Revival Of Redside?

I can't speak for everyone, but there is an 'ick' factor in directing my character to fight and presumably kill the police. For some reason in the "other game" that was mentioned, I found it a lot more disturbing than CoH and rerolled pretty quickly. Maybe the game had more "death" and "injury" sound effects--I can't remember. Anyway, it's one thing to talk about villains planning evil things and maybe sometimes getting away with it, but seeing it all the time (and especially directing the character to do it) was just really depressing.

However, the other reason I avoid red side is the color scheme and the fact that whatever the numbers show, getting on a low level team is way too much work.

I imagine my reaction is similar. playing an actually evil character and doing things that are evil, even comic book evil, is depressing to me. If i want to see evil win, i'd read forbes magazine, i play for the escapism of watching the people who are above the law find the law kicking them in the face and laying them low. Personal experience varies, but in every game with moral choices, i have never played anything but a full on "good/ paragon/open fist/whatever" character. I bought villains because that was where new content and costume pieces were, and i loved plant based powers, but most of my reds are rogues. and their stories usually paint them as master thieves with hearts of gold or vigilantes who went too far rather than real villains.

One thing i will say is that if one cares about playing a villain or hero or such, the tips and rogue system was a significant boon. some of the better content detailing behavior that was either virtuous or monstrous has been in those stories. cant think of any stories in the game proper or tfs that made me feel like "one good spider". If anything would cause people to play redside for the feel, i'd say that should have been a determiner.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I prefer the fewer zones of the red side and the ATs have always been cooler (well, used to be...now anyone can be any alignment). Anyway, blue side has way too many zones and lots of those are dead. Red side gives you more focus and less pointless running around

In general people prefer playing heroes to villains.

Redside isn't dead, it's just not as popular.

Redside isn't dead per se, at least not on Virtue, I see people there every time I play there. (I play almost all my solo content there, because I loathe the heck out of the blueside content.) Villains just don't team much prior to the 40s.

I don't think Redside is dead per se...It just doesn't get much love because:

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Originally Posted by Lemur Lad Interesting version of history but not particularly accurate in it's language. Let's try again. After City of Villains was released, Cryptic slashed the dev team for the entire game to less than 20 people, so the studio could focus on new projects and still technically meet their contract with NCSoft. The dev team made a conscious decision that the things they could do should be things that had the biggest impact for the most players, so neither side got much in the way of specific development. NCSoft saw it was a money maker for them and a game worth improving, so when the time came they bought out Cryptic and took over the dev team and made it much larger. That's a severely trimmed version of events, but it's more accurate than the slanted synopsis you were given. Beware oversimplification, the full story is often a lot more complicated.

Frankly, I really don't mind. Redside is quieter than Blueside and therefore less laggy:

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Originally Posted by Gaspard CoV has always been the underdog compared to Coh in player numbers and I can't see things changing. However, a lot of the truly skilled players I met were on red side, rather than blue. Just a personal observation.

I forgot from my first post that redside also has mayhem missions. Another thing with redside is that the SFs aren't extremely long. I think the longest one is SVSF and that can be done in 40-50 minutes, easily.

I've actually been thinking why CoV isn't as popular as CoH, every now and then.
Back in the day, before GR, I used to think that the ATs were way too different for some people who were already used to the hero AT structure and roles.
Then there's the visual style (plus the number of polygons etc. textures on outdoor maps) which may put people off.
Don't know about the story, because I think an average player doesn't stop to read the mission description or contact dialog (most of the time.) Me and my friends sure as hell don't. lol But then again I don't really know which path an average player would pick if given a blunt choice of Good Or Bad in a video game.

I think after the new smell wore off after launch, people went back to playing CoH side characters and that's where the general population is nowadays and that's where I would probably head as a new player who wanted to be close to a big population of players and learn the game.
At least, that is how I see it.

Of course, now there's GR and vigilantes/rogues running about, jumping between red and blue.

I've never cared for Redside because most of the villainy was cartoonish (in an 80s way), and you spent most of your time following other's orders. Neither of these conceits suit my villainous character concepts.

Redside suffers from a narrative flaw - in the superhero narrative (indeed, in most narratives, really), the bad guys act, while the heroes react.

To put it another way - on Blueside, you can play Superman, or Batman, or Spider-Man. If they found out about the missions, they'd do them, even if exact methods would vary.

It's moderately difficult to imagine Magneto, Dr. Doom or the Skrulls taking Arachnos' orders to rob a bank, or checking in the newspaper for a good idea for a heist. They'd already have things to do, to suit their purposes.

If only all AT and all Alignments could go anywhere.

Villains are allowed on Blueside - I bash Hellions, Malta, Family, etc in PI all the time. If only Villainous PCs had some Villainous contacts and Mission Arcs there. Wouldn't it be nice flavour wise if you, flagged as a Villain, had Longbow and PPD attack you when they saw you?

Same with Redside. There's plenty of heroing to be done over there. Honestly, a 'Nation' that blocks all "Good People" from even entering is as ludicrous as it sounds. A better approach is that it's a corrupt government who minions (ie Arachnos mobs) attempt to arrest/remove those who might distabilize the regime (ie. Heroes and Vigilantes). Truly that's just fluff anyway - Arachnos already attack everyone on sight, Villains included.

One could argue that it's not realistic to allow Villains and Heroes to walk around side by side and not fight each other. How is that much different that my Vigilante joining a bunch of Villains (whom he normally bashes) on a ST to defeat the Freedom Phalanx?

One open world - then all this talk of redside/blueside populations would go away, as it should.

The thing that would revive redside for me would be to make the contact chain work more like goldside. Stop making me do a mayhem mission just to get a new contact. If I want to perform some villainy, just let me walk up to a contact and start some evil.

Also, more contacts like Peter Themari could help.