Was it Mercy Island?

[Codewalker]

Red zones "more lived in?" Yikes! My whole thought was that they were horribly unlivable.

For the most part St. Martial seems quite nice, especially the northeast of the zone -- must be all that casino/mob money at work.

The southern part of Nerva has some charming spots as well.

The worst places redside seem to be Mercy (which is mostly bombed out ruins), and Grandville (wtf dat architecture).

[MyriVerse]

To each their own.

I'm not fond of that section of cobblestone streets in St. Martial. The rest is just too many NYC-style buildings and way too much neon. I kinda felt claustrophobic. And definitely not those industrial areas.

Nerva: Okay. The Crimson Cove area isn't bad.

[KingsGambit]

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.

It was a matter of flavour, but the content was of course the same. Instead of "rescuing" people, you "kidnapped" them. Instead of foiling a bank robbery with a villain in the vault, you were the villain breaking in and fighting a hero to get out. There were also some occasions to reappropriate doomsday devices or whatnot, being a worse criminal than the ones we beat up. But obviously tilesets and enemies were largely the same.

I personally played CoV far more than CoH. I didn't even own CoH for a year or two, so all my main chars (rad/fire corruptor, dark/ninja MM, cold/cold domi) were red side. When I did eventually go Blue, I tried an Electric/Electric blaster and hated it. It wasn't fun to play, always out of stam. And the stupid Conflict Zones that didn't have hospitals in them, so you had to respawn in neighbouring zone, take a lift, leave the hospital, cross the map, change zone, find the mission building, go in, go back to your floor....RAAAGHGGH. Then, the bloody trains.....CoV's ferries were simpler, more consistent and much more elegant. I never had to take green line to Steel, then Yellow to somewhere else, waiting for the train, making sure I went in the right door. Not to mention the zones were all HUGE. They were too big. CoV I think Nerva was the only massive zone, taking ages to go from bottom to top; CoH every single one was utterly huge and took ages to traverse.

I did like my tank tho. Mace/Shield....she had a police outfit, baton and riot shield, named Pepper Spray. My most played hero, loved her. I actually turned her Vigilante before sunset. I had a regen scrapper called Charlemagne and a Peacebringer called The Rabbi who had a white beard, glasses and black hat :-)

Overall, I preferred CoV. I liked being the villain, I liked the TFs (never got Master of tho :-( ), the zones and I felt much more familiar with it. Cap au Diable was like a second home for us villains. I still remember the tailor, the Electric gremlin boss that attacked the zone someitmes, the goldbrickers, the giant sphere and mission architect, the heliport (to go to the PvP zone). Redside 4 life.

[Sakura Tenshi]

A lot of people have hit on the big issues with Mercy, so, I think I'll throw in my own thoughts on how Villain starting zone could have been fixed.

1. Move the starting zone to an altered St. Martial.
The reason for this would be to 'ease' players into the idea of being a villain. You're surrounded by glitzy bars, beautiful casinos, solicited by implied hookers, it looks like Arachnos runs the place more like another country than you'd expect and care about appearances, and it in general being a villain seems glamorous. The people you fight are bigger jerks or party-crashers, you rob banks, cheat the system, vandalize a few places, and steal some fancy stuff. The truly villainous things you do (and this one involves a revamp of longbow) is optional where you go to more slummy areas of St. Martial and find non-aggressive Longbow Volunteers. These are just dudes in t-shirts offering relief to refugees and their worst comment to the player is "please don't attack, we don't want trouble" or "would you care to join in and lend a hand, not too late." They're not even carrying guns. They fight your throwing rocks, brawl, and in rare instances will have a flare gun. Oh, and they're underling rank too so you don't even get a lot of EXP for fighting them. You just beat them up because you're a jerk and they possibly come across as holier than thou or remind you too much of Mormons or Jehova's Witness.

2. An inter-island highway system.
Pretty self-explanatory, just a road network between all the islands with St. Martial at the heart of it all so you find yourself going back.

3. mob diversity.
As mentioned, mob diversity is an issue, and sometimes even just making new, 1-15 level versions of existing mobs could do a lot, and in some place as fancy as St. Martial you could have stuff like casinos, resorts, bars, and restaurants owned by practically all the major groups.

Okay, that wasn't as big as I thought, but I could go on about my "wonderful idea" of revamping longbow but I think I wasted enough of folks' time talking there.

[Noyjitat]

Port Oakes also had a few nice areas around it as well.

[Zombie Hustler]

Until the advent of Going Rogue, the Rogue Isles were my main play area. I just loved them so much more than Blue Side. Yes, the smaller number of initial contacts and paths was sort of a negative; on the other hand, on Blue Side even with a plethora of starting contacts, the adventure paths really weren't all that different from one another, and consisted largely of short, unrelated missions. Eventually you got onto larger and longer storylines, but they never felt quite as interconnected as on Red Side to me. Red Side's smaller zones were a lot more interesting and differentiated visually to me, and easier and more focused to navigate around (definitely an evolution of design that had developed after the learning curves of the initial game; I don't doubt that Blue Side would have featured some of the same had it been developed later).

As an added bonus, that most players never got the chance to see, there was a Villain side story arc in issue 24 that really took advantage of a lot of newer design (such as phasing tech) that made the Red Side even more of a culmination of all of your villainous career efforts, in that it incorporated many aspects of earlier missions (if you'd done them) by bringing in your NPC contacts as allies (or foes) and calling back to a lot of your previous adventures. It was so well done (and last I checked, it wasn't entirely documented on the wiki; IIRC, it doesn't mention that Crimson Revenant turns down his contract and assists you if you'd run his mission in Nerva among other things.)

[Ohioknight]

I'd like to add the additional observation... you couldn't really be a villain in CoV.  In City of Heroes you run around saving citizens from evildoers.  But you can't ATTACK civilians in CoV like you can in Grand Theft Auto (for example).  If you were able to run around robbing or beating people on the street until you need to run away from/defeat a hero, THAT would be City of Villains.  I just found it kind-of discouraging (not that I really wanted to be a villain in the first place, but if you're gonna do it...)

[Power Gamer]

I agree with you Ohioknight, CoV did not seem very villainous. It didn't go far enough.

Praetoria on the other hand, IMO, went too far.

Flavor issue for me.

[Van Allen]

I'd like to add the additional observation... you couldn't really be a villain in CoV.  In City of Heroes you run around saving citizens from evildoers.  But you can't ATTACK civilians in CoV like you can in Grand Theft Auto (for example).  If you were able to run around robbing or beating people on the street until you need to run away from/defeat a hero, THAT would be City of Villains. ...

Something along those lines, being a villain in CoV wasn't like blowing up a school just for kicks but fighting for your survival and stopping Circle of Thorns, Clockworks, etc... much like Heroes.

PALPATINE: "Good is a point of view, Anakin. ... The Sith and the Jedi are similar in almost every way, including their quest for greater power. The difference between the two is the Sith are not afraid of the dark side of the Force. That is why they are more powerful."

I started on CoH, didn't get far in CoV then spent more time in CoH.  THEN spent more & more time in CoV.  I like the stories better.

muhahaha




MUHAHAHA!

[Floride]

I like the stories better.

CoV stories were the funniest. In fact, right before sunset, the last arc I ran was Mender Tesseract. 1950's Arachnos cadets saying things like "Can I have your costume when you lose?". The pettiness of your contacts made them seem sooo clueless. And that was the appeal for me.

Blueside was fun, Redside was funny.

I think Mercy's biggest flaw was that it was an island. People who only ever played blue side would make their first villain and then bore themselves to tears by swimming to every mish. If they had to traverse the streets I think they would have enjoyed the absurdity of the villains more. IMHO

[Archlight]

Loved RED side far more than Blue side. I had about twice as many villain ideas to create over hero concepts. Yes the place was a dingy hell hole. But you had greater aspirations you were not going to be someones lacky. While they may try to set it up that way. Even LR knew he could not contain you especially when you show him his mask.

Some folks fit COH better and some folks fit COV better. It was totally obvious when your on a pickup team with cross over Blue players. People were playing COV like COH. Healer we don't need no stinking healers. Tank pulls we don't need them either. You would notice these influx periods. Especially when they wanted to get to the level cap and have a SOA.