Time to beat the dead horse... again

The reasons people cite for hating redside are all wrong, though. Take a run through St. Martial or Aeon/Mercy City and tell me it's all trashy and bleak. Paragon City has entire zones dedicated to garbage and destruction. The Rogue Isles only have half of Mercy and the slums of Grandville. The zones have so much more character to them and have so much more going on as opposed to Blueside and it's "Almost every zone is a generic city" landscape. And only about two or three contacts actually treat you like total dirt. The rest either just give you mercenary jobs or genuinely appreciate your help. Plus you really don't even fight that many Longbow soldiers.

I honestly just think folks don't enjoy playing the bad guy as much as being the good guy. A lot more people seem inclined to save the day, get the girl, be the hero, get praised, etc. as opposed to manipulating others, scheming, kidnapping and murder, and ruining lives.

People only like playing the good guy in video games because that's the paramount achievement of humanity. Lawful Good...the reality is that a lot of us show our true nature through our everyday actions. Going AFK in a mish on purpose, Ebil Marketeering, Leaving inappropriate comments on a friends facebook page, Not laughing at LOLcats memes and beating baby seals with a double padded nerf bat...these are just some of the Red side tendencies that many of us ignore.

Also, you do NOT fight a lot of longbow on redside. People are just blowing it out of proportion because you don't encounter ANY longbow on blueside. Also, you can always change the mish or the diff, so to me the LB excuse isn't valid.

Faultline is the hottest guy in the game *shrug* lol.

Wow, you are some pessimistic folks. I have been a Network Engineer, after 9/11 happened I took a $20 an hour pay cut to be a paramedic. When I lost my lung and could no longer do that job I decided to become a counselor (in school now). I have recently found out I have cancer in my larynx, and may lose my voice. So I decided to learn sign language just in case. If I had not just taken my pain meds I may not have shared all of that.

You know, some people really do find it fulfilling to be good people.

I wonder if it wouldn't be too much trouble to simply take some blue side TF's/Trials and just copy them redside and have them given out by a villain contact with a few text changes and door points being set for red side.

Like the sewer trial for instance. I am sure that this could be ANY sewer in the Rogue Isles... just change the text to say its one of Dr. Aeon's experiments gone wrong and you can take advantage of it or some such. Bam you've just added a whole new trial with some cut/paste and text editing. Something like this should not involve a large investment or time or resources.

Something similar could be done with the Hollows trial... have a villain contact help the player infiltrate Paragon City to go to the Cavern of Transcendence. The villain basically does the same stuff the hero does but with the motivation at the end of whatever he's doing he's gonna get power for himself. Give the player a passive long term buff (like say 5% more damage and accuracy for 24 hours of played time). It's a nice enough buff to encourage players to do it but not over powered or too long lasting and it lets the villain gain something so its not the same old "Curses I have to save the world AGAIN so I can rule it!" story.

I've got both heroes and villains. Would definitely be nice to have some more strike forces, the ones we've got are pretty solid and fun and worlds better designed than several of the trials and task forces on the other side.

As for why it's less popular. Probably a combination of reasons, it really depends on the person. It's hard to make accurate blanket statements because there are dozens of exceptions.

For me? I do prefer blueside. I am a more heroic person in general, I like playing as the do gooder and beating up the bad guy and feeling good that I saved the day and stopped the evil plot. It's pretty easy and simple content to generate and even if a lot of the mechanics aren't always that fun it's not really the writing that ever bothers me. It's kind of a hero's role in life to ever be vigilant against the many and varied threats against the world.

Villainside... well, as has been said, more often than not you're treated more like an errand monkey than a super powered villain. They don't really have the freedom to pursue their own plans and the like, which is understandable given the limitations of the game's mechanics. And villains can't ever really 'win'. There's stuff where we get to feel like real villains but nothing that actually changes the status quo, even when we 'win' like Vincent Ross or Dean's arcs, things still hit back to before. And it's understandable, the game would be broken if we could really steal death rays and ancient artifacts of unfathomable power or could rob banks for millions of dollars. Our clone facility blows up, our shard of infinite power only lasts a single mission, we sell that priceless artifact for 1,000 inf, etc. There are always bigger, stronger, nastier villains out there whose plans get to come to fruition and we have to help or hinder them, but villains never get to be 'top dogs'. It doesn't really bother me, but it doesn't change the fact that Villains are always on a leash. And even when we do get some plots where we get to be the mastermind behind the plot, more often than not we get words put in our mouth. Really I don't envy the folks that write for redside, they have a lot harder job than blueside. Heroes are easy. "This is bad, you don't like bad things to happen" is the only justification absolutely -needed- blueside. Redside? What compels the character to want to do this and work for this person? Is that -too- villainous for my character? Not villainous enough? etc. The problems are legion.

The economy of zones is, honestly, kind of a hindrance too. I mean, it's nice there aren't any empty wasted zones like blueside, but at the same time my characters generally run about the same path without doing stuff like power leveling. The zones overlap a bit, but I still run the general chain along mercy->port->cap->sharkheard->nerva/martial->grandville. Not really because I want to, I just have to. I at least have the option of First Ward at 20 (though, how many times can you rerun First Ward?), but after that I generally find myself running up the same ladder, XP gains and levels come slower so there's a lot more room to do repeat contacts, doing multiple arcs and thus multiple contacts between characters (and fewer characters at that, due to Redside's intimate size). Even mixing in Cimerora and the RWZ, I still find I'm overlapping contacts. After the umpteenth run through, the scenery gets kinda stale, whereas at least Blueside I have several options available, I can go through king's row, I can go through the hollows, I can do Steel Canyon or Skyway, I can hit faultline, I can do Talos, First Ward, Croatoa, etc. It doesn't really start to collapse together until I hit Peregrine.

There's also the minor problem of locked contacts. I kinda like the idea of earning contacts via different requirements, but there's more than a fair number redside (In fact I think almost all if not all locked contacts are redside) and unless you know about them, what their unlock requirement is, and actively pursue it, more often you'll miss it. Easy example, Archmage Taraxis, super easy to unlock, just a history badge. Unless you wiki it you'll never know that and won't know where to find any of the plaques except by some very meticulous checking. As far as I can tell, there's nothing actually in game that tips you off 'hey maybe you should get this badge' etc.

Speaking of, blueside is -super super- easy on contact chains. In fact it's kind of hard to be without a contact at any given point in the game. Even if I outlevel a contact before even talking to them they'll still usually shoot me to someone else. Redside I'm pretty much required to repeatedly hit up brokers and newspaper missions to get new contacts.

And I've found redside content to be a little harder. Given, I'm still green comparatively. But I solo heavily and just from personal experience it seems like villainside missions are -extremely- prone to throwing bosses and elite bosses at you. I mean heck, compare the Shining Stars Arc to the Hearts of Darkness tutorial arcs. Most missions in shining stars when you face down multiple bosses in the same mission you have 1 or more allies. hearts of Darkness? Most times you don't. Sometimes you even face down two bosses at once. That can be kind of offputting especially when you're something squishy like a blaster or dominator and don't have all your tools yet.

And then there's just some of the weird stuff like the accolades for the different sides. Atlas Medallion is stupid easy to get and early on at that. Marshal? Gated behind the Lord Recluse Strike Force so distinctly endgame. Task Force Commander? Not that bad, a bit tedious but you can get it as soon as you can access Numina. Invader? Oh sorry, you missed that Mayhem mission, out of luck unless you port to blueside and nab TFC or get supremely lucky and join someone else doing that mayhem mission (Hope you're not a Praetorian btw!). Super tedious. Portal Jockey? Again all roads lead to Peregrine blueside, it's hard -not- to do Maria Jenkins and Tina Macintyre. Born in Battle? oh, gated behind a random GM spawn and having to take 1 million damage. You'll get it eventually but, eh I'd rather just do Maria's arc with friends (And I can solo the arcs, can't solo Scrappy). Phalanx reserve? Tons of Exploration and history badges, 2 pretty easy defeat badges and the Nemesis defeat badge, a bit tedious and can be hard, but easily doable. High Pain Threshhold? Best work on that debt badge!

Though they do have some weirdly easy ones, like Demonic is -waaay- easier to get than Archmage, or something like Force of Nature. But for the most part, not the case.

I do kind of like that Redside's GMs are actually a lil important, since pretty much all of Bluesides are just for the badge (Though Adamastor's revamp has been -quite- nice in terms of rewards). But Scrapyard can definitely be a pain since he's on a fixed timer and you -want- to pull a team together for a GM fight.

That said though, the redside Strike Forces, for however many there are, are actually pretty fun and worth running, nowhere near as tedious as a lot of the blueside task forces and trials. Honestly Mortimer Kal is one of the funnest team events in the game, not just for the really nice reward but just it's extremely enjoyable to play through. Missions are varied, not too long, not too hard, the story is kinda interesting, the maps are neat, etc.

So yeah, I enjoy redside for being different, I mean I'm paying for the game, I'm going to enjoy playing all the content. But honestly I do prefer blueside.

Like many issues, the one with Redside is many-fold.

Redside was great when it was released. It sported new ATs that many people still love (the number of them Blueside will support this) and, IMHO, better writing for the arcs. Many players loved it. However then the game went through it's lull when the Dev team was cut and very little was added to either side. Villians languished then and many players left.

Redside had an underveloped Market (back when they were separated), fewer zones, fewer missions and less Dev luv all around. So players left. This meant less incentive to do ANY work Redside which continued the trend. By now it's not financially responcible for the Devs to put money and time into the slowest part of the game. Especially when all the best parts (except the story arcs) can be played Blueside.

Sad to say but Redside went the way of Firefly when it was on t.v. It was launched, well-received, treated badly and then abandoned prematurely. Now only the die-hards pay it any attention any more...

Redside is a great place to be loads of content and great places to view..But it does lack those SFs and would add far more to it.

How to fix Redside:
Make all outside world objects (parking meters, mailboxes, cars, etc) destructible, a la mayhem missions.

Seriously though, I don't think the lack of population is so much due to the preference for heroic 'style' (though I do agree Arachnos is rather overplayed). It's just that it feeds back into itself.. people see the redside having slightly lower population and think, "Well, I want to play where more people are!" and so they roll on blue.. and it just keeps reinforcing the population discrepancy.

There is an inherent difficulty in writing for the Villains side, though. As a hero, it's easy to justify your character "taking orders" from so-and-so superhero league or science team and so on. But people are rogues or villains for a wide variety of reasons, and it's hard to satisfy every niche when it comes to mission dialogue and how your character is supposed to react.