The problem with how Tyrant is defeated.

It's not that loyalists fail to stop the war, it's that they are never given a chance to try, because they just get shunted out into regular blue or red gameplay once they hit 20, and have no way to ever touch on the war again 'till they hit 50. By which time it has suddenly already happened.

And that's a failure of the Development team, not the loyalist character. So, not much we can do about that but shrug and move on. Using it as the basis of your crusade against people who enjoy different stories than you, is just dumb.

Doesn't she only play the one character? I don't think she's played any low-level content. She should try giving a loyalist a shake, sometime, but I think she's too set in her ways that she could ever change her mind on anything (except the Crusaders being heroes. She's back-pedalled on that particular titbit quite vigorously of late.)

And, as we've been saying again and again and again, it's not a problem that villains and heroes occasionally has to team up to accomplish something. It can make for a cool moment in a story. The problem is when that's the only content ever released. If you want to run your villain through content newer than Issue 7, you will have to play predominantly heroic content (some of which doesn't even try to give you a vaguely villainous excuse for being there).

We get why the Developers prefer co-op content. We get why co-op content has to be aimed more at heroes than villains. We're just tired of it.

Ultimately, the problem for me is that the 'perfect' hero/villain team-up opportunity is swiftly approaching: The Battalion. It makes sense for everyone to unite against this ultimate threat... but that gimmick has already been used and abused endlessly, and we're sick and tired of it before it's even begun. Personally, I find that's a dang shame.

Honestly, I'm getting a little tired of us having to repeat ourselves every time someone new to the discussion decides that they "have the solution to the problem." Especially when that solution is: "Suck it up. Villains want to save the world too!" At this point, I'd rather see the world burn than be forced to save it. Again.

Sarcastic posts are helpful posts. Well-known fact.

Yeah, their gameplay was decent and they had good graphics. If you honestly feel the did as well as they did because they had murder and prostitutes in them, then you're just riding the Hot Coffee bandwagon.

The worst mistake City of Villains could have made is try to be GTA, especially when you consider that pretty much every GTA game out there goes out of its way to make the protagonist sympathetic and the least bad thing to happen to the city by comparison. Even a messed-up ridiculous game like Saints Row 3 made it a point to downplay the less savoury side of the Saints' crimes (aside from prostitution, 'cause it's funny, right?) and focus on how much bigger ******** the Syndicate are.

What City of Villains should have shot for isn't horrifying disgusting villains that make people sick to their stomach. It's why people asking to be able to kill civilians and see blood were doing it wrong completely. If the game is to follow the themes of comic books, then our villains needed to be less like serial killers and monsters and more like actual archvillains from comic books, allowed to have their own grand master plans and have ambitions for beyond sucking up to an established villain group and beyond doing things "for the evulz."

That's why Dean McArthur/Leonard do so well. That's why Vincent Ross is a good idea. That's why the new villain-side Cap arcs are so cool. Games about playing straight-up serious-face villains do not sell well. They never have. When you see "evil" games sell, it's because they do something to either glorify villainy or downplay it. In Prototype, sure you're a monster but LOOK! I can elbow-drop tanks in half from the top of the Empire State Building! How cool is that! And besides, have you seen the Blackwatch? They're psychotic bastards who want to kill every living person in New York and enjoy doing it, too. Surely they deserve to be snapped in half and eaten? Even something as relatively direct as Dungeon Keeper takes refuge in audacity, with a ridiculously chipper narrator chuckling as he talks about how bad everything is becoming, to the point where the whole game comes off like a parody of evil.

I can give you a 100% guarantee that if City of Heroes were disgusting and unpleasant it would have bombed and failed on the spot. As it is right now, it's just sort of unpopular, but people still play it regularly and it has a stable player base. If you think people complain about "I don't want to be the bad guy" NOW, with as mild as the evil generally is, just think for a second how much worse that would have been with a much darker and more disgusting setting. And no, the people who buy into that aren't as many as GTA would have you believe.

And really, if we're going for mass public appeal, FarmVille has GTA beat.

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.

-entirely in your opinion.

I, for one, am very glad they DID make City of Villains. So, eh.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger 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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I, for one, could have done without City of Heroes. But I don't begrudge those that enjoy blue-side their experience.

But no matter what kind of content loyalists got post-20, they'd still end up as a failure - the war is impossible to stop, because Praetoria was designed with it as the end goal.
And the dictatorship was set up in such a way that only a war would bring it down - by making it ruled by a god-like immortal and a group of insane and powerful psychopathic archvillains, there was no way that it could be changed without violence - plus, they went out of their way to make made every part of the dictatorship as repulsive as possible so that no one would even want to try saving it from destruction - the genocidal invasion plans and Tyrant's little speech about the need to conquer Primal Earth were just the icing on n the cake to let loyalist players know that the whole change from the inside thing was a dead end, and only arned resistance would stop the dictatorship.

It's an ultimate threat

In my opinion? Surely you jest! I speak for EVERYONE!

I've been shaking, punching and kicking loyalists since the war started - it's good fun
The only problem is that we seem to have run out of them now, so it'll have to be back to shaking, punching and kicking the 5th Column to if I want to continue the classic comicbook Nazi bashing.

I never considered Cole an ultimate threat. If he was so dangerous he would've been able to wipe out the resistance that was right under his nose. I imagine if he had won the war against primal earth that the rogue isles would have had a field day as the new resistance, and they would've put the old resistance to shame.

But you only know that because you are level 50+ and have already played through it. That should not diminish the important personal sacrifice a loyalist PC makes when she abandons friends, family and the people she swore to protect in order to travel to a foreign world to forestall an inevitable war that very well could end up destroying everything you've fought so hard to protect.

At level 20, when you make this choice, you don't know that the Devs have already decided that you are going to fail. The game could have build on this, leading to the inevitable breakdown in communication (perhaps through villain actions, giving the rogue islers a win for a change), and eventually tie into the war in a bittersweet moment where you realize that people on both sides want this war, and there's just no fighting human nature on your own. Instead it just... does nothing. Why write an ending to Praetoria that emphasis the importance of your sacrifice, and your mission on Primal Earth, if you (the writer) know that this mission will never be mentioned again and the character will just be a regular blue- or red-sider once you step through that portal?

And while you keep arguing that loyalists are not heroes, you forget that the 'loyalist' choice (whether power- or responsability-loyalists) is to go blue-side. Going red-side is the "selfish jerkface with no interest in what's best for Praetoria" choice.

You should try creating a loyalist and play through the Praetorian responsibility content. It doesn't take that long to play through, and I think you'd find it more insightful than just reading about it on paragonwiki. I'll even join you to help it go even more smoothly. And, because I've never done a warden resistance member all the way through, I'll join with a one of those. Only fair that I play against type too.

Challenge issued!

I doubt it'll happen. On beta one time I tried to get Golden Girl to go redside for the greater good and she refused. It seems Paragon City is a place where villains selflessly put aside their own desires and goals for the greater good but the heroes are too selfish and bigoted to do the same.

You are probably right, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Simple, logical and dead wrong. 60/40 blue/red as of 7th anniversary. Not even close to the point that ALL co-op content would need to be hero themed.


Regarding the incarnate content and villains. With this huge inter dimensional war, what happened to the theme of "extreme measures to achieve victory" ?

What if TPN was about taking Tyrants propaganda machine off line at any cost ? Sure, hijack it to tell everyone about Coles deal with Hamidon. But then they will come back when we leave and turn it into a "they said A we say B". We should have turned the cameras off at the end and bombed the place. And if some heroes don't want to get their hands dirty, then pay villains to click the glowie.

And the iTrials need to be co-op to work from a game mechanics perspective (unless we get cross server teaming). Arcs do not. So where are the villainous incarnate arcs ?
When we got the Belladonna arc, there should have been a Hatchet arc as well. Where the players get to wreak some indiscriminate justice in Neutro/Imperial on the people that did not join the resistance before it won. Thats the kind of thing revolutionaries do after winning. Off with their heads and confiscate their property!
Oh and make both arcs co-op - more content for everyone, right?

You realize that's what I've been saying all along, right?

That theme has been stale for years now. That's what happened. I want someone to make a comic where a villain looks at new content, is asked to fight a greater power, replies with "You think I'm going to do that AGAIN?!" and just walks away laughing. Then, the next four panels are the same villain saying that phrase and walking away laughing from Imperious, Lady Grey, The Midnighters and Prometheus.

I'll assume they went into the trash, considering the first dialogue options villains get with Heather Townshend are:

"I'll be playing the role of hero today."
"I'm here to save the day." (or something very, very similar)

Why the hell even bother?

Because the heroes have been playing by the rules of a democratic society with all those silly things like "human rights". Tyrant, on the other hand, would probably nuke the Rogue Isles from orbit (it's the only way to be sure) and then send in the robots to clean up the dozen or so villains that survive.

Being a criminal is not so easy or glamorous in societies where Off With His Head applies, where an autocrat can hand a list of names to the head of his secret police with a slow nod and know those people will never be seen or heard from again in 24 hours. As it stand the villains of the Rogue Isles are lucky to have a patron like Recluse who is relatively disinterested in what they do because fostering a pirate's den suits his plans.

As for all of the usual complaints about villain content, there are people who simply need to stop playing villains. This is not a sandbox game, it's based around your character doing jobs for other people. This means you get to be Colonel Moran, not Professor Moriarity. The game can not and never will deliver what these people want.

I realize we've been on the same side of this issue since day 1, yes. I was quoting you for emphasis, not to correct you.

And I suppose if I'm tired of having an upper respiratory infection I should simply stop breathing, right? Try again.

No one has implied that it should be.

Yes. That is the complaint. Well done.

Except is has, in Dean MacArthur, Leonard and Vincent Ross. It's been done. It needs to be done more often. You can't tell us it can't be delivered when it already has.

I don't know why I even bother replying, but: The game has managed in the past, with varying degrees of success. Suddenly it is, and always has been, impossible? Ouroboros much?

No, it hasn't, because those arcs still have you doing other peoples' jobs.