Another_Fan
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Quote:It's funny, I look at ogre as an enjoyable little wargame. Its fun factor mostly comes from the fact that for games of the genre it's exceptionally small and quick.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Although I don't have first hand experience buying recent re-releases and such, my understanding is most versions of Ogre use the same basic rules. Also keep in mind I'm talking about Ogre the hex-board wargame, not GURPS Ogre the RPG or the miniature system Ogre which is based on the hex-board version but I'm much less familiar with.
In my opinion, if you're a student of game design and game balance, Ogre is your first point of call. You could spend years thinking about how and why Ogre works. There's even a *hint*, albeit only a hint, of the kind of thinking that should go into open powers systems design. I suspect that might be where Another_Fan is coming from by mentioning wargames. In a sense, you could analogize an army as being a set of powers, and the assembly of an army as a form of open powers selection. However, that analogy doesn't hold strongly enough for it to be a model for open powers design in an MMO for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that there's no good evidence that any wargame like that cared about constant-point balance. It was all about making a better or more effective force than your opponent, and the balance was due to both sides having similar options or being put into static situations that themselves were engineered with balancing forces.
Ogre is interesting in that it has a stronger hint of open powers balance than most wargames, because one side is very strongly fixed: it takes the Ogre. For Ogre (the game) to work, of all possible counter-army constructions there cannot be lots of combinations that are obviously more powerful than the Ogre, but there must be a wide rage of combinations that are nominally as powerful as the Ogre. Which meets some of the requirements I set forth as mandatory in a balanced open powers system.
Why its just a hint of the problem is because the strength of the counter-army is difficult to fully assess because its partially based on the tactics used to drive it. Its hard to say if the Ogre is exactly balanced with the intrinsic power of the counter-army, or if the Ogre is easier to tactically deploy and the counter-army much harder to get maximum effectiveness out of, which acts to handicap the counter-army. In other words, I don't know if in a computer vs computer match, if the Ogre has a significant advantage or the opposing army does, eliminating human factors. It would be an interesting problem to study, though.
As to balance its pretty easy to run the numbers. There are entire fields of study devoted to just that. At a guess balance was sacrificed to keep unit pricing and ability performance as simple integers.
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That's somewhat a matter of opinion (the latter part) and Ogre does in fact meet the on-paper list I provided in a superficial sense, but its mechanics as I previously mentioned aren't quite extensible to MMO design. The fuzzy part is significant in one area: requirement one. When the power selection options involve units in a group rather than abilities on a single entity, you add a set of complicating factors that may only work when the set of powers is distributed among multiple entities in that fashion. The notion of interunit tactics exists for a set of units that doesn't exist for a single entity (at least, not in any design I've seen). And that's important because an Ogre army has some diversity due to its specific selection of units and some diversity due to the implicit interunit tactical options each set of units contains separate from per-unit tactics. When you collapse that into a single entity that interunit tactical options disappears, and the options that Ogre presents when translated into an MMO would be too limited to be interesting.
To reproduce interunit field tactics with interpower synergy effects in a way that would make these two situations directly analogous would be challenging to say the least. And that's why requirement one is there: I don't see a way to bypass it and get relateable results. Wargames in general are fine if there is a way to customize *units* in an interesting enough way to be analogous to the way an MMO open powers system would work, or if the wargame fields larger scale superunits that contain individual units that aren't themselves customizable and which operate atomically. That would be more analogous to an MMO open powers system. Ogre doesn't do this.
That's a rather broad assertion. It also seems to melt away if you actually start trying to do the constructions needed to build the system. The real problem seems to be in giving players powers that enormously increase team effectiveness, and then having npc enemies that either won't have those powers on tap or due to AI limits won't use them effectively.
The all the gev swarm attack it was like watching ants eat an elephant. They also had to speed up the hvy tank, in on of the editions IIRC.Quote:Originally Posted by newchemicals
In the really early version of Ogre when GEVs were 4/4 movement. It turned out that no one considered an all GEV force. Now they are 4/3.
So there is still a GEV scatter phase, but at least Ogre has a chance now
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Quote:On the other hand if you don't play through the whole game, its like going to an all you can eat buffet and having a glass of water.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That's the part that fits not at all. There is nothing that happens at level 50 that puts all of the rest of the game into a different context. The competition in a sporting event is usually explicitly intended to drive to a conclusion. However, every single player that has not even leveled to 50 much less played the end game hasn't in some sense missed a part of the game that would have given the rest of their play additional meaning.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Golden Girl
An interesting thing about the new Undeground Trial is that while it gives insane amounts of both types of IXP, it also has things happening in the final fight that can wipe out an entire league in one go.
Some early calculations from the beta suggested that a player could open both Lore and Destiny with only 4-5 runs of it - but that could be balanced out by the bigger chance of failure, and the fact that the fewer runs there are, the fewer end reward tables there are to give the salvage needed to fill the slots.
You can already do that by running small team trials.
On topic, the difficulty of Keyes is fine in general its just too long and repetitive. Cut the terminals/reactor down to 5, delay anti matters spawn an additional 30 seconds. This would bring the time for the reactor phases in line with the collection phase for lambda. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Keep in mind, I'm not saying balanced gaming systems can't exist. Starcraft is a great example of a relatively strongly balanced game system and its a moderately heterogeneous one as well. And even more interesting in terms of game design is the game Ogre, which was in my opinion the absolute pinnacle of asymmetric game balance. You can't get much more asymmetric than Ogre.
But open powers systems are not the same thing as balanced gaming environments. Open powers system presume a far wider latitude of choices than most balanced gaming environments contain. There's no strong lessons to be learned in Starcraft that would be easy to extend to balancing an open powers system that could drive a game like City of Heroes (or, say, Champions Online).
I should have mentioned Ogre as a game that had freeform elements and also technically met your checklist. If you consider the force opposing the Ogre as the players representative entity it does. It doesn't meet the requirement that players not be shunted into a particular composition, mostly because Howitzers are over priced and G.E.V.S are slightly underpriced. -
Quote:A little too late for me. I do still have a 5 MeV linear accelerator that I built back when Scientific American still published interesting projects.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its not an open powers system as is being discussed, and furthermore there is no specific design intent for corewars to be "balanced" by any criteria other than the obvious: that all options are available to both players. The reason for my PvP rule above is that *all* combat systems, including randomly generated ones, are trivially claimed to be balanced if the definition of balance is that no matter what random options are made available to the players, both sides have the same opportunity to select the same options.
That's not a useful metric of balance for most MMO designs.
Incidentally, my own personal favorite corewars tactic from the late 80s was what I used to call hijacking, and was later more commonly known as vampire bombing. Between Corewars, Conway's Life, Fractint, and DKBTrace (aka POV-Ray) I don't know how we got anything done in the 80s. -
Quote:Its amazing how two people can look at the same scene and come away with completely different interpretations of what happened.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Eurisko is actually the perfect example of an entity that only wants to win, and is willing to destroy any semblance of gamesmanship to do it. Eurisko is digital pun-pun. Its worth noting that Eurisko wasn't particularly innovative, it was pure cold evil in its decision making that would bring a smile to any real min/maxer. In its first outing in TCS it spent all trillion credits on a gigantic fleet of the tiniest ships it could make with nothing but guns; not even engines. To win, its human opponents had to engage him because his fleet couldn't move, and when they did their own weapons were overkill against his unarmored fleet. But because he often outnumbered his opponents a hundred to one, he ultimately blasted them to pieces with sheer numbers. Today, we'd just call that stationary zerging.
Its second outing proved its real evil genius. The TCS rules were changed so you had to be able to move: in addition you got bonuses for the average ability for your fleet to move. So Eurisko created ships with the minimum propulsion possible, and then during the game it self-destructed any ship that was hit to eliminate a damaged ship from the fleet, maintaining its high agility bonus. When you still outnumber your enemy ten to one, you can blow up your own ships to game the rules.
It was *that* maneuver that caused the tournament to ban Eurisko (or rather: threaten to cancel if Eurisko entered). The problem was that people were entering real fleets that might reasonably exist in the Traveller universe, and Eurisko could care less. Could they have made TCS balanced enough for Eurisko? Probably only by sucking the life out of the game to the point only computers would want to play it.
But what Eurisko did is nothing more than what min/maxers have done throughout the history of gaming: shredded rules intended to be used to make an entertaining game, not to be beaten. The response in *every* gaming system to such people who were willing to burn the game to beat it has been the same: ban them.
For humans, its not usually enough to win. You have to win in a way that people will invite you back to play again. But Eurisko just really didn't care. It wasn't programmed to win graciously. And that same distinction is evident in the difference between how most people play PnP games with other people, and how they play computer games against the computer.
You say Eurisko as being ruthless and evil maybe a correct assessment. I am very sure that Doug Lenat was more ruthless, and definitely had the eye for recognizing rubes and a possible scam when presented with the opportunity.
As I said from the beginning traveler had lousy wargaming rules. They were always pretty much a bolt on and never the primary focus of the game. To understand how bad and incomplete they are, almost any of the games published in strategy tactics where more detailed and properly formulated than their whole system. I still remember the 25 tonne ship computer they had. You could see how they were just shoehorning things into system to make it work.
Anyway, the tcs tournaments were more or less tournaments for people that weren't great at wargaming and weren't willing do simple math to characterize the effectiveness of how their fleets would perform.
Now at the time the events occurred you had the start of 80s defense build up in place, You had ARPA/DARPA seriously working on expert systems meant to help commanders make the "Right Decision" and you have an AI researcher with a program who knows of a situation he can use to make a splash.
Did Eurisko outsmart on its own ? Could be you really can't say the published work on the system isn't enough to recreate it. Did Lenat take an opportunity to make a bunch of gamers look foolish, and gain a position with DARPA ? most definitely.
Back to the primary topic, just because its possible to come up with opponents that will completely destroy the players, there is no reason to always go that far.
Edit: Just a note one of the reasons I am suspicious of how this was spun, is that the particular munchkin tactic had already been used in battle tech tournaments where players were assigned a given amount of tonnage to build their units. -
Quote:Don't make the encounters as predictable as ours are. There is no reason that the game can't dynamically adjust enemy group composition if the team is doing well. It doesn't even need to be particularly intelligent just random changes should do. Your team fighting battle maiden warriors ? Oops half their damage is now energy.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Of the items on Arcana's list, the item that has the most significance to me is the one about players knowing what exists in the game. In a game where the encounters can be predicted, it is almost impossible to prevent players from min/maxing to that encounter, or to some kind of general style of encounter. What prevents this in other circumstances is that the player is unable to determine how often any particular ability will be critical, so all abilities still have weight; in fact, a smart GameMaster will often insert opportunities to use "useless" powers to facilitate this exact result.
If you really wanted to up the ante you could actually have the game plan against the pc group. Seeing as Arcana brought up traveller, there is a very good example of the computer out min maxing the players. There used to be a tournament held using the trillion credit squadron rules in that game. Two years in a row it was won by a program called Eurisko and afterwards the program was asked not to participate. Always thought that said more about people that played Traveler and the rules they came up with for fleet design than anything else. -
Quote:I have to apologize, I was specific in my original post right up to the point where I realized forum rules forbade the mention of any computer game not just MMOs, and then removed specific references.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
You're going to have to be more specific. The only core wars I'm aware of was the redcode core wars: I used to participate in that one myself. And most starfleet battles-like games, including literally StarFleet Battles were not remotely open powers systems by any reasonable definition, including the one I list above.
If there are really that many, you should be able to name at least one specific example that can be reviewed. But unless you're talking about another Core Wars (and you have to be: the one I'm aware of wouldn't make sense to mention here), both types of games are actually things I'm very familiar with, moreso than just wargaming in general, and I cannot see how either is applicable.
Trying not violate forum rules here but SSI had 3 conquest of the Galaxy games that allowed you to design both ships and fleets where the where combat/movement rules were almost direct copies of starfleet battles but the fleet composition was purely on a point system and so was the individual ship cost. Microprose had 3 games where you sought to master a constellation and the entire galaxy also where both fleet design , ship design and planetary defense all met the criteria.
Just a suggestion here. Corewars is as about as open a conflict simulator as you might conceive, if you feel your checklist is valid you might ask why you don't feel it meets the criteria or if there are some criteria you aren't articulating. -
Quote:Sorry but when I read this I was a little nonplussed and had to wonder if you were kidding. I know war games and tactical simulations aren't as dominant as they used to be, largely replaced by less complex games but there are plenty out there and are still popular enough that you would almost have to go out of your way not to know of games that meet those criteria.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Within the context of discussing them as applicable to the scope of MMOs, an open powers system in any game including a wargame would have to at least satisfy six requirements:
1. There is a system whereby players construct entities with abilities from a list of abilities.
2. To within a reasonable degree, the list of abilities is not trivially restrictive in scope. Obviously if I make a game where you can only take one of a hundred attacks, and all hundred are numerically ultimately identical, that's not really broad scope for the choices involved.
3. The abilities materially affect the ability to complete game tasks in non-trivial ways.
4. The abilities can be selected and combined *after* the game tasks are known.
5. The system does not restrict which abilities can be taken in combination, or has extremely minimal such restrictions, although it can have rules for synergistic combinations that contain both advantages and disadvantages.
6. The way the abilities work obeys precise predefined rules without the need for human arbiters.
To not be a *bad* example of an open powers system, it must at least satisfy three additional requirements:
1. It does not obviously funnel players into only a few optimal choices.
2. It does not rely solely on rock-paper-scissors balancing in PvP only (although this can be a significant part of the system, it cannot be the *only* basis upon which its balanced).
3. It should generate a spectrum of performance results that are not only superficially dissimilar. Its fine if it can generate very bad results for the player with bad decisions, it just cannot generate only a few obvious optimal ones and it cannot literally be designed to generate only homogenous ones.
The trump card of most PnP games is #4 above. No matter how you min/max a character, the GM can always shift the playing field to one where you are strong, but not optimal. And in fact its a presumption that the purpose of a good GM is to challenge players without assassinating them, which means almost by definition no matter what you make, the GM is going to throw you content that you cannot trivially handle. Rule #4 is extremely difficult to enforce in an MMO.
I would not say the list above is complete: its a complicated thing to judge game balance. But I would at least concede that any wargame that satisfied all the above strongly (particularly #2 in the first list and #3 in the second) would be worth additional study.
Anyway core wars as a paper and pencil game meets your criteria in spades. There are also the entire families of space exploration/conquest games that derive from the old starfleet battles model of gaming. Some are not a great examples because they may have singularities where performance/cost blows up but the better realizations avoid the problems.
Really most of the things you are talking about here as problems seem positively baffling. Most of the problems implementing open systems as beer and pretzels games, is the beer and the argumentative nature of the players. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
a) I don't feel most if any wargames even *have* anything I would consider an "open powers system" in a close enough sense to this context (which means I cannot then mention any that have them) and
So if you want to mention one and make the case that as much as HERO is lauded for it when it actually fails to deliver it upon serious analysis, this game is a much better example, please do. I'm not a wargaming expert, so its entirely possible there exists such a game that I'm unaware of and no one has thought to mention in any debate about this subject I'm aware of.
What would you consider an open powers system in a wargame ? If I have a well defined question it will make it much easier to provide an answer. -
Quote:Mostly free form war games are examples that you can do this and have it work. The key difference is with war games balance considerations outweigh everything else.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I don't follow you. Are you saying that all the developers of a single-character centered RPG need to do is copy the open power selection system used in "most" war games? If so, then no, it won't work, or someone would have done it with success. I also don't know what "most" of these war games you are referring to are.
I have to differ with the argument, that if it were possible it would have already been done. I can't claim to be familiar with every MMO/RPG so for all I know it could already have been done.
Its not a trivial matter to get a game funded and built and you have to convince the people writing checks that they will get there money back. Doing things you have to explain and get people to buy in to. You need to demonstrate that there is a market for the product and inspire confidence you can deliver what you are selling.
As things stand most of the MMO/RPGs I have seen all seem to be cut from the Dungeons and Dragons cloth. You have leveling progression that raises all your abilities power, with each level you get access to either more or new abilities according to some sort of tree system. On top of these progression systems you have loot/gear/booster systems. Its hard enough to balance that hodgepodge in a very constrained system. I suspect you would have to throw those D&D concepts out work out a system fresh from scratch and then backfit into the conceptual framework so people can say "Oh its that ! I like that, lets go play"
All of the above represents extra effort that has no assurance of payout.
I may be misunderstanding but HERO system isnt a wargame, and Traveller was only barely a wargame in that book 5 Highguard had rules for ship to ship combat.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Most war games do not have open powers system in the same sense we're discussing here. Actually, none of them to my knowledge have such systems that are required to be overseen my computerized systems.
The canonical example often brought up as a good open powers system is the HERO system, aka Champions. But that system only works because human being can constantly adjust to is imbalances, and more importantly because human GM can constantly toss challenges at the players that they are not optimized for and have no real ability to simply avoid. HERO would be a computerized disaster.
If you have human players willing to play the meta game "how can we make this work" almost anything is possible. After all, people played Traveller. But the requirements of computer MMOs are such that all of these examples are worth less than nothing.
Traveller is a good example of how you can do RPGs without the level up effects and have freefrom skill selection. There were a few skills that were unsuitable and really shouldn't have been in the game (Jack of All Trades for example) but overall it worked well even when you had people trying to break it. IIRC there were two box games based on traveller made by SSI* and while admittedly not MMOs they do show how its possible.
*not sure if the publisher was SSI -
Quote:Yet most of the war games I have played have managed it, same for trading games and that goes way back to when we played them on teletypes, and glass ttys.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
In fairness, everyone acts that way because in over thirty years of video gaming, no one has been able to create a free form system that actually works.
To give you an idea of the scope of the problem, a balanced free-form system not only has to be balanced when the game first opens, but every single power added to the game over its lifetime has to be carefully crafted to avoid crippling the system. If you put all of your powers in one fish tank, the sharks eat the guppies. -
Quote:You still can't count, and you still can't come up with anything but "I like blasters stop saying things that upset me"Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
I see again the same 2 people complaining Shubbie and Fan.
30+ pages of a 2 person issue?
It really is simple - if you don't like blasters don't play with them. Don't make them. Don't invite them to your ERP. Don't let them in your SG. You can camp in the PvP zones and assault everyone that enters.
Meanwhile I will somehow find the courage and strength to keep playing my blaster - knowing that somehow I will miss out on the wonder of your company.
Well buck up, test your "courage and strength" and actually think about what is being said. -
Quote:My point exactly. There is no blaster that can defeat her in 20 seconds but she or sirocco can be removed from the battle.Originally Posted by MajorTractor
Which ghost widow are we talking about here? An EB in a Patron arc or 54 AV from STF.
I can make a video of my Fire/elec blaster doing the first as soon as I find someone with the contact. For the other, I'll dare you to show me ANY character doing it in 20 seconds. -
Quote:Then they get ice storm as well. All the epics include at least 1 AoEOriginally Posted by PleaseRecycle
I didn't mention it because obviously the average dom does not take a specific epic, and the clever dom takes sleet and not fireball in the first place.
You have never bothered to play a psi blaster , a sonic blaster, or an electrical blaster I see.Quote:Dom epic aoes also have either long recharges or ludicrous endurance costs. Look at explosive blast and join me in a hearty chuckle. It's true though that if you do take an epic aoe, you will have a much easier time clearing basic spawns than a dom who has chosen to focus only on primary and secondary. My point is that blasters don't have this problem.
Doms have access to other AoEs either from their epics, or their primary, and in the not to distant future from their pool powers as well.Quote:Bring up fiery assault if you want, but you haven't made an iron clad case there. Consume is not actually an attack for any practical purposes. Combustion is, yet it is sadly very poor. Blaster combustion may or may not be better but blaster combustion is one of the worst blaster aoes available.
Energy Assault gets powerboost and every dom can get a damage buff with Soul Drain.Quote:Only two dom secondaries get anything like buildup. A third gets aim. None of them get power boost AND a damage buff, but even if they did, power boost doesn't do anything for damage. It's nice for controls I guess but I don't see a major need for it since the dominator inherent is basically the same thing, but for mag instead of duration.
Show me the blaster that can solo ghost widow in 20 secondsQuote:Ever notice how dangerous ghost widow is when she's gone from full to defeated in twenty seconds? That's what I'd say for each of those examples, in fact. Now, you could say that on a pick up team that isn't likely to be capable of wiping out content so trivially control is far more useful. I would agree. In general, though, the more powerful your team gets the less control matters, but damage never stops being important. -
Quote:So first Dominators don't get powers that have higher DPA than their blaster equivalents, now they don't get Fireball ?Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
What was obvious to everyone other than you who read what I said was that I was referring to the likes of fireball and bullet rain, powers in the range of damage scale where they'll kill minions with two applications (for example, bullet rain and then empty clips) with reasonable enhancement and standard damage buffing. I wasn't even referring to mini-nukes, which kill minions and lieutenants by themselves, but those are another thing doms do not get.
Edit Corrected dominator fireball:
Dominator Fireball: Damage 71.6, cast: 1.18
Blaster Fireball : Damage 79, cast: 1.18
You do enjoy being wrong don't you ? I'd suggest actually building a dom before saying things like that or this.Quote:Your pet pool, psi assault, the only one that contains powers that look better than blaster equivalents by any measure (and which are even then worse in other ways), is a good example of this.
Fiery Assault AoEsQuote:The dom gets two aoes which simply are not going to kill the minions in a spawn without procs, musculature, some manner of outside assistance.
Combustion
Consume
Fire Breath
^ suspiciously looks like 3
Fire Epic
Rain Of Fire
Fire Ball
^ Seems to be raising the total to 5
Can't Kill minions with 2 applications ?
Embrace of fire + fire Breath + Combustion = dead minions
That doesn't even consider slotting the primary for damage or anything the pets might be doing.
Yep embrace of fire and power boost sadden meQuote:Those two powers for blasters come in a secondary, which means they are in addition to the primary aoes that the blaster gets. The blaster likely doesn't even need them to form a good aoe chain, but if she wants them, there they are. The blaster also gets build up and probably aim, to make the dom look even sadder by comparison. 
B.A.F. I don't suppose you noticed those prisoners running away ?Quote:Yes, control powers really are irrelevant in the late game in much the same way you're incorrectly suggesting that blasters are. Except correct. You get the idea. Name a TF or trial that is is made or broken with control.
S.T.F. Ever notice how dangerous ghost widow is when she is held or slept ?
R.S.F. Ever notice how difficult the freedom phalanx is when you only have to fight them one at a time ?
I.T.F. Rommie - nictus ?
Not so much, but it would likely be amusing.Quote:We should TF some time, it'd be educational for you. -
Quote:Missed this one.Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
By what measure exactly are dominators better than blasters? They get mez protection, which if we're speaking of the "average dominator" by your own standard isn't permanent so it is in many ways less useful than defiance. Their attacks are universally lower DPA than blaster equivalents and they don't get access to the really huge aoes that allow blasters to destroy full spawns at once. Control powers are all right but largely irrelevant in the late game. The one real advantage doms get is sleet in their epic pool and that's a big advantage, but does the average dom always take that specific pool? Surely not.
Sorry to keep harping on it but it really does seem like you guys just don't know what you're talking about.
Oh right, and dominators as a "ranged AT?" lol
What are these huge AoE attacks that let blasters destroy spawns all at once ? Last time I checked the only AoE that could concievably knock out an entire spawn with bosses was blizzard, and to do that you would need to be buffed to the damage cap for the duration of blizzard and have every tick hit
Really ?Quote:Their attacks are universally lower DPA than blaster equivalents
Really ?Quote:Control powers are all right but largely irrelevant in the late game. -
Quote:Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Two things:Great, then we're on the same page. Blasters are commonly valued by high end teams, as are all the other archetypes.
Do you think grasping at straws helps your position ?
So far in this thread, people have gone from blasters are numerically fine, to it doesn't matter how gimped my toon is I'll force it down a teams throat and they will like it.
P.S. They probably wanted people that could solo cysts,oracles and generals on that ITF.
Proves ? Really ? I suppose the same way epicycles proved that the earth was the center of the solar system.Quote:The fact that you'd have to spend sixty dollars or whatever to kit one character out with IO boosters mainly proves that the devs are shrewd and are well aware that they only have to sell to a few big ticket buyers to make the same amount of money as they'll get by selling inexpensive costume pieces to loads of players. Of the two things, which do you think they'll be selling more of?
Anyway, here is a little question for you, about your rationalization, since when is the goal of any business "to make the same amount of money" ? Last time I checked the goal was to maximize profits. -
Quote:Originally Posted by seebs
I think there's some kind of a cultural gap here. Both here and in my other MMO, I see a lot of people who are totally focused on THE BEST BUILD, and insist that once the best build is identified, no one will ever play anything else.
But when I actually play the game, I see a ton of characters that are pretty clearly "this is my character concept, here is how I could best do it within the rules".
It seems to me that the underlying problem is that people are really not even talking about related concepts. Most of us simply don't care what's the Absolute Most Efficient. We care what fits our character concepts. We care what looked fun or interesting to play. People build characters around concepts like "solo AVs" or "farm AE at level 33", but they also build characters around concepts like "amazing combat archer" or a funny tag line. My invuln/dual-blades tanker concept is purely "I want something that looks completely unpowered as much of the time as possible", because I came up with the idea of a character named Aunt Millie, with the superhero tag line "Putting the AUNT back in TAUNT AURA." ... So there she is, in a sweater with no visible effects except a pair of swords.
Do you seriously think I care whether she's "superfluous" or not? My primary contribution to mission teams is rants about how "when I was a little girl, the half-human cybernetic freaks had DECENT HAIRCUTS because they had some RESPECT." And frankly, that's a lot more useful than anything else, because the point of the game is to have fun.
This is a game in which I have built a character with the specific goal of being as useless and disruptive of his own team as possible. And you know what? If I advertise for teams on "Helpy McHelperson", specifically warning people that he's grav/storm, built for and played for laughs... THEY JOIN. So they can pop Group Fly and say "I'm Helping!"
... And we cleared that mission, too.
There definitely is some sort of gap here and I don't know what servers you play CoH on or why my experience is so radically different than yours.
Lets assume you're right. I belong 6 global channels with 2000 or more members why haven't I seen the following.
BaF forming could use more punsters.
STF forming need someone that can do standup for Recluce.
BAF forming short of observational humor for escape phase.
ITF forming looking for people with knockback powers to scatter everything all over the place.
Khan forming, looking for ethnic humor to make fun of the Nazis.
I will tell you what I have seen.
STF forming need a tank for LR.
BAF forming looking for control.
Khan forming could use debuff.
Speed ITF forming need more damage.
So when you say most of us, you mean most of who ?
Now here is a little observational food for thought, Paragon Studios with freedom, is releasing costume pieces, IO boosters, and improved IOs, IO sets, and temp costumes. The least expensive item by far are individual costume pieces and the most expensive by far are IO boosters for a full build. What does that tell you about what the developers think is important to the players ? -
Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I recently rolled a mind/psi specifically to use a costume I had created. Its been a while since I've leveled a dominator from level one. Is the offense lower than a blaster, or even a brute or scrapper? Yes. Is she weak? Hard to tell so far because nothing is ever shooting at her. For all I know two shots will put her down, but no one has gotten two shots at her yet.
Its kind of like playing a blaster, if I took out all my damage enhancements and was able to attack while in PFF all the time. And all the while I'm actually thinking to myself this is as bad as it gets for dominators.
Funny observation, with the exception of psi dart and mental blast all the dominator powers in psionic assault do more base damage than their blaster equivalents.
Edit: And thinking about it, the one that doesn't do damage also works better. -
Quote:Crashless blizzard on a defender or a corruptor. Have to smile at that, especially for the rads, and kins.Originally Posted by Shubbie
There are 3 ranged damage AT's in the game not counting Soa.
Corruptor
Dominator
Blaster
Its funny, even with the changes, dominators are rather weak before 30, and rocking after...for the entire game after.
Dominators in 99% of the circumstances is a better choice than a blaster.
Though this might even up a bit if they make nukes crashless, but that would bring defenders up into serious consideration for ranged damage and make corruptors even further out ahead unless they make nukes crashless for only blasters.
Last point, which of these is the weakest post 30? -
Quote:O'Rly ? I can't speak for everyone else, but it gets tiring dealing with people whose argument boils down to, "I AM THE GOD OF BLASTING IF YOU THINK THERE IS A PROBLEM YOU JUST DON'T KNOW HOW TO PLAY". But just a suggestion, before you challenge people to count the house, learn how to count.Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
The Shubbie and Fan show is still going on?
Look through this thread and the same 2 people are making the arguement and everyone else says - I am having fun - blasting.
A blaster is not a tank, scrapper or brute. Keep saying that and you will live longer and happier. -
Quote:We had people with very high end builds that were able to handle them. The people who didn't spent their time in the hospital. No contradiction.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
That is a contradiction. If the trials are "punishing" and only allowing people with very high end builds to succeed in them, you can't turn around and say we had "people" soloing the collection phases. That would be only the top tiny percentage of the top tiny percentage of players by your assertions. When I talk about teams blasting through +5s back in the day, I'm not talking about the top tiny percentage of all teams. I'm talking about any full team with a couple buffers over the mid 30s in level. If you were not there, you really don't know what it was like.
That seems to contradict your earlier assertion that the current regime is more democratic. If you had most everyone at a level of power that was overpowered then you can hardly say we have greater access now. -
Quote:Originally Posted by rsclark
I have absolutely no question in my mind that CO would have more players if they had designed the game better. Of course, a poorly designed open game is worse than a well designed game with archetypes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville 
There's absolutely no question in my mind that CO would have more players if it didn't jettison archetypes.
Seeing as that other game now has archetypes and freeform characters, its much more likely the unfinished nature of the product that scuttled it. Everybody always acts like a freeform system has to converge to one optimal solution. This is not so at all.
Start the league yourself, organize with an eye towards starting, start when you think you have a league that can win, don't wait around for it to fill. It goes better that way.Quote:Originally Posted by rsclark
If I am one of the first 6 people in a league, I expect the trial to start in no less than 45 minutes, more likely an hour. If I do not have at least an hour and a half to play uninterrupted, I don't even bother trying for a trial.
For that to be so you would need the people willing to grind the trials, to be a much wider slice of the population than those willing to build high end invention builds. The trials by their nature are very punishing to people without high end builds. So it seems a stretch to take that as given.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The incarnate system is limiting in one way, but it isn't all bad: while there are many people who are unwilling to do the trials in any form, they are the minority. Conversely, for many players unwilling to farm or marketeer, the path to at least nominal amounts of incarnate power is far easier than the path to high level invention builds, and the moderate levels of incarnate power do not vastly outstrip the higher levels like the top tier invention builds do. It does act to distribute power in a different way than the invention system. Its an end game system, so it will be a minority participation system for a while, just as even leveling was. But it will likely act net to spread power out over a wider percentage of players, or at least those with level 50s.
We had people soloing the collection phases and doors from day 1, and to some extent the new enemies are crafted to defeat many of the common things people do to improve their characters.Quote:This is true, but I was responding to the statement that given the changes since ED, we're all vastly more powerful than we used to be. That's not generally true. The fact that its not generally true because of other counterbalancing changes doesn't change the point. In fact, it is the point.
Just a note: we talk about the +4s in the trials like they are at least a significant threat, even if strong teams can deal with them. Back in the I2 days PUGs used to farm +5s with relative ease. In some areas we are more powerful, but in other areas we haven't even scratched the surface of circa I2/I3 power. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Then don't. No one is holding a gun to your head. But there are many players who will save a lot of money by buying those two rows of enhancement slots.
Currently it costs $70 bucks to pull all the enhancements off of a single build ($210 bucks for all three builds), and we have players that burn thru respecs like they were meth addicts. That one time purchase of $40. for two enhancement trays forever cuts that price in half.
And if they are VIP's it won't cost them a penny to buy because they can save up and only spend the free points they get with their subscription. We'll be getting 1200-1600 points when Freedom launches, That's one tray right there.
More purchasable fixes for problems they put in the game ? I thought the enhancement unslotters were someones bad joke. 2 bucks a pop because people aren't very cautious when playing a game ??
But this is way over the top.
And neither is a good fix for the respec system which really needs to be more freeform. Maybe that will be available once they think enough people have bought additional trays.
Expect sales and promotions.Quote:Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
Seriously? they're happy with these prices? I won't ever buy them at these prices.