Fallen Heroes, Villain Goals, and Factions My Way
By
ansetsuken,
Posted on: 2004-11-08 17:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Face it -- any crime in Paragon City is going to be organized crime. The disorganized kind just doesn't last long. How is an average supercriminal to get away with the most minor crime in a city where Sister Psyche can read minds?
The organization of crime in Paragon, in my dream model, would be around Goals. Goals for Villains are like Origins for Heroes. Instead of Magic, Mutation, Science, Technology and Natural, the Villains will pick from Power, Chaos, Ego, Money, and Domination.
Power is personal power over the forces of the universe: magic. It adjoins Domination and Chaos (natural and mutation), and opposes Ego and Money the same way magic opposes science and technology. Power villains are Hellions (who steal magic artifacts), the Circle of Thorns, and so on. Power missions will be to seek out artifacts, relics, and spells in museums, or seek to rescue a captured sorcerer to learn his secrets; they oppose Ego and Money by robbing banks, destroying labs, and so on. Power contacts can be evil sorcerers and wizards, alchemists, scribes, and those who keep the Secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know.
Chaos is a philosophy of ignoring the boundaries of society and civilization, embodied by the chaotic process of gene mutation. It adjoins Power and Ego nicely, and opposes Money and Domination. Domination opposes Chaos for obvious reasons, and in a world without rules and structure, the artificial construct of Money is meaningless. Power villains include Outcasts and others. Chaos missions will be to undermine everything in society: rob banks, kidnap politicians, dump diamonds in the river for no reason, and so on. Chaos contacts would be warlords, gang leaders, and other lunatics out to destroy for no reason.
Ego is a desire to become a figure of power, not in what does or learns or owns, but in what one is With advanced scientific techniques, and Ego villain remakes himself. It adjoins Chaos and Money and opposes Domination and Power. The perfect Ego villains are the Clockwork King, a man who planted his brain into a machine to become all-powerful and built an army of robots in his image, and Dr. Vahzilok. Ego missions would be to learn new scientific secrets by capturing top researchers, stealing information, and so on; or to thwart the evil Domination villains who would try to enslave the Ego villain. Ego contacts could be mad scientists, twisted doctors, and so on.
Money is a desire to accumulate wealth and property and technology. It is a very structured kind of villainy, for the value of money depends on a world structure to support an economy. It adjoins Domination and Ego, both good matches, and opposes Chaos and Power. Chaos is anathema to financial stability, and Power cannot be confined to civil norms. Money villains would include the Crey Corporation. Money missions could be to leverage real estate grabs, seize assets, repossess on loans, acquire buildings or valuable artwork, or to destroy the evil bases of Chaos and Power that oppose them. Money contacts could be bankers, financiers, investors, Cryptic's shareholders, etc.
Domination is the old take-over-the-world schtick based on learning the best techniques and having the best equipment. It is extremely structured, as is Money. It adjoins Money and Power and opposes the two forces that epitomize individuality and independence (Ego and Chaos). Domination villains can include forces like the 5th Column. Domination missions can be to plant mind-control devices, brutally curb uprisings against the command structure, or to simply oppose the dastardly Egos and Chaoses. Domination contacts can be corrupt lawyers, crooked politicians, bribed judges, militant dictator-colonels, and so forth.
The Fallen Hero could use his contacts to quickly advance through the ranks of the crime syndicates which have these philosophies. Or he could hunt on the streets until he has proved his evilness, but this would take longer (no fat mission bonuses here). In any case, a lone-wolf villain would need a structure of this kind to help support him and provide the kind of mutual protection and goal-seeking that he and his evil overlords need.
"Hey," you say, "these sound like factions." You're pretty bright. Let me elaborate a little in the next post.
Power, Chaos, Ego, Money and Domination can indeed be factions in the City of Villains, if I were on the design team. 
At the low end of the scale, there is some synergy. Money and Ego villains can work together, to a degree, because one philosophy begets the other, to an extent. Scientific research requires money to succeed, and good science can make a profit in return. Villains on this level can sometimes cooperate with evil NPCs, or at least ignore one another as long as nobody throws a punch; they are focused on a common goal, more or less. This will allow low-level Villains to PVP against each other without too much threat from evil NPC villains.
As the villains rise in power, however, the philosophies purify and the syndicates become increasingly fractured. Around the time that DOs are available, a villain becomes Kill On Sight for the two opposed factions (that is, Chaos is opposed by Money and Domination). Villains can still PVP with each other, but Villains of opposing Goals will have to watch out for groups of NPCs that oppose them (or would assist their PVP opponent).
When SOs become available, the villain goals are completely separate, because the pursuit of money is fundamentally incompatible with ruling the world or seeking scientific perfection; the seeking of chaos requires one to throw out the rules of scientific study and ritual magic. At this point the Villain is surrounded by factions trying to kill him. PVP here is much more difficult and dangerous, because most of what's on the street is going to try to kill you, with the occasional safe haven among allies. (Well, safe as long as you don't attack them.)
Around level 35, a Villain is a target even to his underlings. This is PVP free-for-all, and nobody is safe from attack by any NPC from any faction.
Of course, the implementation of this is going to be tricky, depending on what kind of PVP that City of Villains will have: in-mission only, by duel only, free-for-all zones, level-restricted, faction-restricted, guild-restricted, whatever. I readily admit that there is a lot of room here for unfair play -- lurking among allies and taking potshots at a player, for instance, or luring a player into a mob of his enemies -- but it's tough to propose specific solutions until we know more about when PVP will occur and how success (and failure) will be tallied. (That is, if you wait until a Villain is 99% dead from fighting mobs, and you get in the killing blow, should you only get 1% of a PVP kill? Less? More?)
I only hope that we can learn more about Cryptic's plans for PVP in City of Villains. We do know it will be by consent in City of Heroes, but how much consent will Villains get? How much structure, how much monitoring? Where will PVP take place, and how would factions fit in, if at all?
Only they know, now, what plans if any have been laid. If anything here sparks an idea among the devs, by all means, I give them my blessing to run with it.
i just have one question about the original post. what if i want to become a fallen hero and so do 5 or 6 others. Shouldnt there be like a super-villain task force where we are sent by a villain to do his bidding until he believes we are truely evil???
just a thought from a crazy Canadian 
Captain Canuk 21 Eng/Eng Blaster
Protector
I think you're forgetting an important one: Ideology.
I think that deserves equal billing in villain motivations. Not even villains within a single organization need to have the same motivation.
Hm. I would say that a Fallen Hero task force within City of Heroes would be very difficult to do right.
For one, in the context of a story, would Lex Luthor give Superman eight or nine chances to become Evil? I doubt it; Lex isn't a fool. If Superman is given one big, end-all opportunity to betray Good and eight or nine times in a row, he fails to do so, why would he continue to get second chances?
Second, the idea that a Hero can fall from grace should immediately move him into the City of Villains villains-only zones. The Fallen Hero should no longer interact with regular Heroes or spend time in Paragon's drone-protected zones. His former allies would no longer trust him, either!
Third, if Heroes suddenly could become Fallen Heroes (or pre-Villains) in the regular COH zones, you'd have an instant PVP team roaming around Founders' Falls or Independence Port or whatever. We don't know if Villain vs. Hero PVP within the Paragon City zones is something the dev team is planning on.
If there is some kind of Fall, it would have to simply be to leave Paragon cold turkey and transfer your toon to COV. Given that COV will have different powersets, it's likely that any hero-to-villain conversion will involve something like the respec, only pre-login: your Blaster becomes a Destructor and you sit around with the level 35 (or whatever) powersets, making up stuff until you've got what you like. You'd throw out your Hero build and make a Villain build using Villain powersets. Once you build your character, you log into City of Villains. This isn't well-suited to a multi-player experience; imagine how tedious it would be to have to spend an hour re-building your toon and then wait on four or five others doing the same thing before you can even begin.
You shouldn't be able to have a Fallen Hero become a Hero again, though. It should be one-way and permanent, otherwise it essentially becomes a free respec.
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I think you're forgetting an important one: Ideology.
I think that deserves equal billing in villain motivations. Not even villains within a single organization need to have the same motivation.
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Precisely what do you have in mind with Ideology? In what way would you implement this for players? I didn't want to get into the idea that any player-formed Villain Group would have to be the same Goal/origin. They could, conceivably, be made up of villains with multiple Goals. It may be an uneasy peace, but there you go.
Even a group such as the 5th Column uses different means to its end of domination: it uses technology, and werewolves, and vampires, and the master race, and so on. It has the take-over-the-world endgame goal but it has different gambits that it uses to achieve this.
Can you elaborate?
I like your ideas a lot, Fishwan.
First off, I'd like to say that the Official City of Villains website does seem to answer some of the questions you raise.
For instance, player villains will start off without powers and work their way up through the villain organization of their choice in order to gain powers.
This would seem to make creating a 'fallen hero' difficult (although you could say in a new character's backstory that they lost their powers or volunteered to have them stripped when they joined the villains).
Also, the site clearly says that villains will start off in the Fallen Isles, then travel to Paragon City to wreak havoc.
The site seems to me to indicate that most PvP will be base raids in pursuit of Relics of Power (which could be designed along the lines of the factions you propose), or PvP missions. No mention yet of FFA zones.
Keep up the good ideas!
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
That's a brilliant set of ideas, complete with cool names and everything. It makes me want to design a game and have you on my team! But first, you'll have to lower your level to 10 and prove you want to be on the team... mwa-ha-ha-ha!
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Hmmm, I forgot that one....
An anarchist who believes the only way for people to be free is to topple the "establishment", a religious fanatic who wants to "cleanse" the city, an iconoclast who wants to make everyone equal by tearing down the most established heroes, an eco-terrorist who wants to stop pollution by any means necessary.
I've had several villain ideas and few of them fit into the "I'm a bad person and I want to do bad things" mold. Sometimes villains think they are doing the right thing. Their methods are what make them villains.
Take Magneto for instance. He may have some of the other motivations, but his primary motivation is to protect the mutant "race", same as Professor X. His methods are different, making him a villain.
Actions determine a villain, not his thoughts. This is why there are times when heroes and villains can team up for a common cause - they both BELIEVE in the cause.
In a super-heroic genre, villains believe the ends justify the means. Heroes do not. That's the difference between them. This is a case for certain heroes becoming villains (as I stated in an earlier post, I don't think there is that much of a difference between many of the so-called heroes in the game now and the villains they fight).
The Devouring Earth strike me as ideological villains (although, to be honest, I don't recall all of the storyline specifics). At the base, they're no different than a super-hero group that is very environmental conscious. The hero group goes after the environmental offenders and stops pollution. The villain group decides that everyone who is not part of the solution is part of the problem and acts accordingly.
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Even a group such as the 5th Column uses different means to its end of domination: it uses technology, and werewolves, and vampires, and the master race, and so on. It has the take-over-the-world endgame goal but it has different gambits that it uses to achieve this.
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As for the 5th column, I'm wondering if this Council of War storyline in the next release doesn't have to do with a basic ideological difference within the Column. A faction of the group believes that the 5th Column as a whole is losing it's focus - racial purity, aryan ideals, etc.
I guess my point is that motivation and goals are linked, but not identical. Taking over the world is a goal, but it's not a motivation. WHY do you want to take over the world would be a better question.
evil?
who gets to define evil? everyone has their motivations...
evil is not the word i would use.
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Second, the idea that a Hero can fall from grace should immediately move him into the City of Villains villains-only zones. The Fallen Hero should no longer interact with regular Heroes or spend time in Paragon's drone-protected zones. His former allies would no longer trust him, either!
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Why move them immediately? Why can't they be in the hero mix still? Um.. lying.. .yo!, you lie, and deceive people into trusting you so you can function in your normal hero society while you secretly brood and build your evil empire. I mean come on. There isn't instant Evil guy funding. You take the resource of good and secretly put it towards evil, and wait till its all done for the right for the big reveal. The Fallen Hero TF can be you and your minions or fellow Falling Heroes stealing all the materials you need, under a different look (pantyhose masks and such) to create your evil persona. Mission objectives: Building Materials, Information, Bank Heist for money, assasinate people that are going to reveal your secret plot, Evil unvailing party (public selfish deed)... SOOooo easy to pull the wool over the eyes of naive heroes!!! muh ahahahahahaha.
Destruction: Someone who doesn't wish to rule the world, but rid the entire population. The ultimate evil. Someone who doesn't need minions, but has them because the unworthy underlings serve you in some dire hope that you won't destroy them as well.
Sometimes villains don't need motivation.
Let's bear in mind that not every villain has grand schemes or overweening pride. There should always be room for smaller motivations and criminals that are more like twisted antiheroes than archvillains. Vengeance is an obvious motivation for such characters, but there are others--obsession with a particular person, a never-ending search for the ultimate challenge, or even the well-being of a loved one who can only be saved by leading a life of crime. Such characters may join (or be forced into) a criminal organization, but only as a means to their own ends.
Even in comics, the bad guy isn't always a villain in his own eyes.
The Way of the Corruptor (Arc ID 49834): Hey villains! Do something for yourself for a change--like twisting the elements to your will. All that's standing in your way are a few secret societies...and Champions of the four elements.
that was stated previously. It is true there is villains that exist, who don't view themselves as villains, just doing what they need to do.
However, there are also villains who care nothing for money, territory, or dominion, only the conquest of others. It could fit into the Power grouping I guess, however, not in the gathering of magical items. However, simply caring for having the personal strength to eliminate any who cross them. Pride, Strength, that is their motivation.
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Hmmm, I forgot that one....
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Careful, your secret identity is showing, Fishwa -- I mean, Lord Recluse.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
I would have to agree. Lol.
In thinking about consensual PvP, I got an idea.
Villian zones only villians can enter. Hero zones only heroes can enter. And Conflict zones that both can enter that is free PvP. It's consenual, because you have to enter the zone to make it so. Of course, you couldn't have zones like this that have contact missions, noone should be forced into such a zone. It's an idea... one of, I'm sure, many that are floating around.
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In thinking about consensual PvP, I got an idea.
Villian zones only villians can enter. Hero zones only heroes can enter. And Conflict zones that both can enter that is free PvP. It's consenual, because you have to enter the zone to make it so. Of course, you couldn't have zones like this that have contact missions, noone should be forced into such a zone. It's an idea... one of, I'm sure, many that are floating around.
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That exact idea, too. See my sig.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Your evil overlord may clamp power-suppressant cuffs (or a weakening spell, or a necklace of Ottercreekite) on you or something...
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SPOON!!
Hmm. I'm thinking that your concept for a fallen hero is a little extreme, and that maybe the reverse is more applicable.
If you have a villain who wants to turn good, how long should they have to endure before they are trusted? The Juggernaut has been trying to be a good guy for quite some time now, and still no one believes him. If we were going to have a method of transferring from CoV to CoH, then a system similar to yours would have to be used.
Going from CoH to CoV is much easier. The example you use is extreme. First, Superman is called the Big Blue Boyscout for his pure ideals. Second, Lex Luthor is a major super criminal who has no need for someone on Superman's level for anything other than as a tool to accomplish some goal. If he ever thought Superman was turning evil, he'd give him some task where it'd succeed even if Superman betrayed him (which a free-thinking Superman would certainly do).
So, the Lex Luthor/Superman example is far from the normal fallen hero. The question shouldn't be whether Lex Luthor would believe it if Superman switched sides, but whether Superman or Lex Luthor would believe it if Batman switched sides. Read Kingdom Come for that answer.
How far from being a villain is Batman, anyway? The Punisher? Wolverene? Ghost Rider? These are characters that are full-on heroes, but give them a push and they'll cross the line. The slightest change in Batman's methods would offend the Big Blue Boyscout, and he'd be deemed a villain.
In actuality, it doesn't matter whether the other bad guys think that a hero has truly fallen. It only matters what the other heroes believe.
Another scenario; the hero that never was. I'm assuming that most everyone has seen The Incredibles by now, so what kind of hero would that one character have been if allowed to remain a hero? If capable of doing some of the other stuff we know that character to do, he/she never had the correct motivations to be a hero in the first place, so the slip to villainy was inevitable. Even if he did good for a while, his/her nature would put an end to it eventually.
One of the best examples of this is in one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons. The one where Mr. Burns loses all of his money, and Lisa helps him get it back. In an honest effort to do good, Mr. Burns creates Lil Lisa's Slurry, one of the most offensive things he's ever done. Mr. Burns simply doesn't have the conscience that could stop him from doing evil things. He really thought he was doing good, but it was horribly evil.
Just my thoughts. I think that your other ideas are great, though. The motivations are very cool.
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Sometimes villains don't need motivation.
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This is 100% false. A creature without motivation is a slug, the proverbial bump on a log. You don't wake up in the morning and decide on whim to destroy the world or rob the bank. Even the dog telling you to do it is motivation - granted you're insane, but it's motivation.
Would most folks here agree that the best recent example of a fallen hero is Hal Jordan, the former Silver Age Green Lantern?
He was the prototype goodguy- straight laced, hansome, clean cut, and by-the-book. He had tremendous willpower, courage, and was never, ever afraid of anything. Then, somebody blew up his home town (Mongul and the Cyborg, I think). The lose of so much life caused something inside Jordan to snap. He wanted to undo the wrongs done to him. When the Green Lantern Corps tried to stop him, he KILLED them all, destroyed the Guardians, absorbed all the power on Ioa, and then tried to remake space and time in an image that best suited him.
The reason: because life was cruel, and he wanted to use his power to make it less cruel, less unfair.
It's a simply motivation. Perhaps even noble. But he was clearly a villain, as he was willing to kill, maim, and destroy in order to rebuild the universe as HE wanted it.
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Sometimes villains don't need motivation.
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This is 100% false. A creature without motivation is a slug, the proverbial bump on a log. You don't wake up in the morning and decide on whim to destroy the world or rob the bank. Even the dog telling you to do it is motivation - granted you're insane, but it's motivation.
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AH! but "the Blob" (depending on which version of the movie I guess (NO, not the Marvel character, the oozing pseudo alive creature) was consuming as part of its nature, and perceived as evil, and "good" people, heroes if you will, battled against it. Its possible to have a human form bad guy with a blob attitude, consuming or doing its natural "thing". And yes, I would not mind playing a Villain who carries out that style of "evil". So I guess I'm agreeing with you because the slug/blob thought is very close, but I'm disagreeing only that I think it is and should be possible to play an origin/motivation like that. I consume because my physical state causes me to grow, and do such things, not because I benefit from it.
I've been thinking about several game mechanics for COV and for entertainment purposes I'm going to throw them out for you to enjoy and critique. If you don't think my ideas will work, please propose solutions instead of attacking me personally -- PVP hasn't started yet.
I began to think of this only as how to allow a Fallen Heroes mechanic, but it branched out to cover villain factions and contacts, which all tie together nicely.
Falling from grace and turning evil is one of the oldest concepts in our literature base. Anybody ever heard of, um, Lucifer? The Fallen Angel? Yeah, thought so. Western literature is ripe with stories of this kind and COV must allow this. However, it should not be easy and it definitely should not be a repeatable thing.
Think of the difficulties of the following comic-book situation as Superman tries to turn evil:
LEX LUTHOR: Welcome to my Secret Evil Base, Superman, and may I congratulate you on choosing Evil for your superpowered needs.
SUPERMAN: Thanks.
LUTHOR: We have to get a copy of your drivers' license and finish your new hire paperwork, but in the meantime, here's a copy of my secret evil passkey.
SUPERMAN: And the self-destruct code for the base, the computer access for all your upcoming evil plans, and the combination to the vault where you keep suppressed evidence?
LUTHOR: Here you go. Okay, I'm off to steal some groceries for the super-refrigerator. Don't go blowing up my base while I'm gone, ha ha!
SUPERMAN: Ha. Ha.
LUTHOR: Ha ha!
SUPERMAN: Ha ha. (pulls out a crumpled script from his pocket) No. I would? Not. Blow up, your face. BASE! Not face. I would not blow, up? Your base.
LUTHOR: Waaaaiiit a minute, something is fishy here.
SUPERMAN: What?
LUTHOR: You have pockets?
This would never, ever happen. Any hero who decides to turn evil is going to have to prove himself to any villain before he'll be trusted. He's going to have to labor under a cloud of suspicion until he's demonstrated his commitment to evil ways. This may mean harsher penalties for mission failure (for the evil overlords would see this as betrayal).
Most of the missions of this kind will be timed, and tough. Some of them will be complete setups: he is pitting you against another (possibly NPC?) Fallen Hero who thinks YOU are the target. The evil overlords may even send you along with a team of his minions who will attack (ambush) you in an instant if you fail -- they'll jump right into the mission with you and start beating the tar out of you. "Hero! Lickspittle! I knew we couldn't trust you!"
Failing your evil masters may set you back quite a long way and you'll have to work harder to overcome it. Falling from grace, in other words, is like a Trial that goes on until you've recovered your former Good level.
Not at the regular XP progress, heavens no. You'd get the same XP per mob, but as a Fallen Hero your mission bonuses would be huge. They'd have to be, since your risk of failure is also huge.
Your evil overlord may clamp power-suppressant cuffs (or a weakening spell, or a necklace of Ottercreekite) on you or something, so you don't have your full array of powers. If I arranged it, a level 30 hero may have to "fall" as low as 10th level to start, but he'd have more than just his level 10 powers: maybe 12, or 14 (so he can travel). When he completes a mission and bumps up to level 12, he unlocks more of his previous powers.
With them a Fallen Hero couldn't exactly breeze through each mission -- he'd only have one or two powers more than an equivalent level Villain and on those, his damage is scaled down -- but succeeding at a mission would reward him well enough that leveling back up to his previous place wouldn't be a chore. Once he makes it to his previous level, he's just a Villain (but maybe he gets a Fallen Hero badge).
But wait! I hear you cry. Evil overlord? I'm eeeeeeevil, I don't need no stinking Kingpin or Lex Luthor to trust me or to give me favors! Evil people don't have to follow a structure or join a faction or participate in a hierarchy!
See next post, sunshine, I'll tell you all about it.