He took HOW many cakes? That's terrible. Let's Play City of Villains!

Honestly what else was I gonna call it.


Welcome to the City of Villains let's play!

City of Villains is one half of the City of- universe, an MMO set in a comic-book superhero world. City of Heroes (aka blueside) came out first, back in April 2004. City of Villains (aka redside) was release on Halloween (GEDDIT!?) 2005. Last January they even got around to releasing a Mac client. The world is a pretty standard "anything goes" comic book world. There's evil corporations, alien invasions, psychic clowns, zombie hordes, and of course, Nazis. Last year the two games were finally just merged, so even if you only ever had one of the two games, your $15/month now allows you to play both.

In City of Villains, you play an up-and-coming star in the Arachnos Organization living out life in the Rogue Isles.


The Leader of Arachnos is this fine fellow, Lord Recluse.


Recluse and his heroic counterpart Statesman were best of buds back in the '30s, before gaining their superpowers and simultaneously unleashing superpowers on the entire world. Now they're having a giant hissy.

The "story" behind CoV involves Lord Recluse seeking out the Destined One, a villain who is the key to his plan for beating Statesman and his Freedom Phalanx and then achieving world domination. He's staged a breakout at the Zig, a maximum security prison in the heart of Paragon City (seriously) where all the superpowered evil doers get sent, since his magic 8 psychic told him the destined one is in genpop. He plans to find out exactly which is his destined one by letting them all run loose in the Rogue Isles and waiting for one of them to survive. It's like Battle Royale but with giant robots and fireballs. The "story" is really very little of what you do in the game, however. Mostly it's robbing banks and kidnapping alien diplomats and such.

The game differs from most other MMOs in that you don't often get a team together and then work on killing one big monster. You kill a LOT of smaller monsters all at once.


A whole lot.

I'm Let's Playing City of Villains because it's sometimes amazing what a difference 18 months of playtesting can make. Blueside has more to do, technically, but most of it desperately needs the edges sanded down, and the writing is...let's say "lackluster." There's a much harder grind, and some of the longer Task Forces are exercises in raw pain. Redside is far more polished, and the archetypes are roughly a thousand times more interesting, mostly because they don't follow the traditional "tank/mage/heal0r" setup. Speaking of which:

Archetypes
Each of the five basic archetypes gets to chose a primary powerset and a secondary powerset at creation. These can never be altered without re-rolling the character entirely, so choose wisely. Each archetype also has an inherent power that helps to define their roll in fights. Click the name of the AT to learn about their primary and secondary choices since this is getting long enough as is.

BRUTE A melee fighter who prefers fists, flaming fists, electrified fists, souls wrapped around fists, axes and gigantic war hammers. Their secondary is armor that, along with a pretty solid HP pool, allows them to stay alive long enough to hit things to death. Their inherent is fury. As they deliver and take damage, their fury bar rises. A higher fury bar means more damage, up to a 200% bonus.

DOMINATOR The dominator specalizes in locking things down. Their primary gives them access to stuns, sleeps, immobilizes, holds and the like. This is good because they are delicate napkins, and their only real chance of not sucking pavement is to shut their opponents down before they can get off more than one or two shots. Their secondary is Assualt, a selection of melee and ranged attacks, so after they lock everything down, they can light it on fire, freeze it solid, or even scream horrible thoughts directly into their opponent's brain. Their inherent is domination. As they deal damage, they start to get their giggle on. Once the domination bar is over 90%, they can activate domination and receive an 80% damage boost and a boost to the magnitude and duration of all their mezzes for 90 seconds.

CORRUPTER The corrupter's primary is ranged damage. Fireballs, lightning bolts, even assualt rifles or laser eyes, they're hell from a distance. Their secondaries contain the bulk of the game's buff and debuffs. They can hand out radiation poisoning, wrap you up in ice so as to take less damage, and even use the healing power of fire as the combat medic from hell cauterizing your wounds on the go. This is after they have lit you on fire. Also to take less damage. Somehow. Their inherent is scourge which gives them an increasing chance for double damage as their target's life drops.

STALKER The sneaky little bastard of the game. Like brutes, they have a melee primary and an armor secondary. Unlike brutes, they have a tiiiiiiiny little dollop of HP. They make up for this via their inherent, Assassination. When Hidden, they're invisible to the enemy, and any attack they make will automatically crit for double damage. Their Assassian Strike power will one-shot just about anything conning at your level, but of course punching someone in the face with the souls of the damned draws attention, breaking hide.

MASTERMIND The mastermind's primary allows them to summon and control 6 pets, turning the game into an interesting pseudo-RTS. They can call up robots, zombies, thugs, ninjas, or mercs to do their horrible bidding. Their secondary, like the corrupter, revolves around buffs and debuffs, but the effectiveness of these powers is a bit lower than what corrupters get, mostly because the mastermind gets to dish them out while hiding behind a wall of henchmen (which they get to name). Their inherent is Supremacy which gives their pets a boost to accuracy and damage, so long as they stay near them.

Along with archetype, at creation you pick an origin, which is basically where your powers come from. There's technology, science, mutation, magic, and natural origins. What your origin is comes up maybe three times the entire game, none of which are important.

Now, the best part: God's Own Chargen. The "gear' in this game is compeletely separate from your appearance. So what you look like and what you do in this game are completely divorced concepts. So you can have two characters who are exactly the same in terms of hit points, build, powersets, power choices, etc and so on, but one is called Princess Twinklelove and one is called Butch the Jawripper. It's fantastic. There's a lot of people out there who use the game as nothing more than a place to show off their fancy costumes. There's hundreds, if not thousands of costume pieces at this point, and they keep giving out more. Robots, top hats, tuxedos, spandex, knight helmets, peg legs and pirate hooks, dog heads, ninjas, zombies, it's HUGE. The official site once mentioned that if you take "unique" to mean "more than three things different" then there's well over a million possible costumes out there, and you even unlock MORE as you progress through the game.

So! What do I need from you?* The following:
An Archetype
Primary Powerset
Secondary Powerset
Origin
And if you want, you can wing me a theme, or a character concept. I have a few ideas myself, we'll see what turns out. By the way, at this point the GMs are pretty good at catching onto Corporal America and his buddies Wonderful Woman and Wolferine. So let's not even bother, k.

For the first update, you get to choose my contact!
Kalinda, one of Arachnos' top psychics who will introduce me to the organization by having me run their errands, then will send me off to fight an ungodly amount of snakes,


or Burke who is a mercenary working outside Arachnos who will introduce me to the organization by having me raid it and then will send me off to fight an ungodly amount of snakes.


*I've already got a few high level characters, so I may skew the votes a little to avoid doing something I've already done to 50.

Since this is an MMO, you can also play along! Here's how.
This link here gives you the whole client free from the official website, though it will take roughly 3 months to download it. (Mac users run the same client.) The game is kinda old, so it's really pretty easy to find it cheap. If you decide to play for the first time, there is a 10 day free-trial program available, and if you sign up for a month I get a month free, which is nice. If you already have an account that's been inactive for over 90 days, there is also a "please come back!" program, where I send you a re-up code, and we both get a free 15 days. If you want in PM me your email with either "free trial" or "reinvite" somewhere in the message so I can send you the right code.

I play on the Virtue Server, which is the unofficial RP server, which means we'll all get to laugh quite a bit.

This game was designed to be far more forgiving than say, Everquest or WoW. A team of 8 healers is totally viable, as is a team of 8 meatshields. So if you do sign up, just think up a concept and run with it. What archetype and powersets you choose aren't really that important. Looking damn good, however, is.

Starting out when I'm on update 20? Never fear, the game has a system called "lackeying" and "malefactoring". Lackeying works by letting high level characters take low level characters on as a lackey, allowing them to fight as if they were also high level! And malefactoring lets a high level character voluntary lower their level so they can team up with a bunch of lowbies. Last Issue (the game's name for major content updates) they released a system called "Level Pacts" that allow you to link your character with a buddy's so you are ALWAYS the same level.

Depending on how many people show up for this, I'll update this post with some more general playing tips and such. Depending on how offtopic it gets I may just throw a thread up in Hardcore Awesome Forever. We Shall See.

So Anyway Let's Play!

This tempts me to pick up the City games again entirely too much. Especially at a time when I actually have the time to maybe get around to scratching the level cap.

I'm going to toss my vote in for a Corruptor though. Maybe with a sciency feel, so Assault Rifle for primary and Radiation Emission for secondary.

Thread title wins. Mad thumbs up!

There are SOME exceptions to this, but you CAN always find level-appropriate things to do with your buddies.

The only taker I had the last time I tried that was a spambot. =(

I'm ALMOST at 90 days (last active day was Dec 13 2008; this website sez its been 82 days as of today) so I'll get a reinvite code from you in a week or so. All my characters were on Freedom and Victory, though, so I'll have to start fresh (I don't think there are any freebie character transfers).

I'm pretty happy to run a TT-derived character as well, so if there are lots of good ideas we don't have to toss 'em all out.

Ahhh, I haven't been to the Cities in ages. Perhaps when Issue 14 lands I'll be tempted back by that delicious mission maker they're promising...

As for the character to create, come on. You know you want to go Mastermind. The Robotier the better. Though zombie/dark is a good combo too, and fairly potent once you learn all your various tricks. I got such a Mastermind up to Lv30 or so, I named all my minions after Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters. There's nothing quite like sending a Lich named Slartibartfast to go punch some mafia goons.

Oh, this is gonna be great. My suggestion for a villain:

Ninja Mastarrr
A piratical Mastermind who summons ninja slaves to do his bidding.
Primary: Ninjas
Secondary: Pain Domination

Oh wow! You're playing this on Virtue? Dang, if you were on Justice, I could totally hook you up. Justice is my home server, that's why...

Hmmm... might have to roll a new character on Virtue...

Best thread title ever.

A Brute of Science with Dual Blades and Willpower.

Because willpower is a funny powerset to me.

It's just a mashup of Regeneration and Invulnerability if I remember right.. it's pretty underwhelming. -.-

Any idiot can come up with a character for this game, but a good character is named and dressed from top to bottom in a definite theme and style. And have a short, punchy bio that isn't much more than a paragraph long, because this is the Virtue server and overly long melodramatic essays are a plague that must be stopped here. (This far, and no further!)

Clearly the only choice you have for a villain here is Gary Snarkovich, aka Doctor Spite, a Mastermind who is himself a mindless drone guided by the shadowy influence of the Talking Tyrants Trust. He shall wear a bright and colorful outfit because every other player-controlled villain in the game is an unoriginal moron who always wears red or black. He shall also be not hesitant to make snarky comments about what's happening around him and the ludicrous foes he'll be pitted against, because the developers don't take the plot seriously and neither should you.

I agree completely. Thumbs up!

Also, lets do a Captain Ersatz of Aku as a Mastermind and give him Robot Henchmen?

We can call him Umbral or Tyrant or something.

Archetype - Mastermind
Primary Powerset - Summon Robots
Secondary Powerset - Dark Miasma
Contact - Kalinda
Origin - Umbral is piece of Primal Evil who has slowly gained sentience. Its eventual goal is to enslave all reality.

Yeah, no that's wrong. WP is actually a very good powerset, especially if you take the Fighting Power Pool's Tough and/or Weave. About the only real weakness to it is that there is no Self-Heal and honestly once you get into the twenties, level-wise, you don't need one unless you're soloing 8-man groups.

Sorry, let me clarify: thematically underwhelming. The powers LOOK cribbed (mostly) from Regeneration and Invulnerability (the Regen powers even keep their names).

But! I haven't played it, so it might be fantastically overpowered.

It simply does not get more perfect than this. Powerleveler, make it so.

I... I really like this. My only request would be mastermind, because they're really neat and the one thing you can't get on heroside.

When I played it was on Freedom, heroside. Princess Tangerine was a raditation defender with bright green hair and pink-and-green striped everything. It was awesome. I'll do the "come baaaack" thing when I get a chance and make a villian. Who will also be brightly colored because otherwise I lose track of which dude I am on the screen.

Well this really makes me want to bring back Dr. Pneumatic. A Robot/Darks Mastermind. All fear the steam powered machinations of terror that this evil genius commands.

I'd say go for Captain Communism. SS/Shield Brute going for Burke as initial contact and Science origin.

Addendum: Mastermind if they now let you customize what your minions look like. Last I heard they implimented that sort of thing on weapons but I don't know for sure you can customize your ninjas or whatever. If not, that's lame and I don't support it.

No, I don't think you can. Something to do with how the minions are coded, their appearance is randomized on everyone's display. Ie: Minion #1 might have a green shirt on your screen, and a blue shirt on someone else's.

It's a shame, but it would also mean that would potentially be 6 more costumes that would need to be transferred over the interwebs, whereas where their appearance is randomized the construction of their appearance is up to the computers on each user's end, they just need to know which minions are up.

Apparently I know more about this than I thought.

tl;dr version: Would be a neat feature, but too impractical.

This. Although I'd be just fine with you summoning ninjas instead.

I will probably not play this or any MMO for quite a while yet, but as I lurk through the FFXI and WoW threads already, this will be no different. And I want me some mastermind-induced entertainment. Corrupter would also be fine, but I don't know nearly enough about the game to make suggestions about powersets.

Yeah, I'm backing Dart Zaidyer's idea as well.

The only problem with robots is they take up a lot of screen space once you get the big 'uns. I wish you could have purple ninjas but I guess not. *pout*

If you go for robots, I propose the conceit is that they are captured message board spambots forced into an existence of servitude for all time.

These bots used to spam you! Now you spam these bots!

That is brilliant.

Either Ninjas or Robots would be cool.

I'll put in a vote for Dart's plan (eeeeevil plan) as well. I also like the idea of being a mastermind.

This thread will be very dangerous 'cause I loved me the shit out of some CoH/V back in the day. Mostly the character creator though. I think I only managed to get a guy to level 20 and that was only because of a bonus xp weekend. The allure of making new guys is just too great. Still, one thing I always wanted to do was get together with some folks and make a themed supergroup. That'd be rad if it ended up happening in this thread.

Villian Group Name: CPU Overload
Requirement: Robotics Master Mind
Goal: To shut down everyone's computer by the introduction of so many robots on one screen as to cause CPU/GPU meltdown!
Sign up NOW!!

No one has suggested Ziff Vavif, wearing a top hat?

I suppose it's rather obvious, but this thread seems to be titled after that notorious(ly silly) panel from one of those "teach your kids to count and read" books.



If not, then there had better be some pastry theft in a later update, or there'll be hell to pay.

Wonder if there are any cake capers in COV.