So is Redside really harder than Blueside?

And the only villain zones that are total craptowns are Mercy and Sharkhead. Villain zones are bigger and more internally diverse than hero zones, so all the others have their nice area and their not-so-nice area. It would certainly help if the Isles didn't have a chronic case of perpetual cloud cover though.

Again, I believe that's only because our play styles have become so second nature that when they no longer work we perceive that as "hard". CoV seemed "hard" compared to CoH when it first came out especially to those who played CoH longer.

Even things like navigation and the hazards traveling to and from mission doors seemed "harder". Shortcuts we've learned in travel, play style, attack strategies, targeting order, etc. are different enough that we can feel uncomfortable. Play is no longer "mindless", running on autopilot to complete a mission and cash out for the evening.

It's kind of like driving to work and the highway is shut down for some major accident and you now have to find a way around it, forcing you to take an unfamiliar route. It's not that it's actually harder, it's just you have to think about what you are doing a lot more.

Hey. Isn't Striga technically outside of Paragon?

No, it's honestly not. It's far more to do with the power range that Praetorian mobs have, the exotic damage types and debuffs and the sheer weight of spawns in comparison to their Primal counterparts.

At a level for level comparison, Praetorians have far more powers available and much more potent stats than any Primal mob of that range barring Vahzilok with their toxic damage and speed/rech debuffs. Any other Primal mob, at a design level, will be far better balanced for the level it spawns.

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.

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

Ah, you're right. It is PBs that get Vahz early on. Warshades don't get those thrown at them until the second arc. Still, it looks like both get a good cross section of all the low level factions as an "Introduction to the Bad Guys of Paragon" lesson.

That said, my Peacebringers still managed to faceplant the zombies thrown at them before they could get into spew range.

Um? How so? I run into the Spectral Daemon Lord a lot pre-20 villainside.

Also, for a time [not sure when it changed to be honest], redside CoT was the exclusive home of such fun stuff as the Nerva Demons and Hordelings.

- Il Numero Uno (The Number One)

It pays pretty well for me, my multi-billionaires are all villains.

Redside has the crappiest writing in the game, bar none. 50 levels of being a flunky does not good writing make.

There's a difference between concept and execution. In general, CoV has what I consider a poor concept but better execution of that concept. Better plot flow, better dialog, more use of arcs rather than one-off missions. All of that may be predicated on a flawed premise: that we are all willing to be flunkies of Arachnos, but how it is actually executed is broadly still superior to the generally themeless hero stories we find in CoH, IMO.

It's definitely more engaging, IMO. I may not like the plotline as a whole, but at least it's clear that you are playing a story of some sort, Villain side. For that same reason, I find it easier to stockpile merits V-side too, even though the merit rewards for each individual arc are pretty pathetic.

When you chart out the lifespan of the game, it's actually kind of amazing that V-side content is as good as it is. Subjectively, I'd say that the V-side story arcs are far closer to the Praetorian story arcs in terms of polish and execution than they are to the Hero-side story arcs -- and yet, City of Villains is far closer on the calendar to the CoH launch than it is to GR launch.

So whatever flaws the original Hero content has (and there are frankly too many to list), the devs learned the important lessons fairly early on.

The only thing that kinda rankles me about CoV story-arc content is that the devs were clearly way, way too enamored with the (then-new) escort mission when they were designing CoV.

FWIW, I can't stand leveling hero-side anymore, even though Paragon is more visually attractive, and even though teams are easier to find. As for whether Red is harder than Blue, eh, probably a very little bit harder, but it's honestly hard to tell these days given all of the various tools we're given to ease the discomforts of leveling.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

A tree with a rotten core is still dead.

I disagree with both the execution and the concept being any better than CoH. CoV spoon feeds you the story in bite sized chuncks. It's like the chicken nuggets of content. In CoH, you're slowly learning the mysteries of the City while dealing with small scale threats by the various villain groups. Even the Faultline arcs, which post-date CoV maintain this form of pacing. The overall plot of that zone isn't made clear until the third arc. It's similar to the slow reveal of the Rikti origin, the Circle of Thorns, MoM, Countess Crey. By contrast, in CoV most of the time it's fairly obvious what's going on the second you talk to the content. See e.g. Kelly Uqua. The Praetorian arcs don't do this either. Each of the paths has a story where you fall further down the rabbit hole, learning more about the bad and the good of the paths you choose to walk.

CoV is further harmed IMO, by a foundational bit of inanity. The fact that it is a City of Villains separate and apart from a civil society. With the fact that crime is all but rewarded in law, it's hard to believe they could keep the lights on (even with a demon powering them). They should have never separated heroes and villains in the way that they did. It made the CoV story all the more silly.

I could go on. Of course this is all a matter of opinion, but CoV isn't very much fun. I much rather do tips, while on CoH I sprinkle in my favorite arcs (like Freakalympics). But to each his own.

I'm almost the exact opposite. I haven't leveled a character in the Rogue Isles since Going Rogue.

I still level characters on their "native" side. I don't go Rogue until I'm 50. Then again, I level almost exclusively solo and don't team a lot, usually TFs, until I'm near 50. I find this harder to do, in general, in CoV, because of the foes. (Vahz are nasty, but you outlevel them very quickly.) I find it more engaging in CoV and very tedious in CoH. Especially the zoning.

It's fascinating how people can look at the same things so differently. Yes, the foundational plot(s) in CoV are weak, and fairly predictable. There isn't a whole lot of suspense, though to be fair that's partly because a lot of us already had a pretty good foundation in the (spotty) lore of the game before CoV even launched.

That said, each Villain arc is, if not more tightly paced, then at least more obviously self-relevant from start to finish. There aren't (as a rule) gratuitously repetitive filler missions padding each and every one.

I'm sure a lot of this has to do with play style. If, for example, you only have an hour to play at a time, you're less likely to be able to complete a hero-side arc in one sitting. In my case, I can go literally weeks between sessions in a given hero arc. So whatever admirable pacing is written into the story is lost on me, because I'm lucky if I even remember what the heck is going on by the time I pick it up again.

By contrast, I can typically play at least one whole villain arc in a one-hour play session. Ditto for Praetoria.

Even ignoring game time constraints, given the speed with which characters level these days, given that you could join a team in the middle of any arc (and particularly any hero arc) and come back to find you've out-leveled it, I find the hero-side arcs are just too long.

It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would defend original hero content on the basis of implementation, but hey, variety is the spice of life. Thanks for sharing an interesting point of view.

Heh, yeah, wasn't there actually a quote from a former CoH developer basically laughing at the absurdity of a self-contained City of Villains? A quote from long before even CoH launched, if I recall.

Well, it's not like I've leveled a lot of characters lately, but I can't imagine myself not going to Praetoria first, and from there there really isn't a so-called native side. The beauty of Praetoria is that even good-hearted characters could plausibly fool themselves into going to the Rogue Isles, simply out of a distrust of Marcus Cole.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Praetorea's nice and all, but my take on it is that it's something I experience for it's own sake. From a concept perspective, I have absolutely zero interest in having all my future characters hail from Praetorea. I create Praetoreans because (a) I want to experience the story arcs there and (b) I specifically decided that I wanted something that has its story origin in Praetorea.

My core concept for character origination is Primal Earth. I don't mind having some characters from Praetorean Earth, because that's really not much weirder than a few of my characters who ostensibly have roots in Primal Earth. (If you're a fae/elemental being, how anchored, really, are you in what we think of as human-centric earth society?) All of them? Not so much. And I care enough about concept that I'm not going to start something in Praetorea and then "retcon" its orgin as not having come from there.

Given all that, I'm not going to create everything in CoCole from now on. I'll create most stuff in its "native" original side. I may be a powergamer at heart, but I do slave myself to concept in some ways.

Some of the red side arcs are just funny as hell. From the Radio to Doc Buzzsaw to Vernon Von Grun. As someone who has dabbled in writing all my life, there's nothing harder (IMO) that writing something that's actually funny. I give the red side content bonus points for some good laughs.

Yep, Rick Dakan, the original CoH Lead Designer, said it in August of 2002. It was a side note in a larger question involving PvP and why CoH originally wasn't intended to have player villains at all.

Here is the relevant paragraph (emphasis mine):

Amusingly, he ends the section with this:

Likewise. I've started two characters in Praetoria and will probably start two more there just to run those arcs (haven't done the two extremes), but that might be it. I'm just not sure I have the concepts for more*.

I dusted off an old level 8 tank the other night and actually found it to be refreshing. I even took him to the Hollows, something I hadn't done with a character since oh, 2005. I don't mind the lower levels, there's something comforting about doing some early street-sweeping in Galaxy, then Steel, mixing in newspaper missions and an arc here or there. I spent a couple of years focusing on villains and had gotten a little tired of the Isles. It is dingy, and after a while I do get sick of Arachnos.

My perception is that Gold > Red > Blue on the difficulty scale, at least solo. There are dangerous mixes of foes in both of the first two that seem harder to avoid than blue-side.



* I do wish we had the ability to create any AT in any starting point, especially after the shiny of Praetoria/side-switching has worn off a bit. I'd like to take a level 5 MM around Galaxy, or a level 10 blaster through Port Oakes.