Samuel_Tow

I hoard all my temporary powers, because I don't want to use them. Period.

Yeah, I want my old NA colours, too. This petrol green-blue is neither the same nor better.

Here's what I keep asking people high and low: what is the POINT of these "social network" stuff? I keep asking that, and so far I've gotten very few answers. I did get a couple of interesting ideas right out of a global channel in-game, of all places, such as if a famous person tweets, there will always be fans who WILL read, or how one could use these tools to organise SG or other community events.

Now, those are all fine and all, but I think they miss the point of a "social network." Tweets, blogs, Myspace accounts, Facebook accounts... What is the point? Please understand that this isn't a criticism of the system, as I'm not someone who's used it and hated it. I'm a person who had never had a reason to use these things, and who doesn't GET it. These services are spreading around the Internet like a bacterial infection, and they are obviously very popular. My question is why?

"Reducing loneliness" is a good concept, I suppose, but in words only. I've tried "reducing loneliness" via strangers, and lemme tell ya - that does not work, least of all when that communication with strangers goes one way, as a blog typically does. I don't see the point of telling things to the world.

Now, I've stuck with Internet forums for a long while, and it's easy to say I'm still engaging in a social network, only in a more conventional form, but that's not actually true for me. I hope I don't insult anyone by saying this, but I don't come to these forums for the people and the socialisation. I most certainly don't come to SAY things. I come here for the replies. Information, arguments, ideas, concepts... None of those things need socialisation. As a matter of fact, I treat almost all people, both friends and strangers, as something in-between the two, so maybe I'm biassed.

But, really - what is the POINT of these social networks?

Frankly, I wasn't going of Champions Online at all (I don't know enough about it) but rather off a video I saw from DC Universe Online, where the Narrator talks about how a power in offensive mode shoots lightning whereas the same power in defensive mode does pretty much a carbon copy of Tesla Cage. I also don't want to get into discussions about what City of Heroes would be like with a free-choice points system. That ship has sailed. I mean, it's fun to think about it, but here I want to keep to something that is at least remotely realistic.

One of the things I have always hated about traditional MMO balance is that every class is designed with at least a few things that the class expressly CANNOT do. I guess that's part of the course for designing around a teaming structure, but it is individually limiting to a high extent. Looking at our game, however, we already have an out - Dual Builds. Originally designed to alleviate the problem of needing a specific build for PvP that's different from what's best for PvP, the expanded system was marketed as a way to, among other things, have a solo build and a team build. I mean that's not all it's designed to do, but it's still a possibility. We can, theoretically, build on that and allow different builds to actually be of different ATs. It's just a question of what is allowed.

Now, I want to say something right here - that's a direct AT-for-AT swap. No picking and choosing of primaries and secondaries out of a unipool of powersets like you can in the Architect. One of the overriding priorities of my train of thought is to propose an addition that does NOT break any balancing points anywhere in the game, or at the very least which damages as few as possible. Free power selection has proven to not work in this game and ATs were designed around both limiting raw power and reducing the the ability to gimp. That's not a structure I want to mess with, not least of all because I want to work WITH the system, rather than trying to overhaul it.

Look at it this way: you have a Fire/Fire Scrapper called Flame Dude and a Fire/Fire controller called FIame Dude. Functionally, the difference between having just one Flame Dude who can visit a trainer and switch between Scrapper and Controller is almost completely identical to having both a Scrapper and a Controller and logging out of one and into the other. Granted, with two characters, you have to level up to 50 twice as many times as for one character with two builds, but look at it from a different perspective.

I have a Dark/Dark Scrapper I made before I4. When Dark Melee and Dark Armour were ported over to Brutes, I didn't make one. Why bother? I already have the exact same combination. I made a Fire/Fire Brute at some point in I9 or I10. When Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura were ported over to Scrappers, I saw no reason to make one. I already had that combination. Well, suppose my Fiery Melee/Fiery Aura Brute doubled up as a Fire Control/Fiery Assault Dominator? Then I would very much jump at the chance to make a new Fiery Melee/ Fiery Aura Scrapper and I would dual-class him as a Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation Blaster. This adds one extra step of variety, which in turn means we can make more things with the tools we already have without resorting to duplicates.

Granted, this is a kludge. The system was never designed to even consider this kind of multi-classing in the way a points system would, where you pick ability themes and then pick what you do with these abilities afterwards. Perhaps, from a conceptual standpoint, such a points system would be superior, but I'm not confident it will be quite as straightforward as a class system. But that's besides the point. We already HAVE a class system. The point is to find a way to branch out without having to go NGE.

I believe such a system of dual-classing would be good for the game. As I said, it would add more variety and, being that you have your extra class from level 1, should allow people to get familiar with their alter ego. What's more, that ought to put an end to the debates about making non-solo-proficient classes more solo-proficient, because those who want to solo will always have a second class to play when they're not on a team. This might actually allow for team-centric classes to become even more team-centric when there's an out.

I also understand that this is tantamount to an AT respec, and I know how the community views those. I don't believe this is as much a problem, however, as this isn't a respec, it's part of the same character. It's done once at character creation and cannot be altered again. Granted, if this were allowed, for existing level 50s it WILL be the next best thing to an AT respec, but they will not abandon their old AT and will not be able to change their minds. There's also the potential problem of messing with player character balance, but since this only really switches from one stable state to another, it shouldn't present such a problem. Provided we either time this AT switchover to once every 15 minutes or even to having to visit the trainer to do it, such that people aren't switching around all the time, then I don't see it as a meaningful problem.

It doesn't help Tankers feel more like the tanks of comic books and it doesn't solve my problem with make-pretend threat, but what it does is it gives us more flexibility to adapt to situations and it just makes it so you can pick your strengths and your weaknesses so you're never in a position of wishing to just log out and play another AT.

This is indeed interesting from a purely novelty point of view, but it still does come down to speed, which in turn comes down to reward per unit of time. How those balance against each other is complicated, but that's what it comes down to, because at the end of the day, that's what really matters. "How fast can I reap the rewards," as it were.

It's probably also worth looking at how the Super-Sidekicking system will affect the whole thing. You speak about +5 enemies, which, unless the new difficulty setting go beyond Invincible, shouldn't be possible come I16. Challenge levels 1 and 2 spawn even cons and +1, challenge levels 3 and 4 spawn +1 and +2 and Challenge level 5 spawns +3. If I had to take a guess at how things will work, "challenge levels" will be stripped down to three levels and "enemy numbers" settings will fill in the gaps and expand that way.

What that means is you will likely be able to pad your own team, but bridging and fighting "deep purples" will be out of the question. Since the team scales to the level of the mission, this won't be possible even if you take on a mission that's +5 to you.

It's also worth noting, though I'm sure you're aware, that experience rewards aren't just "split" between the members of a team, they are also boosted upon acquisition. Currently, they are divided something like this. Yes, practically speaking that is still a reduction, but a lot less reduction than an outright split. In the most basic of terms, the members of an eight-man team earn more experience put together from a single kill than what eight single players would earn put together from the same kill.

I gotta tell ya', I won't miss that overcomplicated system (or rather, miss it having such an effect) when everyone's roughly the same level.

Granted, there isn't any actual POINT to running around the zones short of atmosphere, and I know we see that differently. Fair enough. I've often felt there ought to be more to do in the outdoor zones. Not specifically phat-lewt-related, mind you, but more than just badges. Hidden missions, spontaneously-occurring contacts, unique and interesting enemies, more events that don't include beating on a giant monster, that sort of thing. Sure, people after lots of experience and drops will still avoid all that, but at least those of us who DO like to move around the zones will feel less stupid and you may feel more inclined to travel or explore.

As for IP, I just like the fact that a lot of the locations are, if not unique, then at least custom and hand-made. Me and a few friends used to make newbie runs where we took level 1 characters from Atlas Park to Peregrine Island on foot, which means no trains, no teleporters, no Pocket D and so on. Tunnels only. I picked the course, and I selected Atlas Park -> Steel Canyon -> Independence Port -> Terra Volta Gate OVER LAND -> to Kings Row gate via water crossing -> I don't remember where. I think Skyway to Talos to PI. That lap around Independence Port overland was the highlight of the race, because it didn't involve just running around, but actually using the terrain to escape one-shot death (before the one-shot code was implemented).

Then again, I've always been a fan of free running/parkour elements in games, and things like Ubi's Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed games are easily my favourite single-player games of all time, so I'm biassed. Still, I enjoy working WITH terrain, rather than against it. I still like to take characters with only Combat Jumping and take them on a trip around Cap Au Diable. The rooftps there are so close together that that's a LOT of fun. I also like following the PTS pipeline from where it starts West of the Port Oaks ferry, walking over the pipe to where it ends in the hillside North of Aeon City.

Granted, that's "make your own fun" just the same way as super-jumping without stepping on the ground is, but at least you should know where I'm coming from.

I can't quite follow what you guys are arguing about. Since I can't really glean any one central point from the thread and so put my finger on the argument, it sounds like you both agree and are arguing semantics. Which is interesting in and of itself, I guess, but I'm missing the eventual end of the argument.

I think we can all agree that, playing for the sake of looking at cool fights (nothing wrong with that, mind you), the game comes back to rewards of a certain value that come at a certain cost. What formulates the cost is a combination of static circumstances (e.i. what you have to do to earn it) as well as subjective opinion as to how "costly" that static cost actually is. As mentioned, for some people time is cheap and effort costly, for others effort is cheap and money costly, and for still others money is cheap an everything else costly. The value of a given reward is, itself largely subjective. The statistics of reward strength and rarirty aside, it comes down to how much one needs, and indeed how much one wants, a specific reward.

Speaking for me, once-off number crunching is cheap, but actual min-maxing is expensive. Influsence in-game is relatively cheap, but the effort required to number-crunch Inventions is much more expensive. So what's whorth doing for me is going with the simpler Commons and paying lots of influence to buy them ready-made, rather than resource-managing their creation.

So... I don't know! Balance based on that, I suppose.

As you'll note, I didn't explain anything. I stated that this change is three years old. I got scolded for not explaining it. There are already plenty of threads on this one and the search feature is supposed to be better than the one in the old forums.

*edit*
Apparently, search isn't good enough. I couldn't find any of the old threads. Oh, well.

Far as I'm concerned, reputation doesn't matter. I don't give people good or bad reputation because I'd rather let their actions speak for them. That's why I've turned mine off. If you dislike your negative reputation and believe the process is unfair, turn yours off, as well.