I played CoX for about a year, and during my time I noticed a few things. Most of them have been brought up already, but I don't believe one has (And if it has - yell at me and I will beg for forgiveness) :
In CoX, I couldn't help but notice the amount of blueside (hero) characters/players was far greater than (villain) redside. Now, I'm not entirely sure what caused this phenomenon, but, I'd like to discuss it:
1. I know for one City of Heroes was released first and some were bound to just stick with what they had
2. Since the amount of #1 players was pretty large, very few bothered to go and play full-on villains, so it was somewhat cyclical
3. There's always the possibility of pretty much the same content as you'd get blueside
After Going Rogue was released, the numbers increased, but by very little. Most of those who -did- make a villain just transferred over to hero side once they had the chance.
I can't say anything about the earlier years of CoV, because I wasn't there, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was the same.
ANYWAY, to my point: If there was a problem with similar content to hero stuffs, then why would anyone bother to play anyway, besides for the sake of the character?
In CoT, I hope the devs take the time to differentiate the content between the two sides to make each one unique, different experience from the other.
Thoughts, questions, arguments, comments?
The devs hated Redside
:)
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
Well that definitely explains things
I'm not sure the CoH Devs actually "hated" the Redside, but that became the classic "rallying cry" for Redside supporters to explain everything they saw wrong with the game.
I think most of the reason the Redside never really got the attention from the Devs or support from the playerbase it might have deserved was that for all intents and purposes it was never really more than an "expansion' to the core CoH game. Despite the fact that CoV was treated as a "standalone" game when it first launched it was never actually an independent game codewise - as soon as CoH's Issue 6 was patched to the game every player's client was effectively CoH and CoV merged together into a single client. The only way CoV was ever a "separate game" was in how your accounts were setup. That's why when the two games were technically "merged" together a few years later practically nothing really happened from the player's point of view because everyone's clients were already united from the beginning.
So since the CoV zones shared so much with CoH (in terms of NPC groups and mission structures) it never really got the chance to become anything more than an "appendage" to the main CoH game. A few people jumped over to become mainly Redside-based players, but obviously that number was always quite a bit smaller than the total number of Blueside players.
Since CoT is planning on launching with its new alignment system it'll basically have fully equal support for both "heroes" and "villains" from Day One. Hopefully this'll mean we won't have an equivalent "The Devs hate the Redside" joke for CoT.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Personally, I had an equal number of heroes and villains, but if CityInfoTracker is representative of the whole, there were twice as many heroes as villain characters in the game. (http://cit.cohtitan.com/character/stats)
I knew several players who refused to play redside, and more who just dabbled because they actually preferred blueside. I don't know how representative my associates were, but they never said it had anything to do with being kinda the same as blueside or that they started as a hero. A couple said they liked that (before Freedom) there were more starting choices on blueside. Some said they thought the Rogue Isles were too drab. But the overwhelming majority of folks I asked said simply that they wanted to be heroic and not villainous. They just preferred being the good guy.
Somewhat ironically, the one complaint I did have about redside was that it wasn't villainous enough. Only rarely did I feel truly evil (as in some of Westin Phipps' mishs) or like a scheming baddie from the comics/films (as in the cloning factory arc from i17). For all my complaints about SWTOR, I did at least when playing redside feel as though I got to roleplay a truly nasty character through my choices. I hope CoT allows us to similarly explore the far edges of the spectrum -- both good and bad.
As for "devs hate CoV lulz" -- towards the end I did start to feel this a bit, because of all the co-op content that came out. I understood that it would have taken a lot more resources to make unique content for redside, but I always thought that -- if villains were going to run the same content as heroes -- the mish text could at least have given a nod to more villainous motivations instead of always falling back on "if you don't help the heroes fight these new guys, they will destroy the world." We could have played the exact same missions but had alternate text that made us believe we were doing something more selfish or evil than simply stopping the enemy just like the heroes were doing. (I think this was discussed in another thread here somewhere.)
Spurn all ye kindle.
I didn't think about the psychological part, Cinn. Much thanks. Most people -would- prefer to play a hero, it's just a part of human nature. And then there are people like me who like to RP mass murderer or something. I find villain characters to be just as diverse and unique as heroes, if not more.
I do agree with the mission text not being very villainous. They undercut it by quite a bit there. There's probably a thread somewhere for that, though. :p
There were lots of reasons for it.
CoV came out much later. Blueside had all that time to build resources and for players to feel attached to their character. CoV also had the level limit they were stuck at. Not to mention it was much more the grungy place...all of it!
People preferring to play the hero over the villain.
The fact that CoV had you feel more like an anti-hero than a villain. That for being a big bad, once you were out in the isles, you were treated basically like a small time thug.
CoV was also harder on people's computers. It's true, some people just aren't willing to upgrade their computer until it's a smoking pile of nothing.
Then there was them not being tied together.
I think all that combined to make redside less attractive to people. I think we would've seen many more redsiders if they had just dropped villains into Paragon City, made a PvP server and just allowed villains and heroes to coexist (maybe with a few hero player only and villain player only areas).
It's... difficult.
In comics, Villains usually actually OWNED being Villains and reveled in it, whereas in reality people who do truly horrible things usually don't think of themselves as bad people at all. To use an oft-used example, Hitler thought of himself as a hero and never said Mua-ha-ha. I think CoX was trying to be a little--just a little--more realistic about the psychology and that may not have actually worked out that well.
And, in comics, Villians usually had secret lairs and organizations and lurked in the shadows rather than a Villian zone. They really couldn't show their faces--well, their masks, actually--unless they were ready for the big finale where they almost always lost. and even if they didn't lose the battle, they usually lost the war.
So... how do you integrate that into a game and make it fun to play? People deep down always paint themselves internally in a positive light, and noone wants to lose, or not to be on an equal footing, or to be reviled and so more limited in their ability to move around freely. Note the "misunderstood and noble" orcs and undead in WoW.
And trying to be realistic about someone who actually loved cruelty and evil would be awful dark--probably darker than CoT will want to go. The only way I could see it work well would be for it to be almost tongue in cheek, a la Mua-ha-ha, ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
I don't know. I don't have an answer, I just appreciate how tough actually making it WORK WELL, rather than just EXIST in the game, must be. The NEMESIS system of Champions would be much easier to pull off, and I would LOVE to see that in CoT. Not INSTEAD of Villians, don't get me wrong. It's maybe the best concept in CO--equal to CoH's Architect--they just left it for dead instead of developing it properly.
????????♀️
Yeh, the Nem system in CO is a genius idea and I'd love to see it ON TOP OF villains in CoT. Heck, villains could make up hero Nem. And as badly as they developed it, it s STILL a lot of fun, so it obviously has potential.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I played redside primarily. The staggered release and requirement to own CoV meant most established groups found switching difficult. Also I agree that most folks want to play the hero.
CoT will avoid the staggered release while having the advantages of much more player feedback than CoV enjoyed. ( I liked the villain zones designs overall for ease of travel.)
I agree it's a difficult thing to get right, but I think it can be both realistic and quite dark if done well. One example from SWTOR that stands out for me was late in the game, I think on Corellia (I'm probably gonna get some details wrong here, so anyone who still plays SWTOR feel free to correct me). We had taken over a Republic installation that included an infirmary that was full of wounded, and my Sith Sorcerer had to decide what to do with them. He chose to kill the wounded enemies (which is pretty dark), but not for mua ha ha reasons: in my mind, he had seen how tenacious these Republic people were in fighting the might of the Empire, and he felt he (1) couldn't risk that any might escape and fight the Empire later at a critical junction and (2) had to discourage and demoralise other Republic forces. So it was a decision that he found logical, even though I personally found it reprehensible.
That's the kind of stuff I hope for in CoT. Decisions that draw me in to the point where I'm thinking "What would this character actually do here?" instead of "What effect will this have in game terms?"
Spurn all ye kindle.
I agree that a proper nemesis system needs to be less slap-dash than what was presented in CO.
A proper nemesis system should throw out the idea that the nemesis must be a hero or villain, super-powered, or even an individual. In this day and age, Crey Industries would have been a classic villain.[color=red]*[/color] Nor should it assume that both parties feel the same way about each other. There could be the classic situation of High School Guy 1 being envious (and all that entails) of High School Guy 2, while the HSG2 of could be ambivalent or even friendly toward HSG1. Or the competition could have capitalistic or idealistic roots, which leaves plenty of room for mutual respect and/or admiration.
I feel that such a tool should be given a name that has fewer implications but is equally simple, such as adversary system.
[color=red]*[/color] Perhaps I spent too much time on the blue side, but Crey Industries is still one of the first names to pop into my head when I think of the most evil/villainous organizations in CoH.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
As A writer I can tell you that creating a bad guy with flavor is tough. Maintaining interest is tougher. Then CoX went through the low spots where they had few resources to work with. The Redside Market failed until both sides merged (without all the doom so many people claimed would happen). But IMHO redside had better story arcs and the ATs were built better. This is why so many ran redside ATs as heroes after the merger.
CoT hopefully will not suffer from any of this as both sides are launching together.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
For all the problems CoV had at least it had the advantage of being sort of like a mini "CoH version 2.0" as far as adapting to some of the lessons learned from the original CoH in terms of things like ATs and zone travel. This is why I have hopes that CoT will learn from the shortcomings of the entire CoH game that came before it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
That is a cool point--very perceptive! Now that I think about it I'd say more like CoH 1.5, but that's splitting hairs.
I agree that if CoT uses CoV as a reference for planning the mechanics of the game, it would help the goal of creating a spiritual SUCCESSOR in that it moves forward further in the same direction that CoX as a whole was moving.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
One somewhat-overlooked reason [i]I personally[/i] didn't play Redside was that when it was released, my computer was older, and the villain zones all had environments that lagged my machine. I don't know if there was a higher particle count or just more detail or what, but for a long time, playing heroes worked smoothly but playing villains was stop-and-start jerkmotion.
Eventually an upgraded machine enabled me to play v-side and h-side in Ultra Mode, but my aversion to the Redside zones remained strong. Coupled with the above-described preference to see myself as a hero, and the new ability to play the villain ATs heroside, that made my villainside forays few and far between.
Captain of Phoenix Rising
To be fair, the developers admitted that some parts of Red Side were badly put together, and ended up using more polygons than needed.
I suffered the same fate in CoV as well. Blueside, I could easily crank everything up to the *absolute max* and still keep it capped at 60fps with no frame rate drops. Red side.... the same settings would drop me down about 33%-50% in terms of performance.
The same with some of the newer mission maps as well... some were more demanding than others.
On the Justice server the villain population was about 2/3s to 1/3 of the hero population. Most people played their main heroes and hung out with their superhero groups because that is where all their friends were.
With CoT I'll be starting out on the villain side, and hang out with like minded individuals seeking world domination.