Designing new Hero Factions

To start off here, I should mention that I'm a City of Villains player who only got City of Heroes when they added both sides to all accounts a while back. There aren't very many of us, so it's not much of a surprise that development hasn't focused on making the game work well for our style of play.

One of the most consistent complaints about Villain-side content right now is that we spend far more time fighting other Villains than we do fighting Heroes, and when we do fight Heroes, one group hugely overshadows all the others combined. I don't foresee the development team making any meaningful additions to content in the Rogue Isles ever again, so it falls to players using the Mission Architect feature to put together some ideas.

Let's have a look at the hero groups currently in game.

- Longbow: Appear more frequently as mission antagonists from level 1 to 50 than anyone else, overshadowing all other Villain vs. NPC Hero content combined. Even then, appear far less often than you spend fighting other Villains. Only bosses seem to be "Superpowered", although a few of them use some super-tech. Even with a decent variety of troop types, stretched out over the entire level range they wind up feeling quite repetative.

- Wyvern: Seem to get phased out eventually. They're tied for second with the Legacy Chain, but still miles behind Longbow. Come in two varieties.. three colors (and ranks) of guys with a bow, and three colors (and ranks) of guys with a bow and a jetpack.

- The Legacy Chain: Make a big splash early on, and then fade away like Wyvern. Very good variety, though. In my opinion, the most interesting Hero faction to fight, for the very brief span they oppose you.

- Paragon Police Department: Faced from level 5 to 50, but almost exclusively in Mayhem Missions. Tremendous variety, but spread in such a way that there's usually only a couple different types in each level range.

- The Luddites: Isolated to Cap Au Diable, exist only to foreshadow a Villain you'll probably wind up fighting, in a story you get conned into by a Hero in disguise. We can forgive them for setting up yet another Villains vs. Villains storyline though, because a lot of their dialogue is hilarious.

- The Scrapyarders: Similarly isolated to Sharkhead Island, edge out the Luddites by having their own Superpowered Elite Boss/Hero/Giant Monster Allies. But lose enough Hero Points to not really count by being industrial terrorists.

- The Dockworkers: Scrapyarders Part 2. Most players won't even realize this is a seperate faction. As normal guys using industrial equipment to fight mobsters, I have a hard time even putting them on this list. At least the Scrapyarders have a bunch of supernatural leaders.

- The Vanguard: Heroes, but you join them anyway, and the only ones you actually fight are renegades.

- The Midnight Squad: Heroes, and you only rumble with them in some of Darren Wade's missions before becoming a member.

- Ouroboros: Conspiracy theories about Mender Silos aside, this is another group professing an interest in saving the world and recruiting your Villain to do it. And you don't even get to fight them. That's three Hero Groups you're an official Badge-Carrying Member of now! Hooray!

- Cimerorans (Loyalists): Once again, good guys, allies, only fought in a handful of missions.

- The Freedom Phalanx: Elite Boss/Hero class enemies almost always accompanied by Longbow. I think Manticore shows up with Wyvern support troops once, but I can't remember for sure. May as well just get retitled Longbow High Command.

- The Vindicators: Same as the Freedom Phalanx. Infernal runs with the Legacy Chain in lower levels though.

- The Regulators: Two members in game, both function as members of other groups (the Freedom Phalanx or the PPD), only one of them an opponent you can fight.

- WISDOM: Currently only two members in game. Both appear with Longbow Support.

- The Civic Squad: All named bosses, appear in two missions. But with PPD support! Good for them for not being Longbow stooges!

- The Dawn Patrol: Only two members left, the only one you fight had to be absorbed into a major Villain Group before he became a viable adversary.

- Hero Corps: Don't even appear as fightable NPCs. Exist only as historical footnotes and Mission Difficulty Adjusters. Most players on both sides mistakenly believe they're a part of the same corporate entity as Freedom Corps and Longbow.

- The Paragon Protectors: Turns out, they're actually villains. At least they have superpowers...

- Others: Ravenstorm, War Witch, Castle, etc., never even appear as opponents.

One big thing I noticed here? There's a definite tendency among those factions that even include minion and lieutenant ranked enemies to focus on Weapons (so mostly Natural origin, with a few special weapons that drift into the Technology origin). And those that break that trend mostly do so with Magic (Legacy Chain, Luddites, Midnight Squad, Vanguard Sorcerers), the notable exceptions being PPD Kheldians and Psi Cops. Heroes with a Science theme seem restricted to Boss rank and above (since the Paragon Protectors are actually Villains), and if there are any with a Mutant theme, I can't think of them off the top of my head. PPD Psi Cops, maybe, but Psionics seems to straddle the divide between Mutant and Natural in this setting. This makes sense though, since Mutant and Science origins tend not to result in masses of guys with the same ability. Still, it gives us some untouched possibilities to focus on.

So that identifies a few areas I want to target for the group I'm personally planning. A Hero Group that features enemies of all ranks from at least Minion on up (underlings only if I have a good idea), features clearly superpowered Minions and Lieutenants instead of just guys with guns and/or swords, could span a very large level range and reasonably become involved in the stories of several of the Rogue Islands, includes its own Hero and Elite Boss class enemies instead of borrowing them from other teams, and isn't going to try to buddy up with Villains instead of fighting them. That's a pretty serious list of requirements (especially given the MA memory limits), but I think I've got something that works. I'll get to writing the faction up while I let others contemplate their own ideas.

This was pretty much the entire reason I made my arc, Fighting Freedom. The main enemy group is called the Freedom Militia, a group of young mutants who took inspiration from the Freedom Phalanx and decided to band together to fight Arachnos and other criminal groups.

It pretty much fits every criteria you stated except that what would normally be elite bosses are bosses, and the "hero class" leader is an elite boss to be more friendly to characters who aren't solo powerhouses. Of course, The arc only takes place in the 30-35 range with not nearly as many enemies as I would like due to space limitations, but given enough space and arc slots I could easily make all sorts of stories with them from 25-50. Lower than that would be pretty mean to the players, since low level custom enemies are incredibly hard to balance.

scrapyarders/dockworkers arent really hero groups, they are just disgruntled workers.

luddites are similar to the dockworkers/scrapyarders in the fact that they are just disguntled civilians.

In theory, the best options would be to expand Wyvern and the Legacy Chain while giving the player more chances to encounter the PPD outside of Mayhem missions. Another interesting idea that would probably have a more explicit fit to your goals is to take the Paragon City Heroes (who are also mostly in Mayhem missions) and fill them out with more than just bosses. Perhaps semi-fusing them with Hero Corps.

I'd like to see Hero Corps as a new group we could fight BOTH as heroes and villains. They are basically mercenaries after all, so sometimes their goals would clash with heroes as well. With enough troop variety they could be extremely interesting, and more importantly if they are generic-looking enough they can be recolored and used for all kinds of purposes in the MA, saving space previously used on custom characters which are difficult to balance properly to make them give a reasonable reward.

New Hero Factions are going to be difficult from the offset because they need to have a similar level of lore involved (in comparison with the existing factions) which I don't think can be adequately explained in a 5 mission arc.

There are some pointers however and 'spare' characters who could, conceivably, become Hero Factions. Tony Kord, a very brief contact in Atlas Park if you choose the Technology Origin, is one such character. There's even a badge relating to him (Upgraded). He's very much in the Iron Man mould.

Of course you could always use existing villains who are in the process of redemption - sure it'd be non-canon but it's as good a place to start because you don't have to go through the lengthy process of explaining their backstory: Countless Heroes have already gone up against them. It also has a Going Rogue theme attached to it.

I'm currently writing an arc featuring Frostfire. It's an Heroic one (where you help him become a member of Vanguard - I figure he's a little older than Fusionette, Faultline and Penelope Yin but would fall into the same category of up-and-coming Hero - but his Outcasts could conceivably (after all that drubbing from low-level Heroes!) become a Hero faction in their own right, under his leadership.

My 2.5 inf