Fallen Heroes, Villain Goals, and Factions My Way
By
ansetsuken,
Posted on: 2004-11-08 17:48 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Well my thought is that most villainous activities should be coded to be part of the framework of some 'master plan' in accordance with the Goals of Ego, Greed and so forth.
Perhaps there could be an 'ultimate relic' that theoretically grants the pinnacle of each Goal (unlimited wealth, universal destruction, etc), but in order to get to it, you must assemble several other Relics (stealing some from museums or heroes), put together some kind of cool device (stealing parts, repelling attacks upon your labs), and so on.
Perhaps Relics aligned to a certain Goal give lesser benefits to villains of another Goal.
That sort of thing.
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!
Well, I think I posted earlier that actions are implicitly more important than motivations when determining villains, not to discount motivations at all. It's how you do something, followed by why.
I would love, as a villain, some control over missions and strategy. I think, if the design were solid enough, the most fun would be to have a trickle down effect - higher level villains implementing plans (from a series of available options) that will trickle down into lower level content.
The upper level villain plans will sometime depend on the outcomes of other players who may not even be aware who they are working for. You get a cog in your wheel with some low level hero interfering and it gives the game a real vibrant feel.
The villain chooses a goal mission - within the framework provided here:
Motive: Money
Action: Chaos
Location: King's Row
Objective: Lower Property Values to drive people out. This is not feasible as a personal objective as it will notify too many heroes of your plans. (Higher level PVP, will ruin any of your sneakier goals).
Goals: 10-20 spawned missions for villains and heroes
Success: Over 50% successful villain completion. If heroes win 75%, your name will be linked to it (spawning some upper level hero missions against you, there is a chance of this even with success, but much lower).
A low level villain could get a mission like:
"My people tell me [VILLAIN] wants some people to cause havoc in the storefronts around King's Row. If you do a good job, you'll get your name circulated among the in-crowd and maybe you'll get some more work."
Some hero will get a contradictory mission, setting up some PVP if needed.
"Thugs are breaking into storefronts all over King's Row. You've got to stop them!"
That's a great idea, except for one big drawback -- it seems to depend on a pyramid structure. You couldn't have 10,000 level 40 villains determined to do the same thing if they have to depend on 100 level 5 villains to do it. Well, you could, but by inverting the pyramid you take away the accolade (or infamy, in this case) for all but a small percentage of the higher-level villains. You'd actually also invert the power structure, as well, as those 100 low-levels would determine the fates of all those high-levels -- and if someone's name was attached to the mission, the level 5 villain could send the level 40 villain a tell saying, "I'll do this mission for you -- if you fork over 20 million influence."
I really like the idea, but given the constant flux of characters I'm not sure how feasible it is. As a supervillain you may want to insititute a scheme such as lowering property values, but if there aren't any low-level villains to accomplish that goal you'd be stuck.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Well, you wouldn't want to make it completely dependant on players. It's easy enough to fill in NPCs to do the bulk of it. The generation of missions gives the lower levels more of a living, breathing experience.
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That's a great idea, except for one big drawback -- it seems to depend on a pyramid structure. You couldn't have 10,000 level 40 villains determined to do the same thing if they have to depend on 100 level 5 villains to do it.
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I see your concerns with this. Given that the level 50 villain could himself go out and complete those missions with a level 5 alt on the same server, I'm not sure how worried to be about it (yet). I'm sure the developers have good solid statistics for COH on how many player accounts are active in the last 30 days, how many of those players have at least one level 50, what the cross-server playing rate is, and so on. Ultimately, their numbers would dictate if the idea is feasible.
It seems likely that many level 50 villains will move on to some other game ('dude im gona go play the F4raGLE ROCK MMO its gonna PWN!!!'). Other level 50s will start lowbie alts. Others will enjoy the mastermind aspect of the games and plant missions, and others will duke it out in hands-on PVP. The ones who fail to leave may dabble in all three.
That kind of Supervillain end-game would probably not be the only way for a player to advance, merely the only way for a player to tell a story and pick up clever and distinctive badges. I also don't see any Supervillain-spawned missions as replacing lowbie content, but as supplementary optional content, supergroup-based content, whatever.
If Supervillains at those high levels could act in concert, joining a consortium with mutual goals, the pyramid collapses at the top again.
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Just as a point, Anarchy is not Chaos.
Common misconception, though.
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Just as evil and misguided tho 
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I'd like to think not, as I'm an anarchist.
On Justice:
Aufheben, level 50 MA/SR Natural Scrapper
Ansetsuken, level 39 MA/SR Natural Stalker
Member of the Experts of Justice / Chaos Crew
The more I play this game, and see the interactions between villain groups, the more I wonder if the devs aren't already thinking along these lines. (I mean, Lord Recluse mused earlier that he must have forgotten... to have me rubbed out? Oh, no!)
I might have been wrong about the Circle of Thorns. All of their rituals with captured citizens have comments like "Soon you will be one of us" and "prepare for your transformation." Are they not Power villains, but self-transforming Ego villains?
If no, no wonder they were trying to put together a deal on technomagic with the Freakshow. Yes, magic for the Freakshow, another set of Ego villains. Interesting.
That would explain why the Vahzilok, the Clockwork, and the Circle of Thorns are all involved in the Positron Task Force...
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I might have been wrong about the Circle of Thorns. All of their rituals with captured citizens have comments like "Soon you will be one of us" and "prepare for your transformation." Are they not Power villains, but self-transforming Ego villains?
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Spoiler ...
My understanding (At level 32) is that the COT use normal human hosts to bring more of their demon comrades to Earth. So they are not transforming themselves per se - they are empowering their pals (who then empower their pals, and so on, and so on). Somehow demons possessing humans doesn't strike me as Egotistical - if anything, I'd think it was demeaning. But they can't get anything done trapped in another dimension. As to their larger goals, I still don't know. There is a lot of squabbling over ancient artifacts between villain factions, though - offhand I would guess they're just building their numbers so they can have the best shot at getting all the loot. Whether they want the loot to increase their Power or enable their lust for Domination, I'm not sure. The two aren't really mutually exclusive. I'd vote for Power though.
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You're being confusing. My response was to Jeff Kuroi, who was clearly advocating "rid (the world of) the entire population" and "ultimate evil."
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1: The name is JeTT, not Jeff. >.>
2: My statement was that his mentality is that he views everyone as "lesser" and deserves to die, but not that he would kill everyone. After all no one, who doesn't leave room for alliances, survives, despite how physically powerful they are.
I don't have time to read nine pages, so I'm sorry if this has been said before.
One betrayal is not enough.
Referencing the comics (which ought to always been the first reference for game mechanics like this) there is precedent for characters switching back and forth a number of times. Sometimes the change is insignificant, sometimes not. This is what I'd propose:
3 total betrayals.
If you're a hero, you can become a villain. You have a chance to think better of it and become a hero again, but you are tainted. You have the potential to fall again. If you do, there's no going back. That's it. Even if the hero did repent another time, no one would trust him.
A villain can become a hero but be lured back to his old ways. If he turns his back on evil a second time, though, he has proved to himself that he can overcome his base urges (as well as essentially alienating any villainous contacts he might have had). Relapse, after all, is part of recovery. (Example: Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was created as an evil vampire, then his soul was returned to him. In the series, he loses his soul again and becomes evil once more. In a climactic battle, his soul is restored and he is good again. He never again turns evil.)
This is not only better for story, but better for gameplay. Similar to the "three respecs in the life of a character" mechanic, it allows players to experiment without necessarily ruining their character on the first try. However, the shift is not insignificant. Players have a chance to experience either side and determine which they enjoy best. Characters are given a chance to redeem themselves or relapse into their evil ways.
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Spoiler ...
My understanding (At level 32) is that the COT use normal human hosts to bring more of their demon comrades to Earth. So they are not transforming themselves per se - they are empowering their pals (who then empower their pals, and so on, and so on).
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It's a giant evil pyramid scheme! Does that mean their motivation is Money?
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2: My statement was that his mentality is that he views everyone as "lesser" and deserves to die, but not that he would kill everyone. After all no one, who doesn't leave room for alliances, survives, despite how physically powerful they are.
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Sorry about the name gaffe.
However, you were clearly talking about Ultimate Evil -- your words, my caps -- which does NOT leave room for allies, in my opinion. Any evil which compromises cannot be ultimate. As Ultimate Evil I'm thinking of Cthulhu, Sauron, Senator Palpatine, and George Steinbrenner rolled up into one.
A character, less powerful but of the same temperament, who is anti-social and possibly psychotic who merely wants to kill or destroy is clearly a Chaos villain in the way I envisioned it. If you disagree, or think there should be an additional category to account for your concept, please explain how such a villain's contacts and missions would be materially different from Chaos as I have it.
Bear in mind, of course, that in City of Heroes, nobody has to do missions if they choose not to. They can simply hunt the streets for likely targets. That a Villain undertakes a role in Chaos doesn't necessarily mean he must work for anybody or in any system. Also bear in mind that I'm not the designer and it doesn't cost me any money to change my mind; we're only hashing through the conceptual bits in case the devs are listening.
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I don't have time to read nine pages, so I'm sorry if this has been said before.
One betrayal is not enough.
Referencing the comics (which ought to always been the first reference for game mechanics like this) there is precedent for characters switching back and forth a number of times.
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You assume too much; I'm not completely ignorant of comic book storylines or popular themes in literature. Whether or not an element has precedent in comic lore has no bearing on whether or not the resulting system can be exploited. It seems apparent that Villains will have subtly different power sets than Heroes, and any Hero who falls into evil ways must slightly alter his build in order to fit the Villain sets available. Permitting characters to become Evil, then Good is essentially a free character respec for Good, by turning evil and back, and a free respec for Evil by falling a second time. I fear this would be the case unless, of course, the developers are careful not to let this happen. They have already said flatly they do not propose to exchange uberness for real-world cash, so giving two free respecs to purchasers of City of Villains sounds like walking that thin line.
The idea works, as lore, for those players primarily interested in telling a story. Some players will not be interested in the story potential but only in how the mechanics work, what benefits can be extracted, and where the loopholes are.
It may be possible to design supporting game mechanics that limit those exploits. What exactly those mechanics are, none of us can say, because there are many assumptions being made about how COV works in the first place; and we may not agree that two free respecs is an exploit at all. I lean toward restriction at the cost of story, but if good game mechanics can be devised, the three-betrayals idea could be very useful.
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Permitting characters to become Evil, then Good is essentially a free character respec for Good, by turning evil and back, and a free respec for Evil by falling a second time.
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Actually, the fix here seems pretty simple. Just save the "Hero State" of the character when he Falls and respecs to his "Villain State"; if he then chooses to Redeem himself, he simply reverts to his previous Hero State (if he has levelled in the meantime, he can only respec his new powers not covered by his saved Hero State). And vice versa for Villains.
Great thread. Didn't want this to get lost in the upcoming inactive thread purge. (It's been a couple of weeks - we're due for another on Friday!)
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No, no, no, I'm saying that Ue-B4R, Eater of Worlds is a character concept that is too evil to code. It appears that you and I agree that anybody playing this villain type would have to learn to accept the limitations of any system structure put in place: just as it is impossible in a shared gameworld for any Hero to actually truly eradicate crime, it is impossible for Ue-B4R to actually destroy the world.
However, Heroes can fight crime one villain at a time. What lesser, intermediate goals will Ue-B4R have, short of destroying the world? Destroying a country, well, we don't have any. Destroying a state or county... don't have those either. Destroying a city ... well, there's only one city, and it's shared. Destroying a city block? Damned if I know how you'd permit that in a shared world; take away the buildings and there's no place to do door missions. You're left with destroying people, or destroying things in instanced missions.
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I kind of like the idea of a villain bent on destruction... and while it's not possible given the current content of the game, I think it could be made possible without changing the fundamental play system. Just a general sort of brainstorm: what if you could take a mission which creates an instanced zone, with access permitted to two teams - one hero team and one villain team?
(Now I realize this possiblity depends on how pvp is implemented, and I also realize that there are many people who want no part of the griefing and bad sportsmanship seemingly inherent in MMO pvp. That said, this is just a brainstorm.)
So the villain team has goals to destroy things, such as bomb a building, or take out a power substation, or warp and rip apart a section of monorail track -- and the heroes have an opposing mission to stop them. Yes, it is guaranteed that one group will succeed and one group will fail -- but this sort of mission would be purely optional, taken from a contact who is not in your story-progression-PvE-contact series, and would just be for fun. Alternatively, these instanced missions could be indoors, through a door in a normal zone like steel canyon or atlas park... and if the villains succeed, everyone would see the windows at the top of the building blow out, or something, and the heroes would be thrown out. Or something suitably comic-book.
Just some thoughts. Oh, and to Fishwan: Excellent post. I started reading about the motivations and my jaw dropped. Great job! 
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Just a general sort of brainstorm: what if you could take a mission which creates an instanced zone, with access permitted to two teams - one hero team and one villain team?
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Well, of course. Destroying things in instanced zones is about the only practical way I can think of for things to be destroyed without re-writing public zones every tick to update all the current carnage. Missions, allowing both Hero and Villain types to play each others' foils, would be a very good way to do this, as you suggest.
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Just some thoughts. Oh, and to Fishwan: Excellent post. I started reading about the motivations and my jaw dropped. Great job!
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Thank you! I'm not sure it carries any weight with developers, and they may well have their own reasons for retaining the Origin magic/mutation/etc for Villains, but I hope it gets them thinking about possibilities other than the Origins we get as heroes.
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I'd like to think not, as I'm an anarchist.
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Anarchical societies don't seem to get very far.
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Anarchical societies don't seem to get very far.
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Yeah, but somehow anarchical threads can survive for 14+ months with no posts.
JOIN ME! in my anarchial revolution!
Yes, in this thread it has been mentioned several times that there are gradients of goodness and evil in the real world, and in real stories, which are not reflected in the game mechanics presented here. Given that the computer itself does not understand player motivation -- it can only provide player choices -- I'm not sure we're at the point where characters can have the power to break game mechanic rules but claim they were doing it for heroic intentions, or vice-versa to adopt an arrest-the-bad-guys code but do it as a villainous vigilante. Your suggestions are welcomed on how to code those specific behaviors into game mechanic choices while keeping griefing at bay.
The Villain endgame could (and in my opinion, should) permit the super-villain to set up his own few network of contacts and load them with missions for smaller villains. To maintain their uniqueness, these contacts would have to have a large number of choices to pick from: attitudes, variable targets and goals, many different ways of speaking and blanks to insert those targets and goals, costume and "look" choices, and so on. The Villain could put them in his Superbase in an outer foyer where other players could access them.
Of course, most of it would have to be automated or computer calculated, especially rewards, otherwise you get missions like 'use this temporary atomic megadeath power on one Hellion and win 150,000 influence and 2,000,000 XP.'
That would make for a fun villain endgame, depending on where one decides the 'endgame' is. Level 40? Level 50? If you set it at 50, what endgame is left when levels cap at 75?