u/hwate8

Just listened to this Worm/Miraculous Ladybug song, and a matchup idea in the comments reminded me of JoJo, so here's my crossposted concept:

This feels like it would make a good asymmetric multiplayer duel: one of you is an obvious superhero who can take the other down with ease if you can find them in a giant crowd of people, the other needs to fake being a civilian as their enemies' transformation timer ticks down without rousing suspicion (or on the other end, the villain has limited time to commit a bunch of crimes without being caught, while the hero has to stop them from earning a macguffin that makes them extra-powerful to reverse the dynamic. Maybe multiple different gameplay modes with their own objectives/rules of engagement, ala ARC Raiders?).

(You could also have the players instead select from a few randomly-generated abilities from 'Primary', 'Secondary' and 'Tertiary' pools. That gives you the chance to make actual characters whose powers are in-universe randomized between deployments and have distinct personalities and voice-lines of their own, but introduces RNG into the mix which is difficult to balance).

The Skitter has a Swarm that can drain the timer faster and blind/deafen/slow them but it gives your enemy a HUD warning that you have to be _somewhere_ within a certain distance (and an emergency baton that can stun for getaways but isn't very effective), while the Ladybug has an explicit time limit that effectively decides the match (and probably no obvious scanning mechanic) but insane traversal options, and the map has random events like:

• varying terrain from different maps (urban vs rural vs national parks which all give some characters bonuses like a chlorokinetic in a forest or a geokinetic in a 'concrete jungle', etc), to random events like a sudden aerial bombardment of Bakuda Bombs;
• a mix of thugs who come after the Skitter player while an NPC villain Miraculous distracts the Ladybug (these could also be randomly selected from players who are waiting on servers to free up for their own games);
• a complete genre-shift if you get a rare Zombie Plague from Bonesaw that forces both sides to flee while saving as many civilians as possible, or a sudden Endbringer Attack where they have to compete to survive and deal as much damage as possible (the Endbringer casually slaughters most of the NPC's who show up to fight it and has no health bar to emphasize how Godzilla-like/unstoppable they are). Both come with massive bonuses based on how many civilians you save and how much damage you deal to the S-Class threat, and only slightly reduced if you die to emphasize risky plays and keeping the emergent gameplay focused on the 'empathetic villain vs sympathetic hero' dynamic/undertone.

Or, y'know, the Skitter ends up faking being attacked by their own swarm to avoid imminent discovery, the Ladybug tosses them over their arm and runs to keep them safe, and now you have to question-and-lie to each other as the swarm tries to make Bug drop Skit while sticking to patrol patterns that don't arouse suspicion, and the hero has to dig through the evidence they have and what they've been told by the 'civvie' for contradictions (maybe have a separate 'interrogation' mechanic that reveals their identity and outlines it whenever they're in your line-of-sight from then on?).

And police start spawning on the map as the fight drags on, who make a cursory attempt to find the villain, but if the hero or villain take down or outright kill an NPC civvie (or smash up a building, etc), they come down on them like a ton of bricks and call in SWAT and so on, which further ups the stakes.

(You could have an Extraction Shooter vibe in the background where being captured or failing to be captured is just a loss, but outright dying costs you some 'resource/currency' as a bigger punishment and a reason to keep the players following the 'unwritten rules'.)

This also impacts the heroes opportunity to flee: if they fail to take down the target in their limited time (not sure if I'd add a mechanic to give them _more_ time, we're trying to keep to a tight like five-to-ten minute match at the longest), they have to high-tail it to an evacuation point with the rest of the unknowing civilians, or take down the target without their powers which is possible but extremely dicey (you basically have to pray their swarm is way away from you when you 'tackle' them, and there's also a minigame where you both have to grapple the other based on stamina/health, etc), while the villain tries to catch them.

The JoJo idea is based on a bunch of VsBattles match-ups: numerous Stands and their users can be put in a nearly-identical situation (mechanically, this could be DLC that reuses mechanics like turning your spread-out swarm into a Stand that can be operated like a second character, or potentially with a second player on both sides to free up the multitasking aspect and make it a 2v2) and make for interesting cat-and-mouse chases, but there'll inevitably be bad matchups and you need some pre-programmed mechanic that detects when one of these happens to give the weaker character some extra advantages (like the age-forwards Stand with insane range/AoE vs the age-backwards stand with melee range: either the AoE needs to be discouraged by punishments for mass casualties, or the weaker character needs, say, NPC allies or to know the appearance of the enemy player).

Bonus points if the breakout shows the captured villain escaping the same prison again while the hero walks out having completed the paperwork (or vice-versa with a supervillain lair/random abandoned warehouse/etc, maybe use the building as a way to let a player who picks 'random' know vaguely what genre/group of characters they might be getting), the 'captured' target gets a peck on the cheek to imply the specific villain and hero characters of that match are in some kind of Batman/Catwoman relationship (and the idea of two heavily-armed-but-powerless superheroes who know each other's faces and have to instead play a game of rocket-tag keep-away with instant-takedown gadgets like Containment Foam grenades is also another way to mix up the formula), or the players who are waiting for their matches to start can hijack civilians in other player's games to either trick/delay the hero or help them take down the villain (interesting social experiment statistic to be had there, especially if the players are using original/crossover characters with actual personalities that are more sympathetic/unlikeable).