I got moved by what Omicega had to say about Gallia, and I wanted to reply, but didn't want to derail the event thread further. So I'll just drop a reply here, to the parts that resonated with me.
Quote:Gallia has never done anything with any semblance of realism or reason -- it has danced like a puppet on a string to whatever insane schemes the past iterations of story dev teams have cooked up, and the core identity of it as a pretty black-and-white villain has been muddied over the years by ham-fisted attempts from Gallic players to add shades of moral greyness to the faction.
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It's become abundantly clear that people hate playing villains here.
The last statement is true, at least about myself. There'll be a lot of I's in this, because without a poll, that's all the info I have.
When I try to play a renegade in Mass Effect, I tend to make paragon choices at major story points, because that's what I would do. But then I talked to a friend of mine. It turned out that he always made the different choice at some point, and considered it the right one. Something makes me think I'm not the only one who noticed that (since "people hate playing villains" was brought up). I think it perfectly illustrates a couple of statements:
1. Every villain is a hero in his own mind.
2. A good villain is the villain whose motivation you can understand and sympathise with, even if you can't accept their goals or methods.
That brings us to Gallia. When I first started playing Disco 9 years ago, the Gallic motivation of "vengeance for being betrayed 8 centuries ago" was sufficient to my much younger teen mind. I hadn't heard about the 2 points I brought up, and I hadn't even completed Mass Effect trilogy by then. I just enjoyed the new setting, despite it being isolated (GRN couldn't leave Gallia) and not complete (only Languedoc, Dauphine, Burgundy, Champagne, and Lorraine were available). Fun and RP were had.
<- Skip about a decade ->
I came back to Gallia, armed with the experience mentioned above. Now the motivation of "revenge for something centuries old" or even "resource grab" felt even less valid than before. Black-and-white just didn't do the trick. That's why I sought a more appropriate motivation for the Gallic war. I don't claim that it's perfect, but there were some Gallic players who agreed with that. Yes, it's an attempt of rationalizing what's already been done, but I found it helpful for providing better RP and maintaining my own immersion. There are still things nigh-impossible to rationalize (like what's happening to planet Leeds right now, and more importantly, how it is happening), but Lanakov did a good job with what he was given.
In the end, I think this "rationalization" is for the best. Does it take away from Gallia being a villain? I think the answer is "Depends on how you play it." And if you find a valid reason to do a villain-y thing in the RP environment and make it relatable, then it's even better.
I believe anyone who got to enjoy the priviledge of RPing with Lanakov's Isabelle Montlaville de Chanteloup will acknowledge that this was (is) the most charismatic villain of this era of Discovery. The moment you are caught admiring a magnificient bastard like her, maybe even a gentleman psychopath a la Chiwetel Steele. That being said, the effort behind the character and keeping a strong barrier between the player behind it is so unique, I don't believe there was anyone ever getting this close to this level of entertainment.
I wanna point out that most villains are unlawful and lack the ship classes to not get rofl stomped and so people just don't play them as much. I'd totally rock an LibRogue BC or BS.
(08-28-2019, 05:56 PM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: I believe anyone who got to enjoy the priviledge of RPing with Lanakov's Isabelle Montlaville de Chanteloup will acknowledge that this was (is) the most charismatic villain of this era of Discovery.
I RPed with Chanteloup very briefly a couple of times and didn't see her as a villain. That's probably because I interacted with her solely on my Gallic char, and their agendas were somewhat the same. On more piece of proof that villains don't see themselves as such (or rather, not entirely).
(08-28-2019, 06:09 PM)hubjump Wrote: I wanna point out that most villains are unlawful and lack the ship classes to not get rofl stomped and so people just don't play them as much. I'd totally rock an LibRogue BC or BS.
I would have to disagree that unlawful factions get destroyed because of the ship classes, many unlawfuls have access to most ship classes and a few bombers are good enough to take on larger caps though this thread probably is not the place to talk about ships.
(08-28-2019, 05:45 PM)Catbert Wrote: 1. Every villain is a hero in his own mind.
2. A good villain is the villain whose motivation you can understand and sympathise with, even if you can't accept their goals or methods.
Actually, I think this is a misconception that people have about villainous characters in general -- the idea that in order to be interesting or 'good' in terms of characterisation, they have to have some level of belief that they are in the right -- and therefore to be someone who can be sympathised with. I couldn't disagree more with this. Villains like Joffrey from Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, or Frieza from Dragon Ball Z are all both memorable and wholeheartedly malicious, and I don't think any of them was ever worried about rationalising their cruelty as the 'right' thing to do.
This is the kind of villainy I always saw as being the most appropriate for Gallia -- frankly, the lack of any believable motivation (an eight hundred year old revenge boner? we need more resources because we wasted all our resources building an invasion fleet to get more resources??) makes it hard to come up with anything else. I've never really tried to play LeBlanc as anything more than a flatly unsympathetic villain, and while I can respect a different take on the issue I feel like you very quickly reach a point, particularly with something as poorly written and handled as Gallia has been by the story team ever since its inception, where all the character's believability starts to tear at the seams.
Not every villain needs to be a hero from another point of view. Some can just be evil assholes, without needing to have depth added just for the sake of depth.
Lawful Evil RP has been my favourite flavour of roleplay since I've been here. My GRN/GJ character was an unquestionably bad guy twisted by his pride who took delight in thinning the Sirian population with the justification of war.
I've always tried (emphasis on tried) to objectively play Core as absolute scum and villainy, never really hiding or shying away from it. But what's funny is the amount of characters and even unofficial factions that have sprung up throughout the years which have completely cut that part from their characters/factions. Another interesting occurance is when Core has done bad villain stuff, people have reacted negatively as if they cannot fathom the faction could - dare say not allowed to - act the way it does. There have been cases where we've tried to push our evil stream quite openly but have had very little reaction from other factions (like when VWA exposed us openly selling alien materials to RS - no one cared). But what Omi says is mostly true, the faction expanding both inRP and OoRply has unfortunately diminished it's villain/antagonistic status - however, I believe this is also due to lack of opportunities to play that role at all (without giving the Zoners their annual beating) within it's zoi and beyond. Last opportunity we had to be bad guys, human factions whined inrply and oorply that we should be working together with others and that this role is reserved for alien factions only (a concept I also detest). Before that, we tried to secure a dynamic jump to an uncharted system for our greedy mits by killing anyone who tried to get close, only to get complaints from the Staff for shooting them. It's not an easy road.
I've also tried proposing Aoi led PvE events across Sirius which the Staff at the time didn't seem keen to support because apparently there was no interest (not true) and also vocal member(s) of the community who tried to push the narrative that Wild shouldn't be openly raiding and that no one in Aoi or Wilde were on board with the idea (also not true).
I think at the end of the day the majority of the community just wants to be the protagonist in their own story, and so little people are willing to play the bad guys. For those who do, you get little support if you want to be bad.