Archnemesis - creating more hero verses villian feel

one of the big parts of superhero comic book's is the archnemesis. where would spiderman be without the greengoblin? Superman without lex Luthor? Hellboy without rasputin?

at the moment, city of heroes/villans doesn't really capture this feel. sure, you fight alot of different villans as a hero..but they're mostly the archnemesis of one of the other NPC heroes, or one off named villans you never see again. it sometimes feels like your just a background hero in someone elses comic book series.

one of the ideas i'd had about how to alleviate some of this feel is to allow players to designate their own "archnemesis"

this archnemesis would occasionally show up as a radio mission or newspaper mission, where you'd have the opportunity to travel to a spot in one of the zones and fight the archnemesis.

now, the way i see it, you can leverage City of Villans to create your Archnemesis.
basically:

1) an archnemesis is a hero or villan from your own account. so for example, my main character Tyr's Hand could be the archnemesis of my villan character Fenrir Lokison.

2) to qualify as an archnemesis canidate, both hero and villan would have to be over a specific level (not sure what would be best.)

3) for the missions to appear, both character must be within a certain level range of each other. (say, 3-5 levels apart). if the gap is more than this, the missions won't show up until the gap is narrowed.

4) a character can only be the archnemesis of one other character. (simplifies things)

on the "archnemesis missions", the computer runs your archnemesis, using the stats from that character slot as it would be if you were playing it. (same hit points, endurance amounts, powers, etc..)


this would allow players to create an archnemesis...and it would encourage more play redside, since to make an archnemesis you have to create a redside character..and to keep him available, you have to keep playing him.


once this kind of system is in place, many options open up. a "sinister 6" type task force for example, where the task force has to fight a group of their archnemesis's as one mission.

It's an interesting idea.

The main problem I see is that the game's AI is not bright enough to fully use all the powers of a higher-level character - so having the AI run the Archnemesis would not be a very challenging fight.

Last I heard, the devs' position is that the Mission Architect currently fulfills this role in the game, which I think is a damn shame because it doesn't fulfill it very well.

The new phasing tech introduced in Going Rogue and further developed in I21/Freedom could be put to excellent use in conjunction with nemesis (lowercase n!) technology.

On a final note, because I can't help myself:

It's a concept certainly worth exploring. There would have to be more than just a handful of arch-nemesis to make it work, to prevent boredom from repetition with each new toon. Perhaps certain steps/actions/choices along the various mission arcs could be used to spin you off on differing paths. Players with 40+ toons across several accounts would only have to face the same nemesis a few times then.

I like that your arch-nemesis might even appear in Radio (Broke out of the Zig again!) or Paper (Vows revenge on player) missions, maybe even to replace, or as an alternate choice of, bank or mayhem missions, that's just cool. It would be helpful, and more fun, if your nemesis leveled up and progressed roughly with you.

I seriously have no clue would this would take code wise, but it's a fun idea and I would love to see it made to work. As Gob mentioned, the phasing technology would seem to be perfect for this with your arch-nemesis might randomly attacking when you are between missions, an ambush with some warning like NPC text or something. (There he is, Get him!). . .