I like how good and evil blur in GR (mild spoiler)

I dunno, everyone dead might be considered 'worse' - and that could be a distinct possibility if someone removes the one being in that universe who was able to stand up to hamidon...

I highly doubt that the 'sonic fences' are foolproof.

I've been playing this game for a long time, and I used to be fairly active on these forums. I don't remember a lot of discussions that carried this exact tilt. Here's why.

The driving force, thematically, behind City of Heroes is idealism. You are a hero. You are free to do what you want, pretty much, but what you do is good. Most missions consist of a nice person saying, "Help! Do this for me." When you defeat a random criminal on the street, citizens will run up to you and hand you money. You live in a city where portals to other dimensions are expanding the boundaries of what is possible, and besides the fact that they have all so far only released monsters and crazy people into our world, everyone just seems to be in a hurry to open the next one (that solid gold Earth is right around the corner. I can feel it!). Nearly all of the streets go absolutely nowhere, and people still drive all the time. You can throw fireballs and fly, and you still carry an ID card that the city gave you. The police outrank you.

The archetypes in City of Heroes are designed to be teammates. They are designed to work towards a common goal from different angles. They are nice people. Some of them are called Defenders. A guy who swings a katana is called (nearly euphemistically) a Scrapper. They have the highest hit point caps, or the highest damage modifiers, or the strongest de/buffing power.

You essentially prove that you are tougher than Statesman, and you get a badge that says you are his pal.

You are an idealist, and you believe that your powers work for the common good. That's all you really ever do with them (except when you win at skiiing in Pocket D using Inertial Reduction). I'm not saying that's how YOU specifically play the game. It's just the flavor of it all, the theme of Paragon City.


The driving force behind City of Villains is ambition. You begin your career breaking out of prison and immediately set upon your path as a "Chosen One." Everyone is doing this. You do missions to earn brownie points with Recluse or his higher-ups. Willie Wheeler and Johnny Sonata come to mind as personifications of this theme. Everything you do hangs upon you getting stronger, or richer, or more powerful. You choose a patron to give you more power, and the very second you are able, you beat that person up. The zones are not well designed for people who stay on the ground. You are always looking up at something bigger, something higher up to go and find new things to rob/murder/dominate.

The primary powerset of every archetype in City of Villains is a damage set. You are always moving forward, taking down your opponents, taking what you want with your strength. Their names are not very nice. You dominate or corrupt, you are a brute or a stalker who assassinates people. All of the inherents either make you more deadly or are designed to prolong your life at the expense of someone else.

Your goal as a villain is to get stronger, get bigger, and become more powerful and important. That's what the game tells you, anyway.


So what is the theme of Going Rogue? This discussion illuminates that theme a bit, but I think a more direct example can be had right at character creation. Upon choosing to create a Praetorian, you aren't asked what archetype you want to be. You can be any of them! What you are asked is what side you want to be on.

The theme of Going Rogue is compromise. This thread illustrates that perfectly. Your decisions in this world essentially boil down to "I [CAN] or [CANNOT] continue to justify my faction's ultimate goal any longer." You can ally with the immortal god-king who enslaves people so that the proverbial trains run on time, or you can ally with the freedom fighters who want to blow up those trains so that people won't be enslaved. Oh, and the "trains" are actually the infrastructure and social standards that keep this highly ordered society running in such a way that plague, chaos, crime, and mass death do not run rampant.

They both appear to be sides that have good goals but ugly methods. They may both be doing what they think is right, but as Dr. House said, "That's the only reason anyone does anything." If you really try to defend one or the other unilaterally, you're probably missing some important details/brain cells. So, which virtue is noble enough for you to commit atrocities in its name?

No, there doesn't appear to be a happy medium. You've got to tear it down before you can rebuild it, buster.

So your choice is basically between being a terrorist and being a terrorizer, and if you don't like it, you can leave. Yup, you actually can move on to Paragon or the Rogue Isles where it's all about you.

In fact, I think the best outcome would be for the Wardens and Responsible Loyalists to form an alliance.