Okay, this is going to be a long one. TL:DR version: Skip this suggestion and go on to the next.
Champions Online has persona nemeses (that's the plural of nemesis) for your characters, which was a nice touch... but they really lack the personal touch a nemesis should be. Plus, they really don't engender a superheroic feel; they're really just user-defined bosses for an alternate-currency mission system. Here's how personal nemeses should work, in my opinion:
First, your nemesis knows your strengths and weaknesses. And they're ready to shield themselves from your strengths, and exploit your weaknesses. If you're a fire blaster, your nemesis has fireproof armor, and fire-extinguishing tricks. They may not be themed for that -- in fact, you may have done everything in your power to make sure that your nemesis is as weak as possible to your attacks -- but your nemesis will guard himself as much as possible against your tricks.
Second, when your nemesis shows up? He's stronger than you. In fact, all things being equal, he's going to defeat you. Now, this is not a bad thing -- heroes lose. And in this case you're [i]supposed/i] to lose, so you don't have to replay the mission over again. The nemesis defeats you, he gloats, then he runs away to start his next nefarious plan.
What happens if you defeat your nemesis? Nothing. Your nemesis curses your name and runs away. But he gets [i]stronger[/i]. He gets henchmen. He gets allies. He goes and steals tech. He's going to humiliate you first. The next fight with him, he's even worse. Eventually he [b]will[/b] defeat you. If you defeat him a second time, he gets worse. He gets a named villain to assist. If you can go three combats without him winning, the fourth one is a [b]guaranteed[/b] loss for you. The game will cheat in order to make you lose.
The whole thing is, your nemesis is your personal foe. If he's easy to defeat then he's not your nemesis, he's just an annoyance. Spider-Man's nemesis is Doctor Octopus, not the Vulture. And again, the [i]point[/i] is that you're going to lose. Losing doesn't mean having to play the mission over again -- it means you finished the mission successfully. Winning might even mean that you [i]didn't[/i] complete the mission successfully.
(Now [b]there's[/b] an interesting conundrum for an MMO -- a mission you have to [b]lose[/b] in order to beat. You get players who want to see their characters win, win, win -- but they know that if they win this mission, they have to repeat it. Kind of a twist in thinking...)
Okay, so your nemesis showed up, and he promptly put you in your place. So what happens next? Well, his Nefarious Plan, of course! A storyline where your nemesis starts committing acts all intended to pay off at the very end, where the Plan will come to fruition and they receive the Reward They Deserve. This is basically a series of three to five randomly-generated missions where the villain has an Objective and a Goal. Your job is to keep him from obtaining the Objective... in which case, it's revealed, the villain had a Secondary Objective and the first one was Merely A Distraction. (The Goal comes in later.)
During this series of missions, you may Anger your Nemesis sufficiently that he decides that Something Must Be Done About That Annoying Hero. He sets up an ambush specifically designed to take you out (this one's even more brutal than the first Nemesis encounter) and then puts you in... wait for it... a Deathtrap! Your nemesis gloats for a while, then Leaves You To Your Doom, which is your cue to try and escape.
(Yes, TRY to escape. A Deathtrap should be a tough challenge which you might not get out of. But don't worry, you won't die... you'll just get rescued at the end by one of the Iconic Heroes. This only happens if you didn't solve the Deathtrap on your own. As part of "losing" the challenge, you get a Shame XP Debuff that lasts for a good while. You had to be rescued by someone else. Feel the humiliation and defeat. Shame, shame, shame.)
Escaping the Deathtrap, you have to wait for the final mission in the arc, in which you and your nemesis face off for the Final Showdown, and your nemesis monologues on how his Nefarious Plan will succeed, by listing off each Objective and the Goal it was to accomplish (which may make no sense... to [b]you[/b])... then the final climactic fight will take place, in which you will emerge victorious! (No, seriously. That buff the nemesis had when you fought him at the beginning of the arc? You have it now. If you can't win, then the Nemesis escapes, and there's more Shame Debuff time for you.)
This is how a nemesis behaves. When Doc Octopus breaks out of The Raft, he chases down Spider-Man (having had plenty of time to realize what kind of mistakes he made in the last battle, and how to correct them), humiliates the Wall-Crawler, then puts his next scheme in play. Web-head gets his shtick together, figures out how to defeat his nemesis, and faces him down at the end. Doc Ock goes back to the Raft, Spidey goes on to get screamed at by JJJ some more, and the whole cycle will repeat in a couple of years. Lex Luthor does the same thing to Superman. Joker, Batman; Red Skull, Captain America.
And of course, there should be a random chance that the final mission will result in A Menace Much Worse Than My Nemesis, and the hero and the nemesis will have to Team Up in order to defeat the Menace. This may result in a Heel/Face Turn for the Nemesis -- or the Nemesis may Heroically Sacrifice themselves in order to save the day.
Now, how's this going to work for the [i]villains[/i]? Just the same. When your Heroic Nemesis shows up, he's been investigating your latest nefarious schemes. First, you have to fight him in a battle where you are expected to lose (and flee from), because you realize How Much Stronger He's Become. You then have to start a Nefarious Plan of your own, to acquire and assemble the tools needed to Defeat Your Heroic Nemesis. Along the way your Heroic Nemesis may attack you with a Surprise Attack where he defeats you and carts you off to Holding, where you are eventually Left To Your Own Devices and given the chance to escape. Escaping, your plan culminates in the Final Battle where you use the power gained in the Plan to send your Heroic Nemesis packing. He'll decide there are bigger threats for him to handle right now, and you can get back to your original activities of Making Money/Becoming The Big Man/Vying For World Domination.
Please don't make the nemesis just another user-defined villain. Give him the tools to become memorable.
Oh, and if you go and get help to defeat your nemesis? Your nemesis isn't stupid. He'll go and get the Nemeses of your fellow heroes, even if he has to break them out of jail to do it. (They might go right back in afterwards, but when they're needed, they're needed.) So if Captain Amazing gets his Justice Team buddies The Nightman, War Wench, King Triton and Mr. America to help out in this latest scheme of his nemesis, Professor Peril, the Professor of Crime is going to break out The Laughing Man, Evil War God, Plunder Pirate and Azure Skeleton to assist him in his Nefarious Plan. (And it might turn out that the combination of The Laughing Man and his henchmen, the fury of Evil War God, the bravado and derring-to of Plunder Pirate and the chemical expertise of Azure Skeleton make for an even more fightening combination of villainy... giving birth to the fearsome Injustice Team!!!)
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"My attention span doesn't wander. It takes long trips to exotic locales where it meets strange women that leave it crying and broken in the hot, hot sun."
--me
Nice idea.
At the moment I have two quick thoughts. One, I'd be careful about any kind of 'Shame XP Debuff'. Even if escaping the death trap is the equivalent of a QTE, rapping a player on the knuckles because they aren't playing the game as well as some developer thinks they should is dangerous territory. Better by far to make it a standard defeat (the character almost died but was brought to the hospital by some other hero, or whatever). Two, there should be some incentive to fight the nemesis even if the point is to lose. Perhaps the greater the hero's resistance, the more clues they'll find to some item or information that will help them against the nemesis in the next encounter. Failing that, there's no reason to have a fight at all. This does assume the original intent is for there to be a fight, not a 'fade to black' as soon as the nemesis is found because the fight needs to be lost.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
We did have a "shame debuff", it was the Debt you accrued by dying.
No, we didn't have a personal nemesis per se, but there were story arcs that were similar, The one where you fought your double, for instance.
You could still win by defeating every foe on the map, but the main bad guy kept getting away anyway, no matter what you did.
And of all my characters, I think I won the final battle [i]once.[/i]
For the most part, I was soloing; maybe I should have brought a team. And it was easier for certain character builds than others.
Steve
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"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely [i]will not stop, ever,[/i] until we are live!"
Warcabbit
I feel like I just read a TV Tropes Mad Libs :-)
It sounds like an interesting system , as long as there's an option to turn it off, or you always have to actively trigger a go-round. It could get really irritating if your nemesis insisted on popping up when you were trying to do other things.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
Yeah, well, there wouldn't be any point if you could turn it off.
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"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely [i]will not stop, ever,[/i] until we are live!"
Warcabbit
I would strongly support a good Nemesis system. CO started it but they need to go farther with it.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I wholeheartedly concur. CO's Nemesis system was, as I stated last night during the Livestream, brilliant in theory, but half-a$$ed in execution.
The concept was pure and simple and immersive: create your nemesis and, upon earning sufficient ire following their "introduction crime", you are embroiled in another of their schemes.
Where it fell down was the implementation of "scheme embroilment", randomness of Nemesis minion assaults, ease of said assaults, general lack of fine-tuning of the nemesis, and the absolute lack of varied content for which said nemesis was involved.
Again, sound theory, lackluster application.
But now, we (and by we I mean suggestions via the fans and hard work via the devs) can have our proverbial villainous cake and eat it, too!
And, of course, if the heroes get nemesis, then the villains ought to, as well. Imagine being able to proactively commit your crime, only to have your good-two-shoes heroic foe come crashing the party?! But hooray! Now, instead of -just- being able to commit your dastardly deed, you get to embarrass this pathetic boyscout in front of whatever media might have assembled. Hooray! Infamy and riches!
Therefore, I fully endorse and applaud this idea. It should also go beyond "just make up your own adventures involving your "nemesis". Not everyone has the creativity, time, or want to create their own missions, and they should not be denied the ability to have a dedicated, personalized foe for this reason. I know I will be creating my own missions and such, but that's me, and this is a game for more than just me (thankfully, I could never have funded the whole thing!)
Yea I was excited about CO letting you create ya own arch-nemesis but was so disappointed at how it turned out. Like you can only have one at a time. And then if you ever finish the arch you have to decide whether to leave them in the prison or let them out or just delete them to make a new one. Why can't it just happen on its own. Why can't I have a rogues gallery. Why can't my arch nemesis' suddenly join together and create a team. Why isn't he exploiting my weakness. Why can't i customize his powers and the look and powers of the minions. Heck, in CO you can't even see what the minions look like. Why can't I just be running around a mission and suddenly there's my nemesis popping up just to cause me trouble. When do I finally get to raid his base and fight him. I dunno if CoT will let you pick a side. But if it did. It would be cool to be able to create a Hero and Villain and then be able to pair them up. So the way ya toon developed is how you would see them when you ran into them. Yea they would have stats scaled down so that you weren't a lvl 20 hero and running into your lvl 50 villain. For sure you would never win. Although, that could tie into what John said. You don't always have to win. Maybe it becomes a story of how ya hero became stronger and eventually defeated that villain.
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Owner and Big Sister of the Justice Girls -Champions Online-City of Titans-
Forum Breaker
Leader of the Ellysyn Dark Ensemble
I really like this idea. I would just suggest that the dealings with your nemesis play out in arcs. (Perhaps at certain level intervals.) That way it wouldn't intrude on the rest of the game. After all even the notable nemeses in comics were not there at all times. All in all though I really like the idea of my own personal nemesis, as a break from getting to beat down the same enemies as everyone else in the game.
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are small, crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
I love the idea of nemesis systems, but Champions never quite felt "complete" to me...
An alternative, and perhaps less complicated system might be inspired by the buddy system (liked/hated) in COX, and the SG systems...
Basically, you can "invite someone to be your nemesis" As nemeses, you have unique content available (something akin to "pvp modes" in a shooter... different head to head objectives) these nemesis missions can be completed individually (EITHER PvP with your nemesis, or PVE with a computer clone of your nemesis) or with teams (lead by you and your nemesis)...
...and further... your nemesis need not be a dudley-do-right or baby-eating skeletor...... You could have a "nemesis" who is another hero.... someone who (RP or thematically speaking) you have a rivalry against.
In conjunction with goodguy/badguy nemesis mission structures, there could be mission framing for other dynamics badguy/badderguy, hero/vigilante, etc...
And, even further... there could be GUILD nemesis "alliances".... that unlock/enable even further mission archs (again, either PvP against your opponent, or PVE against computer controlled clones)
(this last one might be a bit of a stretch, as it might be problematic maintaining data on several nemesis guild characters in a viable and useful way)
I know this isn't really the same thing as "making your own nemesis" but it would be an interesting and more dynamic take on the concept (especially with a mission architect feature in the game)
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]
Perhaps a better way to think of a Nemesis type system would be as a sort of specialized "Friends" list. So just like how you can choose to put someone on your Friends list, and your Friends are a subset of the entire population in the game ... you can then go an extra step and "upgrade" some of your Friends to being on "Nemesis" status for you, and for them. So Friends first, Nemesis second ... and no skipping over step one. This then lets you set up a "Nemesis" status as being more of a Friendly Rivalry Between Players, either for their individual characters or for their entire account. The major point being that a "Nemesis" status [i]that lasts[/i] would be something that two players mutually agree to (for whatever reasons they care to come up with).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Oh, definitely... very much like a friend or SG invite, the game gives you a pop-up "Dr. Insano wishes to be your nemesis. Accept?"
it could be a feature that unlocks at level 10 or something, with a little blurb about what it means.... something along the lines of you can only have one nemesis at a time, but you can leave the nemesis partnership at any time, etc et al....
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[i]....Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars...[/i]