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What do you want to do...AS A VILLAIN

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Cyclops
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What do you want to do...AS A VILLAIN

COH added robbing a single solitary bank. I want to rob every store. Maybe start out robbing convenience stores and moving up to banks. There was a restaurant in COH that was everywhere...I so wanted to go there order a meal and then rob the joint.

***and I want to somehow enrich myself through robberies. I want a tangible reward. I want to see a rising dollar figure. maybe even (date I say it?) in game credits?

I want NPC super heroes that show up in my solo adventures. Cops are nice but i want recurring supers in the standard offered adventures.
This is NOT a nemesis, but a small cast of heroes made just for NPCs in MWM official story lines.,,give the bosses a cape.

I want to beat a gang into submission. they are MY gang now. and I get 10% of the take.
Later I want to take over a real mob.

I want a mad scheme to build a super weapon...where I have to get the parts by robbing science land and industrial parks.
I want a mad scheme to turn the cops into mindless apes by poisoning their donuts.

I want to steal cars and wreck them. I want the price on my head to increase...in fact, I want my notoriety determined by how much I am worth.

I want to be...evil.

Lothic
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It occurred to me a while

It occurred to me a while back that the reason it's always been hard to allow for "true villainy" in a game like CoH (and now CoT) is that villains tend to be the group that "causes" all the problems in the first place. What I mean by that is that they are the ones who have to dream up brand new nefariously creative plans to make something happen in a superhero world - all the heroes have to do is reactively stop whatever the villains try to start.

Since heroes are mostly reactionary it's relatively easy to make a MMO game revolve around them. All you need are villains jumping around to shoot at like a big grandiose version of whack-a-mole. But the real trick is to provide roleplay opportunities (many of which aren't even strictly combat oriented) for the villain players to do which give them the illusion of being free to be bad FIRST before heroes (either NPC or PC) react to them.

Having more places to rob and having local gangs to dominate/subjugate are good ideas. The simplistic Mayhem missions CoH did provide were a good start for pure anarchy. For higher level villains having quests to get pieces to build doomsday devices or find evidence to blackmail high ranking public officials would be cool. Maybe the game could have a whole unique set of permanent NPC civilian contacts who can be "manipulated" to certain degrees by doing various repeatable daily missions (like kidnapping family members or other forms of intimidation/coercion) that hurt them in some way. These contacts would be available to everyone and your interaction with them would be completely relative to how each of your characters have worked either for or against them. In this way these special contacts could also be used by heroes (assuming your character chooses to do missions that actually help these contacts instead of hurt them).

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

Grimfox
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The problem is with the crazy

The problem is with the crazy ones. The ones that want to blow up the world. By definition you can not let them 'win' otherwise game over. Similarly if they set out on a quest to destroy Anthem and her bunch of henchmen you can't let them win because that would ruin the story line for everyone who has not yet reached that spot in the mission chain. It's fine to do that in a single player game where your success means you've won the game and you alone are done. Even heroes have a similar problem they can't ever truly defeat a prominent villain because then they would destroy that story line.

This is why I almost never play an evil character. I'm usually smarter than the story...and more ruthless. The story doesn't let me take the action I feel is correct so I end up feeling dumb and impotent. With heroes the story is usually written with an unavoidable outcome right as you are about to deliver the final blow. So that feeling doesn't come up as often.

I do think there will be an aspect of villainy as far as gaining influence with the criminal underworld. You probably wont ever be in a total position of power within a given gang. You wont be able to oust the head of the Triad, but you might make it to the top circle or a place of special status outside the standard power structure. So in that regard I expect COT to be better than COH. Time will tell.

As far as rewards go, you'll be rewarded for successfully breaking into a bank but you get a similar cut to the heroes that stopped the robbery at the bank across the street. I highly doubt you'll get a reward of millions of IGC for knocking over a downtown bank. Otherwise inflation on the black market for villains would be insane.

Lothic
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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

The problem is with the crazy ones. The ones that want to blow up the world. By definition you can not let them 'win' otherwise game over. Similarly if they set out on a quest to destroy Anthem and her bunch of henchmen you can't let them win because that would ruin the story line for everyone who has not yet reached that spot in the mission chain. It's fine to do that in a single player game where your success means you've won the game and you alone are done. Even heroes have a similar problem they can't ever truly defeat a prominent villain because then they would destroy that story line.

This is why I almost never play an evil character. I'm usually smarter than the story...and more ruthless. The story doesn't let me take the action I feel is correct so I end up feeling dumb and impotent. With heroes the story is usually written with an unavoidable outcome right as you are about to deliver the final blow. So that feeling doesn't come up as often.

I do think there will be an aspect of villainy as far as gaining influence with the criminal underworld. You probably wont ever be in a total position of power within a given gang. You wont be able to oust the head of the Triad, but you might make it to the top circle or a place of special status outside the standard power structure. So in that regard I expect COT to be better than COH. Time will tell.

As far as rewards go, you'll be rewarded for successfully breaking into a bank but you get a similar cut to the heroes that stopped the robbery at the bank across the street. I highly doubt you'll get a reward of millions of IGC for knocking over a downtown bank. Otherwise inflation on the black market for villains would be insane.

You make some fair points here: Playing a "villain" in a computer game is hard mostly because what you're allowed to do as a villain is limited by the medium itself. Being an "evil" character is far more viable in a pen-n-paper RPG setting because you aren't restricted to keeping the world's "status quo" intact like you are in a MMORPG.

This kind of "being stuck inside the box" limitation has always been the fundamental weakness of MMORPGs. As time goes on the technology will allow for more and more sandbox-style freedoms and hopefully like you say CoT will push the boundaries even further.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

Fireheart
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Hey, it's hard as a Hero, too

Hey, it's hard as a Hero, too, because the Villain always gets away! (So they can pester the next hero.)

Be Well!
Fireheart

Lothic
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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Hey, it's hard as a Hero, too, because the Villain always gets away! (So they can pester the next hero.)
Be Well!
Fireheart

For what it's worth there could be more events/activities provided in a game like CoT that could give heroes alternative things to do as well. For instance one of the few special things CoH offered were the semi-random building fires. They could maybe come up with other "natural disaster" type things that could gain positive "brownie points" for heroic characters. Maybe saving people from storms or a dam that breaks. Heck they might even put proverbial "cats stuck in trees" that you can save for a few points here or there.

The point is there are a lot of possibilities for activities that could used to help shift or reinforce player alignments one way or the other.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

HornetsNest
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Villainy is always riskier

Villainy is always riskier the heroism. I'd like to see jailbreak scenarios, if they ever catch me and throw me into a dark pit. I'd like to see NPCs that are coercible. They need to know that I'm the scariest monster in the alley. Gaining influence with the local criminal element is nice, but I want to feel like I'm a power in my own right. Above and beyond their petty ambitions. I'd love to see villainous gathering spots like large dimly lit basement clubs decorated with garish neon art and flooded with loud music and drug fueled rave dancing NPCs. Putting my boot heel on the neck of a few NPC heroes. Feed my lust. Feed my ego. Let me bathe in the glorious carnage until my inevitable fall. Then let me start it all over again

Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high

Lothic
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HornetsNest wrote:
HornetsNest wrote:

Villainy is always riskier the heroism. I'd like to see jailbreak scenarios, if they ever catch me and throw me into a dark pit. I'd like to see NPCs that are coercible. They need to know that I'm the scariest monster in the alley. Gaining influence with the local criminal element is nice, but I want to feel like I'm a power in my own right. Above and beyond their petty ambitions. I'd love to see villainous gathering spots like large dimly lit basement clubs decorated with garish neon art and flooded with loud music and drug fueled rave dancing NPCs. Putting my boot heel on the neck of a few NPC heroes. Feed my lust. Feed my ego. Let me bathe in the glorious carnage until my inevitable fall. Then let me start it all over again

I think you have to take for granted that as a level-based game certain "options" for villainy are always going to have to be level-dependent. Starting out as a low level character "petty" things like robbing convenience stores or turf wars with street gangs are likely the main things you're going to get involved with. It's only once you become a higher level villain will you be able to build doomsday devices and/or threaten the entire city itself.

Also no matter how many opportunities for different kinds of villainy we ever get in CoT they're always still going to be limited by whatever the Devs consider to be within the bounds of their "Teen" rating for the game. Being able to go to "drug-fueled raves" while torturing captured heroes might be things the game's software could eventually allow for but I doubt the Devs would enable/encourage those kinds of things based purely on the arbitrary restrictions placed on them to maintain their game rating.

Sadly as I implied in earlier posts MMORPGs will likely always be limited in the degree of villainy they will allow if for no other reason than for the sake of the game's rating. We can only hope that games like CoT can first push the boundaries of what the game's software will allow for and then see what they can do to push the artificial restrictions of the self-imposed ratings system. I suppose you could just blame all those silly parents out there who don't want 8 year old Johnny/Jane seeing hyper-naughty things...

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

Grimfox
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Really is Johnny/Jane that

Really is Johnny/Jane that are the evilest villains. Keeping me from my "hyper-naughty things"

It really is a challenge being a villain in a teen rated setting. Certainly any teen would know about the evilest and most vile things that would make a villain villainous, but to actually do those things or simulate them is beyond the boundaries of the game. You look at a classic show like Batman TAS and certainly the Joker is a Villain, but you rarely see him in the act. COT is bound the same way. If they faded to black or panned away every time a villain did something rightfully villainous, a player would spend most of the time starring at a black screen.

So what villainous things does that leave a villain to do?

Lothic
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Grimfox wrote:
Grimfox wrote:

So what villainous things does that leave a villain to do?

Well I think we've already mentioned several ideas for "criminal activity" in the last few posts that are probably acceptable for a MMORPG. The real key is to realize there plenty of types of "crime" (implied or otherwise) that could still be carried out despite living under the dictates of a Teen rating.

The main things the Teen rating would probably prevent (crime-wise) are things like the graphical depiction of drug use and nastiness like overt sadism or torture. Standard gun-fights are fine but being able to pull a victim's fingernails off as a "fun" little mini-game probably wouldn't be kosher. It's really the same kind of "common sense" stuff we've come to know from what they can and can't get away with on standard network television. Sadly the harsher stuff you can see on HBO might be a bit too much for CoT.

That still leaves plenty of "bad stuff" on the table. For instance there might be a mission where a villainous character could "poison the water supply" of a neighborhood. Succeeding in that mission might earn you the approval of a villainous faction and get you hated by the normal civilians but there's no real need to graphically show a bunch of dead bodies or people puking up their guts or whatever. The "nastiness" happens without having to have it be overt or gratuitous.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

HornetsNest
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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

HornetsNest wrote:
Villainy is always riskier the heroism. I'd like to see jailbreak scenarios, if they ever catch me and throw me into a dark pit. I'd like to see NPCs that are coercible. They need to know that I'm the scariest monster in the alley. Gaining influence with the local criminal element is nice, but I want to feel like I'm a power in my own right. Above and beyond their petty ambitions. I'd love to see villainous gathering spots like large dimly lit basement clubs decorated with garish neon art and flooded with loud music and drug fueled rave dancing NPCs. Putting my boot heel on the neck of a few NPC heroes. Feed my lust. Feed my ego. Let me bathe in the glorious carnage until my inevitable fall. Then let me start it all over again
I think you have to take for granted that as a level-based game certain "options" for villainy are always going to have to be level-dependent. Starting out as a low level character "petty" things like robbing convenience stores or turf wars with street gangs are likely the main things you're going to get involved with. It's only once you become a higher level villain will you be able to build doomsday devices and/or threaten the entire city itself.
Also no matter how many opportunities for different kinds of villainy we ever get in CoT they're always still going to be limited by whatever the Devs consider to be within the bounds of their "Teen" rating for the game. Being able to go to "drug-fueled raves" while torturing captured heroes might be things the game's software could eventually allow for but I doubt the Devs would enable/encourage those kinds of things based purely on the arbitrary restrictions placed on them to maintain their game rating.
Sadly as I implied in earlier posts MMORPGs will likely always be limited in the degree of villainy they will allow if for no other reason than for the sake of the game's rating. We can only hope that games like CoT can first push the boundaries of what the game's software will allow for and then see what they can do to push the artificial restrictions of the self-imposed ratings system. I suppose you could just blame all those silly parents out there who don't want 8 year old Johnny/Jane seeing hyper-naughty things...

You know that I wasn't speaking literally. Just being in a dark club with shadowy dancing NPCs was the atmosphere I was going for, No drugs need to be seen at all. That was just a turn of phrase meant in villainous flare. Gloating over defeated heroes has nothing to do with torture either. The whole point of what I was saying is that you rise in power, stop being treated like a punk by the NPCs, and after you level up enough then the heavy hitter heroes show up to knock you down a peg. I'm flattered that you took my little piece of prose as seriously as you did though

Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high

Lothic
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HornetsNest wrote:
HornetsNest wrote:

You know that I wasn't speaking literally. Just being in a dark club with shadowy dancing NPCs was the atmosphere I was going for, No drugs need to be seen at all. That was just a turn of phrase meant in villainous flare. Gloating over defeated heroes has nothing to do with torture either. The whole point of what I was saying is that you rise in power, stop being treated like a punk by the NPCs, and after you level up enough then the heavy hitter heroes show up to knock you down a peg. I'm flattered that you took my little piece of prose as seriously as you did though

I only took it "seriously" enough to point out the practicality that villains would need to rise through the ranks before they'd get to do the types of things you were describing. Getting to "bathe in the glorious carnage until your inevitable fall" and "boot-heeling fallen heroes" were flowery enough dramatic images but no matter how well CoT feeds your villain's lust/ego it's still (sadly perhaps) going to have to conform to its default Teen rating. Save the well written yet vaguely imprecise RP prose for the game.

P.S. Don't worry, I didn't take you "literally" on any of this... *shrugs*

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

Darth Fez
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Cyclops wrote:
Cyclops wrote:

I want to beat a gang into submission. they are MY gang now. and I get 10% of the take.
Later I want to take over a real mob.

There is the obvious problem with a system that serves up free loot to players, but I can see potential for such "gangs" (perhaps several individuals a hero is mentoring, or some civilian group (akin to CAP) that the hero supports) to deliver clues. Thus, every so often, they essentially deliver a mission that's something too tough for the "mooks" to handle. The tricky question is how they can be useful and serve some purpose, even if it's just to be noticed and provide some color, between those big 'delivery' moments.

Lothic wrote:

It occurred to me a while back that the reason it's always been hard to allow for "true villainy" in a game like CoH (and now CoT) is that villains tend to be the group that "causes" all the problems in the first place. What I mean by that is that they are the ones who have to dream up brand new nefariously creative plans to make something happen in a superhero world - all the heroes have to do is reactively stop whatever the villains try to start.

That is the problem in a nutshell. Players play - i.e. react to - the game. In single player games it is easier to provide the illusion that the player is in charge and that the game is reacting to the player, but that's much more difficult, if not impossible, in a MMO. As others and I have pointed out before, heroes are about maintaining the status quo (or at the least working within the system to change it) while villains are about breaking the status quo. MMOs cannot change*, so it's easy to see which group is going to have a better time of it.



* Certainly not at the speed at which players play the game.

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You know what I think would

You know what I think would make villain mission interesting? Inter villain politics... can my Head scientist in charge of making my army of robots be trusted? Or is he going to take control of the whole shebang and try to kill me... can I trust Lady Poison to keep her end of the bargain? Or should I try to kill her early just incase... building a ray gun is all well and good, but we are going to need more than heroes trying to stop us to keep interested, lucky there's no honour among thieves :]

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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That is an interesting idea

That is an interesting idea and raises the point of leveraging whatever mission architect CoT will have. The best source of new content for players are other players. That's the main reason why roleplayers will often stick around the longest in a MMO: they are able to create and provide their own new content.

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Really good ideas. I hope

Really good ideas. I hope some of them can be done.

Nighttide

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If MWM ever picks up on the

If MWM ever picks up on the whole Control Points thing I've been going on about for a couple of years, you'd have the opportunity for Turf Battles to "control the soul of the city" ...


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

If MWM ever picks up on the whole Control Points thing I've been going on about for a couple of years, you'd have the opportunity for Turf Battles to "control the soul of the city" ...

The idea actually existed in the first game design docs put together by the first team. So going back to over 3 years ago. Things changed over time with company splits, teams changing, and the iterative process of design.

If anything like this were to exist it would most likely be on the pvp side, as the guideline is that all forms of pvp even pvevp must be entirely optional.
Which is another way of saying, the idea is not within the current scope of the game for launch or even quite some time post launch. I do like the idea as it could lead to some interesting gameplay elements, but It will have to be reintroduced at a more appropriate time if it will ever have a shot of implementation.

Now as to villains gaining control of organizations, this would be, in a sense, a type of RTS game play. Where the player now has to manage resources (which includes their npcs) to maintain and even attempt to grow their organization. It would also require a possible diplomacy system for negotiating with other underworld organizations (be it with other PCs or even NPCs). This is a much larger impact on the game world over the Path system. Unfortunately, this level of design also doesn't fit within the current scope of the game. And would be more difficult to implement after the game is live.

However, starting, and maintaining a super group even as a villain does offer a few similar elements. This, of course, would rely heavily on interaction with other players, and could afford said group of players plenty of role-play opportunities. And there is a possibility we could implement a tag to super groups hooking into the faction rep system so that there is at last recognition for "flying your colors" within the game world.

Also, we do have plans to introduce a system for "crafting missions" called Schemes and Investigations. Where villains hatch plans and heroes investigate crimes. They are separate so player heroes won't be investigating a player villain's scheme (but that isn't to say that npcs won't show up to attempt at foiling the scheme).


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I would like to see a bank

I would like to see a bank robbery where the heroes could respond and there would be some PvP.

One could have a sewer access into the good town, and the villain then zips into the bank or store right there, which may or may not already have people in it. Then they rob it, alarm is set off, can they get out the door and down the sewer before intercept? Heroes in zone or nearby would get radio calls or whatever.

These wouldn't be missions on either side. Just optional activities always available. Trying to pull it away from the immersion busting instance mentality. No I don't know how to stop invasion. But that rarely happens in practice in places like Stormwind on WoW on the PvP servers.

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What i would like is the

What i would like is the option to choose if my Villain is lethal or non lethal. If they are recognized as a Professional or Maniac, Monster or Man.

Getting slightly different options/reactions from people is the most I'd expect though. If I'm recognized as a Maniac who murders people for fun and profit (Sometimes not the profit) I'd expect a reaction along the lines of Cops running away (Beat cops that is) or at best trying to get Civilians to safety and confronting me if I'm attacking them/the Civvies. They would call in the Bigger guns to deal with the situation. If i on the other hand have a reputation for not causing casualties and leaving once I've done the task... then the Cop might rush in more brazenly and attack me as they know I won't Kill them, in an effort to push me into leaving sooner, rather then risking violence that is unneeded.

I'd Also love to be able to Play a crook who never has a "Presence" that is a mystery with their crimes. Never spotted and rarely harmful, but steals alot of stuff on Contract for other groups.

Heroes, Villians... Who Cares. In the end, it's our Actions that define us not a name or tag we use.

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We have colloquially called

We have colloquially called some hero missions "street sweeping" and as I understand it we are talking about open world procedurally-generated content like purse-snatchings and such.
On the villian side I would like to see the same thing. I would like it if every procedurally generated Tom or Jane walking along is a potential candidate for mugging, likewise with any storefront, office or bank in the world. Then you could also have a chance of being stopped by a NPC hero who would be conducting the AI version of a street sweeping mission. I would expect that banks and other high-reward encounters would have SWAT team response and higher level villians might warrant a SWAT team equipped with equipment and tactics to address a superpowered criminal. This would be in addition to the chance of the NPC hero showing up.

In fact, one could go so far as to make all open-world villianous acts a PvP flagging event. I think that a player villian SHOULD be wary of any heroes flying over the city if they are thinking about snatching a purse or robbing a convenience store or bank. That would make the lvl 50 player heroes a real potential threat. It would also mean that street sweeping could actually have real meaning for even a lvl 50 hero. But with the prevelence of low level villians all snatching purses and robbing stores around town, the lvl 50 heroes will probably decide that they have bigger things to worry about. I see this being a self-governing predator-prey ecosystem that could be a real blast to play in. And if a low level villian has to snatch 10 purses to impress the mob boss, but a group of player heroes has taken it upon themselves to keep their portion of the city safe, then the low level villian will either have to snatch purses in another part of town or obtain the help of higher level villians. This could be as fun as it could be frustrating.

HornetsNest's response was the most awesome because I think it really captures the essence of what it is to be a villian:
"Villainy is always riskier than heroism. I'd like to see jailbreak scenarios, if they ever catch me and throw me into a dark pit. I'd like to see NPCs that are coercible. They need to know that I'm the scariest monster in the alley. Gaining influence with the local criminal element is nice, but I want to feel like I'm a power in my own right. Above and beyond their petty ambitions. I'd love to see villainous gathering spots like large dimly lit basement clubs decorated with garish neon art and flooded with loud music and drug fueled rave dancing NPCs. Putting my boot heel on the neck of a few NPC heroes. Feed my lust. Feed my ego. Let me bathe in the glorious carnage until my inevitable fall. Then let me start it all over again"

I can't add to what he said. Who could. But I do like the concept of being locked up if you get defeated. So defeated villians really should be put into prison. That should definitely be part of the game. At first you are in the local precinct holding cell. You have one escape attempt there. If you succeed you are out and literally back into the real world at the local precinct. But if you fail, you go to the actual prison and there you need to team with other villians to break out. This could be a party instance or it could just be a hollywood style flash forward to a prison riot in progress (that in game-system terms would be perpetually persistant but in-character you would get the notion that it is an opportunity not to miss event) and you and any or all the other villians that happen to be there take advantage of it to fight your way out. You might even have a third event in which your character is in transit between the precinct and the prison and this could be a mission for high level villians to break you out. Your transit ride could only be a minute or two to you, but I see a high level villian mission something like "There is a villian out there who shows some potential but who got captured. There is a convoy transporting the villian to the hooskow. Find the convoy and free the villian" In this case there could be any number of actual villians being transported at any time, each lasting the minute or two for that specific captured player, so the mission would include a successful breakout of any one of them.

Of course, a captured villian could always pay off a guard at any step in the captured process to get out immediately. (except during the transit convoy mission because that would potentially derail the mission of the villian attempting to break you out and that would not be good for the game) This would be a monetary (in-game currency or cash-shop get out of jail free card) penalty for the convenience of getting back into the game without having to attempt any breakout content.


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Huckleberry wrote:
Huckleberry wrote:

We have colloquially called some hero missions "street sweeping" and as I understand it we are talking about open world procedurally-generated content like purse-snatchings and such.
On the villian side I would like to see the same thing. I would like it if every procedurally generated Tom or Jane walking along is a potential candidate for mugging, likewise with any storefront, office or bank in the world. Then you could also have a chance of being stopped by a NPC hero who would be conducting the AI version of a street sweeping mission. I would expect that banks and other high-reward encounters would have SWAT team response and higher level villians might warrant a SWAT team equipped with equipment and tactics to address a superpowered criminal. This would be in addition to the chance of the NPC hero showing up.
In fact, one could go so far as to make all open-world villianous acts a PvP flagging event. I think that a player villian SHOULD be wary of any heroes flying over the city if they are thinking about snatching a purse or robbing a convenience store or bank. That would make the lvl 50 player heroes a real potential threat. It would also mean that street sweeping could actually have real meaning for even a lvl 50 hero. But with the prevelence of low level villians all snatching purses and robbing stores around town, the lvl 50 heroes will probably decide that they have bigger things to worry about. I see this being a self-governing predator-prey ecosystem that could be a real blast to play in. And if a low level villian has to snatch 10 purses to impress the mob boss, but a group of player heroes has taken it upon themselves to keep their portion of the city safe, then the low level villian will either have to snatch purses in another part of town or obtain the help of higher level villians. This could be as fun as it could be frustrating.
HornetsNest's response was the most awesome because I think it really captures the essence of what it is to be a villian:
"Villainy is always riskier than heroism. I'd like to see jailbreak scenarios, if they ever catch me and throw me into a dark pit. I'd like to see NPCs that are coercible. They need to know that I'm the scariest monster in the alley. Gaining influence with the local criminal element is nice, but I want to feel like I'm a power in my own right. Above and beyond their petty ambitions. I'd love to see villainous gathering spots like large dimly lit basement clubs decorated with garish neon art and flooded with loud music and drug fueled rave dancing NPCs. Putting my boot heel on the neck of a few NPC heroes. Feed my lust. Feed my ego. Let me bathe in the glorious carnage until my inevitable fall. Then let me start it all over again"
I can't add to what he said. Who could. But I do like the concept of being locked up if you get defeated. So defeated villians really should be put into prison. That should definitely be part of the game. At first you are in the local precinct holding cell. You have one escape attempt there. If you succeed you are out and literally back into the real world at the local precinct. But if you fail, you go to the actual prison and there you need to team with other villians to break out. This could be a party instance or it could just be a hollywood style flash forward to a prison riot in progress (that in game-system terms would be perpetually persistant but in-character you would get the notion that it is an opportunity not to miss event) and you and any or all the other villians that happen to be there take advantage of it to fight your way out. You might even have a third event in which your character is in transit between the precinct and the prison and this could be a mission for high level villians to break you out. Your transit ride could only be a minute or two to you, but I see a high level villian mission something like "There is a villian out there who shows some potential but who got captured. There is a convoy transporting the villian to the hooskow. Find the convoy and free the villian" In this case there could be any number of actual villians being transported at any time, each lasting the minute or two for that specific captured player, so the mission would include a successful breakout of any one of them.
Of course, a captured villian could always pay off a guard at any step in the captured process to get out immediately. (except during the transit convoy mission because that would potentially derail the mission of the villian attempting to break you out and that would not be good for the game) This would be a monetary (in-game currency or cash-shop get out of jail free card) penalty for the convenience of getting back into the game without having to attempt any breakout content.

The problem with that as far as I know from the lore we have so far is that it's very likely villains would end up in Hardlock which for all we know the superhuman part of that prison could have no guards at all or have very heavily armored and trusted ones. Either that or the cells are made with power inhibitors.....

Considering how normal mooks can end up in Hardlock I doubt supervillains won't end up there as conventional prison can't hold them. Unless you have the options of inciting a prison riot or something.....

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Rob the local bank.

Rob the Titan City Bank.

...The bank IS in a PvP zone so the heroes can guard it, correct?

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Now as to villains gaining control of organizations, this would be, in a sense, a type of RTS game play. Where the player now has to manage resources (which includes their npcs) to maintain and even attempt to grow their organization. It would also require a possible diplomacy system for negotiating with other underworld organizations (be it with other PCs or even NPCs). This is a much larger impact on the game world over the Path system. Unfortunately, this level of design also doesn't fit within the current scope of the game. And would be more difficult to implement after the game is live.

Such a shame, because I would really love to have some RTS elements in my MMO. I like RTS. I like RPG. I usually don't like FPS, but there are occasional exceptions. I just wish I didn't have to get my varied gaming interest fixes from different sources all the time. Even if such sources aren't always directly combined. For instance, one thing I would love to have seen/played back in the glory days of CoH would have been a CoH RTS, similar to games like Command & Conquer or Starcraft, but based on organizing troops/assets of various CoH factions like Longbow, The Family, Arachnos, and so on. But rather than merely a C&C clone with a CoH skin, also have each game affect the other. The RTS letting you utilize your RPG characters as summonable heroes, or gaining resources for accomplishing various quests in the RPG, and RPG elements being modified by RTS events, such as altering dynamic spawn points or ambushes based on how the RTS plays out. I also remember way back when SWG was announced it occurred to me that they had an opportunity to create a hybrid game, allowing not only RPG elements, but shooters, vehicle combat (which we partially got in JTL, eventually... They toyed around with it in land based, but it never really panned out completely imo), and again, RTS elements. I loved it, but I always wished it could have been more. The more varied gameplay elements I can get from a single game or collection of connected games, the happier I will be.

I know I have my head in the clouds about this stuff, but I'd always rather see development leaning towards "What new heights can we achieve?" rather than "How much can we cut away from our goals, how much less can we settle for?" Don't mind me, I don't mean to be critical, just to express ideals so that people can't say "Well, nobody really wants anyway, so why bother?"

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Starhammer wrote:
Starhammer wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
Now as to villains gaining control of organizations, this would be, in a sense, a type of RTS game play. Where the player now has to manage resources (which includes their npcs) to maintain and even attempt to grow their organization. It would also require a possible diplomacy system for negotiating with other underworld organizations (be it with other PCs or even NPCs). This is a much larger impact on the game world over the Path system. Unfortunately, this level of design also doesn't fit within the current scope of the game. And would be more difficult to implement after the game is live.
Such a shame, because I would really love to have some RTS elements in my MMO. I like RTS. I like RPG. I usually don't like FPS, but there are occasional exceptions. I just wish I didn't have to get my varied gaming interest fixes from different sources all the time. Even if such sources aren't always directly combined. For instance, one thing I would love to have seen/played back in the glory days of CoH would have been a CoH RTS, similar to games like Command & Conquer or Starcraft, but based on organizing troops/assets of various CoH factions like Longbow, The Family, Arachnos, and so on. But rather than merely a C&C clone with a CoH skin, also have each game affect the other. The RTS letting you utilize your RPG characters as summonable heroes, or gaining resources for accomplishing various quests in the RPG, and RPG elements being modified by RTS events, such as altering dynamic spawn points or ambushes based on how the RTS plays out. I also remember way back when SWG was announced it occurred to me that they had an opportunity to create a hybrid game, allowing not only RPG elements, but shooters, vehicle combat (which we partially got in JTL, eventually... They toyed around with it in land based, but it never really panned out completely imo), and again, RTS elements. I loved it, but I always wished it could have been more. The more varied gameplay elements I can get from a single game or collection of connected games, the happier I will be.
I know I have my head in the clouds about this stuff, but I'd always rather see development leaning towards "What new heights can we achieve?" rather than "How much can we cut away from our goals, how much less can we settle for?" Don't mind me, I don't mean to be critical, just to express ideals so that people can't say "Well, nobody really wants anyway, so why bother?"

Would it be possible to have RTS content without the hostile takeover part, and maybe without the real-time part? So, as a freelance individual (a self-employed supervillain) you can do business with NPCs and organizations diplomatically and economically via branching dialogue and trading goods, money, services and intell?

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What a villain wants?

What a villain wants?

One thing I would love to see is a system where a higher level villain or villain group could offer jobs to low level villains. If you need 100 Uranium Rods to power your doomsday device do you really want to rob endless labs to hope to find them? Or do you want to generate lab robbery missions that pay out the lowbies in cash but you get the rods? Even more generally I would love to see a system where actions taken could generate missions or pvp content. If a villain is robbing the bank in broad daylight a hero might have the chance to hurry over and stop them. If a hero is cracking down on gang members on the street, maybe a villain could take the opportunity and foil their plans. Mostly I hope that CoT doesn't follow too closely on the City of Villains method where villain missions were just slightly altered hero missions. Give both hero and villain sides some unique experiences and it should really encourage people to try both.

Huckleberry
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DoctorTomorrow wrote:
DoctorTomorrow wrote:

What a villain wants?
One thing I would love to see is a system where a higher level villain or villain group could offer jobs to low level villains. If you need 100 Uranium Rods to power your doomsday device do you really want to rob endless labs to hope to find them? Or do you want to generate lab robbery missions that pay out the lowbies in cash but you get the rods? Even more generally I would love to see a system where actions taken could generate missions or pvp content. If a villain is robbing the bank in broad daylight a hero might have the chance to hurry over and stop them. If a hero is cracking down on gang members on the street, maybe a villain could take the opportunity and foil their plans. Mostly I hope that CoT doesn't follow too closely on the City of Villains method where villain missions were just slightly altered hero missions. Give both hero and villain sides some unique experiences and it should really encourage people to try both.

While not the same as directly offering missions, if the uranium rods were only available from certain low level missions, I could see this being a market-worthy item. Or the Higher level character could farm the missions herself. This would make the villian herself make the evaluation of whether it was worth her time or her money.

Let me take this one step further. If players are able to establish a demand via the market, it would be the same as generating a mission via an underground network. So if there are no uranium rods on the marketplace, and you want some, perhaps the market would allow you to place a demand for 50 uranium rods at 100inf each.

I know this isn't as direct as your idea of actually creating the mission. I do like that idea. I like it a lot, and would love to see it happen. But when I thought of your example, this market mechanic just seemed so simple to accomplish the same thing. On the other hand, an anonymous market posting really doesn't have the same feel as a mission created by an actual player, does it?


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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I want to lace the water

I want to lace the water supply with a drug that will turn the local population into mindless zombies that donate their money to our righteous cause. I'd also like to hijack satelite systems and use them for my own nefarious purposes; maybe blackmailing governments and organisations relying on it to fund my secret WMD research. I would like to kidnap and interrogate high profile military scientists for secret research. I wanna create my own lair in a variety of cool environments, basically anything that has ever been done in James Bond and then some. I wanna invade goody-two-shoes bases and lay waste to them!

Maybe you could come up with a sort of guild versus guild PvP where a guild's base is the battleground. You could use this to attempt to free/take prisoners, steal/reclaim secret technology, etc. Maybe make a kind of KotH meta out of it where there are a number of artifacts or individuals scattered around the world that give boons to the guilds currently holding them in their possession, and make people fight for them. Kind of like how you have to fight for legendary Pokemon in Pokemon Online, or the keeps in GW2 RvR.

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C. jejuni wrote:
C. jejuni wrote:

I want to lace the water supply with a drug that will turn the local population into mindless zombies that donate their money to our righteous cause.


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I may be on the other

I may be on the other spectrum here. I had a few villains who were willing and able and inclined to do super nasty things for the lulz.

But I also had mercenaries who were perfectly willing to rob a bank or beat up a hero for money, but would draw the line at murder or maiming innocents. It's important to have the options for our bad guys to not be so bad as well to be outright evil. Catwomen as well as Jokers, if you get my meaning.

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Blue Battler wrote:
Blue Battler wrote:

I may be on the other spectrum here. I had a few villains who were willing and able and inclined to do super nasty things for the lulz.
But I also had mercenaries who were perfectly willing to rob a bank or beat up a hero for money, but would draw the line at murder or maiming innocents. It's important to have the options for our bad guys to not be so bad as well to be outright evil. Catwomen as well as Jokers, if you get my meaning.

Sometimes there are so-called "villains" out there who have a far more developed sense of honor and morality than any of the supposed "heroes" they may be opposed to at the time. The only reason they are labelled as "villains" is because they happen to defy the majority and/or the status quo of the society they exist in.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Sometimes there are so-called "villains" out there who have a far more developed sense of honor and morality than any of the supposed "heroes" they may be opposed to at the time. The only reason they are labelled as "villains" is because they happen to defy the majority and/or the status quo of the society they exist in.

Isn't the difference between a flower and a weed all about whether it is trying to grow where you want it to?


I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
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Only the gardener know which

Only the gardener know which are flowers and which are weeds.

I think the alignment system will cover a lot of ground in this regard. By your actions it will create a label for each character that is more tailored to a character. What that label allows you to do or how it affects you is not something that has been disclosed to my knowledge.

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What I would suggest is that

What I would suggest is that both for heros/villains is hiding of the identity and being defeated can lead to your identity being revealed and thus you not being able to walk to streets incognito, being able to blend in with the common crowd to ambush your super hero enemy etc.

But my primary aim if i was to play as a villain would be to be an anti-villain, one with some sort of moral compass, I may not dispatch my enemies, I may turn of my "allies" depending on the actions they perform tec.

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Ok, I'm going to be annoying

Ok, I'm going to be annoying and cross-post from a similar thread, just because it is something I feel strongly about:

No telling exactly how all this will actually play out. While it's cool that under certain circumstances heroes and villains will be able to work together as they did at times in comics and in CoH, I do hope that the classic comic book "line" between hero and villain doesn't get so blurred that it becomes inconsequential to gameplay.

The hero/villain dichotomy is a fundamental aspect of the genre--though so is occasionally blurring it. Just not so often that it becomes effectively meaningless.

FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)

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I agree with Emp. I liked

I agree with Emp. I liked the Hero-Vigilante-Rogue-Villain thing they had in CoX. I think the hard part of that is the fact that reproducing it that way necessitates having a divided player base vis a vis the hero zones and villain zones. I think it would be best to avoid that for a number of reasons. As the CoX devs used to complain, they had to write content for basically two separate games, but they could only call it one game and were not paid double and didn't get double staffing to help do it all. Also, the players at largest played WAY more blueside than redside. I myself never got a villain to level 50, but had like 6 heroes at 50 and a few others that I either deleted or hadn't gotten fully leveled yet by the time it was all over.

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The disjoint in the

The disjoint in the development between heroes & villains in CoX is part of why I didn't get invested in playing on the villain side. If villains were playable from the beginning it might have been different. I liked the concept of how villains in CoV navigated their first dozen or so levels. I appreciated the tone of the missions and the feel of the villain side of the world.

There were three big problems with CoV for me though (for reference, I stopped playing CoX somewhere around 2007). Mentally I identified CoH as a hero game, and by the time CoV got bolted on I couldn't fully commit to the villain side. Second, the mesh of the two CoH/CoV worlds had limited permeability. I didn't necessarily want to go stomping around on heroes, but it felt like they were two separate games. Third, I didn't feel a sense of agency while playing my villains. It felt like I was playing a reskinned hero. I would have wanted an option for my villain to be able to operate through proxies or minions and only get his hands dirty when success is absolutely necessary. But then I feel that would have played more like a spy RPG than a punch 'em up.

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Planet10 wrote:
Planet10 wrote:

It felt like I was playing a reskinned hero.

Well ... you were ...


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As a villain, I want the

As a villain, I want the capability to operate like a shadowrunner in the sense that I go about committing my crimes under a false identity (either to shield myself or to implicate someone else). If I feel the heat, I shed the identity (or move to a new location). Maybe if my character shifts enough blame to a villain group it can open up an opportunity (steal something from the group or hit a target while the heroes are preoccupied).

In CoH, defeated heroes respawned at the hospital. The XP debt encouraged you not to get defeated often. I want to make respawning as a villain an interesting experience. What if a villain that gets defeated in a 'hero' neighborhood has a solid false identity and they get an option to respawn in a nearby hospital (reduced XP debt and a tarnished false identity)? The benefit of having a good cover is that you don't have to muck around with breaking out of jail or the sanitarium. Maybe if you build up a good reputation with a criminal group they stage a rescue from police custody before you get locked up (full XP debt, i.e. you 'owe' your guys) and you get patched up by their doctor/voodoo priest/med bay. What if when you get defeated in 'villain' areas you get patched up by the local underground/discredited doctor (full XP debt).

In a general sense, heroes stop villains from completing some nefarious plan. Flipping that around, I don't have a good idea of how to enable villains to set your nefarious plan in motion (outside of user created content). Brain will revisit this later.

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