Author Topic: Was it Mercy Island?  (Read 8903 times)

KidKourage

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Was it Mercy Island?
« on: May 18, 2016, 10:38:39 PM »

Vee

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2016, 11:54:00 PM »
I just remember being annoyed by the Mercy Island revamp as I was used to zipping through the opening arcs for an early start on my merit-whoaring. After it I just ended up street sweeping to 4 which was decidedly meh.

Corona89

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2016, 04:36:02 AM »
It took me several years to try red side and I only ever went for it because I needed a level 50 villain to unlock VEATs.  Mercy Island had a few problems, IMO. 

The first was visual.  The zone was cluttered and had a shanty town feel that I found very off-putting.   It fit with the whole, "Arachnos doesn't care about civil governance" thing but it just wasn't appealing to look at and play through.

Second, there was a distinct lack of enemy variety.  Like the OP said, regardless of which contact you chose at the beginning, you ended up in a Snake pit.  That really negated the lore they were trying to sell.  On one hand, you could go with Kalinda and buy into Project Destiny from jump.  On the other, you could go with What's His Face and establish yourself as a rebel.  It really didn't matter, though, because you were going to end up fighting overgrown iguanas either way.

Lastly, Mercy Island didn't provide the clear pathways that Atlas Park or Galaxy City did.  Because the zone was much more compact, it was difficult to run across it without being attacked several times.  That wasn't a problem in and of itself but the inexperienced could easily wander into an area with red conning enemies purely by accident.  Do that a few times too many and frustration set in.  Then it was right back to blue side. 

ricodah

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2016, 04:48:07 AM »
I once heard it stated that Red side represented only about 20% of the characters ever created. 

According to Paragon Studios infopic, redside had 40% of the all the characters ever created.  Players did seem to play their heroes more than their villains.  The top 5 lvl 1-49 and top 5 lvl 50 are pretty much all blueside except, surprisingly, Masterminds.


Castegyre

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2016, 09:12:21 AM »
I can think of a few reasons more people didn't stick with red side, though there's likely more.

People really don't like being the bad guy. Even most real life bad guys apparently don't think of themselves as the bad guy. I've spent a lot of time role playing online over the years. Even role players seldom play real villains online.

There wasn't an adequate social hub.

Most players were well established on blue side so were reluctant to move leaving red side as more of an occasional excursion. New players tend to go where the player base is, which was blue side.

The idea of a thing is often more comfortable and appealing than the reality of it. Blue side was an idealized city. Even the dirty parts were somewhat sanitized. Parts of red side, the bulk of Mercy being one of them, were just dismal.

I pretty much went to red side when CoV launched and stayed there. So did my wife. I liked it and I liked several of my villains. I also totally get why many people didn't.

doc7924

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2016, 01:22:11 PM »
I never really felt COV was like playing like real, evil bad guys anyway.

Except for the few missions you fought police or guards, you fought the same villains as the heroes did mostly in the higher levels.

Plus Blue Side has a lot more content I think then the Red Side.

Then once they let any AT be either Red or Blue, it didn't matter in any case.

When COV was launched I played villains for like a year without playing my hero's. But after a while it all felt the same anyway.


Garble

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #6 on: May 20, 2016, 01:52:36 PM »
To me the zones on blue side always had more character than the red.

Whatever part of Patagon I was in I could spin around and immediately know where I was. Sky City felt different than Steel Canyon which felt different from Atlas etc.

But red side I mixed up the zones all the time. It seemed like you never got out of the dirty future tech bases that were squatting on dreary Victorian post apocalyptic wastelands.

Corona89

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #7 on: May 21, 2016, 10:59:58 PM »
But red side I mixed up the zones all the time. It seemed like you never got out of the dirty future tech bases that were squatting on dreary Victorian post apocalyptic wastelands.

Yep, pretty much this.  The red side zones did have their own character but it was a lot less obvious because they all followed the same visual themes.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #8 on: May 22, 2016, 06:13:28 AM »
Fort Darwin was the Atlas Park of redside on my server. Pinnacle, I think. It always seemed to be pretty packed, so I don't know if Mercy Island was the problem or not. Of course, things got even more complicated once FD got overrun by Longbow. That tiny square in the middle of Mercy just never seemed like a good gathering place.

Nyghtshade

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #9 on: May 24, 2016, 04:30:11 PM »
Yep, pretty much this.  The red side zones did have their own character but it was a lot less obvious because they all followed the same visual themes.
When I wanted a redside change of pace, I'd head for St. Martial.  Loved the casino strip, the rooftop gardens, the little tiki-bar on the main strip, the Giza.  And all of it, lit up at night in a grand neon pageantry of greed and excess!  What's not to love?   :D

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #10 on: May 24, 2016, 06:59:36 PM »
When I wanted a redside change of pace, I'd head for St. Martial.  Loved the casino strip, the rooftop gardens, the little tiki-bar on the main strip, the Giza.  And all of it, lit up at night in a grand neon pageantry of greed and excess!  What's not to love?   :D

Grandville is just about the coolest place I've ever seen in any game.

Corona89

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #11 on: May 25, 2016, 03:32:10 PM »
When I wanted a redside change of pace, I'd head for St. Martial.  Loved the casino strip, the rooftop gardens, the little tiki-bar on the main strip, the Giza.  And all of it, lit up at night in a grand neon pageantry of greed and excess!  What's not to love?   :D

Yeah, the strip was awesome.  My usual spot was Aeon City in Cap Au Diable but I definitely liked the visuals for the developed parts of St. Martial.  Unfortunately, both zones still had plenty of dilapidated crap to look at, especially when you were traveling to and from your missions.

Dev7on

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #12 on: May 25, 2016, 05:00:40 PM »
According to Paragon Studios infopic, redside had 40% of the all the characters ever created.  Players did seem to play their heroes more than their villains.  The top 5 lvl 1-49 and top 5 lvl 50 are pretty much all blueside except, surprisingly, Masterminds.



Where did you find that source from?

ricodah

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #13 on: May 26, 2016, 04:01:15 AM »
Where did you find that source from?

Likely the original CoH forums but don't remember exactly.  I have had it saved since the 7th anniversary in 2011.

Clave Dark 5

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #14 on: June 01, 2016, 01:41:19 AM »
I see few people are sticking up for red side here, so let me take a crack at it. *cracks knuckles*

Red side was always home to me for some of the reasons highlighted above as reasons to NOT play there.  I found blue side to be too clean-looking, too artificial , red seemed much more solid a place - not gritty, just more lived in. 

I enjoyed the way your character was channeled across the various islands as they leveled up, giving you a real sense of a path to, well, infamy I suppose.  The islands also allowed the devs to put in a more varied map, not just an endless cityscape; over here's some city that looks less like a row of featureless glass boxes, then a mountain, some industrial areas, an old castle, a wharf, etc.  I know blue side had all that too, but it had less of it to my eyes, red side felt more varied, more different areas packed into a smaller location.

Mercy island was a sort of obvious "starting with nothing in the gutter" place for you to rise up from, so the dismal look was fitting and ha ha, gave you a reason to want to get out quickly. 

I preferred the character classes better for some reason, perhaps because they were a bit more complex to pull of in action. 

Something red side lacked?  No Hollows.  That place always felt like some kind of pointless punishment for such low level characters and my first encounter with it almost put me off the game as I was learning how to navigate the world.

I'll concede that it never felt quite like really being a "true villain" though, but for the same reasons (contacts directing you instead of, I don't know, heading out on your own somehow) blue side never felt too much like being a real hero either.  I wasn't so much invested in the story on either side though, my characters were who they were rather than fitting neatly into the hero/villain dichotomy.

Near the end I did end up playing blue sidesome, but only because the game population was shrinking so far that even on the most populated servers I couldn't find anyone to team with.  If I'd have been able to, I probably wouldn't have left red much at all.
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KidKourage

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #15 on: June 12, 2016, 06:42:29 PM »
I remember that graphic, though my original comment was from an earlier forum post (Lighthouse, maybe Positron?).  So villainous archetype were on the rise between the two.  Yeah!

My own moment for "well this whole Destined One thing is disappointing" didn't come until I hit level 40 and the Patron pools.  "Wait, I'm a villain.  I want to be number one, not chief lackey to a team of lackeys all working for number one.  This makes me third tier at best, somewhere in the two digits on the leader board.  Yuck!  No!" 
I agree that Red side was dirty and more monochromatic in appearance but it was also a lot more vertical.  Running around the upper works of Cage Co, or Grandville, getting up high in Aeon City, or on top of the Giza.  The fact that some quartermasters were on the roofs of buildings rather than the ground.  That really appealed to me. 
There definitely was less content.  Despite a dozen or so high level villains, I don't think I ever had a single mission that took me to the Hard Way in St. Martial and was always like "why is this even here".  I liked red side, but I had to wheedle my buddies into it if I wanted a team-up there.  I got to PUG as a villain less than a dozen times (not counting Rikki raids).  Even posting to the forum calendar rarely drew enough players to get a Strike Force going on Victory or Infinity.  I never once got into a mayhem mission that triggered boss hero responses, but can remember all kinds of wild rides doing safeguard missions (even had a Paladin appear once in King's Row to face off with the team).  And I always wondered why the upper level snake missions didn't return the villains to Mercy Island - as if they were in the Abandoned Sewers layer of that island.
But was there less interest because of less content, or was it the other way around?

nitz

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #16 on: June 14, 2016, 04:08:32 AM »
Red side was a lot harder and challenging than the balanced and well known blue side. Other than AT discrepancies such as underpowered dominators and brutes mainly, it took a lot more teamwork than the blueside and hardly anyone noticed it or better yet, it was hard to put a team together.

A buffed up brute would certainly be a big win for any teams, that's why I loved playing my cold or fire corruptor so much and it didn't seem to be a popular class at the time. I'm talking before IOs, before level 50 and powers proliferation. There were very few ATs that could solo as easy as a /Fire tank, /Regen scrapper, a blaster or whatever. I remember getting killed a lot of times red side, many team wipes when playing meleers and it was frustrating enough to make people accommodated with the blue side formula quit.

History side also had many flaws just as the blue side, it didn't make me feel halfway like a villain, even so, sometimes I had to do heroic stuff, it made nonsense, I did read through ALL the story arcs and there were few remarkable ones but not for being a villain, mostly had to do with betray someone just as good.

Later on my best character ever was a Stone/Willpower brute, unstoppable.

There also lacked a lot of content, I remember grinding my way to level 40 a lot at those islands northeast of somewhere in St. Martial

Corona89

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #17 on: June 21, 2016, 10:22:30 PM »
Red side was a lot harder and challenging than the balanced and well known blue side.

I'd say red side was more balanced, at least to suit my tastes.

There was definitely more challenge in the dispersion of enemies across the zones and the kinds of stuff you came up against in missions.  Whereas in Paragon City a story arc might culminate with a Named Boss and their lieutenants, the Rogue Isles would throw you an Elite Boss (Or AV if your settings were high enough) and just tell you to deal with it.  Personally, I really enjoyed that and I always wished there had been some kind of revamp to bring blue side content in line with the stuff the villains got to experience.

Also, Villain ATs were more thoughtfully designed.  If you ever did manage to get a decent sized team of villains together, it became very obvious that the ATs weren't carefully crafted parts of a whole like their heroic counterparts.  Every red side AT was a bit of a hybrid and could operate on its own to a solid degree.  It really helped promote that fantasy of a bunch of villains who were only working together to further their own agendas.  Less of a Justice League and more of a Suicide Squad, if you will.

Like I said upthread, I still preferred blue side overall but I don't wanna give the impression that it was vastly superior to red side.  The only area where you could make that argument, IMO, is the overall aesthetics and the size of the playerbase.

KidKourage

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #18 on: December 08, 2017, 02:50:39 PM »
"Go your own way" - Wow.  That strikes up a good memory.  I remember trying exactly that with a Brute called Mad Axe - a battle axe / willpower fellow who wore a ratty kilt and heavy boots (plus a few tattoos).  Got out of the Zig and dragged before Kalinda, spit at her feet and ran off into the ruins bashing everything in sight.  I know the memory was way better than the experience though.  With no hazard zones and few bosses on landscape, it was a slog.  An unbearable slog once level 30 hit.  I was so proud of having a contact list with exactly one contact in it - where the bar wasn't even started.  No way to share that with anybody though, and then one of the issues came along and auto unlocked every contact we were eligible for.  Spoiled the whole thing.  So I slogged my way to level 35, joined Vanguard, and stuck to War Zone until sunset.  Such a screwball character, but when you just needed an afternoon of button mashing to vent, he was up for it.

MyriVerse

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Re: Was it Mercy Island?
« Reply #19 on: December 08, 2017, 03:32:07 PM »
Red zones "more lived in?" Yikes! My whole thought was that they were horribly unlivable. I kept thinking, "Who the heck would design such disgusting places?" They were like dungeons to the point where nothing looked real. And that's where my suspension of disbelief died.

A few months after CoV came out, I never went back there.
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