Does evil ever win? Should it?
By
baron_inferno,
Posted on: 2009-06-02 04:41 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Wanted (the comic, and to a lesser extent, the movie). There simply ARE no good guys in there; by default, the bad guy win. A lot.
I'm not the droid I'm looking for.
MA Arc ID 8121: Rapp'Mas'Ta's War. The Rikti are trying to incorporate sonic effects into their weapons? THAT can't be good. Maybe we should ask them to stop.
Bad Villain Mission:
Contact: I'm a brilliant guy with lots of plans. I need a stupid thug to carry out a robbery for me. You are a stupid thug. Do this for me because you are too stupid to come up with your own plans.
Acceptance: You're right, I'm pathetic. I'll do it.
Good Villain Mission
Contact: Boss, I did as you said. I've been watching the warehouse for you. You were right, of course, they brought the gold shipment there. Now you can put the rest of your brilliant plan in motion and get the gold.
Acceptance: While I go steal the gold, you go do my bidding to prepare for the next phase of my brilliant plan.
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Of course, the good guys don't often make a lasting effect either... Croatoa's still infested with supernatural horrors.
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And don't get me started on Dark Astoria...
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But for the good guys, winning can often just mean keeping the status quo, which is easy as hell to do. "Oh, you stopped Nemesis' new superweapon? Good job!" Sure enough, the next time I log in, Paragon City hasn't been blown up.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
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I've been involved with another game for about 8 years. It is pretty RP intensive, which is aided by a very dynamic world that does change over time depending on what happens. (Although not always, the status quo is rather prevalent as well.) Most people are on the side of good. Plenty aren't. However, few of the 'bad' guys often come across as too believable. They haven't quite figured out how to mesh themselves with a dynamic, living world in an organic way.
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Sounds like EVE Online...
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"Hypocrisy, the human inherent." "Let not this work be wasted, apply yourself always."
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In the first two books of the "Song of Ice & Fire" series by George R. R. Martin, the bad guys "win". That's why I never read the third one - I get enough gloom and doom from real life without reading about it for fun. Those friggin books read like a snuff-film script.
I heard HBO might be doing a series based on the story.
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They are (well, a pilot, at least); Peter Dinklage is already cast as Tyrion. It will be filmed in Ireland.
I'd like to say that SoF&I gets better, but it gets worse before it finally does.
Still, you get the feeling that the Good Guys (or at least the Less Evil Guys) will ultimately win in that story.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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I've been involved with another game for about 8 years. It is pretty RP intensive, which is aided by a very dynamic world that does change over time depending on what happens. (Although not always, the status quo is rather prevalent as well.) Most people are on the side of good. Plenty aren't. However, few of the 'bad' guys often come across as too believable. They haven't quite figured out how to mesh themselves with a dynamic, living world in an organic way.
Someone I know over there made a very wise point about being a bad guy: "In order to play the villian well, you have to be willing to lose."
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To a large extent, yeah, when worlds like that ask people to play a villain, what they really mean is they want someone to play the Heel. Your job is to make the heroes look more bad-[censored] when they stomp you. After a few years of this, things can get pretty silly. Heroes need to get owned periodically. It keeps them honest.
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This thread is about exceptions to that rule, but it is still the general rule. The villian exists as a foil to the hero and to give the hero something to fight against and triumph over. If the villian truly wins... it can be pretty much "game over."
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It's the Law of Inverse Villain Threat. The more of a threat a villain poses in the world ("I am World Eater Man! I shall now Consume The Entire Earth!"), the less of a threat that villain actually is because in most cases they simply can't succeed (or if they do it will be promptly reset after a tadge of angst). The more likely that the world can continue mostly unbruised if the villain's plan succeeds, the greater the danger it actually poses.
@Mindshadow
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In the first two books of the "Song of Ice & Fire" series by George R. R. Martin, the bad guys "win". That's why I never read the third one - I get enough gloom and doom from real life without reading about it for fun. Those friggin books read like a snuff-film script.
I heard HBO might be doing a series based on the story.
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They are (well, a pilot, at least); Peter Dinklage is already cast as Tyrion. It will be filmed in Ireland.
I'd like to say that SoF&I gets better, but it gets worse before it finally does.
Still, you get the feeling that the Good Guys (or at least the Less Evil Guys) will ultimately win in that story.
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Some of the good guys are still alive. In that series, that counts as winning.
And some of the worst bad guys have already lost.
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England, France, and America fighting against the Native Americans.
Most of the English Monarchy over the course of the past several hundred years.
The IRS.
-Rachel-
W.
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You've been having an AFFAIR?!!
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Yes. I'm very, very sorry. (But not sorry enough to stop!)
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Sounds like EVE Online...
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Ew. Gross.
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To a large extent, yeah, when worlds like that ask people to play a villain, what they really mean is they want someone to play the Heel. Your job is to make the heroes look more bad-[censored] when they stomp you. After a few years of this, things can get pretty silly. Heroes need to get owned periodically. It keeps them honest.
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To me, it seems like most of hero-pwning comes in the form of the small (though often tragic and harrowing) losses that come along the road to the final victory. They feel much pain and whatnot, thus making them stronger and more determined to defeat the big bad guy who made it rain blood over your hometown and turned all of the children into his zombie army.
Losing so many children of the town to their fate as shambling undead hordes is the loss. Finally defeating the guy is the win.
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It's the Law of Inverse Villain Threat. The more of a threat a villain poses in the world ("I am World Eater Man! I shall now Consume The Entire Earth!"), the less of a threat that villain actually is because in most cases they simply can't succeed (or if they do it will be promptly reset after a tadge of angst). The more likely that the world can continue mostly unbruised if the villain's plan succeeds, the greater the danger it actually poses.
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Ha! That actually describes... well... just about everything very nicely. Well put!
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To me, it seems like most of hero-pwning comes in the form of the small (though often tragic and harrowing) losses that come along the road to the final victory. They feel much pain and whatnot, thus making them stronger and more determined to defeat the big bad guy who made it rain blood over your hometown and turned all of the children into his zombie army.
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But that's just it; essentially, villains get to be as evil as they wanna be in backstory, but when in continuity in a game, they're screwed. Because most people want their hero to be the hero, whereas there's more actual tension if they're never sure wether they're the hero, or a member of the doomed squad who wasn't properly prepared for the threat the villain poses, from whose members a single survivor will stagger back to civilization to tell the tale (possibly to provide vital tactical details for the actual heroes who will go on to defeat the threat).
@Mindshadow
Evil wins in real life all the time. So much so that it should be more commonplace in media.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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The problem with evil winning in an mmo is that you can never really change the world in an mmo. you can fake it by having bad guys blow up a base that you never see, or robbong a bank that does nothing to your actual ingame buying power, but unfortunatly the villains have an inherent problem that they cant ever really do anything. Thats one reason people who have a hard time with the vivacious verandi arc get angry, the villain is forced to take an act by a guy who doesnt seem to be able to bring about that force, but if the carnies would succeed it would change the game world, so you have a rock and hard place there.
heroside its different because heroes usually react, and thus the status quo can mean you won. Now this doenst always hold true, croatoa you may still be attacked by witchs even after you supposedly helped them, and the rwz is an equal oppertunity offender in that you seemingly resolve the rikti issue..but there still are a metric buttload of them still gunning for you in the rwz. But with redside the issue is You cant beat and enslave bat zul because then the cap zone would have to change because you removed its power source. you cant raise the leviathan because that would mess up the sharkhead zone. You cant ever really beat the freedom phlanx or vindicators because they have to be alive and free to fight you in other content, you cant even blow up parts of paragon for the same reason, its gotta be there for future stuff. And finally you cant overthrow recluse in this world because yet again, that would change the game world, so no taking over even. you cant ever really meaningfully change the world in this or even most current gen mmos, so villains have a problem.
now you can have little victories, dire worg has raided paragon more times than i can count, and he got the cash, raised auto insurance rates for all, and did some nefarious deeds while there, and in some missions i have made little victories over the good guys, but villains just have a problem being represented in games beyond violent thugs and patsies, because it is difficult and at times impossible to make a workable game mechanic around breaking the laws.
Of course villains should win. Frequently, and with great fanfare. What the villain should not win is the final battle.
If evil never won, never prospered, and was ever incompetent, there would be no threat. No need for heroes.
Just look at Dr. Light from DC. Until the recent Identity Crisis business, he was a training wheels villain for the children to beat on. No threat. No respect. The police probably could have taken him out on their own if the Titans didn't feel like the exercise that day.
That is not the way to manage a villain in the long term.
Unfortunately, that's all our villains are here in CoX. We're the Dr. Lights of the CoX universe. For most of the game we're henchmen to people who don't even rate henchman status. We have one moment of almost awesome, and then we're back to henching for nobodies, with the occasional scrap of work thrown our way from the Mighty.
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Of course villains should win. Frequently, and with great fanfare. What the villain should not win is the final battle.
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I think that explained what I was trying to say upthread far better. The villian's victories will all be along the road to that final battle, but at the final battle... the hero will always win.
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Of course villains should win. Frequently, and with great fanfare. What the villain should not win is the final battle.
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I think that explained what I was trying to say upthread far better. The villian's victories will all be along the road to that final battle, but at the final battle... the hero will always win.
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Agreed. And that's why they call it fiction.
Be well, people of CoH.
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The problem with evil winning in an mmo is that you can never really change the world in an mmo.
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No. This is a problem with the way a standard MMO is designed. It's not a feature of the genre.
To see the truth of this, you only have to look at CoH and ask yourself, "What are the seminal events of the last few years?"
Manticore and Sister Psyche's marriage, or more generally, anything at all that involves Shalice Tilman: possible because the Calvin Scott task force ENDED and the status quo changed.
The story of the Council. The Mender Lazarus task force. The Imperious Task Force. Issue 15. All possible because of the Fifth Column/Council War.
The Truth About The Villain Known As Faultline - Possible because Overbrook changed.
The resurgence of the Rikti and Vanguard stories, including the return of Hero 1: Possible because the Crash Site changed.
"You can't change the world" is a cop out.
The arguments always boil down to two things:
1) "We don't have the resources to make temporary content and then dispose of it."
2) "Players hate change."
Call me a radical, but to number two I say "Tough noogies. Let 'em deal with it." Heck, make flashback work the way it OUGHT to work and people would use it to go back and play "lost" content like the Calvin Scott Task Force.
The whole point of the Mission Architect is that it was originally designed as a developer tool. Presumably, the devs have a more powerful version (or less limited, at any rate). Being the devs, they don't have to hook their "architect missions" up to Aeon Entertainment. They could just as easily drop a NPC in any zone and hand out missions from that NPC.
The argument that content design is too resource intensive to justify making it disposable for the sake of story advancement is simply no longer true.
I'm not suggesting that the whole game should suddenly become non-static. What we SHOULD have is a good selection of story arcs that are EPISODIC and NOT static. In fact, with the branching dialog options we have now, the ending of each chapter could even be a kind of poll, where the story of the following chapter is influenced by the choices the players make in the final dialog box.
The static world is a design decision, nothing more. It's not an unalterable feature of MMO's, it's just the way that they've always been built because "content design is so expensive". If tools like the MA are available, then the cost of designing content has been reduced accordingly. The world OUGHT to become more dynamic as a result, just as long as the content designers aren't stuck in the rut that says "Static = Good. Dynamic = Unpossible."
you are comparing apples to oranges. each of those changes was either a part of a greater change set up by developers or the focus of an entire issue. we are talking about something that you personally going through content would trigger, we have no evidence about that. Full dynamic content is something i certainly would not say no to, but you drastically downplay how much work it woudl really take. MA are entirely consequence free, heck, you cant even set contacts or missions out of the limited area, having real dynamic content would be a great deal more than that. I would love it myself, but the years have made me a pragmatist.
Villains in reality generally win. The so-called villains in real life also deal more in the gray areas as opposed to the black and white that is good vs evil. This is due to the fact that in real life, being villainous is not so clearly defined in many of the cases. Such interpretations are heavily influenced by personal opinion, cultural view, ideology and religious connection. For example, many Americans hail Thomas Jefferson and Dalai Lama as heroes but to some others, they're little more than slave overlords. It's hard to argue that slavery is a heroic deed by any stretch of the imagination.
On the other hand, villains that only focuses on the extremes garners all the attention thus all of the resistance that comes with it, which ultimately makes them lose in the end. Adolf Hitler and Kublai Khan are two examples of this.
This is why I don't see the point behind all the rhetoric regarding whether CoV is "evil" enough. Evil operates in its own way and is far more often subtle than it is overt. I think that makes villainy all the more interesting.
So, $name, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb
evil never triumphs, good never triumphs...the eternal struggle between them is where stories live.
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My City Was Gone
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done earlier in thread :P
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Missed that. Mine is better because it has 20% more pie.
Pie Pie Pie...
See.....
Ok...I will leave now....
The thing is... there is no final battle. Neither Heroes, nor Villains truly win anything but the ability to fight another day, and if they lose, they get to inspire someone else to fight another day, or be forgotten and sink to anonymity.
I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!
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rite nao!
I've been involved with another game for about 8 years.
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You've been having an AFFAIR?!!
So