Why is my hero fighting my villian?

So I have an idea for a new zone event: Hero and Villain Zone Incursions.

The Concept: Hero and Villain spawns happening in opposing faction zones in a cross between Superadine Raids and Zombie/Rikti invasions using copies of our own characters. This is not a PvP event/concept.

The details: Instead of fighting the usual villain/hero enemy factions during the current events, there would be a pool of heros/villians that would be used for the incursions. Players would be asked to register/volunteer any hero or villain that they would want to be included in the event draft... er pool. Heroes would not show up blue side, Villains would not show up red side. (It certainly would be feasible that either Hero or Villain incursions could occur in Praetoria if this idea was used.) This would lend a greater variety to the spawns as well as a heightened uncertainty as to what you'll actually be fighting.

The copy of your character would show up with their name, costume and power selections. (Powers available to the character would adjust in the same manner as is done with MA critters and if they show up as a minion/Lt, etc.) Whether or not this would also include IO set bonuses would really depend on how this was implemented.

Like the Zombie/Rikti events this would occur in any zone. Unlike those events, there would be specific spawn points in the zones akin to the Superadine raids and the spawn would move across the zone to several possible exit points. Like the Zombies/Rikti/GM's the Hero/Villian's would have their con adjust to the player's level so you wouldn't be out leveling the event. Incursions would have mob spawns like Zombie/Rikti events with a small percentage that it would spawn as a single Hero/Arch Villain/GM instead.

The truth: I'm not sure such an idea can be implemented within the game structure as it currently stands.

( I apologize if someone has already proposed this or a similar idea. I did take time to go back through the suggestions and ideas thread quite a bit and didn't see anything like this. )

So, what do you think?

Maybe the copy is limited to Primary and Secondary power sets to alleviate the possible AI limitations trying to handle 24 powers?

Is there a way you'd tweak the idea a bit to "sell you on it"?

Personally, I think the idea of not fighting the same 4-8 minions, 3-6 lts, 2-4 bosses, and the same eb/av from any one villain/hero group interesting. It'd be a change from dealing with say Freakshow, Carnies or Malta as you wouldn't know what you're going to come up against. Each time you participated you wouldn't have the same heroes/villains as there would be a wider variety in the spawn pool.

Again, not sure if the game itself could handle a larger PvE grouping then currently exists in the game.

I fully support this.

Maybe your hero/villain can be put through a similar Architect wash, where you select what powers you usually use or something?

I like it, especially now that the AE powersets are available to provide approximations of the character primaries and secondaries already set up for the AIs to use. Opted-in heroes and villains could be used for the Safeguards and Mayhems, too. It'd make a change from defeating Holo Man for the hundredth time.

I like the idea. The copies of PC's would have to be:
Opted in. (you've got that covered)
Limited in available power choices, AE style. (covered).

I see one big potential problem with this.

Somebody from Paragon Studios would have to sift through the inevitable flood of player names that reference drugs, reference sex or sexual acts, try to bypass the profanity filter, or have intentionally rude or offensive names. I can already see myself "fighting" the Reefer Man in a t-shirt with an afro and a headband with black jeans.

While I might be wrong, I think the sheer amount of developer initiated moderation of players and player names is one of the reasons in the past the developers have stayed away from producing events based on Player Characters. It wouldn't be like the current AE where your experience may change during online play, nor the current naming and character creation system where the developers seem to rely on the community to catch most of the... distasteful or T.O.S. violating... elements that enters the game. It would have to be developer initiated since the developers would be the ones publishing the content directly in an event.

While I like the idea of using player-based characters to fill in the world of City of Heroes, I just can't see it being a practical solution given the number of punks and jerks that many of us have probably ran into in the game.

I think it's a great idea ONLY if I could check some kind of scoreboard to see how my villain did on his last "incursion" into the city.

If I could have something like that, I'd think it's awesome.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

I fully support the idea of costumed heroes and villains fighting one another in a Zone incursion event. As it is, we must defend a bank or go to a PvP zone to accomplish this. It's a huge draw in the comic industry to have certain popular villains/heroes interact across book titles. I'd love to see it, if the Devs could make it work.

It would take a lot of work to create that many villains/heroes, at least 200-400 I would guess, each with their own unique name. Mightn't it be easier to create NPC SGs and VGs with a set "cast of characters" and let them attack a bank or try to take over a section of the city?

I'd love to see "The Legacy of Evil is loose in Steel Canyon!" broadcast like a fire alarm. I would definitely drop everything to fight a group of costumed super villains, especially if they were as hard to defeat as those damn zombies....

Not a bad idea at all. Would certainly add some more flavor to the game.

I guess since Cryptic owns all our creations anyway, they could just go ahead and do it, but I would offer mine as well, as long as it's understood that I'm not playing them. I mean, AI can only go so far and I (of course) wouldn't be so easily defeated...

I like the idea a lot, but...Think of all the players who would want to register a hero/villain, and the odds of their hero/villain being chosen at random. I'm concerned about the butthurt that would come when peoples' hero/vill never gets chosen for an incursion or safeguard, or even if their seems to be a noticable bias toward selecting certain players' characters. All I'm saying is, this type of thing could lead to a lot of bruised egos and subsequent tension amongst the player base.

I always saw something like this as the natural progression of the AE features. I still want an in-game Nemesis system.