Heists, Thefts, and Audacious Larceny

Recently, the conversation in game turned to the 'And they WONDER why all the villains are coming blueside!' conversation that we've all heard a few times by now.

I quietly admitted that I was considering bringing my brute back to the Blue side. Again. Now that I CAN do heroic content I find myself not really caring about doing the villainous content.

This prompted me to think about what I enjoyed about the Red-side game. And what I really like my villainous characters to do is steal stuff. I enjoy the missions that are thefts and base invasions to jack some artifact or superweapon. I enjoy mayhem missions. I really enjoyed the recent holiday tip mission to steal the Malleus Mundi.

I really enjoyed a certain arc by the renowned Mr. Gagne, an author I'd been keeping up with before he started doing CoH AE arcs.

The arc in question is "The Do-It-Yourself Casino Heist Project by @Twoflower Arc ID: 404549". It details a Hollywood-blockbuster style overplanned heist that goes wrong, with quite a bit of Mr. Gagne's signature humor thrown in.

Villainous content doesn't *have* to be all violence and destruction, murder, ****, and toruture. It doesn't *have* to be 'really hero content'. It can be fun, audacious, and epic while still being exciting and lighthearted.

I know that there are quite a few villains out there who really have problem with the villainous content being not dark enough for them. However, I'd rather there were more arcs that put the player in the position of Danny Ocean or Jack Sparrow instead of Calligula or Hannibal Lecter.

Rogues generally play something like this - just in it for the money.

Ironically, now that I don't have to play villainous content with villainous archetypes, I find myself playing red side more than in the past. I've moved as many heroes to the Rogue Islands as villains to Paragon. (Not counting Praetorians here at all.)

I agree though that I'm not looking for dark stories. My favorite villains in the past I always pictured more as rogues, long before Going Rogue was announced. They weren't kitten-stomping world domination types. they were just in it for a quick and easy buck. Amoral rather than immoral. Selfish rather than vicious.

Mayhem missions are great fun too.

I find Redside much more fun now I can tell Arachnos exactly where to go stuff it. My main, Alpha, has beaten up pretty much anyone to get in his way to date, stolen everything not nailed down, everything that was nailed down while also stealing the nails, and generally been a badass.
I recently made him a full on Villain again because, meh, V-merits are better, I wasnt using his Rogue status for anything and, when all is said and done, he does have a mean streak a mile wide when the mood takes him. So, hey, why not?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

While I appreciate the ability to go tell Recluse where to shove it, I actually rather like playing an Arachnos stooge. (Of course, my character is more along the lines of an office-drone in a business that just happens to involved murder and psychic mayhem)

I believe the biggest mistake Cryptic (yes, Cryptic) made when designing City of Villains is they couldn't tell the difference between the kind of villains that make sense on a good story and the kind of villains players actually want to BE. When I write a story, I do indeed fill it with villains, some pretty unpleasant and irredeemable, and I create those villains with contempt for the sake of seeing them defeated for MY OWN satisfaction.

This is not a good way to write a character that I'm going to want to play as, that I'm going to care about and like, that I'm going to put forth the effort to advance and perfect. A good villain in a story is not the same as a good villainous protagonist in a game, and when you mix one with the other, the results may be drastically less impressive than they might look on paper.

I realise they had to cater to all types of villainous constructs, or at least as many as they could encompass, and all of those had to be unplesant in some way (they're villains, after all), but I feel Cryptic's capital offence was rubbing that unplesantness in our faces. In a story with a nasty, unpleasant villain who's in the audience's face, it's justifiable because the unpleasantness is going somewhere and there will be eventual vindication when the villain is defeated. When that villain isn't, as we are expect to want for ours, it turns the whole game into a crapsack work that's just depressing. And while I know that some people like those dark, hopeless stories, I feel very safe and secure in saying that most do not.

The problem with City of Villains is it focuses on how villains are repugnant without really giving them much of a chance to be cool. After all, we admire the Joker not because he's a cold-blooded murderer, because he ruins lives, destroys people and all that. No, we admire his for his audacity, for the sheer scope and depth of his plans, and for the wanton disregard that an unpowered individual can enact against generally super-powered foes. We like him more because he's a COOL villain than because he's a NASTY villain.

And City of Villains has very, very, VERY little that can make a villain feel cool. Sure, there's Time After Time, and there is the occasional Mayhem mission. Oh, and the Dean -> Leonard arc is also pretty cool. But most of the rest is pretty narrowly confined in the realm between "life is pain" and "I'm just in it for the money." There's just no chance to shine, as it were, and that's the boat anchor around the neck of the villain-side game.

Quote:

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.