So, I had this idea in the confirmation thread, and it seems like a couple of you guys though this would be cool so I wanted to share! (Bear with me, it's very long but I think it's pretty interesting)
First and foremost, we all know we're 99.99% getting both a classic NRS Story Mode (3-4 hours cinematic story mode) and an arcade ladder mode like in every other fighting game. Also, we now know we're getting loot drops, in the form of Gear upgrades for our superheroes, that are said to give bonus stats, greatly change aesthetics and ''alter the way you play'' (going off what we have so far). We don't have much details about how this is all gonna work, both for online and competitive play, but that's not the subject here. What we DO know is that we're getting this Gear System and it's here to stay.
Personally, I think this sounds like a great idea to give a lot of longevity to the game, add a great aspect of customization and give NRS a way to do a lot of free updates by adding more gear. The only thing that worries me a little is that traditionally, after clearing Story Mode, ladder for every character and completing whatever challenge mode we're given, I see very little incentive to go and play single player, and this has been true so far for every NRS game (for me). If I'm simply going to play 1v1 matches, playing against real opponents is just a much more satisfying experience than playing with the CPU.
So, let's say that you unlocked a bunch of armor pieces throughout this single player experience and want to actually use what you worked for. I think it is very unlikely that ranked matches will allow full customization with stat changes, we'll probably be limited to vanilla characters or at the very least a couple of presets. Granted, they might allow us to keep our aesthetics, but there's no way they'll just throw 30+ characters with 1000+ variables each and claim the game'll be balanced. While the aesthetic aspect would be pretty cool, people are still going to want to feel rewarded when they get that Legendary Kryptonian Plate of Hope with max stats, so I had an idea for a game mode that could let you use your full gear.
Call it Adventure mode or whatever (yeah that's Diablo 3 speaking), start by creating a couple of pre-made chapters where you fight through a bunch of fighters of various universes (GL world, Krypton world, Arkham world, etc. etc.) until you reach a boss fight. No cinematics or anything like that, but don't just give us standard 1v1 fights. First, let us use our full gear. Create a couple of generic NPCs (Arkham inmate, Brainiac bot, Parademon), add cameos by cool DC characters (Kilowog as a skin for Grodd with GL specials, I don't know stuff like that). Let's have endurance matches, tag team battles, boss battles, battles with modifiers, battles with fully geared up CPUs. Add in co-op support so you can go through fight after fights with your favorite friends and you take turns fighting enemies, or maybe you all each start a fight at the same time and if your friend loses his enemy gets tagged with yours with whatever HP he has left.
Then when you're done with the pre-made chapters and have defeated whatever final boss the game has (Ulra Anti-Monitor Sinestro Apokolips Superman-whatever), give us randomly generated encounters like Diablo does it with the Nephalem Rifts. You can have exclusive loot for this mode (aesthetic only if it scares people too much), you can periodically add weekly-monthly updates to create a couple more pre-made challenges and even use this mode to promote new DLC chars. All of this combined could create a never-ending game mode that gives you a good incentive to hunt for loot, to want and equip loot with cool stats and most importantly gives more casual players a mode where they can grind as much as they want and feel ''better'' for it, even if they don't have execution skills. Sure, if they hop on ranked they might get bopped, but at least people who don't want to put 300+ hours into hitting the lab with their oh so favorite Batman can experience feeling powerful in a fighting game and maybe they can even play with us FG afficiandos without having to play AGAINST us for once. Be honest, how many of your regular non-FGC friends actually continue playing with you after the first two weeks of the game's release? Give us local and online co-op and I can promise you NRS, you will be making a shitton of money.
I know that this is just one big TL;DR brainstorm, but I think this sort of never-ending adventure game type could be VERY appealing to the masses and to players that want to exploit this RPG aspect Inj2 is pushing, without threatening the core competitive play that can still thrive on its own. Who knows, maybe they can create a sort of tournament zone in this mode where the top players can go and try to fight the powered up RPG players with their vanilla mains. There are just my thoughts, what do you guys think?
EDIT: While you're at it, throw some kind of guild system and have people fight each other guild v guild just like MKX did it with these 5v5 fights, but with all their super OP loot that makes them feel awesome.
