I know that's not very original as a suggestion,but i think in the future we should play as villains.But how to accomplish that,after seeing CoV not being as successfull as everyone thought.Here are some ideas for this.

1)Conquerors Online:Now that we are introduced to Multifaria,a world were heroes of our world are villains and villains are heroes,it would be a nice set up for a villain's expansion.Although i would prefer being a villain on Champions' Earth,i think using Multifaria would be more easy for development(just twisting characters and places that already having in our regular game).

2)Play the role of a villain in Champions Online's regular earth.But instead of taking missions and quests from heroes and law enforcers,you would take missions from villains and criminals.Which bring us to our next question.What's the point of being a villain,if at the end of the day i would be just a glorified enforcer for other villains?

My suggestion for this is to elevate not only in levels,but in villainy.Like in CO we start as rookie or newcomers,as a villain we are new faces,ambitious and full of goals.The first pair of missions would be fighting law enforcers like MCPD,PRIMUS,UNTIL etc and doing quests from low level supervillains like Kevin Poe and other crimebosses.As our reputation grew,we will take quests from organisations like VIPER and ARGENT and so on.But facing the forces of justice can be boring.Except superheroes,there aren't many colorfull challenges.Enter villains vs villains

As everyone knowns,while heroes are mostly team players,villains are not.You are a crime boss?There always a rival crime boss that earns or wants to earn more than you.You are an assasin or a supergoon for hire?There are rivals in that market,with other superenforcers being more famous and established than you.Finally,you are a would-be conqueror?There are other villains who wants the privilage to rule earth instead of you.The world is too small for so many masterminds.So,after awhile,you'll have missions and quests to face other villainous organisations or individuals in order to build your reputation.

As for "Help a Citizen"missions,we'll have "commit an act of infamy",like stole a bank(and earning money or tokens to unlock things),stole an equipment or blueprints before another rival criminal etc.

As for powersets,i think that current powers are good.Maybe adding more "evil" powers like "twist toymaker" or "evil genetist"(instead of munition bots,you'll have small mutated animals).Except your powerset,we would have to choose what type of villain we wants to be.Not everyone wants to be master of the world.Some maybe enjoy the role of being hitmen and assasins,others want to make crimes for affection and taking the spotlight(like Foxbat) etc.

As for the Nemesis system,we'll have to use our personal heroic nemesis,our personal superhero we'll have to crush in order to achieve our goal.And instead of Nemesis missions,we'll have our heroic nemesis appearing out of the blue everytime we commit a crime and he'll try to stop us.

Finally,for PvP,i would propose to keep the current system.

The reason CoV didn't fare as well as CoH, I think, is that ultimately while some people may enjoy playing 'evil', the majority (based on population of red/blue servers and percentage of red archetypes that converted to blue once side-switching became available) prefer to be a hero.

There's also the issue that a game that promotes and fosters 'evil' behaviour has to walk a very fine line --- Grand Theft Auto style games have drawn the ire of many people who might otherwise have ignored video games, eg.

A core problem with villains is, as you note, the feeling that you're just a flunky for someone else. This was prevalent in City of Villains to the point your villains were little more than Enforcers for -real- villains. The problem is that villainy is by its nature an ACTIVE profession whereas Heroics tend to be RE-active ---- heroes respond to STOP a villain, but the villain has to START the crime first...

I think a good compromise might be "anti-heroes" such as those that populate Hudson City in the pen-and-paper Champions game. That's a setting I'd LOVE to see in an expansion.

I think a progression bar for villainy would work.You'll start as an enforcer for others but later you'll have to commit mission that would only benefit you(sort of making mission from Crime Combuter,but now it wouldn't be an emergency situation but an act fo infamy to boost your villainous reputation).

As for promoting evil,they can put a limit to your villainy.You can make a lunatic villain like silver age Joker but not a blood thirsty mass murderer like modern Joker or Carnage.

the reason why it doesn't work in CO is because it is still using the old MMO ruling system, you need a new and dynamic game system to achieve true hero/villain gameplay.

There's a whole lot of words here and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings by saying I didn't read them, but quite simply Cryptic's already said "No."

Sure it would be nice and all that, but the answer's there.

If you want to know why they said no, it was basically something like "we don't want to do villains without making it mean something" or something, which means that unless it's a mechanic with depth, fit's the theme, and doesn't **** off a bunch of other players it's not going to happen.

There was also a mention of "resources" the short of which is basically villains would require a whole different gameplay thing, and they still haven't fixed targetting, so it's likely not going to happen any time soon if ever.

Villains aren't coming in foreseeable future. Various reasons for that.

At one time hideouts werent coming ether, just got to keep pushing!!!

The ultimate irony in all this is that even without the Foundry, CO has an excellent tool for creating villain content that makes it seem your villain is more than a mere flunky. The Nemesis System.

With a few tweaks the Nemesis System can make it appear that you're more than a flunky to real villains, nemesis type can translate into a communal lair area, Evil Lair for Mastermind, Abandoned warehouse for maniac and cave for savage with the various minion types hanging around to tell you of opportunities for villainy.

Expanding further we have location based missions so passing a bank can offer a mission to rob the bank ect. ect.

Even if the above modifications to the Nemesis system were held off till level 25 it can mean that that's the breakoff point of when you can chose to become a real villain rather than someone's flunky.

That gives me an idea for a limited series of Nemesis missions where we can play as our Nemesis.So we can have 2 kind of Nemesis missions.One,our regular nemesis missions where we try to stop our Nemesis and his/her henchmen and the other would be playing with our Nemesis and allow us to do some villainous acts and building our Nemesis'story.It would be less ambitious than a villains expansion and more easy for developers to achieve it.

Hideouts are alot easier to implement, compared to having to redesign the entire to change 1 faction into the option for 2.... Also, like somebody already pointed out, Villains don't take orders, they make them... If your a Villain are you really going to go ask Dr. Destroyer if you can handle his light work... Or are you going to try and out do the last crime he did.... There is really no way to just randomly start an act of evil... Alot of things would have to change, and the end result would probably have to seem more like a Grand Theft Champions Online... Where practically anything a "Villain" does, becomes an open world event for any nearby hero...