Redside is So Much Better Designed

I still hate how villain-side content land-locks me on the same island, visiting the same five doors, following the same 5 routes day after day. Once I hit Sharkhead Island, I know I'll be bored to tears for the next five levels because I'll I'll see is grey buildings, black sand and the Hell Forge.

Oh. Joy.

Not that there's much to see even if you zone. You switch from one black-grey-brown dump into another that's almost exactly the same, anyway.

And as much as people talk about redundant missions and faceless contacts hero-side, the fact of the matter is I've been here for five years and I STILL don't remember all their names, locations and missions. Villain-side, I knew all the contacts with all the missions and all the locations within a few months. Less is not always more.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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I still hate how villain-side content land-locks me on the same island, visiting the same five doors, following the same 5 routes day after day. Once I hit Sharkhead Island, I know I'll be bored to tears for the next five levels because I'll I'll see is grey buildings, black sand and the Hell Forge.

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Sharkhead is far from my favourite zone, but I'll take that any day over being sent halfway across the city to Perez Park by a contact in Founders Falls.

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Not that there's much to see even if you zone. You switch from one black-grey-brown dump into another that's almost exactly the same, anyway.

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The visuals of the zones are a matter of individual taste, but at least the enemy layout of redside makes some kind of sense. The CoT in Sharkhead are in Potters Field - a creepy graveyard that people avoid (understandably.)

Now let's go to Founders Falls, where we step off the train and, oh look, there's an 8 foot tall demon sacrificing some poor civilian in the middle of the street in broad daylight. I mean... what?

There are plenty of enemy groups that I can accept loitering around the streets, especially in the less populated or more run down areas... but Portal Corp should spend less time worrying about what's going on in other dimensions and more time worrying about the behemoths standing around in the car park.

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And as much as people talk about redundant missions and faceless contacts hero-side, the fact of the matter is I've been here for five years and I STILL don't remember all their names, locations and missions. Villain-side, I knew all the contacts with all the missions and all the locations within a few months. Less is not always more.

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Villainside contacts are memorable - they have unique appearances and well defined speech patterns. Heroside contacts are a pack of sickly looking (what's with the coughing?) non-entities who all talk in exactly the same way, and for every interesting mission they hand out they've got three defeat alls to do first.

Okay, what can I say that hasn't already been said.

Red-side has much less of the "Run all the way to China...then come back" style of mission arc. While there IS still some of that, it's not too bad. Granted, some people don't LIKE being zone-locked for the duration of an arc. But, personally, I feel there's enough variety within the various arcs that it never gets that claustrophobic.

I didn't really notice it at first. Mainly because my first toon got ground to 50 mostly by streetsweeping with a bit of teaming here and there (NOT a recommended playstyle if you like moderate levels of advancement). However, I took my stalker from 1-50 mainly by soloing missions. Then, wen I came back blue-side to do the same thing with a blue-toon, I started REALLY noticing the sprawl of the missions.

Suffice it to say that it could use at least a LITTLE looking into.

On the flip side, red-side IS unrelentingly dingy. I know it's supposed to be darker and edgier. It still doesn't help that spending too much time over there triggers S.A.D.. I built my first villain days after my first toon. It went unplayed for nearly 6 MONTHS. And it was the only other toon I had for a while!


As to the red-side "Oh look! MORE LONGBOW!" issue. PLEASE don't get me started on that. I'd just overload the language filter.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

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Has anyone ever used Super Speed in zones like Mercy, Port Oakes or Cap au Diable? heh.

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Yes, works quite nicely.

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I've never understood why hunt missions were removed on Red side.

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Because the great majority of people hate them.

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Blue side you can choose a mission or a hunt. If you don't like hunts don't choose them, but at least they have a choice. I see no benefit taking away that choice.

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Quite often the choice is between two hunts, or between a hunt and not doing any more missions for that contact.

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Red-side has much less of the "Run all the way to China...then come back" style of mission arc. While there IS still some of that, it's not too bad. Granted, some people don't LIKE being zone-locked for the duration of an arc. But, personally, I feel there's enough variety within the various arcs that it never gets that claustrophobic.

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Enough variety? There isn't enough variety in the WHOLE GAME villain-side, let alone enough variety within a single zone. Black Victorian-style buildings give way to grey tower blocks, which give way to brown rackety shack ghettos... ALL OVER THE PLACE. The only way I can tell whether I'm in St. Martial or Nerva Archipelago or Mercy City is if I fly up and take a look at the whole map. It's like how sometimes you can't tell if you're in Steel Canyon or Atlas Park or Galaxy City... But then you head over to King's Row or Faultline or, hell, Skyway City, and you know where you are. Grandville is memorable, I'll give you that, but beyond that? All black, grey and brown.

*edit*
I didn't mean to be a jerk with this. It's just that it really seems like they wasted a perfectly good opportunity to add at least SOME variety to the game. And I'm right with you on:

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As to the red-side "Oh look! MORE LONGBOW!" issue. PLEASE don't get me started on that. I'd just overload the language filter.

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Post 30, that simply kills, and it grates ever more in a game with this little variety. Too much Longbow and their bases are terribly optimized for performance. That's actually the symptom of a greater disease - CoV doesn't seem to have a point for the most part. I thought I remembered all the story arcs being good and engaging on my first pass through to 50. On my second pass through, I realised they were all "Go there and do that for me, then I'll pay you." For heroes it's kind of justified as... Well, you're a hero! Plus, most arcs either advance the plot (Countess Crey has been arrested and convicted!) or reveal some crucial canon information (The Circle of Thorns are 14 000 years old, you say?). Villain-side... Not so much. "Hey, we're gonna mess up the Scrapyarders real good! Go beat them up in these four abandoned buildings!" or "I hate Council! Go beat them up!" is a story, technically, but not a very interesting one. These story arcs leave neither interesting information behind nor seem to matter much one way or the other. Hero-side, when you take out the Nemesis 40-45, then 45-50 people talk about how the Nemesis Army should be dispersing soon (except it's not). CoV-side, I can honestly say that the arcs that actually matter are exceedingly rare, and even those that do amount to little more than a cameo appearance (read: Pyriss). Time After Time sort of matters and Pia Marino's arc reveals interesting info, but beyond that, it's more busting heads for kicks and giggles. Oh, and money.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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Sharkhead is far from my favourite zone, but I'll take that any day over being sent halfway across the city to Perez Park by a contact in Founders Falls.

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And I'd take travelling from the Storm Palace to Perez Park and back to the Storm Palace over spending five days straight in Sharkhead Island. There are ways around travelling, such as Pocket D, Ouroboros, veteran rewards, mission teleporter and so on and, push comes to shove, just out and out travelling, which never really takes more than a couple of minutes, not most of the time, anyway. There is, however, no going around the fact that Sharkhead Island is UGLY and I'm FORCED to spend at least 5 levels there because there is no alternative zone. CoH-side, you have AT LEAST one alternate zone for every level range, often having three or even four. CoV-side, you'd be lucky if you had two.

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The visuals of the zones are a matter of individual taste, but at least the enemy layout of redside makes some kind of sense. The CoT in Sharkhead are in Potters Field - a creepy graveyard that people avoid (understandably.)

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Sure. Which only really matters if you're street hunting and isn't actually true all the time. Yes, CoT are in Potter's Field and that forested are in St. Martial because... It looks like Perez Park, I guess, and the Carnival are almost exclusively at their circus. Why are there Nemesis Soldiers battling Circle of Thorns on the beaches of Sharkhed Island, then? Why are there Knoves of Artemis on the roofs of warehouses in the Gutter? Why are there Tsoo in St. Martial's Jackpot? Or Skulls and Hellions on the isles AT ALL? What are the Vahzilok doing at the airport in Cap Au Diable, clear across the island from where they have any business being at all? I can see why there are Circle of Thorns in the hills around the PTS, but why are there any in the Luddite Farm forest? Why aren't there any Arachnos Soldiers in Nerva Archipelago when there is a Black Helicopter with full crew and Quartermasters and Arbiters and even a Fateweaver scattered all around the islands? Why are there Devouring Earth on St. Martial at all?

There are a few examples of good enemy placement in City of Villains, as there are a few good examples of enemy placement in City of Heroes. Monster Island and Monkey Island come to mind, as well as how stringently enemy groups are positioned in Terra Volta. You can't find Devouring Earth anywhere there isn't open soil, usually found in areas of devastation, and if you're looking for lost, they're always at the bottom of big trenches, where you'd expect the homeless to take shelter out of the way of the Freakshow and Sky Raiders skirmishes. Faultline also has Freakshow inhabiting the Freakshow camp and Lost inhabiting the Lost camp. Oh, and Sky Raiders inhabiting the Sky Raider camp. There are examples of both sides.

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Villainside contacts are memorable - they have unique appearances and well defined speech patterns. Heroside contacts are a pack of sickly looking (what's with the coughing?) non-entities who all talk in exactly the same way, and for every interesting mission they hand out they've got three defeat alls to do first.

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Villain-side contacts may be memorable, but there are barely a third UNIQUE contacts in CoV as there are in CoH, and what contacts there are don't have a quarter of the missions that CoH contacts have. CoV contacts aren't remembered because they're memorable. They're remembered because there are so few of them so little to do for each it's perfectly easy to remember. I may not recall all the generic CoH contacts, but when I start doing their missions, I know who is who. I just don't always remember all the missions like I do CoV-side. There are so many I couldn't see them all in three playthroughs, and that's if I kept track of who I've worked for and who I should work for next.

The Midnight Club, Cimerora, the War Zone and Ouroboros HAVE helped quite a bit, and they're going in the right direction. However, there's no denying that CoV has no more than a third of the content there is on the hero-side, and while people may argue that it's BETTER, the fact that I can quote most of the contacts takes a lot of the quality away, especially when you consider that most of it ISN'T better, it's just shorter and closer by. Easier access to a crappy story, however, does not make it better, just more tolerable.

Ideally, if CoV got a brand new villain zone that wasn't a broken-down slum and used more colours than just grey, black and brown, THEN maybe we can talk. But the fact of the matter is that I am sick and tired of running through the SAME contacts in CoV, and I can ALWAYS find a path through CoH that's completely unique from what I did last time if I cared to look. This is NOT true for CoV.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My problem with the CoV zones is that there is nothing vilainous to do there. Its a city of villains, so theres a bunch of villains standing around, and since I am a villain I really have no motivation for fighting any of them (also, I'm usually on my way to a mission full of even more villains that I need to fight).

In CoH, I stop muggings and break ins and dodgy deals. In CoV... I just get from A to B.

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There is, however, no going around the fact that Sharkhead Island is UGLY

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It's supposed to be ugly. The powers that be in Sharkhead are Cage and Mako, and I don't think either of them care much for urban renewal and environmental protection.

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and I'm FORCED to spend at least 5 levels there because there is no alternative zone.

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Here I agree with you. I'd love to see a new 15-25 villain zone, to allow my characters to take a break from the second half of Cap and half or all of Sharkhead.

As for enemy placement... I think it matters for more than street hunting - the type of enemies you see on the streets can add a lot to the atmosphere of a zone, and none of the enemy placing in CoV is as incongruous as in some older zones of CoH. I'd expect the CoT to be lurking in any out of the way area, wooded or otherwise, but if they were placed according to the same logic as Founders and Peregrine they'd be sacrificing hapless citizens in the middle of the St. Martial streets and under Recluse's statue in Grandville.

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The Midnight Club, Cimerora, the War Zone and Ouroboros HAVE helped quite a bit, and they're going in the right direction. However, there's no denying that CoV has no more than a third of the content there is on the hero-side, and while people may argue that it's BETTER, the fact that I can quote most of the contacts takes a lot of the quality away, especially when you consider that most of it ISN'T better, it's just shorter and closer by. Easier access to a crappy story, however, does not make it better, just more tolerable.

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Redside is smaller, no question of it, but the superior quality is there. If you doubt it ask yourself this...

When Going Rogue is released do you want the contacts and missions to be more like those of CoV or of the original zones of CoH?

I've got nothing against the newer heroside content, as I've said, but from what I've seen so far the older content (which makes up a lot of heroside) isn't up to the same standard.

Hero side has more zones, more content and not the same 2 arcs over and over for new heroes.

Hero side zones, are also a lot more varied, have more range to them and look unique. I can tell the moment I log in what zone I am in even if I didn't see on the log in screen what zone I was in.

Red side, Mercy - St. Martial all look ridiculously alike. Not completely but there are too many areas where the same gray drab buildings appear no different than the same gray drab buildings of any other zone. Also perma gray and drab isn't all that fun after a while.

Hero side also feels way more heroic, than Villain side does villainous.

I play my "Destined One" villains, who all are simply tools for Arachnos only to have every freaking 2 bit contact I meet talk down to my villainous "destined one" no matter how powerful. I'm sorry but am I playing a Super Villain or a low level goon, because that is how the char is treated by the contacts.


In all honesty, Villain side has some good stuff. The Archetypes are a lot of fun and they do have some really good mission arcs. Though they have some bad ones too. I just object to this whole idea of one side being better than the other, they are both different and both have good things and bad things about them, but if you are going to sit here and gripe about why blue side sucks, let's mention some of the short comings of red side while we are at.

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CoV learned many valuable lessons from CoH.

The problems it has are more conceptual than technical.
The 'look' of the game is pretty boring. yeah, it's visually busier than CoH, but the zones are all basically carbon copies of each other.

Oh, this one is really long and has some jungle.
Oh, this one has a big pyarmid in the middle.
But basically they all hew to the same visual style, one I call Garbage Can Gothic.

It doesn't have any natural meeting places- I've harped on this since day one. CoH has Atlas, CoV has nothing. And before the inevitable 'atlas sux thank god CoV doesn't have one', meeting places are good for a sense of community. If I'm playing heroes and want to check out some costumes and read some bios and see some goofy broadcast chat, I heat for Atlas.
In CoV, I'm out of luck. The Cap market usually has a small group around it, but nothing to get excited over.

The other major issue is the whole "villains fighting villains 24/7" vibe. In CoH, you're mostly fighting bad guys. In CoV, you fight one 'good' faction, and the rest of the time you're beating up fellow villains.

I appreciate the structural improvements they made over CoH, but it is a huge failure at diversity. The visuals and the enemies are limited to a narrow band that doesn't hold up very well to repeated viewings.

As redundant, lame and annoying as a lot of the hero side stuff is, it still delivers a much more varied gaming experience, visually and experientially.

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It's supposed to be ugly. The powers that be in Sharkhead are Cage and Mako, and I don't think either of them care much for urban renewal and environmental protection.

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Yeah, but even Kirk Cage's headquarters is a dump. Even Villa Requin, the place that's supposed to be the high-end off-limits island where the rich live secluded lives, is still dirty and black and white. I understand that the point to making the Isles into Depression City where everything is dark and dirty and rotten to the core and any beauty, peace or order you might find are just a farce belying still more corruption and evil, but... Well, that's not a place I want to be in, both personally and conceptually. All of CoV makes me feel like I'm playing Bioshock - something happened, the place got ripped to shreds, everyone's dead or corrupted, everything's broken or on fire... Obviously something interesting happened, but I got there too late, so all I ever get to do is pick through the rubble and kill anyone that's left.

I actually agree with the Rick Dakan quote someone had in their sig: "Yes, we could have one city that was all heroes and one city that was all villains, but that would be a pretty stupid way of doing it, wouldn't it?" Sure enough, that's exactly what City of Villains is - a whole city of nothing but villains. And that corrupts its very nature. Good needs evil to be good, and good has PLENTY of evil. Evil needs good to be evil and... Evil has almost no good anywhere in sight. The most we can hope for is a slice of this rat hole, and that really doesn't fit a villain with vision and audacity such that he could control the world. It doesn't have class, and that's a game-wide problem.

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As for enemy placement... I think it matters for more than street hunting - the type of enemies you see on the streets can add a lot to the atmosphere of a zone, and none of the enemy placing in CoV is as incongruous as in some older zones of CoH. I'd expect the CoT to be lurking in any out of the way area, wooded or otherwise, but if they were placed according to the same logic as Founders and Peregrine they'd be sacrificing hapless citizens in the middle of the St. Martial streets and under Recluse's statue in Grandville.

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Well, for the most part that's true. In King's Row, Circle of Thorns mystics are only ever found on rooftops whereas Clockwork robots are largely found in empty lots, construction sites or near powerlines and substations. On the other hand, the Skulls and the Lost rule the streets, like street gangs should. In Steel Canyon, Tsoo and Hellions are everywhere, with Council troops preaching in the streets like they should, but you can only ever find Vahzilok conducting their business in the alleyways and spaces behind buildings and tucked away next to the war walls, never on the sidewalk in plain view of the street. There are good examples, Founders' Falls just happens to have CoT ceremonies on the banks of the river for some reason.

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When Going Rogue is released do you want the contacts and missions to be more like those of CoV or of the original zones of CoH?

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You want an honest answer? I would like them to be like the original CoH contacts in the old zones. I HATE HATE HATE the CoV contacts and their crappy, pointless, two-mission "story arcs" that don't mean anything and don't amount to anything at all. I despise how few missions they have - the cost of them being "better," which they aren't always. I abhor how they lock me IN THE SAME DAMN ZONE for everything they do until I'm sick of looking at it and never seem to have missions that matter for more than their little neighbourhood. I don't like them. I never have. I never liked the Hollows or Striga or Croatoa contacts, and while I like the Faultline story arc, it's decidedly NOT something that deserves to be split between four contacts. Hell, it's not even a quarter of Crimson's World Wide Red and that his one ARC. He also has approximately 20 mission mini-arcs, each with about three or four instances. The whole Faultline storyline is about as big as four of Crimson's missions, that's about it.

I liked the old CoH contacts. I liked the fact that they sent me all over town. These are problems that concern the whole city, it makes sense that you'd have to travel the city to fight them. I like their long story arcs with long, elaborate storylines. Yes, sometimes they waste time with a lot of nothing. I STILL prefer that filler to a three-mission arc and call it a day. I like that their arcs link together with each other and tell the full story of many enemy factions, and that they have an effect on the city.

Far as I'm concerned, City of Villains is City of Heroes lite: all the "fun," a fraction of the zones, contacts, stories and missions. Like I said - less is not more. I like my big zones, I like my long stories, I like my travel and I like my many-missions arcs. To me, catering to everything being "convenient" takes a lot away from the actual feel of the game. It makes me feel like they're saving a buck here and there, and I do NOT like that.

Ideally, I'd like Going Rogue to go back to its roots and introduce many interesting and diverse zones with large expanses of land. I'd like it to return to the serious contacts with serious stories, as opposed to the episodic quirps and in-jokes that so many CoV contacts are built on. I want my feeling of this being an epic game back. Because CoV makes me feel like I'm a low-life hustler clawing at success one morsel at a time. And that sucks.

I like my game big and expansive, not small and compact. Yet again, less is not always more. In this case, it's plain less.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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The other major issue is the whole "villains fighting villains 24/7" vibe. In CoH, you're mostly fighting bad guys. In CoV, you fight one 'good' faction, and the rest of the time you're beating up fellow villains.

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/nitpick

More than one.
Longbow. And longbow. And more longbow. And more longbow. And, look, more longbow!

That said, there's at least some *potential* good vs evil without them that just hasn't been picked up:

Legacy Chain - is just not delved into. And they vanish rather quickly.
Wyvern - if anyplace is good for turning "sorta-good" guys into bad, it's these. Why aren't we, as villains, trying this?
Where's the Civic Squad other than a brief mention?

Neutral:
Luddites - OK, more protesters than "good guys," admittedly. But again, more story that's just not touched on.
Scrapyarders - Yeah, I call them neutral. They'll fight against Cage, they know Mako killed Scrapyard, but looking at their dialog, most just want fair treatment and have been pushed too far, so they're striking back (as opposed to just striking.)

Yeah, perhaps I could throw in Wyvern here, too.
Arachnos.

... wait, arachnos? Yeah. Yes, Recluse and crew are evil. Yes, some of the rank-and-file are fanatics, hardcore, out for themselves - but the rest are a police force/army. Are they joining out of any real loyalty to Recluse, or because "this is my home, this is a good way to get a leg up and get a better life/looks good on the resume/looks good politically?" RL example - how many of the Soviet Union's army were fanatic communists, versus "This is at least a steady paycheck and meal, and better than working in the field?" I know, Arachnos rank-and-file dialog doesn't always tend toward that, but for the most part, well... 18-21 years of propaganda before joining up has an effect.

Saying all that, of course, brings out just how much story *isn't touched on at all.* The same's somewhat true blueside, admittedly, but a good number of the groups have stories that blend into each other.

I get, of course, having this massive population of low-level villains to fight. It's an MMO, you have to level somehow. And I get that it's hard to write "real" villainy - especially keeping it generic enough that more characters WOULD do something like whatever the plot would be, without being someone's lackey.

Doesn't mean it doesn't get old/tiring, or that there's not quite a bit of potential that's untouched, though.

See my Guides and Tutorials

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Arachnos.
... wait, arachnos? Yeah. Yes, Recluse and crew are evil. Yes, some of the rank-and-file are fanatics, hardcore, out for themselves - but the rest are a police force/army. Are they joining out of any real loyalty to Recluse, or because "this is my home, this is a good way to get a leg up and get a better life/looks good on the resume/looks good politically?" RL example - how many of the Soviet Union's army were fanatic communists, versus "This is at least a steady paycheck and meal, and better than working in the field?" I know, Arachnos rank-and-file dialog doesn't always tend toward that, but for the most part, well... 18-21 years of propaganda before joining up has an effect.

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A couple of factors to consider for this admittedly interesting look at Arachnos:

First, it's not just rank and file dialogue, it's ALL dialogue that comes out of the mouth of an Arachnos soldier that makes them seem slightly worse than just bad. "Hey, if we stand over there, we can harass people right as they get off the ferry. Wanna?" I don't remember the exact quotes, but plenty, PLENTY of them take Recluse's order to "test" the Destined Ones with more than a little glee, as they have essentially been given free reign to harass and even kill people with absolutely no repercussions. And they're loving every moment of it.

The other is that Arachnos already HAS a rogue faction - the Rogue Arachnos, unsurprisingly. Technically, if there are good guys within an evil organisation, you'd think they'd become a lot more apparent in a splinter cell, but that is not the case. In fact, the Rogue Arachnos are just as bad as the Classic Arachnos, making it hard to believe that there really are an appreciable amount of not-all-bad guys in there. Sure, a traitor here, an informant there, the odd commander with a conscience I can get. But an actual population of redeemable Arachnos would likely require yet another splinter faction, at which point it just becomes a stew.

To my eyes, it seems like the developers were so eager to paint the Isles as a shithole, if you'll pardon my expression, that they painted themselves into a corner with an irredeemably overexaggerated faction ruling over everything.

I'm really hoping Going Rogue will do it better. It HAS to, being that an unclear morality is kind of its selling point. You can have the whole world be a rat's nest and still claim that, so maybe we'll get a dictatorship that's at least slightly believable.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

CoV could definitely do more with the storylines of some factions to 'spruce them up' a bit.

But what I wanted were explicitly heroic enemies.
Aside from Longbow, all we get is the PPD guys in Mayhem missions.

Luddites and Scrapyarders both bore me- they're basically normal people, and they're visually generic. There isn't much of a sense of accomplishment in beating them down.

Scrapyarders could be interesting with one change- they 'reach out' to Paragon city for help, and a couple of actual heroes infiltrate the Rogue Isles to help them out.

Not a bad idea for an an MA arc, if anybody wants it.

What about the Legacy Chain, though? They're clearly good guys.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

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What about the Legacy Chain, though? They're clearly good guys.

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Are they?
I've never noticed. =/

Maybe next time through I'll read the flavor text.
They never felt particularly heroic to me, they seems like a WoW faction.

A lot of people have complaint about CoV not being evil enough.

There could be more behind it that you think. There are some people who, even briefly, project their values onto a character and would be disgusted at the sort of work that embodies true villainy (ex: terrorism, [censored], massacres, etc.)

Rather than risk driving away players with the most common set of values, creative development must turn the evil dial down to that of a lawful-evil, fascist, dog-eat-dog that the Rogue Isles seem to be.

Besides, if the CoV gameplay and environment were as evil and dark as some players want it to be, there would no contacts or even citizens. It would just be ruins and a few remaining savages constantly trying to dismember eachother.

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A lot of people have complaint about CoV not being evil enough.


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It can't be 'evil' in any real sense or nobody would play.

But it could definitely use more comic book style evil, of the black tophat and waxed mustache variety.

I actually vastly prefer to play Blueside rather than Red.

I've had CoV for ages now, and only got a few villains to around the 20 range - I just really can't stand the layout and community of the Redside.

It feels like communications are much harder to maintain, there always seems to be a lack of players in any given zone, groups (while not hard to come by) aren't as plentiful as on Blueside, and the zones feel more cluttered and busy.

Plus, everything looks grungy and dirty. I know that's what they were aiming for, but that doesn't make me want to play in it anymore. I've always felt that CoV and CoH should be more connected. Right now, it feels like Redside is like it's own separate country instead of simply a different breed of super-powered denizen living in the same city.

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Right now, it feels like Redside is like it's own separate country instead of simply a different breed of super-powered denizen living in the same city.

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The Rogue Isles are a separate country.

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The devs did learn quite a few things from CoH and applied the learnings towards the design of CoH. But they also left out some of the good things that blueside has going for it.

The biggest systemic problem I see for redside is lack of zones. And that leads towards a lack of content for redside. Blue has a multitude of level paths due to the number of zones it had. Redside is really the same path over and over again.

But what of the Co-op zones? They are new, accessible to redside and they have content. Yes, that is true. But the nature of the zone, therein lies their weakness. They are co-op zones. Meaning both redside AND blueside can run them. So you wind of running them with heroes and villains. And that means twice the exposure which is what I'm complaining about.

Redside needs it's own new zones for villains to run around in. Reside needs a Hollows, Striga, Croatoa and Shadow Shard zones of their own. I don't litterally copies of the zone, but zone of those levels.

Mission Architect as fill the gap to some extent, but I want to play villain content that is canonical written by the devs. I really, really want to play redside more then I do. But I get burned out quickly. So the number of times from 1 to 50 is a lot less then what I do heroside.

Redside is beter designed, but less developed.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

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Redside is beter designed, but less developed.

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A lot of people have complaint about CoV not being evil enough.


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It can't be 'evil' in any real sense or nobody would play.
But it could definitely use more comic book style evil, of the black tophat and waxed mustache variety.

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What CoV suffers the most because of is its basic premise - it's a City of Villains. There's just no fun to be had being evil in a city where everyone is evil and everything is dirty. It's kind of like Dungeon Keeper without the Lord of the Realm. Not much fun.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.