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

Nope - just that they don't appeal to everyone, so adding new missions and arcs with a differt style of contact text is the best option.

Yes, because the insults and degradation are so endearing.

Hey, it's how Arachnos rolls

Quoting myself because you dont just get to ignore things that make your uninformed point of view seem hard to defend.

I'm not ignoring anything - I'm just trying not to have to repeat myself too much so I don't clutter up the thread with similar replies, so the answer to your other post can be found in one of my recent replies.

(Blood Spectre made me do it!)

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

It's a little late for that, don't you think?

Here's the thing though. If you had any actual firsthand knowlege of the game, you would know that the perception of redside mission contacts is overwhelmingly negative. It's not even in doubt. You persist in trying to put down the feelings and opinions of people without having any experience of what is being discussed.

Nobody, and I mean nobody would object to getting at least a hint of respect more often than we do.

Don't D-Mac and Leonard respect you and want to be friends with your awsomely evil villaionus self? And if theyr'e the same range as the blue sdie ones, they'll cover 20-29, so the devs have given you an alternative path without having to change anything at all, so you can choose to avoid a couple of the old 20-29 contacts who swear at you.

This isn't about putting down the feelings and opinions of people - that'd just be mean - it's totally about managing expectations - just like some of the wilder hopes for GR had to be wound in.

And just look at how often the devs have said their priority is new content instead of revamps - expecting them to go through every misison in CoV and rewrite the contact text when they can give new contacts with new content instead is just being totally unrealistic, and setting yourselves up for disappointment - just like people thinking GR was going to be a stand-alone addition like CoV was.

Uh-huh. The future I saw had the world destroyed ten times over, infested with Shivans, demons, the ghosts of the dead and STILL locked in a war of destruction, all thanks to Recluse's plans. Now THAT would take some organisation to achieve. You don't destroy the whole world with just wishful thinking, after all.

Recluse strikes me as someone who's just waiting to jump ship to the next winning side. Seriously, he lets his organisation stagnate and focuses on his own pet projects, obsessed with the Statesman and whatnot. As far as heroes go, it's kind of their duty to stop evil from going about unchallenged, and while I don't foresee Arachnos having a future (mainly because I'm the one who ensures they don't), they seem to have some time left on their half-life. Time enough to make a serious mess of the world.

The reason I keep saying you're missing the point is because you insist on arguing about Arachnos, when many of us DON'T WANT IT. It doesn't matter how you spin it, I just don't want to take over Arachnos. It doesn't matter how "common sense" you try to present it (note: it isn't), I don't want to take over Arachnos. No matter how many times you infer that if villains WERE strong enough, they'd take over Arachnos. We still DO NOT WANT. Honestly.

Remember that argument? You can't be allowed to be stronger than Recluse or you'd overthrow him? Ignoring for a fact that I AM AND I DO in the future of the timeline, no, I actually don't want to. It's not a safe bet to assume everyone would. In fact, ASSUMING we do is one of the major flaws in City of Villains. The game assumes everyone wants to either get a cosy job in Arachnos or take it over, when many of us want to get AWAY from Arachnos, narratively, physically and conceptually.

---

You know what? I still say Arachnos shouldn't have been given such an omnipresence. Give them a couple of islands if you must. Give them Mercy Island and Grandville Island. Leave Port Oaks to Emil Marcone. Turn it into CrimeCraft. Have me train at his underboss, have me purchase from store under his "protection." Give Sharkhead Island to Kirk Cage. Boot Arachnos off the premises and have me level up at Vince an purchase off official Cage Consortium quartermasters. Nerva Archipelago already belongs to Longbow and Crey, so kick Arachnos off Mainland Nerva, fill that with Crey, instead, and leave them alone just off in the jungles of Primeva. St. Martial already belongs to Johnny Sonata, so boot that Arachnos fort at the docks into the sea and have me train at someone at the Golden Giza, and purchase from their souvenir shops.

Seriously, CoV feels like the whole game was devised as being a series of unrelated islands, each with its own ruler and factions, and Arachnos was grafted onto the story at post-production because the system for picking your own faction was called off. There's no need for Arachnos to own all of the islands. Leave them the islands that HAVE to be their own and just leave the other islands to free agents. That would certainly help distance us from Arachnos a great deal.

That's kind of why I keep asking for new zones to City of Villains. I want to see new islands that AREN'T part of Arachnos territory. Give me a Nemesis Island, give me a Devouring Earth island, give me a Banished Pantheon island, give me a Coralax island, just something that ISN'T Arachnos!

See, GG, the reason I don't want to take over Arachnos is because I'm sick to death of 'em.

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.

Saying that old content is poorly written is to expecting sweeping rewrites as complaining about the price of gas is to expecting a free hybrid car.

The point of this thread was NEVER that ANYONE expected a rewrite of even a single mission. It has ALWAYS been that we wish it was written with more respect for the player in mind in the first place.

It does not fall to you to manage our expectations in the first place. And even if you were given this sacred duty by Expatatres the Expectator to manage our wishes, (lest we dream to highly!) we never actually had that expectation to begin with, so you can really just stop talking like you know the subject matter and let us carry on the conversation we wanted to have in the first place.

How about the Abyss?

The Abyss has an astounding lack of contacts and other content in it, but I concede to your point

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.

As far as hitting the nail on the head goes, this scores a direct hit, because it puts the entirety of the problem down to a very simple statement better than I could have explained it and it aptly describes the problem I've had with GG's view of it.

Villainy in City of Villains feels like it was written by someone who disliked villains, disliked writing for villains, disliked depicting villainous things... And it shows in every detail of the game. Because the writers apparently felt bad about writing for villains, the experience for the players ends up making THEM feel bad in return. After all, villains are evil, slimy, miserable creatures. Surely that sort of world would fit them the best!

I sincerely hope whoever wrote the Going Rogue content actually enjoyed writing for villains, so that we may get a few missions that are less focused on making us feel crap for having made a villain and more on making us feel vindicated in having chosen to play one. I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that the more a writer enjoys writing for a (decent) villain, the less vile and repugnant that villain will become and the more AWESOME he will be. Still evil, that's always doable, but evil and AWESOME, not evil and CRAP like we currently are in City of Villains.

In short, the CoV content is miserable through and through, and it doesn't have to be. It SHOULDN'T be.

*edit*
To add: Yes, being a villain in real life SHOULD be a miserable experience and SHOULD be horrible, unpleasant and unrewarding. That's because we don't want real-life villains to exist. But any game we play should be fun, engaging and rewarding, and if that game involves being a villain, then that villainy should be fun, engaging and rewarding, too. Currently, it mostly isn't.

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.

A shame for sure, it'd make a good zone to teach those villains about Hamidon and the DE... and all those abandoned labs are just begging to be explored... :/

That not really true in my Eyes my Stalker is A Arc Villian, if he can Kick Recluse butt and all the freedom Phalanx, then he has what it takes to be an Arc Villain.

I think the Abyss Soul purpose is to Spawn Hamidon and nothing more then that, it doesn't need anything else since that where a Raid Boss Lives.

Yeah cool Stuff like Dieing at the end huh.

Way to be obtuse.

True, but the the 'price' of villainy should still be evident: even successful villainy should be fraught with betrayal, domination and paranoia...but your character should get to do their fare share of the betraying dominating and terrorizing in a way that at least strives to create the illusion that you are doing things your way.

You know, before Smallville got abysmally stupid, I thought they were doing a rather good job of that with Lex Luthor's character. Even as he began to gain more and more of what he wanted, he started to lose the people he did care about and found he couldn't trust anyone etc. etc.

In the one instance where they try to interject some kind of sense of the 'price of villainy', it just turns into a morbid and sickening affair. Because in Westin Phipps' arc...you still can't make even the simple choice of letting the teacher off the hook. You have no say in where the arc goes and in the end when they give you the whole reflect-on-your-life moment...I was thinking: 'You're trying to slop guilt on top of me being a mindless lackey for the past 43 levels?'

Bad and stupid writing from top to bottom.

If you choose to let the time run out, you don't have to take the teacher in ... and you get a different souvenir than if you take her in. That's all I'm sayin' ...

This is EXACTLY what I disagree with. Why? If this were an impartial movie or story, then obviously villain would have to either fail or pay a high price. Bit this isn't it. This is a game where I play the villain. Why should it suck for me even in victory? This is precisely the kind of thinking that creates all of CoV's problems - the notion that the game should teach some kind of moral lesson and always make villains suffer no matter what they do.

No. This is not what I want. Why can't it be COOL to be a villain? Why can't villains ever be successful? Not partially, not at a cost, not with a catch. COMPLETELY successful. Satisfied, vindicated, victorious. No doubts, no regrets, no lingering problems.

This is not the real world. Moreover, this is not a moral stand. Here, we very much CAN let the bad guys win, because that's the whole point of the entire game. That our villains can't is the root of the problem. That the game's writers felt that they SHOULDN'T give us closure and that they SHOULDN'T give us unmitigated success is the core reason that so many people are so pissed off at CoV.

Look, I'm no stranger to nasty, downer stories from the so-dubbed "murder porn" to the various Japanese depravities. I know they suck, and I know that's not a good thing to have in your game. This is why I'm advocating for less vile, less disgusting evil and more comic-booky, more iconic villainy. Less poisoning children and abusing school teachers, more taking over the world and building death rays. Less selling people to slavers and butchers, more robbing banks and stealing ancient power. If anything, disgusting evil is a drawback to the game, because it creates exactly those kinds of reservations - that evil CAN'T win, SHOULDN'T win and that even when it does, the player MUST hate himself for it.

The game should encourage you to make a villain you actually LIKE and encourage you to WANT to win, not depress you a feeling like there's no winning this so you may as well go play a hero.

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.

*cough, MMO based on comic books, cough*

Actually though I do like some of your points and it's obvious that the writing on redside could use some punching up (cough) all over the place.