Remember that guy? Lord Recluse?
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2011-12-13 02:02 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I, along with quite a few others, were VERY sick of Arachnos being involved in everything and anything and for nearly a year, we campaigned to have less of Recluse show up in major storylines. Personally, I'm glad this happened, though I'm disappointed to see his omnipresence replaced with the omnipresence of Tyrant, instead. The reason we asked for less of Recluse wasn't so much because he was a bad villain (he isn't) so much as because we didn't want to keep seeing THE SAME villain be the root cause of every major angle Issue after Issue. Just like people are now sick of Praetoria, so we were sick of Arachnos a few Issues back.
That said, I agree with you. Recluse has been out of the title picture for long enough now that we've stopped being bothered by his presence and are starting to remember him with fondness. Now would be the right time for Recluse to make a comeback as a major threat of some kind and have another storyline of his own. Maybe we can even have him feud with Tyrant now that he's been weakened and Recluse has had enough time to come up with something big. Or, I don't know. Maybe we can wake the Nemesis up and remind him he used to be a villain, too. What did he set his alarm clock to?
The great irony is that for all the flak Recluse took during the I6-I9 period, he's actually a pretty cool villain. He has a great look, he has a fairly stable evil organisation, his own island chain and a sexy dead lady. You can't ask for much more than that. The problem, for the most part, was people - specifically villains - were sick of always being painted as racing to serve Recluse over and over again. I, personally, became sick of Longbow standing in for heroes and Arachnos for villains. Not all heroes want to side with Longbow and not all villains want to side with Arachnos, hence why many of us wanted Recluse sidelined.
But again, Recluse has been sidelined long enough. I'd like to see him do something more meaningful than punch the Statesman directly into my eye.
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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.
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Turns out, not so much.
He seems to be perfectly ok to sit on the sidelines while the Heroes duke it out with Goatee(less?) Statesman instead of taking proper advantage of the situation.
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
Well, there were some Arachnos incursions in the Neutropolis arcs.
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I could see how this was and issue, but it's simply not the case anymore. We have more than enough options and paths to take now, and many masters to serve (if not simply serving ourselves). The fact is that in the end, Lord Recluse is the Archvillain of the game, the personal rival of the game's icon, Statesman. And with all the new paths we've been offered and all the other threats to the world we've had to stave off, the only thing I can think to say is "Recluse never did anything this big". I think his vacation needs to come to an end, and everyone needs to be reminded why Recluse is someone to be feared.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The great irony is that for all the flak Recluse took during the I6-I9 period, he's actually a pretty cool villain. He has a great look, he has a fairly stable evil organisation, his own island chain and a sexy dead lady. You can't ask for much more than that. The problem, for the most part, was people - specifically villains - were sick of always being painted as racing to serve Recluse over and over again. I, personally, became sick of Longbow standing in for heroes and Arachnos for villains. Not all heroes want to side with Longbow and not all villains want to side with Arachnos, hence why many of us wanted Recluse sidelined.
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The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
All of my characters love the idea of fighting a large military like organisation, just like the Council or Arachnos.
Really though when you think about it, blueside theres barely any legit storyarcs that are based on them being our main rivals.
- They show up in Faultline for a brief part.
- Every pvp zone but no storyarcs there.
- Mender Silos arc via ouroboros.
- Cimerora.
None of which focus solely on Arachnos being a top evil organisation.
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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Isn't it, though? For all the options we're given, what's the first thing Arachnos do when they show up in new content? On the villain side, they're your task masters and the de facto "bad guys" while Longbow are your enemies and the de facto "good guys." It's years down the line, and literally the first thing these guys do is right back down the exact same alley that made me hate both Arachnos and Longbow at the same time.|
Originally Posted by AkuTenshiiZero
I could see how this was and issue, but it's simply not the case anymore.
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And why is Recluse in Paragon City personally, laughing a chucklehead? This is something Dr. Evil would do. The only reason Recluse has any authority at all is because the UN recognises the Rogue Isles as a sovereign nation and him as its leader, thus preventing the US from bombing his empire back to the stone age. Showing up IN PERSON to attack US soil and shout taunts at the US' premier hero is the fast track to bringing his nation into open war with the United States. And I don't care how many super weapons he has, he's gonna' lose.
That's my big beef with Recluse and Arachnos - if they were written like a logical evil organisation which needed some kind of foundation to exist and had to at least acknowledge some rules of international politics in order to use the laws to its favour, then it could be a very compelling antagonist. Instead, Arachnos is reduced into a caricature evil organisation populated exclusively by dicks and who seemingly the whole world sees as overtly evil yet hasn't felt the need to wipe out of existence. And when Manticore does try to help out the people of the isles, he's branded a criminal. When Longbow set up a base of operations, they're breaking international law. So what about Recluse and his goon squad who raid Paragon City on a daily basis AND raided both Galaxy City and Altas Park following a major disaster?
Recluse can be a great antagonist, but he needs to be handled with care, and his organisation needs to be less obviously evil. It could still be obvious to us as players and to anyone who cares to look, but come on, man! At least try to pretend!
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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.
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Saying this, what story would you give them for future arcs?| Recluse can be a great antagonist, but he needs to be handled with care, and his organisation needs to be less obviously evil. It could still be obvious to us as players and to anyone who cares to look, but come on, man! At least try to pretend! |
Personally i would like to have a high level arc with them in which they are trying to obtain an item which would put them back on top as the main bad guys and not third [or possibly lower? Coming Storm >Praetorians > Arachnos?] in line?
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I've always enjoyed fighting Arachnos, they have an interesting mix of enemies within their ranks which makes them a decent challenge for most of my characters and is one of the few enemy groups in which you can actually see their power growing [for their npcs] as you level up in the game. By this i mean your fighting from wolf spiders > Bane > Huntsmen > Mu > Toxics > Those other ones i for some reason cant remember the name!
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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As a hero? Fight back an Arachnos infiltration as opposed to an Arachnos raid. Say I stop a bank hist and, when frisking the villain, find a he booked his flight from the Rogue Isles through Really Not Evil Shipping and Vacationing. When I check this with the PD, it turns out a lot of recently arrested bank robbers from the Isles booked their ship tickets through the same company, so I go there. At first, everything looks legit, like they just have bad security checks, but there's something off about it. So you insist to check the offices, and all of a sudden the receptionist pull rifles and Arachnos soldiers come rushing out to kill you because you're obviously on to them. Turns out this was an Arachnos front.|
Originally Posted by EU_Damz
Saying this, what story would you give them for future arcs?
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That sort of storyline would still paint them as the brazen, callous villains that they are, conducting criminal operations in the heart of an American city, but it would also show that they DO care about not getting caught. Arachnos agents can then still rob banks and put bombs under people's doting grannies, but they do so secretly, because they don't want people to know they're doing these things. It makes Arachnos seem smart as well as powerful.
Occupying a city block just seems like a bonehead move. They're gonna' get run off, if not by a swarm of heroes then by American armed forces. Here's an idea - dress your soldiers like EMTs and set up a mock field hospital, then dress other agents as patients and claim it's full. Or dress your men as firefighters and send them all over Galaxy City. By the time people smell a rat, you have your meteorite fragments, you have your Shivan samples and you can clean house and leg it.
Arachnos is just stupid. And I get that Recluse is just using the Rogue Isles, running them into the ground and will probably jump ship when a better opportunity presents itself, but it just makes the whole organisation come off as colossally stupid. Not something you want out of your premier bad guys.
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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.
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The start of that story does actually sound like something that would work quite easily in this game, one that i certainly would play! 
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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Both the Aaron Thiery and Twinshot arcs involve Arachnos to varying degrees to introduce them to the players. |
Originally Posted by EU_Damz
All of my characters love the idea of fighting a large military like organisation, just like the Council or Arachnos.
Really though when you think about it, blueside theres barely any legit storyarcs that are based on them being our main rivals.
None of which focus solely on Arachnos being a top evil organisation. |
Where do they show up in Cimerora? Daedalus' pits you against Cimeroran Traitors and then Malta. The ITF pits you against 5th Column and Traitors.
And as was mentioned, the end of the Praetorian arcs when you're hitting toward 20 introduces you to Arachnos and gives you an overview of the Rogue Isles if you choose to go Villain.
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Originally Posted by Agent White
Both the Aaron Thiery and Twinshot arcs involve Arachnos to varying degrees to introduce them to the players.
Where do they show up in Cimerora? Daedalus' pits you against Cimeroran Traitors and then Malta. The ITF pits you against 5th Column and Traitors. And as was mentioned, the end of the Praetorian arcs when you're hitting toward 20 introduces you to Arachnos and gives you an overview of the Rogue Isles if you choose to go Villain. |
In cimerora the arc your talking about is his second one iirc, his first one is to recover the item [name escapes me] that ghost widow has stolen.
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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I could actually make one in the Architect, now that you mention it, but I'd need a little more than just this basic premise |
Originally Posted by EU_Damz
The start of that story does actually sound like something that would work quite easily in this game, one that i certainly would play!
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Originally Posted by EU_Damz
In cimerora the arc your talking about is his second one iirc, his first one is to recover the item [name escapes me] that ghost widow has stolen.
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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.
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Its not an arc run very often sadly but heres the link to it.| Daedalus doesn't deal with Arachnons. The soldiers invading Cimerora are Malta. |
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Daedalus...er_.2840-50.29
Its a short few missions with one hell of a tough fight in the middle, but its quite fun
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
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Oh, right, the mission to defeat Ghost Widow has Arachnos in it. Of course! |
Originally Posted by EU_Damz
Its not an arc run very often sadly but heres the link to it.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Daedalus...er_.2840-50.29 Its a short few missions with one hell of a tough fight in the middle, but its quite fun |
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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.
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Sorry to just cut a small segment out of a longer, well thought out post, but this statement made me laugh out loud. How does one place a bomb under a person secretly? I mean, short of a Devices Blaster with a Cloaking Device and a Time Bomb |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
*snip*
Arachnos agents can then still rob banks and put bombs under people's doting grannies, but they do so secretly *snip* |
That said, I'd like to see Arachnos kinda horn in on Crey's territory a bit, with Aeon's company as their front. Yes, we as heroes know that Aeon and everything he touches is just another Arachnos plot, but somehow I don't think they'd let his Architect Entertainment buildings be all over the place if this were common knowledge. Beyond that, it's well known that Aeon has developed a geothermal power plant that VASTLY outstrips any other geothermal plant on the planet, so he MUST have some good tech (See: Marshall Brass, Virgil Tarikoss). I'd think that people would be clamoring to have him set up a plant in the middle of Grendel's Gulch. With the recent volcanic activity it's seen, it could easily be a new power plant site to help reduce the cost of power in Paragon City.
Which, in and of itself, is just an Arachnos forward base that is nominally producing some small amount of energy that reduces electric and heating bills by some small number of cents per month. But clearly, Aeon is a good guy for coming all this way to help set this up! He can't be up to no good, no sir! Ignore that his main financier happens to run a state that has been sending operatives into foreign countries with ill intent for decades. Aeon is A(e)OK!
Sorry, couldn't resist that last one. I could totally see it on an AeonTech billboard in Paragon City though.
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Originally Posted by Venture
I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe. You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off
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PPD Mastermind
I would just like to see heroes fighting villains again instead of teaming up all the time. It is like your hero (or villain) spends 50 levels fighting the good fight (or evil) just to join the side you have devoted your life to defeat.
Paragonian Knights
Justice Company
He probably just got sick of destined ones throwing his helmet from the future at him.
I think the problem is too much red side content focuses on villains fighting Arachnos and not enough blue side content focuses on heroes fighting Arachnos.
Seriously in nearly eight years it's been, what, just the tail end of Faultline, the STF and a bit of the revamped Atlas Park content? Scanner missions if you count them.
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Now this I can agree on. It occurs to me that my uber-evil villain has been fighting for human extinction for 50 levels (everyone needs at least one genocidal maniac on their roster) and now it's time to start the incarnate content and final make some real progress towards his goals, right? Right?|
Originally Posted by Grae Knight
I would just like to see heroes fighting villains again instead of teaming up all the time. It is like your hero (or villain) spends 50 levels fighting the good fight (or evil) just to join the side you have devoted your life to defeat.
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Oh, wait, we're saving another dimension now. Y'know, it's becoming increasingly difficult to write a story for this character when it's so damned hard to do genuinely evil things in this game. I really wish they'd hire some new writers for the villain content. I mean the current writers are okay at writing heroic stories, but there's really no sense of great evil being done by my characters. It's like someone said "Evil = Robbery" and that became the writer's bible for everything redside. I'm not asking to firebomb orphanages or anything equally un-PC, but a superweapon project every now and then never hurt anyone. Well, except your targets. They tend to hurt quite a bit.
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
While I certainly enjoy fighting large organisations like Arachnos, Fifth Column and such, I would like to have more stand-alone villains. I personally rather liked seeing the Rogue's Gallery villains that appeared in the tip missions (even if they were always backed up by existing villain groups). When the SSA started and there was the mysterious mastermind talking off-camera, I was very excited at the prospect of a new villain who didn't have to rely on any of the existing groups, beyond manipulating them. I was really hoping to see someone entirely new, with a cool back-story.
There was one moment in a Praetoria mission though, where Arachnos soldiers show up and make some comment to the effect that they will glady die to forward Recluse's goals. The way it was said (I won't even try to paraphrase it, as I don't remember it very well) actually made me see Arachnos as a threat for the first time in a long while, thinking of them as blindly loyal and willing to sacrifice everything for Recluse. It was actually a cool little moment.
Est sularis oth Mithas
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Exactly what Nemesis wants you to think!
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The reason we asked for less of Recluse wasn't so much because he was a bad villain (he isn't) so much as because we didn't want to keep seeing THE SAME villain be the root cause of every major angle Issue after Issue. Just like people are now sick of Praetoria, so we were sick of Arachnos a few Issues back.
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Isn't this the M.O. for all Crey and Nemesis Operations? (and some Fifth Column?) You go to investigate some lead and everybody pulls out guns on you? I don't mean to complain that it's been done, but it's been done. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
As a hero? Fight back an Arachnos infiltration as opposed to an Arachnos raid. Say I stop a bank hist and, when frisking the villain, find a he booked his flight from the Rogue Isles through Really Not Evil Shipping and Vacationing. When I check this with the PD, it turns out a lot of recently arrested bank robbers from the Isles booked their ship tickets through the same company, so I go there. At first, everything looks legit, like they just have bad security checks, but there's something off about it. So you insist to check the offices, and all of a sudden the receptionist pull rifles and Arachnos soldiers come rushing out to kill you because you're obviously on to them. Turns out this was an Arachnos front.
That sort of storyline would still paint them as the brazen, callous villains that they are, conducting criminal operations in the heart of an American city, but it would also show that they DO care about not getting caught. Arachnos agents can then still rob banks and put bombs under people's doting grannies, but they do so secretly, because they don't want people to know they're doing these things. It makes Arachnos seem smart as well as powerful. |
I get the feeling that Lord Recluse doesn't even care about legalities. Even if you caught him shoplifting on camera with a confession and signed statements from the Freedom Phalanx, the Arachnos Lawyer Corps would keep any legal action from progressing well into the 25th century.
Recluse just brazenly does whatever he pleases because he knows the "good guys" are restricted by their legal system and he is not.
However, I like your thinking and I agree with you that Recluse needs to expand his base of operations. Maybe the problem is that we don't see him trying to turn things to his advantage *more often.* Why doesn't he use portal tech for recruiting and resource gathering? What is he doing with all the tech we've seen Dr. Aeon using? Isn't the AE system like a way to feed an "alternate" Well of the Furies? Does he have a way to use Shivans against the Shivans? Why doesn't he use Von Grun's vials of bees? What about the "ghost research" that horrible woman in Port Oakes is doing? Recluse has so many fingers in so many pies that he rivals Nemesis in complexity. So why does he rob banks in Paragon City? Because he enjoys it.
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Frankly, given how many appendages Recluse has at his disposal, he can simultaneously prod more pies than the average mere mortal.
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Originally Posted by BYiro
...Recluse has so many fingers in so many pies...
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The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
Personally, I'd rather have them be in the background for a while than become a tired enemy group like Longbow. I think that Lord Recluse is currently putting his eggs in a few different baskets and seeing how things unfold before unleashing whatever his next plan may be. Arachnos's involvement in the Cimeroran arcs as well as their appearance in Praetoria goes along with that. Sister Airlia's arc is a better indicator of their success in Cimerora, as it was confirmed in a clue in one of the SSAs (the first, I think) that Imperious is under her influence now. Lord Recluse's name also came up a few times in the most recent part of the SSA, and I'm not quite ready to dismiss that as coincidence.
I'm hoping that some of the story content in the DA revamp will touch on what Lord Recluse has been doing in regards to the Praetorians. It might be more prudent for him to sit back and let the others do all the fighting while he sends in forces to do reconnaissance, but given his history I'd figure he'd have personal reasons to get involved. It's one thing that the Praetorian version of his archnemesis is running the show, but there's also the fact that the Praetorian version of Recluse is already dead (Since that's mostly touched on by Prometheus, I'm not sure how much information about that Lord Recluse has been able to find, but whatever he's found out he probably isn't happy about it).
I don't think we've seen the end of Arachnos as a major villain group (and I hope not, since they're my favorite faction), but I don't think it's time for another one of Lord Recluse's great plans just yet.
Yeah...Whatever happened to him? He seemed like a real promising up-and-coming villain.
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.