desviper wrote:

This fills the goals of a "watch the world burn" type, simply senseless destruction of a huge portion of the city to spread chaos and malice.

As I pointed out in some other thread, this is fun perhaps once or twice. Even if the character succeeds, what have they accomplished? Irradiate the city that is their home?[color=red]*[/color] To me, that crosses the line from nihilistic to suicidal. There's a reason such villains don't get their own comic books: it's not particularly interesting to follow an individual who is interested only in killing and destroying. This kind of thing really only works for a bit part or a 90 minute movie.

Trying to take over the world every week will become as tired and trite just as quickly as saving the world every week.

Pinky: "Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!"

Well, unless you're a hyper-intelligent lab mouse, I suppose.

All that said, I agree that CoV, on the whole, felt more like "Work for Arachnos! Live in our amazing slums!" than being one's own villain. Basically, unless you were one of Lord Recluse's inner circle, it seemed that the only reason anyone became a villain is because it paid the bills.[color=red]**[/color]

[br]
[color=red]*[/color] How many villains would be thrilled to have a reactor melt down in their proverbial back yard? It's not as though the heroes are the only ones who have a vested interested in keeping Titan City in one piece.
[color=red]**[/color] That and being a construction contractor was obviously a dead-end job in the Rogue Isles.[color=red]***[/color]
[color=red]***[/color] Bazinga!

Well unless you are the joker I think he would just laugh as the earth was burning and being destroyed some villains are just sick demented serial killers who would enjoy a little incineration

In general, I agree with the OP. As I think I've mentioned elsewhere, one of the few things I liked about SWTOR was that some of the evil choices felt actually...evil.

Darth Fez wrote:

desviper wrote:
This fills the goals of a "watch the world burn" type, simply senseless destruction of a huge portion of the city to spread chaos and malice.
As I pointed out in some other thread, this is fun perhaps once or twice. Even if the character succeeds, what have they accomplished? Irradiate the city that is their home?* To me, that crosses the line from nihilistic to suicidal. There's a reason such villains don't get their own comic books: it's not particularly interesting to follow an individual who is interested only in killing and destroying. This kind of thing really only works for a bit part or a 90 minute movie.

I expect you are probably right, but I would still like it as an option. Some of my characters in CoV were intelligent, calculating baddies, but some were quite psychotic and destructive. The latter spent more time just blowing everything blowupable in mayhem missions than they did concentrating on the bank.

The only problem I see with destroying titan city is that this is an MMO not a single player game. What I mean is that the two ways this could play out mean someone is being penalized for the action of someone else. Let's say we go with making this mission actually affect the world of titan city. Now picture this, A player who just likes doing single player missions and doesn't like being on task forces at all is happily going from one mission to the other having the time of his life when suddenly he sees a giant mushroom cloud in the distance and suddenly the sky turns green and the ground shudders and starts splitting open as every npc in the world turns into mutants including the contacts. That player has now been denied the ability t play the game his way and "one unhappy customer" won't even begin to describe what tat player is feeling right now. Now combine that with the fact that millions of people are going to be playing this game, and 1% of them want to use this one mission to screw wit everyone else again. Now picture that 1% who are the necessary level switching off there leveling hoarding a bunch of replay tokens or whatever and doing that mission over ad over again. You see the problem with this? Now let's sa that this mission doesn't affect the rest of the world and you're an RP villain. You go through the whole thing of setting off this nuclear explosion and everyone makes a big fuss about how the whole city is destroyed and your the most vile creature known to man, and then exit the mission and then.... nothing.... nothing has changed.... It's immersion breaking to say the least.

*ponders the issues of blowing up a wind turbine*

desviper wrote:

notears wrote:
The only problem I see with destroying titan city is that this is an MMO not a single player game. What I mean is that the two ways this could play out mean someone is being penalized for the action of someone else. Let's say we go with making this mission actually affect the world of titan city. Now picture this, A player who just likes doing single player missions and doesn't like being on task forces at all is happily going from one mission to the other having the time of his life when suddenly he sees a giant mushroom cloud in the distance and suddenly the sky turns green and the ground shudders and starts splitting open as every npc in the world turns into mutants including the contacts. That player has now been denied the ability t play the game his way and "one unhappy customer" won't even begin to describe what tat player is feeling right now. Now combine that with the fact that millions of people are going to be playing this game, and 1% of them want to use this one mission to screw wit everyone else again. Now picture that 1% who are the necessary level switching off there leveling hoarding a bunch of replay tokens or whatever and doing that mission over ad over again. You see the problem with this? Now let's sa that this mission doesn't affect the rest of the world and you're an RP villain. You go through the whole thing of setting off this nuclear explosion and everyone makes a big fuss about how the whole city is destroyed and your the most vile creature known to man, and then exit the mission and then.... nothing.... nothing has changed.... It's immersion breaking to say the least.

That's the issue with that particular goal, which everyone seems to be stuck on :p I mentioned it to cater to the main motivations that came to mind.
Remember in CoH when the Rikti War Zone got so full you needed a 2 and sometimes a 3. Then later in the game (after IRL stopped me from playing) Galaxy city was destroyed but an echo still existed. Running a "Destroy Titan Reactor" missions that generates a second map of the zone, one where the reactor has been destroyed, while the normal zone is still a choice. Maybe throw in a few perks to the destroyed version, unique baddies with unique badges with costume pieces or good drops attached, unique exploration badges, what have you, and allow the zone only to exist t hours after the mission has been completed (stackable).
I feel that's the best way to balance fairness, immersion, a good Ultimate Goal for a senseless villain, and spot for content to be thrown in/ sucked in to.
But really, what about the rest of the suggestions?

Alright this idea fares a lot in my opinion. The guy who just wants to do his story arch can still do so and everyone who wants to do the nuclear apocalyptic aftermath can still do so.

As for your other suggestions, The first one is already in the plan, it's in one of the updates on the kickstarter, I forget which one at the moment and I urge you to look for it yourself.

The second one is also kind of already in the plan. What the devs want to do is allow players to pick a "path" to go down such as a detective path for people who want to do batman style missions, or a guardian path where you do superman like missions that you can freely move between. One of them even has the goal of taking over a mob boss's gig. Forget which update it's on.

The third one I'm not sure whether it is a thing that has been said is going to happen or not on the forums, there might be an update, there might not, but with paths already a thing I think this might as well be a thing, if not at launch then later on, and will be something that I will be looking forward to.

Now if I may make some suggestions of my own.

Lair optimization could be something like warpaths in wildstar where you can build a base with turrets, hire minions and try to take out other bases. There should of course be other options for people who want their characters to have different goals like becoming a general for your faction rather than taking it over and then going out to take over the world for said faction or mind controlling the inhabitants of an island to kill their families, friends and neighbours for the "want to see the world burn types" or starting a gang war for street villains.

You know, this is another area in which hazard zones could play a role.

By day, the hazard zone is your typically hazardous zone. By nuclear meltdown, the hazard zone denizens show that they do, in fact, have the intelligence to get out of Dodge when the fissile material hits the, uh, something-something. In their place there are a bunch of 'OMG Save The Power Plant' missions. Perhaps with bonus mutant and/or giant monster invasion depending on various factors.

P.S. Will Titan City really still be using a nuclear (and fission, and that) reactor?

Will the fines I pay as a villian be equal with the fines I pay as a hero? How substantial will they be? I understand the risks of lawbreaking, but the reward should outweigh the risk I hope.

notears wrote:

The only problem I see with destroying titan city is that this is an MMO not a single player game. What I mean is that the two ways this could play out mean someone is being penalized for the action of someone else. Let's say we go with making this mission actually affect the world of titan city. Now picture this, A player who just likes doing single player missions and doesn't like being on task forces at all is happily going from one mission to the other having the time of his life when suddenly he sees a giant mushroom cloud in the distance and suddenly the sky turns green and the ground shudders and starts splitting open as every npc in the world turns into mutants including the contacts. That player has now been denied the ability t play the game his way and "one unhappy customer" won't even begin to describe what tat player is feeling right now. Now combine that with the fact that millions of people are going to be playing this game, and 1% of them want to use this one mission to screw wit everyone else again. Now picture that 1% who are the necessary level switching off there leveling hoarding a bunch of replay tokens or whatever and doing that mission over ad over again. You see the problem with this? Now let's sa that this mission doesn't affect the rest of the world and you're an RP villain. You go through the whole thing of setting off this nuclear explosion and everyone makes a big fuss about how the whole city is destroyed and your the most vile creature known to man, and then exit the mission and then.... nothing.... nothing has changed.... It's immersion breaking to say the least.

I remember in CoH how there was this one contact who you could kill. If you kill him in the mission you're allowed to kill him in, he disappears but the rest of the world still sees and interacts with him.

If we could implement something like that on an epic scale, then Titan City would look perfectly pristine to a world-saving hero and look like an apocalyptic wasteland to an omnicidal villain. The immersion wouldn't be broken up until a hero sees some villain trying to get over an invisible pile of rubble...

WraithTDK wrote:

AAlbusUUmbra wrote:
I remember in CoH how there was this one contact who you could kill. If you kill him in the mission you're allowed to kill him in, he disappears but the rest of the world still sees and interacts with him.
If we could implement something like that on an epic scale, then Titan City would look perfectly pristine to a world-saving hero and look like an apocalyptic wasteland to an omnicidal villain. The immersion wouldn't be broken up until a hero sees some villain trying to get over an invisible pile of rubble...

That would be INSANELY jarring. Everyone would be seeing something different; it'd be maddening! "Hey, let's go over to that building" "Are you insane? I that's a pile of rubble?" "That's not a pile of rubble; can you not see the aliens hanging out of it?"
Bleck!

As I was saying... XD

Cinnder wrote:

WraithTDK wrote:
That would be INSANELY jarring. Everyone would be seeing something different; it'd be maddening! "Hey, let's go over to that building" "Are you insane? I that's a pile of rubble?" "That's not a pile of rubble; can you not see the aliens hanging out of it?"

To be fair, we had that with phasing in CoX. Are you saying that was jarring also, or just that this would be too extreme a use of phasing?

Probably the latter. I can't really say; that was instituted after I left. I played starting in Beta and was forced by real life constraints to leave after the Ouroboros update. Probably wouldn't have if the game had been F2P at the time, but at the time, it had to be done.

One option could be to supply a variety of targets (bank, research institute, 'secret' base, CEO's mansion) and perhaps three or four different missions arcs toward gaining access to the target. This would make the mission arc the planning stage during which the villain acquires the information and materiel necessary to execute the heist/attack. Rather than doing a bunch of completely random missions prior to obtaining the 'permission to rob bank' card, the villain decides she wants to kidnap that guy and chooses to do so by taking this approach.

ETA: One of the approaches/goals could always be 'I just want to break stuff'.

Rats, Darth -- I was gonna say that.

But yeah, if the heroic side is "discover small problem, learn how it is part of a bigger one, and keep going" then even without changing the mechanics too much you could make our villains feel more in control simply by allowing us choices that change the paradigm to "discover opportunity to create a small problem, [i]decide how you want to make it part of a bigger one[/i], and keep going."

Or open a chain of shops selling overpriced coffee in cups with odd names, the only one of which is in English is "Tall" and that's the shortest one...

I may be misunderstanding the question, since it is in the nature of heroes (and police, fire department, ambulances, etc.) to be reactive. Hence the whole spiel with responding to an event. This is also one of the reasons it is so much easier to convincingly portray such characters in a computer game. The developers script a certain action to which the player responds.

It is, of course, also much more difficult to maintain the element of suspense and surprise when the player is the one planning the action.

AAlbusUUmbra wrote:

notears wrote:
The only problem I see with destroying titan city is that this is an MMO not a single player game. What I mean is that the two ways this could play out mean someone is being penalized for the action of someone else. Let's say we go with making this mission actually affect the world of titan city. Now picture this, A player who just likes doing single player missions and doesn't like being on task forces at all is happily going from one mission to the other having the time of his life when suddenly he sees a giant mushroom cloud in the distance and suddenly the sky turns green and the ground shudders and starts splitting open as every npc in the world turns into mutants including the contacts. That player has now been denied the ability t play the game his way and "one unhappy customer" won't even begin to describe what tat player is feeling right now. Now combine that with the fact that millions of people are going to be playing this game, and 1% of them want to use this one mission to screw wit everyone else again. Now picture that 1% who are the necessary level switching off there leveling hoarding a bunch of replay tokens or whatever and doing that mission over ad over again. You see the problem with this? Now let's sa that this mission doesn't affect the rest of the world and you're an RP villain. You go through the whole thing of setting off this nuclear explosion and everyone makes a big fuss about how the whole city is destroyed and your the most vile creature known to man, and then exit the mission and then.... nothing.... nothing has changed.... It's immersion breaking to say the least.

I remember in CoH how there was this one contact who you could kill. If you kill him in the mission you're allowed to kill him in, he disappears but the rest of the world still sees and interacts with him.
If we could implement something like that on an epic scale, then Titan City would look perfectly pristine to a world-saving hero and look like an apocalyptic wasteland to an omnicidal villain. The immersion wouldn't be broken up until a hero sees some villain trying to get over an invisible pile of rubble...

We could also make it's affects feel less individually but have it be more commonplace so that it adds up over time. Like for instance if I want to make a lex luthor power hungry business man type, I would start doing missions where I'm black mailing business left and right and even have the opportunity to build up my own corporate empire. At first I'd be seeing a little more homeless people on the street as a result of me shutting down some small businesses, then after a while I start seeing billboards with my companies name on them, and then a while after that people start talking to me like I'm big mister money bags, and I start getting more options in missions like bribing a security guard instead of having to sneak past him or straight up murdering him and temporary powers that let me summon body guards and the like.

Alignment systems are always going to be flawed because they attempt to quantify something that is often very fluid into a rigid framework. The thing to remember is that alignment systems tend to be a macro look at everything. It's less about how the character, their friends, or their peers see them so much as how society at large sees them. So, to his employees your villain may be a great boss and the best person ever, but if all the rest of Titan City only sees his "highly brutal behavioral pattern" then they are likely to consider him a violent and dangerous individual.

It might be interesting to have a massive event, always driven by badside, an Arachnos, or Nemesis (!) plot. Good and bad run missions, some individual, some mass, some also PvP, and the tale unfolds towards the end, with whoever doing whatever gaining little advantages for their side for the end battle. Some end battles might be PvP, others PvE.

This would be complicated to design, but would be fun. Some kind of world-change is the result, as well as little doodad trophies for the winning side to put in their base.

Eheeeeeeeeeeeem...

Sounds a little like the new GOTHAM TV show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d1zpt6k5OI

I had a minor epiphany while engage in a game-related activity. It's really quite obvious, in retrospect, but the thought hadn't properly sunk in before.

For me, it isn't the act that sets apart the hero or villain. It's the motivation for that act. After all, heroes constantly go about beating up bad guys and destroying Council base generators and whatnot. Violence, as such, is not particularly evil. Senseless violence can be fun, once in a while (see mayhem missions), but it makes for a rather dull raison d'etre. However, even a fairly innocuous act can give me that "wow, that was evil" vibe depending on [i]why[/i] the character took that action.

It's a really good point, Darth. I'd say another excellent example is Ozymandias in Watchmen. I came away from reading that series with a lot of "Yeah, but..." thoughts.

But that's the whole point, Fez! Slaughter them wholesale rather than retail ...

Darth Fez wrote:

I find one fairly simple but poignant example to be evident in some stealth games, when the player has the choice between killing enemies or simply incapacitating them. The latter tends to involve more effort and/or risk, so the question becomes do they make that extra effort or kill the enemy simply because it's more convenient? I find it difficult to feel that there's any particular moral impact in FPS games because, even when the opponents are human, the only choice is to mow down the enemy in job lots or Game Over.

Thief on hard mode was like that. Some discussions talked about how easy the game was -- just fight and kill the guy with your sword!

Wth! Get a clue. If you refused to fight, you had completely different strategies. Of course Thief rationalized it that you didn't wanna cause a fuss or undue attention in the bigger picture, rather than for some reason of nobility. You were still stealing, after all.