Rolled/Changed alignment to a Hero instead of a Villain because 'nobody plays villains?'

Isn't that what vigilantes and rogues are for?

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.

I don't really think your message is going to reach the people 'causing' the problem.

I'll be honest, redside's problems are legion. Chief among them: Each person is going to have their own reason for why they don't like it.

Some people don't like the tone. Either because they want to be 'their own' villain and not an Arachnos Lackey or the content has them doing things 'their villain' wouldn't do. Or villainy just isn't 'their thing'.

Some people don't like the Rogue isles, from the setting to the environment to the architecture. I'll be honest, every zone being an island does get kind of annoying. (As a note: I have a number of villains).

Some people don't like the content. From my experiences playing between the sides, Redside -is- harder. You run into mobs that use mez earlier, you run into a wider variety of mezzes (ex: Circle of Thorns Succubi Placating you) Or throwing more bosses at you. And elite bosses. -tons- of elite bosses. Blueside, EBs are somewhat rare til you get up there and even then you'll tend to run into them at the end of major arcs. Blueside... I think you've got Frostfire and Nocturne, both totally missable/skippable.

Some people don't like the fact that villains rarely get to 'win'. You stole that magical artifact of infinite power? Oh it breaks after 20 minutes of use. Robbed that bank? 1,000 inf. Killed the hero? No not really, just beat them up or they're some pointless no name c-lister. Discovered the ancient ritual of ultimate power? Oh it would suck your soul if you used it, sorry. Most of a villain's victories are over other villains or they're minor or there's some caveat that upends it. Heroes can always feel good in what they do.

Some feel there's a lack of content, for instance missing strike forces at the 10-15 and 30-35 range. And some don't like the locked contacts.

Some people only played it because they wanted the ATs, which Praetoria, side switching and then Freedom has obviously changed.

And others. I'm sure some feel the low population is a problem too. Everyone has their own reason for it, whether its valid or not. It's all subjective.

Flattery will get you everywhere. Except there.

Honestly, I never really minded this. To me, what makes a cool villain is his victories, but it doesn't really matter whether those victories are over heroes or other villains. In a sense, victories over other villains are often a lot more impressive just because villains in decent stories are represented as much more powerful than heroes, just to create dramatic tension.

See, here's a glimpse of why I find villains so fascinating and why I keep playing:

Say you spend half a story trying to prevent Shuma Gorath from coming to Earth because it would be the end of everything. Then Thanos starts wrecking up the town, tossing heroes around like wet laundry and generally winning. Right at the end, he stops heroes from enacting a final ritual which allows Shuma Gorath into our world. All of a sudden you have a cosmic horror come down and what's the first thing it does? Take on the biggest threat available. I don't know enough about the characters to judge power levels, but suppose Shuma Gorath wipes the floor with Thanos. THAT, to me is a true villain moment - that one moment of ultimate power and domination.

See, the trick with villains, at least in my eyes, is building them up to be a thread. The best way to do this is to build up another character as very powerful, show this other character cleaning house, then have the villain trash that other threat, thus proving to be more threatening. This "other threat" doesn't have to be a hero, specifically. There's nothing about villains which say they should be diametrically opposed to heroes and elementally aligned with other villains. "Good vs. evil" is a basic storytelling approach, but it shouldn't be used as a constraint. I see nothing wrong with heroes fighting heroes and villains fighting villains.

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.

Woah woah woah! I never said they should lie. However, galavanting around proclaiming they are moving to blue doesn't fix anything though, which is what I was saying they shouldn't do.

Also, if everyone who ever left redside due to population stayed... it wouldn't be as big of an issue either. Which is sorta the point of the thread.

Right, I didn't mean it was a problem of villains fighting other villains. The rogue isles are a cut-throat place. You show your threat level by wailing on the competition.

But most of the time you're just playing the hero. Your motivation is different, but it's usually the "He's going to do something -I- want to do" or "if she succeeds, -my- plans will never come to fruition!" sort of philosophy. Like, pretty much -any- co-op content. You get to kill Sorceress Serene because doing so stops her from breaking the world which would stop -you- from doing it (at a later date that never comes). I mean most of the time you're butting heads with a villain can be summed up as "Yeah you should probably stop him or you're going to have a bad day". Sometimes you do it just to be a jerk, but it's really rare that it feels like you're being villainous and making a tactically sound decision to eliminate the competition, it's generally more that you play the hero simply because you're the only option available. Calystix the shaper is going to wake up the leviathan? probably want to stop him. The Circle stole Serafina's Crystal? Yeah, you should go beat the snot out of them. Etc.

Mmmm white choclate chip and macadamia nut

Right, that's very well said. I don't have a problem with villains fighting other villains, but you're right that it is a problem when we're fighting these villains to stop them like a hero would, just with different reasoning. You know, as opposed to fighting them to forward our own goals. Most of the time when City of Villains characters oppose other villains, it's for one of two reasons:

1. "I will pay you to do it!" says the contact where your villain stands to gain nothing from a narrative standpoint, considering "money" is worthless in this world.

2. To stop them from stopping us. Not that we ever actually DO anything, but we need to stop all of these villains with much more interesting schemes so that whenever we get around to doing something, someone won't have beaten us to it.

Both of those are LOUSY justifications, to be honest. They make our villains feel like second-stringers, either being ordered around or otherwise living in the shadow of greater villains whose job it is to make the game interesting while our job is to prevent them from doing it like we're playing the boring police. O noes! They might unleash Vampyri on Port Oaks! That might actually be interesting! Can't let that happen! Stop, vile villain, or taste the bitter flavour of justice that Major Man will serve you!

...where was I going with this?

So when CAN we fight villains and still feel like legitimate villains ourselves? Well, the Spoony One has a very good idea in his Counter Monkey videos. How do you make your players WANT to go where you want them and kill who you want them and still feel like it was their own idea? Steal from them. Steal from people something they treasure, and they will chase that ******* who stole from them to the ends of the Earth, and have a big celebration when they catch him and string him up. Sure, it's just one way to motivate people with a villainous motivation, but it's the idea that really matters here.

How do you make villains fighting other villains be meaningful? Give the player villain a reason to WANT to hurt another villain, as opposed to a reason to HAVE to do it. Westin Phipps is a horrible person. So let me kill him, or at least put him in a full body cast. As a VILLAIN, not a less moral hero. Daos wants to order me around. So let me punch his face concave, toss a whole bunch of Bane Spiders my way, let me break their faces, too, and I'll walk away happy. Dean/Leonard get the right idea. "Protean may have taken your clone lab, but you can get back at him by taking all of his money!" Hell yeah I want to do that! Sure, I may have lost, but I can still make Protean lose WORSE, and that still makes the experience all worth it.

See, when I wrote my one and only villain arc, I didn't make it about a "thing." Sure, there's still a "thing" - a macguffin that everybody wants - but the arc isn't about it. Hell, the player villain isn't even expected to care about the thing. What the player villain is expected to care about is the ******* who set him up and stole the thing. See, it's not about getting the thing, it's about being a bully and putting the punk who crossed you in his place. It's about doing all the things that we really want to do in real life, but don't because they're wrong. It's about having an environment where it's OK to do those things and enjoy doing them.

Villains shouldn't be coerced into content. They should be given content that makes being bad enjoyable. That's why Bane Spider Ruben and Brother Hammon succeed so spectacularly - because they don't force us to do anything. On the contrary, they give us an opportunity to be the big bad villain and revel in the empowerment. I enjoyed punching Zukor in the word-emphasising mouth and then threatening pretty much every B-list villain on the Isles. I enjoyed playing Hammond for a fool and seeing Doc Aeon write in impotent rage. And I left grinning like an evil clown

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.

I'm not saying it's wrong to roll Heroes. I'm saying that rolling one because 'nobody plays villains'/'red is dead' compounds the issue behind the complaint itself and is therefore a ridiculous action to take using that reasoning.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to reach so far for a reason to act indignantly. You've chosen to interpret a note to some players made to attempt to show that they're contributing to the cause of their own complaint as a screed against player freedom. I don't get it, but I'm sorry if you yourself have been one of the people I've mentioned in the original post and are taking this thread too personally.

Again, this thread addresses only one of them, one which should have no business existing in the first place.

'Because I do not like the story' and 'Because red does not feel rewarding' is different from 'Because nobody plays red'. The first and second reasons are not only up to the developers to work on if they feel the need, but are also subjective from player to player. The third reason can be solved by the players giving it on their own.

If they want to state that they've done something no one has the right to tell them not to express an opinion. That's just silly.

No it's not. If they are unhappy trying in getting a team (the whole blooming point of playing an mmo) I'd rather they switch then leave the game.

Whatever reason they move to the side that has more players for is irrelevant.

They are still playing/subscribed.

But even if no one had ever switched, people would still have the complaint, because villain population has always been low. So they'd still have the same complaint, and they'd be stuck with the thing they don't like, rather than switching and solving their own problem.

You're blaming the victims, here.

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Exactly so. See, TheDeepBlue:
You're forgetting that even if everyone who made this complaint genuinely did stay redside, that legion of other problems you're not addressing would prevent redside from really living again. I'm pretty sure redside is never going to be able to hit critical mass, where there's enough people playing that newcomers stay instead of leaving because it's too quiet, because there's plenty of other reasons to leave than 'it's too quiet'.

And frankly, I don't play to immerse myself in the content. I play to hang out with friends. And my friends are all blueside. I leveled my current main through redside because it was easier to get most of the stat accolades that way, and I felt the disconnection. I was very much relieved when I finished doing everything I needed to redside and could swap back to blue. What am I going to do, try to convince an entire SG who are happy where they are that they should go redside instead, just because I might want to stay there but it's too quiet? That's pretty selfish.

I actually quite like redside. I think of Sharkhead Isle as home. But I'm not going to play there extensively when all the people I want to play with are blueside because they don't like red for all those other reasons you're choosing not to castigate people for.

You forgot 5) people in general prefer playing heroes instead of villains. Nothing the devs can do will ever change that. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try though.

That's sooooo not true. Games like Skyrim, Fallout and more reward the player that's willing to explore their virtual dark side - IF there's good incentive to do so. Red side will definitely draw more players if the reward mechanics become exclusive/more enriching.

I always maintained that red side fails because the design was based on blue side morality (ie. crime doesn't pay). When red side starts rewarding players for being villainous, the whole "players prefer the heroic moral code" will go right out the window. Otherwise its still just a slummy blue side crime-fighting zone (like KR and Skyway) that's not worth exploring.

I should have mentioned SUPERHEROS.

This isn't Skyrim, Fallout or anyone of those.

It's a genre specific game setting of superheroes vs supervillains.

In that type of setting, people in general prefer playing Superheros.

A competitor to this game has the same issue, the hero pop is three times as large as the villain one.

You say that and then I point to chain mail, leather armor and post apocalyptic costume sets that are coming inbound. People love those games and they want to play them and have those amoral experiences HERE.

The other thing to keep in mind is that morality plays work the same in any genre. And Darth Vader should be a singing testament that mainstream audiences can and do love the bad guys.

At this point, I don't think Jack Emmert and Zeb Cook were thinking outside the box when they helped conceptualize the Rogue Isles. There's still time and ways to improve the design for cheap and attract more players (both current and new) to red side - and CoH:F but it does require thinking outside the box...

I don't say that as an insult to the devs who used to work on CoV from conceptual development to final implementation but as a challenge to War Witch and the current team of Devs to be innovative and flip red side in such a way that this old hideout looks new again.

Ehhh, none of those costume pieces necessarily mean villains as I could name games with the protagonists (heroic individuals) who wear those costumes and are heroes. If folks wanted play villains more there would be more villains.

I don't think there is enough resources or will to do the type of Rogue Isles revamp that you envision that would bring up the population of redside to the point where you think it will. It would require an expansion type effort, which I don't think we'll be seeing anything soon.

The best they can do is try to play with the rewards and change the content of those zones one zone at a time. I don't seriously think any of that will make much a difference, especially since you can play any of the villain ATs from level 1 on ANY side, you can be a hero and still run villain missions by becoming a vigilante, and the highest content of the game--Incarnates--is co-op.

In addition they just tired another new "side" with Praetoria. How much is that area of the game being used today?