Archenemies, You Complete Me

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Who here can think of a (well done) hero or villain who doesn't have at least one person unique to them constantly trying to take over the world/foiling everything they do? An important part of a character is their conflict, and what better to heighten character customization than to address that?

But that's where the Mission Architect comes in, right? Theoretically, yes. Except to create a worthwhile arc it can take anywhere between hours and months. This is a great tool for story authors, but if you're just looking to have a conflict with your archenemy of choice it's quite a long route, especially for a five-mission arc. Should casual players be devoid of their own archenemy because they don't have time to learn the MA and use it every time they want a conflict with their archenemy?

My proposition: Have the option to create your archenemy and his minions at level 20-30 and have "archenemy" missions, which have a template scenario that inserts your archenemy's data into the mission where appropriate. Creating it would be like using the custom enemy group option in the MA, but with the time-consuming process of integrating it into missions done already with the templates.

But what if you don't want your archenemy to be a petty bank robber? Or do you want that but nothing else? During the archenemy creation you'd be able to check off categories you find conceptually appropriate. For example a mob-oriented archenemy could check off "Hostage Situation," "Bank Robbery," and "Drug Deal," while a more villainous scientist could check off "Doomsday Device (and perhaps even name it)" or "Clone Factory." Each scenario could have generic dialogue or customized dialogue chosen during archenemy creation.

The missions could be handled as if they were tip missions, except they would be more rare, more epic-feeling, and with the choice at the end to kill your archenemy (of course affecting alignment, tying it into Going Rogue). Perhaps in a generic mission there is a random chance of being ambushed by your archenemy's group at the end of it? Or even having the enemies tied into radio missions? Or what if there comes a threat so great that you have the choice of working together with your archenemy to combat it?

Of course, balance is always something to worry about with any addition. An Ice Armor tanker could create his archenemy with only ice attacks and beat him to the ground. This should not be a farming tool, but a higher level of customization to our characters that a majority of players don't have the time/skills to access. I have two propositions for this:

1. Have the system check your character's attacks/defenses vs your archenemy's attacks/defenses and if it gives you an unfair advantage, deny the creation of that arch.
2. Have the archenemy, bosses and lieutenants have an origin-specific attack specially typed to work against your defenses. Like a magic-origin arch vs an IA tank would get a fire-shooting staff.

And as for the archenemies' powers themselves, it would be nice if we could choose from anywhere between two to four sets to use. It's understandable for the MA custom critters to have a limited pool to save space, as well as the arch's henchmen. But the arch himself should be able to fit a wide array of conceptions.

(tl;dr, To create our own archenemies would heighten character customization, Mission Architect is too time-consuming/complex for the casual player, middle ground would be to create our own archenemies and have template missions for them to appear on)

it would not be something that would be less time consuming then AE. something like this would have to go through the dev's for editing and implementation. and alot of the things that would get turned in would take a lot of time to go through to even get to anything decent.

I like this idea.