I just don't have it in me :(

The AE will let you teach him a lesson

Yeah, but what would that say of me if I spent all my time in a virtual world, pretending to get justice and fight crime instead of actually doing it?

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Think of it as a training simulation - so that when the time comes when you really can teach Phipps a lesson, you'll know exactly how to do it

Pfft, he explains his reasons pretty well!
Keeping the poor downtrodden and uneducated so they go along with Lord Recluse's cruel reign without getting any funny ideas!

Same here. In the words of Dungeon Keeper (another great game) "Evil is Good".
We have to be "good" people every day. It's quite cathartic to be able to indulge our darker sides in a healthy way.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

You don't have to see the AE as being a "virtual world". That's just the in-game explanation behind it to justify it's existence. You can just as easily imagine it to be as "real" as anything else in the game. Because for all intents and purposes it IS.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

It's pretty easy to re-write the mission text in your mind when going though arcs to remove any angles that don't fit. It's also easy for such a pragmatic villain to pretend to be mercenary and allow someone to believe he's working for them when it suits his purposes.

For instance, a mission from Mister Bocor revolves around acquiring the Loa Bone. You can easily have a villain who desires the Loa Bone for themselves. In fact, when you complete the mission, you do in fact get to keep the item! It takes a little tiny bit of imagination, but it works just fine.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

What contact is this from? I've been looking for arcs that are truly evil, and this sounds like one of them!

It begins with Peter Themari http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Peter_..._Sweet_Revenge

and ends with Vernon von Grun http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Vernon...un.27s_Science

I haven't read the whole thread (sorry) but my main thinking around this is that it is a limitation of how missions are issued in CoV (and CoH). Because you rely on contacts to give out missions it difficult to write story arcs that revolve around villains doing naughty things of their own free will. You can't really get the feeling of "today I am going to go take over the world and I am going to do it like this" it is more "today so and so is taking over the world and I am going help them by following their plan".

Some newspaper missions simultate this with the whole "go kill so and so because they've annoyed you" but for me these lack any real depth.

I would love it if there were ways to initiate your own story arcs (and this works for heroes as well in doing heroic things) where you decide your motive and the game gives you options on how to pursue this yourself. So you can get the I am going to break in and steal some top secret Crey plans - I can do this by doing x, y or z mission, and then I can do a, b or c mission to find someone to sell them to etc.

I guess this would work like newspaper missions which develop the stories further and would have branching story arcs.

Member of GGRRR, a SG on Defiant - check out our website - GGRRR

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

It's hard to do with a "repeat visits to the same contact" arc, but the engine has the ability for one mission to kick off another without a visit to the original contact. Consider this re-write of the Golden Roller's arc:

GR: "I've got a tip for you: I've heard that Dr. Cambrian of the Crey is involved in the development of a new MacGuffin you might find useful."

Accepting this gives you the "Kidnap Dr. Cambrian" mission. Upon mission success, you'd get a dialog saying "Questioning Dr. Cambrian reveals that the main development work is being done in Paragon City. You know where there's an abandoned freighter you could use, once you've kicked out the Lost inhabiting it." Closing the dialog kicks off the "Defeat Lost in cargo ship" mission. Clearing out the cargo ship and exiting the mission gives you an appropriate flavor dialog and starts the third mission.

This is where the engine needs a little bit of work: I don't think the engine can currently take you directly from one mission map to another. It shouldn't be too hard to add, though. Alternatively, it could dump you in a non-instanced "Paragon Docks" zone that's only used in this arc.

Finishing the third mission gives you an appropriate flavor dialog, ending in "It's time to head back to the Golden Roller and brag about your accomplishments." (You do need an excuse to return to the contact to finish off the mission, after all.)

Creative writing lets you get around many of the limits imposed by the traditional mission structure. It's not as easy as writing a "lackey of the day" mission, but there are some MA arcs that manage it.

I'm inclined to agree with this. However, going even deeper than this, I would say there's another fundamental problem in that villains in literature tend to have a broader spectrum of methods to going about their villainy, and there's an underlying expectation to be able to get yourself into this villainy.

With heroes, while their motivations are different, their objectives tend to be more or less the same- to help people in trouble and to bring evildoers to justice. This fits nicely with CoH because if the end objective is helping someone or bringing someone to justice, then the mission's story will almost always be able to mesh with a character's personal backstory without too much mangling.

Villains, on the other hand tend to be motivated differently. Some are in it for personal gain, some are in it for some righteous cause, some want power, some want money, and some just want to blow **** up. Even when two villains have the same objective, such as getting money, there's going to be a massive difference between how a villain like the Shocker might go about it (robbing a bank) and Dr. Evil might (using a moon-mounted laser to ransom world leaders).

With a hero, given their own objectives such as rescuing a hostage, they might go about it slightly differently, but in the end the same hostage will be saved from the same bad guys from the same location, and probably in largely the same manner (ie: beating the stuffing out of anything that is not a hostage) regardless of whether it's Superman or Daredevil.

Because CoV is based on CoH, its mission structure tends to work best with the mercenary-type villains. They would need at many, many more arcs villainside to be able to go 1-50 completely with missions that fit each villainous paradigm and frankly, I don't think they ever could span the entire spectrum, from vicious anti-hero to psychotic slasher to mad doctor to everyone's satisfaction. So, we get the one path that is sort of the past of least resistance for the story writers while simultaneously being the greatest common factor across as many backstories as can be reasonable expected.

It ain't perfect, but it's better than a kick to the crotch with a steel toed boot.