(Villains only) How evil do YOU want to be, really?

Everyone loves the new villain arcs. Having finished the first and halfway through the second, it's plain to see why: They're fun.

But the first arc isn't really that evil. I mean, yes, your first mission is hunting down a hero before he hunts you down, but it didn't strike me as being as evil as other arcs. On the scale I enclosed below, it's somewhere between a 4 and a 6.

... Yet a lot of people are saying "The Devs got it right. This is how I want to play a villain."

So, on a scale of 1 - 10, at what level of evil do you feel the Devs should average when writing stories?

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1 - I'm a misunderstood hero! I save the world and wear mascara! Is that such a crime!?

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5 - Blowing up buildings for the lulz and other destructive selfishness.

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10 - I want to slaughter everyone that doesn't have blonde hair and blue eyes... and then everyone that does.

Just curious. Have fun!

You should have waited to finish the second arc before making this thread.

I'm not evil, it's just that everybody is stupid and doesn't realize that my way is the only right way. If I have to use violence to adjust their perspective, well that's their fault not mine.

So, I'd say a 4 leaning toward 11.

Honestly, here is what I want and it would be a bit of work by the devs but Going Rogue is a first step.

I want a villain path that gets branches off from being a lackey who becomes a trusted lieutenant (the path we have).

Perhaps you want to go the path of a Westin Phipps/Lex Luthor/King Pin. Outwardly decent, inwardly evil beyond repair.

Perhaps you want to go the path of a Vivacious Verandi/Joker/Green Goblin. Nuts and evil.

Perhaps you want to merely be criminal like a Catwoman or Black Cat.

I suspect there might be a couple other styles of paths I am not thinking of at the moment but I want them ALL to be available beginning as soon as possible and growing in their various paths.

I run the gamut on my Villains. I have one Villain who is actually designed to be interchangable with his Heroic twin brother, to the point where the in-character story is, that no one knows there's more than one of him. And I have one Villain that is designed to make the Joker nervous.

How evil do I want to be in game? They'd have to get an M rating first. Apparently eating babies is frowned upon in polite society.

The problem I see here -- which I frequently see in the whole CoV concept, unfortunately -- is that "evil" just isn't a goal for most folks.

Villainy frequently comes down to one of three things: misguided morality, amorality and psychological disturbance.

We can discard misguided morality for purposes of CoV. It occasionally makes an appearance in CoH.

Of amorality and psychosis, they're hard to convey in a motivating manner. Especially given that most of CoV's motivation comes from outside the character.

But "evil for evil's sake"? It's like Satanic cults, you hear about it but it's rarely real and usually juvenile.

Which is why really good villain plots are hard to come by, I guess.

Now I'm sad. Dang it.

... I had to stop myself from turning this thread into a "What's more evil than that?" joke.

I like pragmatic villainy. Yes, I'm evil. Yes, I've done evil deeds to other people for personal gain. No I'm not going to start eating babies or punching kittens. World domination? Eh, maybe not. Doesn't seem worth the trouble. Indiscriminate murder? Please, I'm a professional, not a maniac.

One villain I have is simply a ninja for hire. She'll kill, kidnap, steal or investigate anything for the right price. Pay on time and she'll be polite and efficient, maybe with a professional service-with-a-smile. Betray her and you'll not even see her coming, it'll still be with a smile, though. Of course, this pretty much had her end up as a top Vanguard agent. They paid better than Arachnos. Also without the whole "trying to kill you in a social-Darwinist experiment", instead she gets neat toys as a bonus.

I've got another one going which takes the idea of a broken psyche and runs with it. What if your subconscious took over and you became locked inside your own body, while it acts on base desires and instinct... and had powerful psychic powers, mentally tearing people apart? Yeah, this one is going to end up really broken in the end. Or redeemed with GR. Haven't decided yet.

I want more diverse evil.

I have evil incarnate, my plant/psi dom, who's not immortal, but I'd say infinitely prolonged and seeks to exact revenge on the hero that made him that way by accident.

Then I have the selfish and misguided protege of said evil, a young girl with basically the Phoenix inside her.

But how evil do I want a stolen and reprogrammed system core of an alien spaceship that delivered two of my other heroes to Earth? Can't say. Ruthless and unyielding is where his M.O. lies.

And don't even get me started on the rage built into "The Erotic Display", my SS/WP porn-store mannequin brute who's wearing a 1.5-piece bikini on a male model...

I'd settle for just more options to explore the spectrum instead of being firmly in the "4" range we have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

Generally, the official content assumes that player villains want to amass wealth and power, and don't particularly care one way or another about who they have to serve, or who they have to hurt, to get it. It also assumes that they don't want to see their wealth and power and the means to enjoy them destroyed.

It would be nice if the writers hadn't approached CoV from the perspective that villains can't win or be proactive. Just because the status quo can't visibly change, doesn't mean villains can't hatch and execute plans. Merely reversing the contact relationship from "this guy can give you a job doing X" to "if you want to do X, this guy has information for you" would do wonders.

I don't want to be evil.

My standard for a great player villain is Magneto. Most good villains are heroes in their own opinions.

The i17 arcs are practically ideal because they don't assume much about your motivations or how evil you are. The only thing they don't do is let you come up with your own schemes (which is what I would make the mission computer do: something like a wizard to create a scheme). I seriously appreciate them, and they're impressively written considering what they have to juggle.

I often say that I hate lackeyish villain content, but to be a bit more specific, I hate those that make an assumption that you want to be Arachnos.

Arachnos is a terrible protagonist group. They're fine as generic cheesy enemies for heroes to fight, but their primary role is as an organization some of the game text, most of the zone themes, and most annoyingly, patron pools!, practically declare you part of. They're the TOTAL OPPOSITE of Magneto. They're just a bunch of jerks who want to be "evil," whatever evil may mean, with no consistent beliefs. "Anarchofascist" is about as coherent as "communazi."

Westin Phipps, who was probably created as a reponse to the "I don't feel like a villain" complaints, misses the mark. It's some of the worst content in the game to me, because, besides being unpleasant at best, I'd say sickening, it is just a bunch of petty evil for evil's sake. The arc I like least is probably Mender Tesseract's, in which you are assumed to want to help Recluse take over... for no reason, while being insulted by her and threatened by Recluse. Why are you taking over the isles just to give them to him? Why is an advanced future being with an extreme superiority complex over everybody from the past helping Recluse?

I suspect, probably wrongly, that some of the blame may belong to that D&D writer they hired who took the name of Lord Recluse. Villain content takes 2 things from D&D that absolutely do not belong in a supervillain game:

1. The D&D concept of an alignment, where a character may unrealistically be evil just to be evil, rather than being a VILLAIN, IE an opponent of heroes. Even psycho villains are usually more interested in serving themselves than some kind of "greater evil."

2. Evil characters wanting to serve an evil "god." Imagine a Marvel MMO that advertised being a villain, but when you play it, the game takes every opportunity to remind you that you're actually just a Latverian soldier serving Dr. Doom.

I've never even played D&D, so this may be totally off, but wherever these aspects come from, they're the pet peeves.

One of my big wants for COH2, if it's not feasible for COH1, is for Arachnos to be toppled and become just another villain group with a sphere of influence in a Rogue Isles that actually live up to the rogue name. Something like Nerva where you can run down a street and find yet another group claiming the zone.