Enemy Variety

Something that has always seemed a little odd is that almost every mission involves one or more of the major factions. There are very few capers starring newcomers or small-time outsiders, like everyone's favorite 1 minion, 1 lt., 1 boss group, the Spetsnaz.

To add a little variety to the mix I propose creating several generic villain groups with no set backstory or idealology. The easiest way to go would be to make use of the Mastermind pets, modifying the costumes for contrast and mixing up the powers to balance across different level ranges.

The generic factions:

Robots - Standard bots, with possibly another lt. to break up the Protector Bot buffing. Addtional units would be mad scientist minions and lts., armed with laser guns and beakers full of variously chemicals. The Throw Beaker power would do minor aoe damage with a variety of random debuffs, set up like the Mystic Fortune power.

Thugs - Thugs don't really need much to be their own faction, though the addition of femele models would be nice. They probably wouldn't spawn at the upper levels.

Necrmancy - The undead horde, with accompanying necromancer lts. and bosses. Lots'a dark powers.

Ninja - EVerything's better with ninja. They could use a high-ranking ninja as a new boss.

Mercenaries - Good potential for variety by making rifle, smg and shotgun versions of the different ranks. An interesting feature would be adding leadership-type auras to the lts.' and bosses.

These generic groups would be first added to newspaper/police band mission, and maybe to some existing blueside contact missions as part of a revamp.

/signed

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

It's a cool idea, but I'm already doing this via Mission Architect myself.

While most of my arc ideas are for more developed storylines, I have both a hero and a villain concept that are basically a series of Police Band/Newspaper missions, as though we are receiving alerts through the SG mission computer.

I have not published these arcs yet, but they are *not* intended to be farms or PL arcs. Just fun side missions with a mix of custom and standard critters to add a little more flavor.

Side note: Your suggestion compliments one I made a few months back, only reversed. I suggested having costumed bosses appear in police band/newspaper missions, even if standard enemy groups were used, to add some variety. Having bosses that look just like the rest of the thugs but with different power sets is lacking; give us some costumed bosses to add to the super "atmosphere" of the game.

I wouldn't mind having the unique villains from the safeguards appear elsewhere in the game.

We need more singular baddies not associated with any group.
We need a Lobo - just out causing trouble
We need a Joker - doing what he finds 'funny'
We need a insert random bad guy with no ties to anyone.

The first time I did a safeguard and saw Comatoriam running towards me I thought that it was another player. When he started attacking I thought safeguards were PvP agaisnt a player villain trying to rob the bank.

It made me feel like a hero, instead of the cops gopher.

so...

more variety = /signed

I don't see the point in recycling MM sets for villain groups, since all of them can be fought in some way or another in Scanner missions as it is. Why use generic Ninja if the Tsoo would add personality to a mission? I'd find missions of nothing but plain Mercs boring. I especially don't see where they would have a place in actual story missions.

The exception to this is that I would love to see the MM sets have equivalent villain groups for use in the MA, to represent an army of henchmen to carry out our player MMs' whims.