Is COH: Freedom Putting the Cart Before the Horse?
By
8-J,
Posted on: 2011-08-04 24:56 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I dunno, Golden Girl, in my experience a lot of players, particularly younger players, prefer to play the evil side. I know that in an upcoming good vs. evil type game that I've been keeping an eye on it is pretty well split between light side and dark side.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's not just games - the vast majority of people prefer movies, books and comcis where the good side beats the evil side - that's why the movies, books and comics that show this are the most popular and successful.
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Personally, I rarely play a villain because I find the Rogue Isles depressing and annoying to navigate. Nerva is the only redside zone I like at all. I know a lot of people who feel the same way I do.
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Teenage boys can't be used in studies about morality |
Originally Posted by RoleplayerX
I dunno, Golden Girl, in my experience a lot of players, particularly younger players, prefer to play the evil side.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Actually, look again. My guild is pre-registered, and if you look at the pre-registered guilds, the scale is far FAR weighted toward darkness.
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Originally Posted by RoleplayerX
I dunno, Golden Girl, in my experience a lot of players, particularly younger players, prefer to play the evil side. I know that in an upcoming good vs. evil type game that I've been keeping an eye on it is pretty well split between light side and dark side.
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Nothing drives people away from a game faster than constantly getting team invites and then being spammed by RMT advertising.|
Originally Posted by Djeannie
Really. Not allowing free accounts to start groups is a poor move.
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Not letting free accounts start groups is a great idea.
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That's because Vader and Boba Fett are way cooler than Luke tongue kissing his sister on Hoth.|
Originally Posted by Feycat
Actually, look again. My guild is pre-registered, and if you look at the pre-registered guilds, the scale is far FAR weighted toward darkness.
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Edit: I'm assuming your talking about TOR's pre reg guilds.
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What people? People with romantic partners? People who have never played CoH, and would like to try the game with said partners? We've gotten "exactly zero percent" of those people huh? If I would have known everyone who played City of Heroes was single, I'd have made it a point to attend more meet-and-greets. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Traditionally, we've always gotten exactly zero percent of those people.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
And if you're going to toss those numbers around, lets see what they actually mean. Unless MMOs are dominated specifically by lesbians, lets assume that approximately the same proportional amount of couples are same sex female as same sex male and do not alter the distribution by much. For 60% of the female population to roughly equal 16% of the male population means males outnumber females by a ratio of 3.75 to one. Out of every 1000 potential customers, about 210 are female and 790 are male, and of those about 126 males and females play as a couple (again, factoring out same sex couples just for simplicity, not because they don't exist).
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Personally, I would hope that CoH in 2011 has a more favorable ratio than whatever game he surveyed in 2003. And if CoH's actual ratio is better than 5:1, then we're talking about more than 25% of players (male + female) for whom being able to play with a partner is likely a significant factor in determining if they play. [1]
Of course, we don't know the numbers for CoH specifically, and I can only assume that survey I linked would be representative of perspective players as well as current players for our game today. That's not something I can categorically claim, but it seems likely to me.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm not going to lose sleep over that. That isn't a make-or-break thing. If they allowed free players to send blind invites, I wouldn't complain too much either, but to lose at most 25% of players who would not be paying to play in any capacity for at least a significant amount of time if ever seems rather insignificant.
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- have yet to make an initial assessment of the game, and
- consider playing with a romantic partner or family member a significant factor in their decision to start playing.
I'm not arguing that free players need to be able to send invites ("blind" or otherwise) to premium or vips. I am arguing that free players need, at the very least, the ability to form teams with each other. If there are ways to achieve this goal without disturbing VIPers, then I'm all for it. But even if it is all or nothing, I think that the population in question is valuable enough to justify some risk to subscribers and premium players if being able to team would make the difference between them playing (and paying) or not.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That means even if every single one of those couples was comprised of a male that refused to become a premium or VIP player *and* a female with the same property, we'd be losing access to approximately 25% of all possible prospective customers. That's the worst case scenario under these numbers, assuming absolutely *none* of those prospective customers happens to be dating someone that is currently either a VIP player or someone who would be returning to the game as a premium player.
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The most I'm willing to infer from the sources I have is that being able to play with a partner or family member is likely to be very important to a significant number of people. If Paragon wants to attract new members from this population, then they should consider changing their teaming restrictions sooner rather than later.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Keep in mind, City of Heroes Freedom is not out to pad its player numbers with as many free players as possible. It is offering people a chance to play for free, with the full understanding that the totally free experience is significantly limited, and the premium experience will always be less than the VIP subscriber experience. We're offering a chance for players to play the game, try it out, and decide whether they want to pay to gain further access. What we're offering is a lot, but absolutely nobody cares if its not enough for some people. It only has to be enough for enough people, because we're not giving away the store, and we have no need to give away the store. This is an attempt to attract more paying customers. Its not some last gasp attempt to attract every freeloader in town with a free beer sign.
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Of course, once they've decided, the credit card's more of a triviality (particularly with the dollar amounts needed to make teaming easier). But players need to be able to get to that point, first, and I strongly suspect that being able to start a team is going to be a required prerequisite for many people.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
So when you say we're "not going to get very far" are you saying that if we target 75% of all potential subscribers rather than 100%, the entire exercise is not likely to come anywhere near achieving its goals? Or are you saying if we fail to find a way to encourage people who are predisposed to not pay anything at all to play the game then this business model is not likely to succeed?
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Teaming is a core part of the experience for this game. If anything can convince a family or a guy and his girlfriend to start investing time and, yes, money in this game, it's going to be their experience playing CoH together. For myself, while I enjoy soloing, and spend most of my time playing alone with other people, I would not still be involved in this game if it wasn't for the fun times I've had while teaming.
So, yes, I would argue that potentially excluding a quarter of perspective players is foolish if you can include most of that quarter without risking the remaining 75%, or the players you already have. I think Paragon can do that, and that it would be worth doing... which I guess is the TL;DR version of my point.
[1] And that's just considering romantic partners. The survey also includes data for people who play with family members. Specifically, 16.4% of men play at least "sometimes" with a family member, and 29.5% of women. That can be compared to 12% of men, and 49.2% of woman who play at least "sometimes" with a romantic partner. (This is a narrowing of criteria from the numbers quoated earlier to exlude those who only play "seldom" with a partner/family member.)
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I THINK they put a Black Helicoptor somewhere in North Nerva, let me go check.|
Originally Posted by Ura Hero
4. My previous complaint; zone travel, has been addressed and is much improved now. I'd still like to see some way to get to the north side of Nerva without having to travel for 5 minutes. (Possibly this has been implemented, I haven't been to Nerva in a while.)
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Yup, Northern tip of Agincourt. It's about in the middle of the map rather than close to Thorn Isle, but it's still closer. Especially with the instant loading that happens when you go from the Nerva South copter, which is less than half a dozen Ninja Run hops from the ferry.
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Originally Posted by reiella
Until I see something that states to the contrary, going to assume VK is right
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While you make good points, the fact is that the decision to not allow free players to form teams (as with trial account currently - and free accounts are basically just a new, improved version of trial accounts) is based on protecting the playerbase - all of them, not just VIP's. |
Originally Posted by LostCreation
stuff
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If free accounts can form teams, then RMT people can freely advertise by making all the free accounts they want, form teams and then advertise to the team.
Veteran players of this game and other MMO's would know better, and ignore or (better yet) report them. But the philosophy behind spam is that if you throw enough... pancakes... at the wall, some of it will stick. And it will. Newbies and others who know no better will get suckered in and then they have put their accounts and their identities at risk. RMT sites are not just a harmless annoyance, they are a very real concern. NCSoft is not going to give those folks the tools to run rampant to do as they please. This is the same reason free account will not be able to send tells, or talk in broadcast or global channels, or join an SG, and so on. If it weren't for RMT, I am sure that free account would have no restrictions on communication or teaming (signature story arcs aside). But as long as RMT is around, that's the way it has to be.
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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Well yes, but without using names so I didn't get PANCAKEPANCAKEPANCAKE'd.
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
That's because Vader and Boba Fett are way cooler than Luke tongue kissing his sister on Hoth.
Edit: I'm assuming your talking about TOR's pre reg guilds. |
I'm reserving judgement on the whole business of limiting communication and teaming ability on free accounts.
I personally feel it's a grave error; an opinion I base upon being a player of several F2P games myself and having participated in the associated communities. That is inherently subjective, alas, but I feel it is accurate in this respect, regardless.
If the point is to convert freebies to premium, then offering a lot of enticing, low-cost shinies to get them to spend that initial five bucks is the answer; not telling them "You can't team up unless you pay up." Limiting non-essential game systems is expected. Limiting essential quality of life game systems is extortion and will be viewed as such. Free players do not take kindly to being extorted into becoming paying players. Making the conversion of freems to subscriber a goal of your payment model is a mistake - it should be a consequence, not an obvious goal. Free players who feel railroaded are players who dig in their heels and say "Pancake you".
Again - I have no statistics to back up what I say; only life experience.
By the same token, if the goal is still some attempt to limit "gold farmers" then my response is "get over it". This kind of limitation punishes the legitimate players a lot more than it punishes the offenders. In fact, if "gold farming" is really lucrative enough to pursue the activity in the first place, then the farmers will have little problem forking over the five bucks per account to become premium members themselves and circumvent the limits.
Gold farming is going to be a consequence of freemium play. Get over it. Get past it. Don't limit legitimate players in order to target the smaller population of undesirables.
As for the topic of "villainy" - It's almost a pointless discussion because it means a dozen different things to a dozen different people. I have to shake my head when people complain about "not being villainous" because I find that most such people don't really think like a real super villain.
What they generally mean is that they want to engage in Grand Theft Auto petty villainy - hiring a prostitute and then killing her and stealing her money and dumping her out of the car and then going and doing it again for the lulz.
They want to run down the streets of Paragon City killing every civilian they see and laughing while they do it. They don't really have any concept of what they would do if they actually had free reign to try and make something of themselves as an immoral or amoral super-powered individual in a world that was theirs for the taking.
It doesn't help the villains are considered "rugged individualists", by and large. This is all the more obvious when you get all of the complaints about players being "lackeys" in Arachnos instead of feeling like Arachnos is a support organization that is grooming them for better things.
On the one hand, that's a problem with the design of Arachnos, but on the other its a sign of the unrealistic expectation of the players - namely, that there's space at the top of the villain food chain that is theirs by right and that there shouldn't be someone else already at the top who wants to keep their power and squash the budding villain like a bug before she becomes a credible threat.
There's a reason that organized crime is organized. It's because chaos is bad for everyone involved.
A procedural game with set resources, scripts and responses to player actions can't really simulate villainy in the way that it can simulate heroism. Not without making it another game entirely.
Maybe what's really needed is for someone to develop a super villain game first, and then add the accompanying super hero game on top of THAT. Maybe then, people would get the kind of game that lets them "feel like a villain".
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Well, maybe.|
Originally Posted by EvilRyu
No...
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While some people may take the bent of disparity that EvilRyu talks about, and run with it, I don't think that is really the culprit with this game.
Honestly, I think this is one of those cases of several reasons/factors. Some of those factors may impact all, some, a few or very little. To each individual, the factors that affect them will seem paramount.
I don't think the average player looks between the two sides and sees game-mechanic disparity.
I do think that there becomes a learned disparity. As great as this community may be, its predilection towards Blue Side helps to shape the future players as well. Both with words and with the resulting population balance.
Anyway, I think that the gloomy, overcast sky is a factor (of course, it is also a factor for some of us to enjoy Red Side more, hehe... But I imagine we may be the minority in that case).
I think the name of the game is a factor.
The biggest thing, in my book, is that playing/exploring/accomplishing Villainy is a much more broadly defined thing and you will have far less people agreeing with what hits the right mark for villainy as compared to what hits the right mark for heroism.
Stop the crime/Fight the bad guy/Save the victim(s) = Super Hero = Fun
While we can craft many equations for Villainy, you'll not get so many agreeing on one simple such example.
From my experiences of playing villains through tabletop role-playing games and such... I found, as a game master especially, that villains need to hatch their own plots. They need to create their own missions. They are best suited to defining what it is that they are going to do.
I let them bring the adventure/missions/modules to me.
I simply (well, not quite simply) created the virtual world for them, provided them with as many options as I could, and just let them choose what acts of villainy their characters chose to pursue.
Sure, I led them here and there and dangled carrots of enticement, but -even then- it is the illusion that they are making the decisions that made all the difference.
Trying to accomplish the sense of villainy in a video game with the same mechanics that you accomplish heroism isn't going to really work.
As an example: Often times, the villain (you) should be the one in the last room, fighting the hero that managed to find you.
You should be in that last room because you hatched your own plot to get there and then made your way there.
However, CoV runs on CoH mechanics... so all you get is the feel of a lacky-type bad-doer beating up other bad guys.
As for what CoV does right...
I still find Mayhem Missions to be the most fun thing in the game, hehe.
It's great for the type of villain who personally causes mayhem.
And then, after reaching your goal, a hero comes to stop you.
That is great.
Maybe a system for Villains that is a mix of the Tip System and the Paper Missions and Story Arcs... where you look at the paper, choose from a list of potential goals (steal money, steal special item/resources, kidnap, assassinate/eliminate, etc.) and then embark on a series of missions based on those goals. The success and manner in which each step is completed with affects how and when interference from heroes and/or other villains may occur... and, depending on your success, it could result in you being in your spot at the end and being confronted by a hero trying to stop you (or just take you down after the fact).
Hehe, then again... I've likely only focused on what my personal preferences for Villainy would be.
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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I read the entire document. The ratio of 5:1 is inconsistent with their measurements, but by their own admission the ratio of 5:1 is approximate. Either you accept my ratio of 3.75:1, or you accept the fact that their actual measurements for couples has huge error bars, or you assert your belief MMOs are dominated by lesbian couples.|
Originally Posted by LostCreation
The ratio is actually closer to 5:1, male:female. The document I linked is pretty short, there's no need to make numbers up.
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| Personally, I would hope that CoH in 2011 has a more favorable ratio than whatever game he surveyed in 2003. And if CoH's actual ratio is better than 5:1, then we're talking about more than 25% of players (male + female) for whom being able to play with a partner is likely a significant factor in determining if they play. |
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That's not what I'm arguing. These aren't people "who would not be paying to play in any capacity for at least a significant amount of time if ever", these are people who:
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| I'm not arguing that free players need to be able to send invites ("blind" or otherwise) to premium or vips. I am arguing that free players need, at the very least, the ability to form teams with each other. If there are ways to achieve this goal without disturbing VIPers, then I'm all for it. But even if it is all or nothing, I think that the population in question is valuable enough to justify some risk to subscribers and premium players if being able to team would make the difference between them playing (and paying) or not. |
Paying customers still come first, second, and last in City of Heroes Freedom. Non-paying "customers" get a really, really good trial of the game.
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| [1] And that's just considering romantic partners. The survey also includes data for people who play with family members. Specifically, 16.4% of men play at least "sometimes" with a family member, and 29.5% of women. That can be compared to 12% of men, and 49.2% of woman who play at least "sometimes" with a romantic partner. (This is a narrowing of criteria from the numbers quoated earlier to exlude those who only play "seldom" with a partner/family member.) |
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| Respondents who played with a romantic partner were not more likely to spend more time playing the game, but they were more likely to indicate a greater willingness to stay with the game when compared with players who do not play the game with a romantic partner. |
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| Respondents who play the game with a family member were not more likely to spend more time playing the game, and they were also not more likely to indicate a greater willingness to stay with the game when compared with respondents who do not play the game with a family member. |
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This is the kind of thing I keep reading our forums for. Well said Arcana.
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How many long-running villain-centric comic books are there? |
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
As Golden Girl said the 3rd Superhero mmo launched in January of this year. With EQUAL CONTENT and EQUAL PERKS for both it's hero and villanside.
The disparity of of heroes vs villains is 3 to 1 on EVERY server in THAT game. People naturally prefer being a hero over a villain. I think there were a GIGANTIC LOAD more people rooting for the Joker to lose then for Batman to lose in the Dark Knight. |
Villains tend to be "This is who the good guys beat up for the next 1-10 issues," then they get rotated out while you stick with the same "good guys."
Add to that - how many times have the villains *permanently* won? Sure, they kill Superman... temporarily. They take over the world... which gets reversed due to some space-time its-magic hand-wavey nonsense.
Villains continually get written as "They will lose - maybe it'll get rough for the good guys, but they'll lose." I can't see that *not* playing a part - no matter how good the content, etc. - of why more people in this game genre make heroes as opposed to villains.
Not to mention that the bad guys that DO get away with things for a long time don't really lend themselves to games. They do... what? They plot and scheme, buy people off while looking like a respectable businessman who gives to the community, etc. while behind the scenes he's getting protection money paid to him and sending out minions to get beat on. Now put that in COH... how do you level? What are your powers? The closest we come to that is the Mastermind, and that's so far off that example (what's the last thing your character got to plot?) that it's not even in the same time zone.
The only games I can think of that came anywhere close were Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius... and even those were pretty limited.
Fewer people play villains because *we don't get to be villains.* We get to be thugs.
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This, as well, to be specific to the game on top of my prior comments.
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Originally Posted by Ura Hero
1. The villain zones are desolate places. Honestly, how many villains want to live in a trash dump? Most villains want to live the high life. Parts of St. Martial fill that bill, but the rest of the villain areas are gloomy desolate places that most folks would flee from at the first opportunity. While I can agree that some villainous types would live in a dumpy area, the majority would not. |
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| 6. Lastly, the whole patron pool thing. Open them up like the hero side powers. Having to do a series of long drawn out missions to get powers that may or may not be useful is boring and a silly time sink. I can usually knock them out in thirty minutes or so, but why should I have to? Heroes don't have to. Even out the playing field. |
There's also the problem that villains want to change the world into something bad, but heroes want to keep the world as it is - which makes the more static game world of an MMO way more suitable for heroes than villains - Paragon City is always being threatened by Villains, but it's still always there - so the default setting is that the Heroes have succeeded and the Villains have lost.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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That's a lot easier for you to say than for NCSoft to do. They cannot just ignore RMT. It's not an option. They have to put roadblocks up.
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Gold farming is going to be a consequence of freemium play. Get over it. Get past it. Don't limit legitimate players in order to target the smaller population of undesirables.
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@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
When it comes to the Villain new-player experience, here's how I remember it from when COV went live:
1. Cool! New ATs I can't have on Hero side, and some unique powersets! (This will no longer be an issue.)
2. Beating up snakes. Ok, that's different from Hellions! (New players won't necessarily have the COH background.)
3. Beating stuff up... BANK ROBBERY? CASINO ROBBERY? HELLS YEAH!
4. Maps are exact same as COH, only with different "skins", and now we're just beating up people all the time? Where's the villain stuff like those cool robberies? Bah.
5. Never go back to Villain side.
--NT
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But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
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Yes and no. In general stories tend to have good to triumph over evil but at the same time a well-written villain is often more popular than the hero simply because the villain is a more interesting character. For example Vader is a lot more popular than Luke because he's mysterious, well-written and can choke people with the Force.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's not just games - the vast majority of people prefer movies, books and comcis where the good side beats the evil side - that's why the movies, books and comics that show this are the most popular and successful.
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There's a reason TVTropes has the Draco In Leather Pants trope.
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On the contrary. They can easily ignore it. If they're going to put roadblocks up then they should be meaningful roadblocks. As it stands, if I am a gold farmer and I make $100,000 of profit annually off of 1000 RMT play accounts, and the cost is that I pay $5,000 one-time to get access to teams and to more channels for communication, then there isn't any question that I'm going to pay it and get on with my farming. It isn't a roadblock at all. It's just one of the costs of doing business, as far as I'm concerned.|
Originally Posted by Quasadu
That's a lot easier for you to say than for NCSoft to do. They cannot just ignore RMT. It's not an option. They have to put roadblocks up.
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The only people who get "roadblocked" are the true newbies who are trying the game out and might actually want to spend money on it if they have fun playing it.
Re: Villainy - It pretty much appears that the problem with being your own villain instead of someone else's lackey/servant/employee/agent/whatever is that it becomes a sandbox game instead of a mission driven combat game. A true super villain is someone who is either an evil mastermind or someone who is pursuing some sort of individual agenda. Any way you look at it, the villain has to provide his own plan and his own measure of how successful he is at achieving his plan.
This is something that most players aren't prepared to do and wouldn't really find all that fun if they had to actually do it. They'd rather just be anarchists and burn down the game world and THAT'S their idea of being a "Villain". It doesn't help that the game doesn't, and can't, support an objective measure of wealth. There's no way to look at another person's character and say "I'm more powerful than you". In the end, everyone is relatively the same. For heroes who are trying to preserve the status quo and act selfless, that's not a problem. For villains who want to rule the world or otherwise reach the pinnacle of whatever it is that motivates them, that's unacceptable and, hence, they are left with an experience that "doesn't feel villainous".
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The reason City of Heroes: Freedom asks for an investment from the player before allowing them to participate in activities that can be socially damaging is that this then creates a material cost associated with account banning. If I can abuse the community or the game with a completely free account, there is zero cost to making another one if its banned. If there is a cost associated with equipping that account with the rights necessary to produce that abuse, it will tend to discourage players from risking a ban, and it will increase the costs associated with chronic abuse.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
On the contrary. They can easily ignore it. If they're going to put roadblocks up then they should be meaningful roadblocks. As it stands, if I am a gold farmer and I make $100,000 of profit annually off of 1000 RMT play accounts, and the cost is that I pay $5,000 one-time to get access to teams and to more channels for communication, then there isn't any question that I'm going to pay it and get on with my farming. It isn't a roadblock at all. It's just one of the costs of doing business, as far as I'm concerned.
The only people who get "roadblocked" are the true newbies who are trying the game out and might actually want to spend money on it if they have fun playing it. |
The more likely a particular activity can be abused to the detriment of either the player community or the game in general, the more likely it is a restricted activity for free players. This is a logical precaution for any MMO to take, but specifically mandated for City of Heroes Freedom, because as I keep saying the emphasis is on the subscribers and the paying customers first.
The devs can ignore RMT in the same sense they can all hold their breaths until they pass out and then reorganize the company based on who regains consciousness first. That it is possible does not make it any less stupid.
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People believe this dreck?|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's a normal human reaction - the vast majority of people like to see the good side win, and the evil side lose - heroes are winners, and villains are losers.
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You may think this is how the world works from watching movies and cartoons but honestly, the shrewd people who are willing to make the decisions that many can't (and that many would deem "evil') are the ones who drive our civilization.
Good is generally stupid and don't realize progress is made on the backs of their fellow man.
I loved the Phipps arch, because he did a necessary job. Arachnos needed the Freaks to be exactly what they were (uneducated louts) because it helped promote the orginization's goals.
I love the Peter Themari arcs because destroying a fledgling force of "good" is exactly what a Villian should do.
The new writers are doing evil quite well though:
Have you guys run the Morality misison where you basically murder this sidekick's grandmother to teach him a lesson? I think its a vigilante one and its fantastic.
Dean McArthur is a fantastic Power trip
The legacy chain fella on the docs in sharkhead (sorry I forgot his name) has one of the best arcs in the game,
where you discover more about the well, the Coralax and take power through manipulation and betrayl.....
My villians aren't blood foaming at the mouth types, they just understand that Heroes are just another word for stupid.
When something good happens to me, I can never enjoy it....
I am always too busy looking for the inevitable punchline...
BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE!
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Most people don't want to worry about the inherent evil of everyday life, and how many thousand of unknown people they probably screw over on a daily basis (They're not evil, though, because they held a door open for a stranger once). All that aside, video games in general tend to be about escaping reality, and having a bit of mindless fun. So it makes sense that more people would want to escape the evils of the world and pretend to be the good guy for once.
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Originally Posted by Test_Rat
People believe this dreck?
You may think this is how the world works from watching movies and cartoons but honestly, the shrewd people who are willing to make the decisions that many can't (and that many would deem "evil') are the ones who drive our civilization. Good is generally stupid and don't realize progress is made on the backs of their fellow man. |
1. The PvE content is significantly harder on the red side, and specifically in ways not conducive to attracting new players. Consider that the red side sees far more endurance drain in the early game than heroes do, and endurance drain is notoriously annoying in a number of ways. If inherent stamina is intended to be attractive because you get enhanced recovery from the start, the red side is almost the equivalent of having inherent anti-stamina. Its also much more mez-happy, and critters statistically have a slightly higher number of attacks (critter offensive threat is almost directly proportional to the number of attacks they have, because unlike players they can't slot for recharge: the more attacks they have, the more offense they have, almost proportionately).
2. The red side content doesn't - at least overall - revel in being "evil" its more a caricature of evil seen through good's eyes. Evil almost never actually wins, and when it does it does in a way that makes the skin crawl on probably a majority of the players. The way I put this to the devs recently is that the red side doesn't range from Magneto to the Joker, it runs the gamut from Cartman to the Human Centipede.
I can see myself being Magneto. All I have to do is believe one thing: if I stand back and do nothing but hope for the best, all of my kind will one day be put on trains and disappear. Again. I could even revel in being the Joker: I'm nuts, and I'm out to prove everyone else is just as crazy as I am.
I just cannot relate to Phipps. This is a high level contact asking me to crush a school teacher. And whoever wrote the arc - which is well written for the most part, by the way - wasn't writing an arc intended to make the player happy. Here's what the souvenir says:
Yeah: this is someone who thinks people should enjoy being a villain. I say its well written because I honestly believe the writer really wanted me to feel ill after "succeeding" in this arc, and I did. Well done.
As long as the writers don't believe in it, the players won't either. And this arc is an example of my belief the writers didn't really truly believe in the red side being legitimate.
1. The villain zones are desolate places. Honestly, how many villains want to live in a trash dump? Most villains want to live the high life. Parts of St. Martial fill that bill, but the rest of the villain areas are gloomy desolate places that most folks would flee from at the first opportunity. While I can agree that some villainous types would live in a dumpy area, the majority would not.
2. As has been said before the story arcs do not lend themselves to the person being led to feel villainous. Pointing to the Westin Phipps arc, it is the only one where I actually felt bad about running the arc. More arcs should convey the; "Oh crap, what did I just do?!?!?" feeling instead of making the player feel ho hum about the entire story.
Edit: Having read Samuel Tow's thread on how the villainous arcs should be more uplifting, I can agree with that side of it. The villain should be able to feel accomplishment about what has transpired as well as being able to feel a certain sense of depravity occasionally for things that they are forced to do.
3. The story arcs are more difficult. And not just in the playability aspect that has been mentioned. The whole newspaper/broker thing is a complete turnoff to me. I want to be able to progress without being forced into a side theme that has no direct impact on my progression for anything other than RP reasons.
4. My previous complaint; zone travel, has been addressed and is much improved now. I'd still like to see some way to get to the north side of Nerva without having to travel for 5 minutes. (Possibly this has been implemented, I haven't been to Nerva in a while.)
5. Villain trials/Strike forces. Honestly IMHO, these things just blow for the most part. I hate 70% of them and won't do them except for a badge. Really? A room where you move slightly and the whole party wipes? Very poor design there. Not to mention there needs to be a few more in wider level ranges.
6. Lastly, the whole patron pool thing. Open them up like the hero side powers. Having to do a series of long drawn out missions to get powers that may or may not be useful is boring and a silly time sink. I can usually knock them out in thirty minutes or so, but why should I have to? Heroes don't have to. Even out the playing field.
There are more complaints than this, but this strikes most of the things I find distasteful about redside.
Tech Support Rule #1 - They will lie to you. Usually intentionally.