I always felt like CoH suffered from weaknesses in the character stories. That is, you never really felt like your individual hero was an integral part of Paragon City. Sure, you fought gangs and villains and whatnot, but you were always just one of hundreds going after the same gangs and working with the same dispatcher or cop.
What I would love to see are NPCs in Titan City growing around you and your character as you advance, and that would be so incredibly prevalent in having your own Rogue's Gallery. I'm talking about villains you witnessed the creation of, or maybe were created as a result of your own actions on a mission. Villains that keep coming back, that know where to hit you, and that actually threaten your ability to complete your missions when they are involved.
Put yourself in Batman's boots here. Imagine you're waist-deep in a criminal investigation, looking over a series of murders. Suddenly you turn over a dead body and a knot of dread rises in your heart as you see a contorted rictus grin on the corpse's face, and a card stuck to his shirt that says "HA! HA! HA!". And you know it's the Joker, and you know things just got infinitely more complicated and dangerous.
It's that feeling that I would love to see emulated in a super-hero game. There need to be villains that mean something to you, that you're a little apprehensive about, and that more than anything, you want to bring down.
Anyone else feel like this?
I like this idea. Provided of course that villains get something similar. Like finding out that the hero that's trying to end your crime spree or vigilante who's trying to kill you chose there path in life because you killed their parents who where killable NPC's in an early mission way back at the start of your career.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Well, I'm not Batman. I'm not the only hero in the city. If I catch the flu IRL and my hero has to pull a week of extra Day Job time, I'm confident that the city won't crash and burn without me. I'm okay about not having Everyone, down to Little Tommy One-Leg, down at the City Orphanarium, depending on me every single day.
That said, I Would like it if the 'tone' of the NPC Contacts indicated that my Cases was important and that I was important to my Cases. I'm the 'investigator of record' on those missions and, baring some catastrophe, nobody else is going to swoop in and solve them behind my back. Sure, I Could look the mission up on the internet and see what the last person to solve a case Almost Exactly (down to the punctuation) like mine, except it's not My Case, had to do.
I kinda like the idea that my hero has a 'Rogues Gallery' and the name of my nemesis keeps coming up. I could fight the 'Skull Daddies' over and over and the Boss at the end of my mission might be "Blood-drinker" every time. Another hero might meet me in a bar and talk about fighting the 'Skull Daddies', but their nemesis is "Bone Breaker", or something else. In my Memoirs, I might tell of the time I was called up to the bigger Leagues, leaving the street battles with the 'Bone Daddies' to the newer heroes, and my final confrontation with "Blood-drinker". I won't mention that a dozen other heroes might have a nemesis with the exact same name...
So, I think this is a reasonably good idea, but it CAN'T be so exclusive that nobody else has the same thing. Not unless we try to copy the Nemesis system from Champions - which might just be too cumbersome for this game.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Everything you've said is totally compatible with the idea and would work perfectly well on the villains' side. :)
That's more or less one element that I had in mind. For example, that police contact is calling you specifically because you've dealt with this guy before, or you might be able to make sense of some detail that, in turn, would lead to a deeper plot that's relevant to some of your past investigations or confrontations.
This is a little more simplistic than I am trying to articulate though. First and foremost, yeah, unless you are fully character-creating your nemeses too, than there would need to be some template here. But the important thing is creating an experience that feels special to you. For example, let's say that at lvl 5, there are 3 possible missions you can draw, and you draw one randomly. Then, there are maybe 15 different NPCs that can be involved in these missions, and one of those is also drawn randomly. That means that your story is one in forty-five possible. Your next toon likely won't have the same exact experience. Your friend likely won't either. And this results in different kinds of nemeses that get generated for different people.
For example, at lvl 5, you might get called in to help evacuate people from a suspicious apartment fire. The guy who meets you on the scene is a cop named Sgt. Jonah Jayne. When the mission ends, an explosion goes off, and Sgt. Jayne is caught in the blast and hospitalized, covered in burns. Your further missions involve what caused the blast, who would have done it, and you might go after a gang as a result. Maybe when you hit lvl 10, you get word during these quests that Sgt. Jayne has disappeared from the hospital. His family doesn't know what's happened to him and no one knows where he is. When you hit lvl 15, you go investigating a robbery at a mob-owned armory by some new vigilante called "The Jaybird," and when you get there it becomes apparent that The Jaybird is actually Jayne, who's frustrated that the police won't bring in his attackers due to corruption. Now he feels like he needs to take matters into his own hands. Of course, as a hero, you have to stop him, and that in turn gives him reason to see you as an enemy too. From there, every so often, a string of quests will turn up The Jaybird as the mastermind behind it all for one reason or another, and the string culminates with a new confrontation where he's gotten stronger. At lvl 20, he's got some henchmen with him. At 25, he's got a rocket launcher and you can't get close to him. And so on.
This would give the missions some depth through characterization, give you an opponent you might have reason to care about, and a goal to work toward, namely, actually defeating The Jaybird and getting him some help. And the best part would be that, with the random chance that your lvl 5 encounter could have gone 44 other ways, your experience is going to be different than most of the other toons around you. Your next toon may make a different enemy in that apartment fire: maybe journalist Margaret Martin gets vaporized into a fire spirit named Magmaria who's out for vengeance. Maybe your friend met Sgt. Jayne in a cryo-facility, not an apartment building, and for his toon, The Jaybird is actually an elemental ice blaster with a superiority complex.
If you do this sort of thing just a few times throughout the players' grind to the top, you can establish a few somewhat-unique recurring villains that make the story-driven quests more interesting. And, this would also lend to give the game some replay value, since your enemies and stories have a strong chance to be completely different the second and third time around.
You're basically talking about something like paths, as outlined in this [url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/630570]Kickstarter update[/url]?
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Thank you for linking that, Fez. I hadn't seen it, and it's really awesome to know the devs are focused on this. Paths are an implementation that TOR really had the right idea with. I'd love to be able to tailor my superhero's gameplay based on where their interest lies.
I was more getting at the idea that a hero is often defined by his relationships with his adversaries. Tense conflicts like those between Batman and The Joker, Superman and Luthor, Spider-Man and Green Goblin, the X-Men and Magneto, Green Lantern and Sinestro. In many ways, the villains define the hero. That's a crucial piece of the superhero mythos, and that's one aspect of the characters I've always felt was missing from CoX.
The existence of paths lends itself to a richer storytelling experience, and a chance to mold your hero into more of what you want him to be. But what I want to put emphasis on is, even in these defined paths, that it's critical to create enemies and adversaries that are an important, recurring, and ultimately dangerous part of your story. As per my earlier posts, I think it would be ideal for the devs to put attention into the development of these sorts of characters when they get involved in quest-building. By weaving them in, it will make PvE victories and advancement that much more rewarding.