How Many Villains Skip Grandville and/or the Patron Arcs?

I've done two of the Patron Arcs, and I have the other two lined up on some 40-somethign level villains that I have, but a lot of times I skip Grandville entirely and head into RWZ to finish leveling a villain.

Sometimes, it's because my Villain isn't really all that evil, but a lot of times it's because I don't like the idea of my 40ish villains being treated like they were still level 1 errand boys.

How many other people do the same thing?

If you don't find Grandville villainous enough, why on Earth would RWZ be any better?

I disagree- I find there to be tons of unsettling, evil, dirty, and downright villainous things to do as a senior villain.

Oh- and skipping the Patron arcs if you are in search of good content and villainous action is just heresy. I enjoy doing Villain patron arcs almost as much as unlocking the powers and using them. Perhaps is it is just my opinion, but the Patron arcs are superb.

I've done this on my one and only villian (not actually a villian). I used the complete mission feature to slowly finish the mishes just so I could access Patron power pools. The only levels I really spent in the Rogue Isles were from 20-35, when I tired of picking through AE mishes and before I could access RMW or Cimerora.

GW and scirroco's arcs are pretty neat. Mako's is okay, if uninspired, and scorpion's is frankly pretty bad. God what a whiner.

And I mean, your level 40ish villain is respected, sure, but you're still just some average joe to recluse and his coterie. Not that surprising that they'd treat you badly; they are villains, after all.

Ive skipped them if I dont like what the PPP gives or if it just doesnt fit my character concept. Neither of my Brutes, both my MM's have a PPP. My Corruptors, VEAT and my Dom all have them.

Of course your villain is respected in the RWZ. They're being spoken to as if they're a hero character. Almost as if the people around you have no idea what you actually are, or did to get there, nor even care.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Skip a free respec?
Skip a shield for squishies?
Skip a ranged attack for melee? Even if it is the only patron attack you take, gloom is the highest DPA attack for a brute outside of Seismic Smash.

Sorry but for the story on each of those you end up betraying your patron and kicking the crap out of them. So what arc in RWZ lets you do that and be even more evil?

I only have one level 50 villain, the Goat.

Grandville doesn't bug me since I upgraded my system a while back, and I ran him through the Ghost Widow patron arc and thought it was really good.

YMMV.

The patron arcs aren't appealing to me. If they (and Phipps) disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't miss them. I'm not entirely certain about why, except in the case of Phipps because I flat out don't like him.

Overall, I find myself using the RWZ and the ITF to get through the 40s content more than I would prefer, although its a bit of a blend rather than a total opt out. I always enjoy the arcs delivered by Vernon (especially by Vernon), Dobbs, Zukhara, Abyss, and Daos.

I find that the 40s are easier to move through on a hero because I find it easier to find high level PUGs hero-side.

I apologize for a rather long winded response.

I never really payed a lot of attention to the "story" in hero or villain arcs to be honest. To me they come across like this: [wall of text] .... fighting .... [wall of text]. There is an awful lot of telling and not a lot of showing, and--this may sound weird--something about the font in this game makes me not want to read. I've actually done all of the hero Task Forces at least once but could not tell you a single story element of any of them, except the new Positron. The newer arcs in the latest issue do a lot to fix some of that and have stuff actually happen during the mission instead of in intro text that is only shown to the team leader. But any time I've been on a TF or story arc, it's always been like "ok now we're fighting clockwork" "and now we're fighting vazhilock" "and now it's council" without any reason or explanation to string it all together. Prior to the new Posi the six patrons arcs to me made as much sense as a series of completely random radio missions.

On the red side, I have one level 50 villain. I do not really play him much. I sit and eagerly await the opportunity to escape the Rogue Isles, which, while they'd be fine enough as a zone I only had to visit a la Boomtown or Dark Astoria, I find draining to play. Except for Grandville, I still cannot tell any of the villain zones apart; the villain zones, IMO are the zone version of the hero TFs. But more of a concern to me is that I've just never gotten the villain stuff. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You are a villain... who spends the majority of his time fighting other villains. And yet the game is model is such that you are encouraged to form friendly teams with other (player) villains who for whatever reason you have no conflict with. The NPC citizens meanwhile are terrified of a lvl 1 Hellion but a lvl 50 Mastermind and her army of undead does nothing to stoke their fear. Basically City of Villains feels like City of Heroes except everything is "srsly darque."

I don't mean any of this as an attack on devs because I think there is a lot about this game is great. The villain side though I don't think really lives up to what its trying to portray. Teaming up to defeat big threats makes a lot of sense for heroes. Teaming up to do villainous things could make sense for villains, but doesn't if the whole time you're mostly just fighting other NPC villains. Not to mention, how lame must our PC villains be in the context of the CoX world if we can't ever have the enormous criminal empires that Nemesis, Arachnos, and even the Skulls and Trolls have.

So, to actualy answer the question: I did do the patron arcs but only to unlock powers. I can't tell you that I know what really happened during the arc but I know I had to fight Ghost Widow at some point and someone on my team told me it was because we were betraying her. So I guess that's what happened. The missions themselves were ok in a flash-boom way but if there was a story I missed it.

What would you skip grandville....that place has my two favorite contacts in the entire game:

Television
Westin Phipps

I never ever skip the patron arcs. I want all of my villains to be able to start the LRSF. Also, this is as close to RP as I get, but defeating Recluse is a rite of passage all of my vills go through, not just to unlock the tf, but to put an exclamation mark on their leveling "career".

Level 45+ villain arcs are some of the only content in the game good enough to actually keep me interested long enough to solo it. The 40-45 stuff is... a bit more hit-or-miss. I'm not fond of patron arcs. Most of my characters want to be villains in their own right, not prove themselves in Arachnos.