Villians how to fix redside
What authority are you of to say what a good super villain is/does?
Personally, the biggest and most dangerous villains of them all are the ones you think you can trust. The ones that, through past exploits, seems worthy of your trust but then goes behind you, takes your **** from right under your nose, stabs you in the back, laughs as he takes your position without effort then, when you try to turn the tables by force, exhibits how powerful he is and how useless your efforts are. Granted, I do have a few that go the "smack athority in the mouth" approach, but they're less supervillains and more anarchists. |
Notice I said A reason.
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Playing the Devil's advocate here: the final arcs from the patrons, where you wind up scaring the bejezus out of Lord Recluse with his own, shattered helmet finally grant our 50 villains the respect they deserve.
It's a nice finishing prize, even if the journey is a little flawed.
What authority are you of to say what a good super villain is/does?
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When I say what a villain "should be," that's inclusive. I've never tried to argue what a good villain SHOULDN'T be, since everyone's preference is different. But old-game CoV fails in providing only a very small subset of what villains could be, and the excuses for it are growing lamer with every Issue.
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.
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Playing the Devil's advocate here: the final arcs from the patrons, where you wind up scaring the bejezus out of Lord Recluse with his own, shattered helmet finally grant our 50 villains the respect they deserve.
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Sure, you might be able to personally best Lord Recluse in a fight, but the full might of the organization (that mind, has access to nukes, among other more sophisticated weapons) is a different thing altogether.
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I still like Praetoria when it comes to satisfying, conclusive finishes. Reese spends the entire time being a grade-A jerk, and at the end, you get to kill him. Twice. He gets better, sure, but he's quite humbled by the end. That's what I believe City of Villains needs to fix it - giving our villains back their dignity and even letting them be arrogant when the situation calls for it. Because right now, most of CoV's content is humiliating.
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.
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Yeah, so the argument goes, and it's still just as much nonsense now as before. Heroes don't seem to have a lick of problem invading Grandville all the time by themselves and not facing anything from Arachnos and it's not like they're the only people with a mediport system. Nor, for that matter, would fighting about a million Arachnos be all that much of a challenge with the aggro cap where it is. The game teaches me that I can come in and rip their bases apart any time I so please, yet all of a sudden I'm supposed to be afraid of them?
This is the ultimate in god-modding GM ******** - but thou must, and constitutes the single biggest fail of the entirety of City of Villains' story as planned out ahead of time - we're small-time weak-willed thugs who want to suck up to Arachnos while they are the big fish who really matter. Tying vendors and reclimators to Arachnos was a mistake. Tying US to Arachnos was an even bigger mistake. For all the bad things I've said about Going Rogue, at least it has the right idea when it comes to self-serving agendas. "Sinclair will use you!" says Beladonna. "Sinclair can't use you. No-one can use you! You'll show the Resistance what you're made of, and if Sinclair tries to mess with you, you'll take him down, too. NO-ONE controls you!" That's what a good super villain is. That's what a good super villain does. He doesn't shrink from one bald old man. He punches him in the mouth, takes on the full might of Arachnos and shows Recluse that he's not to be messed with. It's been six years now, and I'm not any more interested in accepting that Arachnos apologist rhetoric. The game shouldn't be trying to explain why my character is a chickenshit coward. The game SHOULDN'T put my character in a position to be a coward in the first place, and that it does is a fail for City of Villains. The whole narrative treats us like lowlife scum, with every other contact calling us stupid brutes and acting smug and superior. I sincerely hope that Freedom includes as much contact-killing as people are saying, because that's precisely what villains do with contacts who talk back. |
And that's stupid. There's a world. There are powers in it and you mess with them at your own peril. You don't get to mess around with the Lady of Pain or traipse into Nessus or fight Cain or kick Khorne in the shins or have tea with the Dark Powers without issues.
Personally I wouldn't mind an option to say Screw you to Daos... That would then show a cutscene of you being killed and delete your character. Because that's what would happen. You shouldn't be able to beat Arachnos in a straight up contest of power. Because to dos o would be silly. We'd have to have a completely different game (more of a strategy game, I'd play that, no doubt) in order to simulate the kind of power you'd need to take on an organization like Arachnos. You're one superpowered person (albeit a strong one) and there are thousands of them in the world.
To quote an old Jedi saying: There's always a bigger fish. Or in this case, you might be a Great White Shark but Arachnos is a school of Piranhas big enough to swallow the moon.
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
That's my meme, actually. And you have to admit that Recluse's obsession with the Statesman went beyond Dr. Doom and entered into creepy and weird a long time ago. The man isn't trying to rule the world or increase his power, he's content to just show up on the Statesman's doorstep and throw smarmy remarks at him like a spurned lover. And for his part, the Statesman abandons his calm and flies into an emotional rage every time he sees Recluse (check out the tutorial loading screen comic on Beta) like they had a bitter break-up. I honestly feel that the narrative would do Recluse a HUUUGE favour if it stopped identifying him through his relationship with the Statesman.
What really sinks Recluse's sense of power and villainy is that he runs a shithole that he doesn't really run. Aside from that one signed order to Arbiter Sands, it doesn't feel like Recluse does anything at all but exist as a figurehead, because his entire organisation is corrupt, mismanaged and highly unsuccessful at actually running a nation that runs itself behind their backs, for the most part. The reason people praise Tyrant and poopoo Recluse is that Tyrant is the villain with dignity. He rules his nation with an iron fist and everything that happens is said to have been thanks to him. Recluse, by contrast, simply exists in the Rogue Isles and lives among garbage and ruins. If anything, City of Villains looks more like a post-apocalyptic Earth than anything else. Fixing villain-side would require giving Recluse a little more dignity as the de facto lord of the realm, possibly by giving him a zone that's less of a shithole, and at the same time giving players more opportunities to oppose him successfully, giving them the sense of having overcome a credible threat. Right now, the game's biggest fail is Arbiter Daos threatening to bring the full might of Arachnos on my head and the game playing my character like he's actually intimidated. Yeah, Arachnos, the dudes I've been slapping around like errant stepchildren since I was level 1, and I'm supposed to be afraid of them? Give me a break! |
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.
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Fixing villain-side would require giving Recluse a little more dignity as the de facto lord of the realm, possibly by giving him a zone that's less of a shithole, and at the same time giving players more opportunities to oppose him successfully, giving them the sense of having overcome a credible threat.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
And you're demanding to be the god-moded player, who demands to be treated like a special snowflake and to be able to ignore any kind of existing power-structure in the world, just by virtue of being a player.
And that's stupid. There's a world. There are powers in it and you mess with them at your own peril. You don't get to mess around with the Lady of Pain or traipse into Nessus or fight Cain or kick Khorne in the shins or have tea with the Dark Powers without issues. Personally I wouldn't mind an option to say Screw you to Daos... That would then show a cutscene of you being killed and delete your character. Because that's what would happen. You shouldn't be able to beat Arachnos in a straight up contest of power. Because to dos o would be silly. You're one superpowered person (albeit a strong one) and there are thousands of them in the world. To quote an old Jedi saying: There's always a bigger fish. Or in this case, you might be a Great White Shark but Arachnos is a school of Piranhas big enough to swallow the moon. |
And why then are we, a team of eight villains, able to do what Recluse and his apparently powerful army have been unable to do for YEARS, punch right into the heart of Paragon and kick the ever loving snot out of the Vindicators, Ms Liberty AND the entire Freedom Phalanx, right under Atlas' globe?
Paragon without it's Heroes would have been reduced to rubble and anarchy by now.
And, in turn, Arachnos without it's Destined and begrudging metahuman allies would have been broken over the lawful worlds knee by now.
That's the whole reason the game has a status quo to maintain, it's why it's so successful despite people beating up Heroes and Villains so many times; they counter each others movements. Heroes put away Villain X, bad guys bust him out. Villains capture Captain Y to torture and finish him off 'once and for all!' Heroes go and beat up the guards and rescue him.
I can deal with that whole scenario. Except that it's not even; Villains, with the exception of the more recent arcs (which are great, might I add) get treated like lackeys and like they need Arachnos.
Wrong. Dead wrong. Arachnos needs US.
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.
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Then why are they NOT actually in charge? Why are the Heroes capable of genital-slapping not only the Grandville defence forces, not ONLY the Patrons, but also Recluse himself tanked up on super-jesusbeam steroids machine. |
How come John Wilkes Booth could shoot Lincoln and yet the South lost the war?
Arachons != it's leaders. To take on an organization like that you need more than firepower, you need an army, an organization, a plan... And the game mechanics can't handle giving us that.
I'd love to play a superhero strategy game, but COH isn't it. And this means the major organizations of the world are going to be beyond our ability to defeat.
EDIT: We can also get in and fight Recluse because the vast majority of his armies are also being drained by the WEB. This is stated in the briefing.
Because we may have strength, but we don't have *power*.
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
the devs can't fix most players wanting to be heroes. Period. End of discussion.
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Some people don't like the thought of beating up heroes and refuse to come red side. Some don't enjoy the content. Others have their own reasoning.
I like the red side. I play on both.
After taking a year break from the game and coming back, I find that my villain sg has died mean while my hero side SG is still going strong.
"To me." I'm all about options in villainy, and Arbiter Daos playing tough guy doesn't give me any options. My only option is to shrink from the challenge and tell myself I'm so totally not a coward because Arachnos are so big and scary.
When I say what a villain "should be," that's inclusive. I've never tried to argue what a good villain SHOULDN'T be, since everyone's preference is different. But old-game CoV fails in providing only a very small subset of what villains could be, and the excuses for it are growing lamer with every Issue. |
![](http://www.fightersgeneration.com/characters/jontalbain-win3.gif)
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.
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Yeah, I still do have fun redside. In terms of story, even though I don't actually like the story that much, I consider its packaging and delivery so superior to blue side that I prefer it. I started playing a lowbie hero again after months of working on level 50s and was reminded how ... dated the story and presentation of low-to-mid-level CoH is. Go defeat 30 X's. Go run up and down the length of Skyway just to talk to people who's phone number you might have. That sort of thing actually reduces my fun more than the story villain side ever did.
Could my villain side fun be made better with a different backstory? I like to think so. Is the backstory so awful in my eyes that it drains the fun out of it for me? No. It's not close to that.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
What really sinks Recluse's sense of power and villainy is that he runs a shithole that he doesn't really run. Aside from that one signed order to Arbiter Sands, it doesn't feel like Recluse does anything at all but exist as a figurehead, because his entire organisation is corrupt, mismanaged and highly unsuccessful at actually running a nation that runs itself behind their backs, for the most part. ... The reason people praise Tyrant and poopoo Recluse is that Tyrant is the villain with dignity. He rules his nation with an iron fist and everything that happens is said to have been thanks to him. Recluse, by contrast, simply exists in the Rogue Isles and lives among garbage and ruins. If anything, City of Villains looks more like a post-apocalyptic Earth than anything else. |
There is a reason that we don't want the bad guys to win; part of Lord Recluse and Emperor Cole's point as story icons is to illustrate why that is: Paragon City may have War Walls, frequent invasions, Hellions stealing purses in the street, and Hazard Zones, but it is STILL (arguably) better than letting the bad guys win.
With Lord Recluse, you live in a Darwinist/Randian/Nietchzian dystopia.
With Emperor Cole, it's an Orwell/Huxley nightmare scenario.
The main thing I would do if I could wave a magic wand over the Villain Zone would be to create some villain-only mechanics and subsystems for the game:
1: A career-long story arc that allows you to create a doomsday device/worldbeating scheme, culminating in a battle against the Phalanx. If you win that battle, you get to create an alternate timeline (an instance that any player can enter and play in) where you have ruled/destroyed the world.
This location would be its' own variation on 'apocalyptic hellhole', and would use AE tech to build the scenario based on decisions made during the story arc. What kind of dystopia would your main villain build, if they won? Control the world via mind/soul-destroying tech/magic, and you end up with sheep instead of subjects. Conquering via fear and terrorism leads to an apocalyptic wasteland or a hellish landscape filled with sirens and searchlights. Many of these worlds could also be used as additional zones for the AE and alternate worlds found via a Portal Corp repeatable mission Contact or perhaps via Ouroboros.
'Cloning' tech would be used to populate the instance with statues and posters of you and the like.
2: Trials and arcs would allow you to overtake Paragon City and Rogue Island spawnpoints temporarily, replacing the normal spawns with minions of your own design, using AE tech.
3: Create career-long story arcs that establish you as working with other villainous organizations besides Arachnos in the capacity of an Arachnos Infiltrator (using Going Rogue tech). You would begin these by seeking out 'hidden' Contacts in various lowbie zones. You would be able to access alternatives to certain arcs and missions, sabotaging Arachnos plans. These would have unique badges that you could use to 'prove' to other players that you are not actually a lackey of Arachnos.
4: A true faction system within Arachnos, with Contact and in-mission choices that allow you to curry favor with various Patrons and/or invite attacks and countermoves by them and their minions. This would have a corresponding blueside system, allowing you to choose 'trees' of temp powers, missions, and the like from various organizations, like the FSBA or Hero Corps.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
Personally I wouldn't mind an option to say Screw you to Daos... That would then show a cutscene of you being killed and delete your character. Because that's what would happen. You shouldn't be able to beat Arachnos in a straight up contest of power. Because to dos o would be silly. We'd have to have a completely different game (more of a strategy game, I'd play that, no doubt) in order to simulate the kind of power you'd need to take on an organization like Arachnos. You're one superpowered person (albeit a strong one) and there are thousands of them in the world.
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Off-game example - Gordon Freeman, "a man who had barely earned the distinction of his PhD at the time of the Black Mesa incident, and who I have it on good authority was in a state which precluded such training in the intervening years" appears to have no problem taking on the full might of City 17's Metrocops, Overwatch, pretty much every Antlion there ever was and a whole city full of zombies time and time and time again. Do we need more examples? How about War from Darksiders? He appears able to fight hell's forces head on, powerless on top of it, and still come out triumphant and even destroy the Destroyer himself. How about Red Faction: Guerilla's Mason? He manages to take down the EDF dictatorship pretty much on his own, with only occasional, futile help from the resistance for anything more than lodging and supplies.
You lack imagination in much the same way as the original City of Villains writers. There was no reason to tie our Reclimators to Arachnos, there was no reason to have all Vendors be Arachnos-sanctioned and there was no reason to have what amounted to our entire end game up until I19 consist of kowtowing to the Arachnos power structure.
Just as there exist "Abandoned Labs" and the Black Market isn't Arachnos property by virtue of being illegal, so we should have been given "illegal" Reclimators waking us up in the sewers or in a cave or in an old building or any place where Arachnos aren't likely to look and so we should have been given vendors that don't wear Arbiter uniforms. Like in Praetoria. Praetoria itself has no reason to exist because everything which takes place there should have been taking place on the Rogue Isles all along.
You don't need to punch every Arachnos soldier in the face in order to defy Arachnos, as Going Rogue proves beyond the strongest argument. Arachnos don't run a tight shift. People hide from them all the time. Hiding from them and opposing them covertly is not a difficult thing. Everyone does it all the time.
Congratulations on quoting one of the worst movies ever made. I'm not sure that has the effect you're after.
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.
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Only problem with villain side is the starting zone. That is it, and that problem will be addressed with Freedom.
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.
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Arachnos overpowered the IDF and nearly destroyed Keyes Island. Just sayin'.
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Yes, that "nearly" happened... But it didn't actually happen, did it? And if we're being fair, the reason it didn't happen is because "we" stopped it. What does that say about the scary Arachnos military?
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.
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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.
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So, you're saying that the IDF don't possess far superior technology, far greater resources and don't constitute the biggest threat Earth has ever faced?
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If anything, the characters we create are more powerful than Arachnos. But Praetoria certainly has some work to do.
And Arachnos, they're one of the tougher enemies in the game.
So, why fear Praetorians?
I don't find Arachnos tough at all as an enemy group.
Annoying does not equal tough.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!