in heavy-hitting critter form, complete with buildup. I wonder if their 8 oppressive glooms and 8 EM/ attacks could stun through my mez armor? ) Oh yeah, 8 total focuses and 8 mag 50 stun rezzes=ow.

Bots/FF Buh....force bubble/dispersion/personal forcefield/aid self/detention bubble/48 bots=ow.

Necro/poison: the non-stacking poison? Not as much an issue. The 48 zombies, complete with broadsword lieuts on my zombies? Not so much.

Sonic/sonic corr...8 sonic siphons, 8 sleeps, 8 big sonic bubbles, 8 strings of -res...owww.

I wouldn't be surprised if they added "Master of..." badges for all SF's/TF's, but they seem to be doing so for the most recently added strikes forces and such. As such, I don't foresee they randomly throwing such a thing at old TF's like Quarterfield and the like, rather doing so after updates wore done to them.

It did seem odd that the other new 45-50 strike forces had master badges, but not Lady Grey. That said, Hamidon is a pain in the neck, weakened or no. I hadn't used them, but do essence of earth work on him? (I assume they would.) It might make sense in such case to stock up on those, or better yet have a way for that mission to supply those.

I'd be interested. My main is a dominator.

To help others, I can provide every villain AT as well as a 34 tanker, a 28 scrap, or a 23 blaster.

@chicagodoodler

This probably will bring a new eye to the 'epic' pools, but if existing pools were meant to have a single target immobilize, I can't imagine why they wouldn't make patrons give single-target as well.

In fact, to prevent the 'necessity' of side switching, I'm wondering if they won't make as much parity between the two sides as possible. So electric mastery~mu, dark~soul, leviathan~cold, and so on- most changes becoming largely aesthetic/thematic. I do hope this brings earth, fire, and psy to villains as pools, though. (Perhaps with new patrons? I can dream...)

We will see, but I can definitely see patron/ancillary balance becoming more important with the expansion.

I find ninja run to be more 'natural' than the other options. Barring that, I use teleportation (Using a gadget) or flight. (With rocket boots.)

I'm still waiting for jetpack back elements for my natural characters, with jets that activate with flight.

In comic books, the traditional means are swinging and cars/motorbikes, but customizing current travel into these is odd. Could TP be changed into a grapple gun, with a tether being shot into nothing, the character 'whooshing' to the tp point ala shield charge? Maybe, but it would look odd, especially with the hover afterwards, not to mention the tether to nowhere looking odd. Superspeed could be tweaked to use a hover platform thing, or hoverbike? maybe, but it would look odd when the character activates powers or jumps, etc.

As such, you can use purchasable jetpacks, mayhem temp powers, or the jetboots/ninja run. The rest? I can't expect to see anything very much different than these.

*edit* As for the tech thing: every 'natural' hero uses technology for transportation at some point. The difference between a tech and natural hero is that the natural hero can do her/his thing on their own, the tech person's abilities are derived from their equipment. Anybody can use a gadget.

Part of this whole thing seems to be the way the game references NPC's...It makes me wonder if/when they get a way to customize NPC models used for players in granite armor/kheldian forms the same might allow mastermind pet changes.

That said, I cannot see them making 'fully customized' pets using the character costume options. That would involve the game referencing hundreds of seperate models per minion...the devs already mentioned that some of the limits for things like hammi raids and such involved how much strain 50 masterminds would put on the system. 50 masterminds with around 6 fully customized pets would equate to the same thing as 350 players.

The NPC model approach simplifies this, as the game doesn't have to see head option X, head detail1 Y, head detail 2 B, hair style L, chest F, Shoulder D, Chest detail M, Glove R, Belt A, Pants V, Boots K, Back G...the game just has to do "Zombie F." I think the compromise would be akin to weapon model customization...different NPC models, perhaps with a selectable primary/secondary color. So just as you can choose between a nemesis gun, a council gun, or several other gun models for assault rifle, your zombie mastermind could choose between a traditional zombie, a skeleton, or a civilian zombie model.

If they allowed any customization further than that, they might allow for NPC recoloring like we see in the mission architect for traditional NPC models. (Where you select a model, like a carnie, color them black and white, change skin tone, but you cannot alter the model itself.)

I wouldn't mind a pistol/blade assault set, (I know some enjoy the gunblade things, but it's too obscure to be a powerset) a blade in one hand, a gun in the other. The trick is, it's a bit 'natural' for the control sets as-is. Perhaps after they do a gadget control set. Until then, being able to control gravity, wipe minds, form fire, ice, or stone, summon plants, etc. seems odd paired with..a handgun. "I can do all of THIS!* >insert crazy control powers<
...and shoot a guy.

huh. :-/

Congratulations, Utopia, on the accomplishment.

As one who loves dominators, I'd just like to nitpick a bit at the controller comparison. Dominators' compatriot blueside is the blaster, not the controller. You know how many blasters have controls that help them stay alive? Ice has its holds, and many have stuns, a few have others as well. (Sleep, fear, confuse, etc.) Now imagine your blaster is in trouble...those powers are used to keep the blaster alive long enough to kill the enemy. Dominators are the exact same, but they trade some of the more massive kill power for more massive control. The blaster might have the tools to wipe that entire mob of minions, and control the boss he can't kill right away; the dominator has the tools to control that entire mob he can't kill right away, and kill them at a slower pace. The enemy unable to strike--->enemy dead is simply more top heavy in the dominator equation. Can this control help others? Sure. But you aren;'t a controller-a dominator is damage with damage prevention. They aren't support in the traditional sense. (Oh, and don't get me wrong. Dominator damage is not Anemic-they just don't have nukes or the buildup-aim combo.)

Oh, and for Arachnos soldiers? You owe it to yourself to try a Crab spider. Tougher than some brutes, if built right, with AoE's like a blaster and pets to boot. Good stuff.

It used to be MA>Badges>PvP for me, but when it became obvious the developers were willing to make damage control measures in the MA at the expense of legit arcs, I've slacked off that until the feature and its usability stabilizes.
As such, it's now Badges>MA>PvP.

I can't get into PvP because the community's approach and the system itself just can't seem to simulate the fun competition I get with real fighting games. (Which I love) In those cases, the fighting games I enjoy most have a balance in such a way that you can have a good long fight, both giving and taking in a back and forth fight that comes down to a knife's edge victory. The people I've met here for PvP are not interested in any extended competition or battle...they want to kill you as fast as possible to avoid any repercussions, and if the battle starts going against them, they run rather than fight it out. The system itself seems to focus only on defeats, so this "Kill them NOW!" attitude is only perpetuated. Besides this, belittling and derisive attitudes along with a general uncivil approach to communication has made my experience with PvP pretty darned unfun.

My favorites so far:

Mind/Psi/concealment/soul dom- able to control from invisibility, lock down anything but a giant monster, feed off the souls and minds of all who stand before her...'tis nice.

EM/Dark/soul brute- able to lockdown bosses as he smashes them to death. Able to come back from the brink of death at any point, and when that fails, come back from death.

Kin/elec/elec defender- able to sap enemies into tired helplessness, refill hp and endurance, buuf damage to the hilt, debuff damage to the hilt, buff speed, buff recovery, hold targets twice, and shock foes to death with a refuelable nuke.

Crab Arachnos soldier- AoE's to the hilt, huge defense and buffs to self and team, armor, dull pain, summanable pets, a hard hitting debuff...life is good.

Archery/Energy/munitions blaster- death from afar...enmass. boost range>buildup>aim>Rain of arrows>explosive arrow> rejoice over the fallen foes.

Robotics/forcefield/medicine/leadership/mace mastermind- it can handle most anything in the game so safely that notching things up is about a necessity.

There are many more, but those stood out as being fun enough to make me giggle with glee.

I'm not so sure about the color coding for a base, but the navigational signs would be nice.

Along the same lines, please unlock zone Teleport navigation wall items along with zone beacons. So when you get a 'Steel canyon' base tp beacon, you also unlock:

Wall detail, tech/arcane:

[Steel canyon>] (name of zone, right arrow)
[<Steel canyon] (name of zone, left arrow)
[Steel canyon^] (name of zone, forward arrow)
[Steel canyon] (name of zone)

Tech would be metal, color of text changes by SG color ala banners
Arcane would be stone, color of text changes by SG color ala banners
A 'plain' option would use just SG primary/secondary color options, without metal/stone.

Always carry at least a set of 3-4 purple inspirations. These are an excellent fallback..use them together at once and you will be able to survive ridiculous situations. A second spawn? AND an Ambush? A surprise AV? With three small purples, you are very hard to touch for a minute. With four, you are over the 'softcap' and enemies will only have a 5% chance of hitting you. That's right, 5 in a hundred. Good odds, I'd say, for 200 inf.

Oh, and stacked purples become far more powerful than any oranges, especially on squishier characters. Why? oranges are additive in their effects, but purples are multiplicative. The resistance means they will hurt you, just for a bit less. Defense makes sure that it never touches you, and enough will make their chances incredibly insignificant. (Compare 95% chance of being missed with 4 lucks to taking 60% damage with 4 sturdies.)

The Xplorer, vigilante and part-time private detective, entered the cave searching for the lost child "Pinocchio." Sources said the Circle of Thorns had lured him here. Best to find the boy before the mages and their demon antics got to him. What was that noise?

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

As somebody who's built up a tidy little personal VG, and plays hero-side with an SG that is very prestige focused, extra slots on those servers would be a very nice bonus.