Arcanaville
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Quote:What you find bad design I assert is great design, albeit the devs stumbled into it mostly by accident.Originally Posted by BlackestNight
The main argument I'm trying to make is that 99% of the time, you pick CoF or OG, but never both. They overlap in role too much and they don't compliment each other much at all. If you can afford slotting CoF, you get it. If you can't afford slotting/running CoF, you get OG. There is virtually no incentive to leave CoF at base levels and virtually no incentive for slotting OG. I just find having (for all intents and purposes) mutually exclusive powers in the same set to be bad design. At the very least, they're highly competitive with each other.
Setting aside people's issues the individual powers, having both OG and CoF means DA has several things going for it that are highly desirable:
1. It's more likely to synergize with your offensive set. If you have stuns, you can take OG and stack. If you have fear, you can take CoF and stack.
2. You're more likely to get most of the maximum effectiveness of the set with less power choices.
This one takes some time to explain correctly. The obvious objection to #1 above is "why not make a single toggle that does both, then you can free one of them to put in something 'useful'?" But this presupposes you can add more stuff to the set without making it overpowered. Lets work backwards. Lets say we are designing a powerset that is going to end up with strength 80, not including the tier 9. How do we do that? Well, we can, in this simplified example, make a powerset that has eight powers (minus the tier 9) that each is worth 10. Then the total is 80, and we're done.
Except to get the full strength of the powerset requires taking all eight powers, and each one you don't take cuts your strength by a significant amount. That's not a desirable feature. So we could concentrate power. We could make four powers that were 15 each, and then another four powers that were 5 each. Now, taking four powers gets us 75% of the total strength of the set. We can then decide how many of the remaining four we want, or trade them and take other things elsewhere.
But that has a different problem. We now have some powers with strength 15, and some with strength 5. Some powers have only one third the value as others. Its easy to perceive them as being relatively worthless. Think the Invuln passives. Players could argue that those powers are so weak, its too obvious they are the lesser choices in the set to almost always be avoided. It puts everyone in the same situation of taking the same four powers always, and then maybe one or two others.
To solve this problem we need a way to somehow create a set where every single power is strong, but removing one power doesn't reduce the sets strength by a lot. If we had two powers such that having one was worth 15, having the other was worth 15, but having both was only worth twenty, we could actually construct a set with six powers worth 10 each, and these two powers A and B. Having the full set would be worth 80, our target. Losing A would drop the set to 75. Losing B would drop the set to 75. Losing both would drop the set to 60. The cost of losing one of those two powers is less than the cost of losing any of the other six. The powerset allows players to take less than the maximum number of powers with minimum penalty, and that means more viable options to players.
The short version is Dark Armor encourages you to take at least one of the two mez toggles, but doesn't penalize you for taking only one. But if you choose to take both, you do get a higher benefit, just not a dramatic one.
This property of providing multiple valid options that don't involve taking the entire set and don't involve making deliberately weak powers is so difficult to do that in fact Dark Armor mostly does it by accident and the devs have never been able to accomplish this task deliberately. In fact, when they tweaked the Invuln passives they mostly just leveled off the set, and when they tweaked the SR passives they actually did the exact opposite: made the passives super-synergize with each other and with the toggles in such a way that the penalty for losing any one defensive power is actually *higher* than 1/6th the total strength of the set. SR actively punishes you for not taking all three toggles and all three passives.
This is an underappreciated design feature of Dark Armor, except to players who have experienced the opposite problems: having powersets that have powers that either seem worthless to them, or seem absolutely necessary, without sacrificing a disproportionate amount of strength. In effect, because OG and CoF overlap significantly, each is theoretically allowed to be stronger than they otherwise might have, because otherwise the combination of both would be too strong. -
Quote:You keep reducing things to false binary choices. If we didn't take all of our primary you suggest we had two possibilities: take all of our primary, or take a different power pool to replace fitness. But in fact the choice is between all the powers left available, period, for all three or four power choices that were freed when inherent fitness became available (for players that took stamina).Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
I think you're proving my point, UberGuy. The only disagreement left is whether or not everyone else with the same powersets chose the same power pools for their characters. You say no, but I believe most of them would have. There aren't many good alternatives.
You also seem to be implying this is something that is mostly a matter of opinion or judgment, and can't be resolved objectively through example, but it can. If the options have dropped, and not just slightly but in your expressed opinion precipitously, that should be obvious to see in actual builds which would experience the sort of funneling that is a necessary consequence of your theory. But I've posted builds that specifically contradict all of the suppositions you've made that are consistent with your theory. Specialization is still possible. Builds aren't converging on generalists. Builds still have distinct non-overlapping tactical options. Powers can be more useful in some builds than others, so people have different valuations of them. Players can still run out of power choices that would add valid additional value to their builds, which means they are not saturated with powers or slots.
Its becoming increasingly unlikely that I just happen to be an incredibly odd edge case that I can and do construct builds that your theory of build diversity claims is not generally possible. And its important to note that proving diversity doesn't exist requires just one counter-example. But proving it does exist requires only one positive example. Because things either exist or they don't. If they don't, no examples of it are possible. If they do, just one example proves they do.
And I have to go back to the fact that the logical argument that since inherent fitness eliminates a possible build choice then the total number of options must have gone down is flawed, because with inherent fitness options become available that didn't exist before. Conversely, the numerical argument is pretty straight forward and doesn't have that sort of flaw: for diversity to have gone down, the people who had fitness must have taken the exact same powers to a higher degree than people had fitness in the first place. So if 75% of players had fitness, more than 75% of the fitness players must have traded fitness for the exact same three powers, given the same powerset combination (for the players that took three fitness powers, the argument extends to players who took a different number). That seems unlikely if the ratio of players that took fitness was very high like the devs implied it was. Not the least of which is because when I respeced into inherent fitness, I was presented with multiple options on reusing those choices. The probability that even *I* would choose the same choices 75% of the time given the same situation seems unlikely: so much of it depended on what I was interested in doing at the time. The moment I decide to respec changes everything.
If it was true that basically everyone agrees on what is a good idea and not a good idea, and when presented with a choice we all tend to choose the same thing because we all agree what is a good choice and a bad choice, what is useful and not useful, then its possible we could have all respeced into inherent fitness and taken the same powers. But if that were true, we'd all have been playing roughly the same builds to start with. Its asking a lot to claim that we all valued things differently before inherent fitness and had a wide range of builds, but when inherent fitness came along we all started thinking alike and deciding which primary and secondary powers were really useful, and which power pools were the obvious choices. The odds of that happening seem astronomically low.
Having more options is not a bad idea, but proving it by claiming we have catastrophically low levels of build options today, and moreover that inherent fitness is the primary culprit, just isn't supported by the facts when it comes to building. An individual person, with a particular perspective on what they want and don't want, might find themselves restricted by their preferences. But the system itself isn't restricted in options. -
Quote:Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
Okay, that's a good way of looking at it, so let's try that framing. I maintain that characters cannot be as specialized as they were before. They have too many power slots that have to be filled, so they have to take some generalist powers.Primary powers: Power Blast, Power Burst, Aim, Power Push. Blast you have to take. Power Push is being used as a knock tool and a mule for explosive strike. Burst is a short ranged blast good for mixing up with blapping. Not only are there no filler powers, I actually ran out of power picks. If I had more, the next one would have been power boost (to boost stuns) and the next one after that would have probably been hover (which would add to defense and allow some slot shuffling on defense bonuses). The only power not really explicitly intended for a blapper specialist is snow storm, and its a prereq for cold mastery.Code:
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I also ran out of slots: I could easily put more worthwhile slots into combat jumping, stun, health, aim, and conserve power. The slots just aren't there, and the slots are more valuable where they are.
(Incidentally, this one one of three different builds I'm playing around with in Mids, while brain storming what my future alternate build will be. Its a sell-out to blapping build, so its extremely specialized.)
Blessing of the ZephyrQuote:I still don't understand having multiple travel powers
Also, I have flight and superspeed. I have flight because I like to fly, and because you can fly right off of things like caltrop patches. I have superspeed because I like to be invisible, and it stacks with the stealth IO. -
Quote:Different people have different ways of expressing the rule, but my version is this: if it comes before, its a warning; if it comes after, its a disclaimer.Originally Posted by Scientist
I've made half a dozen characters in the new interface, and never noticed the message at the bottom, I didn't even realize choosing from the playstyle list was optional. Here I was wondering whether a Warshade was considered "ranged damage", "melee", or "pets". . .
Warning: the next choice is optional, but will reduce the number of choices in the next panel.
Pick A, B, or C
Disclaimer: if you pick something and then move on, don't blame us if you don't see the choice you want because we're going to point to this statement as proof its your fault. -
Quote:If you are specifically referring to tohit buffs, the fact that players successfully play Dark Armor suggests its still playable, just that some situations are more dangerous than others.Originally Posted by New Dawn
How playable would a Dark Armour be if you had no Dark Regen?
Then remove CoF and OG (most do anyway).
Then remove Death Shroud?
Yet still have it costing as much in endurance, as if you had all that.
How playable?
SR can have the entire set negated by a single tohit buff at any level. By the thirties, there's a very common tohit buff - the DE quartz eminator - that offers enough tohit buff to negate Elude. And then there's Nemesis vengeance. +30% tohit per application: one takes away most of an SR tankers defense, two takes it all away and then some. Also, the Rularuu have tohit buffs. Also, all turrets including Malta engineer turrets have +25% tohit, as well as all pet class critters. That's half the defense a high level tanker will likely have, and a lot more than half the survivability taken away.Quote:Then how many other Primaries that tanks get can say that they can have almost half of their primary completely negated by one secondary effect in their 20s?
None I think, thats a balance issue.
And then there's non-positional psi, which ignores all SR defenses, and SR has no scaling resistance to, no heal to mitigate, and no +health to buffer. You see that in the 20s with the Tsoo. You see it even earlier with the Lost. You keep seeing it in the Rikti and Carnival of Shadows.
And then you reach the 40s and have to tank the KoA. Scrapping the KoA is one thing. Tanking the KoA is another thing. Because another thing that negates the entire SR set is autohitting damage, such as that from caltrops. Which, if you have a ton of them spammed on you while tanking for a full team, actually amounts to sizeable autohitting damage. It can kill you all by itself even if nothing else in the mission touches you (rough estimate: 5 dps per caltrop: twelve of them from a single full spawn non-stacked is 60 dps of autohitting damage. Compared to an SR tanker with just 40% defense, that is like seeing 50 minions suddenly appear and start attacking simultaneously).
So: tohit buffs that can negate SR defense, non-positional attacks that avoid SR defense, and autohitting damage that ignores SR defense. Everyone has problems. -
Quote:They could redo the interface in such a way that the net result is still identical to the current respec screen, meaning that the most you could unslot in one respec would be the maximum enhancement tray slots that were open.Originally Posted by EnigmaBlack
As do I, and I thought they wanted to do it, but after seeing the enhancement unslotters it looks to me that they have no immediate plans to change it especially if they can make a couple of bucks from the market.
Incidentally, I'm sure its occurred to some people that as expensive as they appear to be, if you have a lot of characters you want to unslot a lot of stuff from, buying the 1600 point enhancement tray boosters might actually be worth the points. Buying the first one doubles the amount of enhancements you can unslot from a character per respec from 10 to 20. That seems like its not worth that much, but if you decide to unslot inventions from, say, ten characters in the same account, that 1600 points is buying 100 extra inventions unslotted per respec sweep.
Just in terms of the time saved, it might be worth it for some people. -
Quote:It is, and it improved somewhat during beta, but they really, really, really need someone with ergonomic or interface design experience on the team somewhere. Graded on a curve, its not that bad; DCU spent tens of millions of dollars on a game that ultimately had a UI that was worse than a kindergardener could have made out of construction paper. But fundamental questions like "what should I be doing now" are things the new character creator doesn't always answer.Originally Posted by Starsman
Well, when you put it that way....
But its pretty!!!
*I* still occasionally forget to select my secondary on creation. An error that was impossible in the old interface, and really easy in the new one. In fact, I cannot imagine a brand new player that wasn't familiar with the game *not* making that error at least once.
I think the problem is a user interface designer thinks in terms of ease of use, while a programmer thinks in terms of assembling UI elements upon request. On the very first page of the creator is a UI error. There are two buttons: City of Heroes Freedom, and City of Heroes Going Rogue.
Problem 1: Its unclear they even are buttons
Problem 2: The buttons connection to what they do is extremely tenuous, and in particular a new player will have no idea what the connection is.
Problem 3: The descriptions of the buttons say what they button literally does, but doesn't fully explain why you'd want to pick either choice.
Problem 4: The description for Going Rogue says you can leave Praetoria at level 20. Except its not optional.
This is technically the very first choice a player has to make, and its full of problems. And then we have a consistency problem. The very next choice is origin, and there's no default. You have to pick one yourself. I suppose picking a default increases the probability that the player will accidentally skip that choice and not realize they skipped it, if there was a default and the character creator allowed them to go on without choosing one. That seems logical.
So they have that protection in place for origin, which matters exactly never, but they don't have that protection in place for where you start the game?
This may seem to be a quibble, but in the realm of UI design this is the sort of thing that would literally cause you to fail a design class project, before they looked at anything else. Its the kind of mistake a programmer might make, but no UI designer should make, because its UI design 101.
Now I'll give you one that is not UI design 101: its UI design 201. The next page is the playstyle page, and it includes a list of buttons for playstyle, and a message at the bottom that says "select a playstyle from the list above (optional)". UI design 201: that message should be at the top of the list, not the bottom. Being at the bottom means 40% of the people navigating won't notice it. They will gravitate to the list itself, not the text. Moreover, if their mouse cursor happens to be in the area of the list, that message disappears. Is it important that players know its optional? Yes, because choosing anything will restrict the list of options they get next. Something that the interface doesn't actually state explicitly.
By the way, notice playstyle descriptions and graphics change when you hover over their buttons, while archetypes only change if you actually push the button? As a designer of stuff, that kind of thing just drives me nuts. -
Quote:I have a lot of sympathy for the players that played Dark Armor at release when the armors couldn't stack, although endurance was not their problem. The inability to run all the toggles (DA was not the only set with this limitation) was about as bad as SR toggles not doing anything no matter how many you ran**.Originally Posted by JayboH
...and complained ALOT.
Celidya: I did so since it is the main cause of the endurance problems, not CoF.
But the endurance problems didn't really jump into people's faces until the armor's stacked, and that was a bit later: that and the original end costs of Dark Regen. I think a lot of the endurance complaints that came up earlier faded when Dark Regen's costs were lowered and DA got drain protection. Given how much drain there was in the higher levels between things like sappers and every single carnie in existence, having drain protection was almost as good as having low endurance costs: better in many cases. One lucky shot could detoggle and kill an invuln. That lucky shot doesn't exist for DA. Heck, even my SR can get hit with that magic bullet and while its not instant death, it can be a very quick death if you run out of endurance and get detoggled, and have no endurance to even fight back. That just plain doesn't happen to DA most of the time: you get hit, you get drained, but its never for a lot and its not significant unless you are at very low end. And DAs know not to be hovering near low end because they need that end to fire Dark Regen.
The costs are still there, but the surprises are generally gone.
** don't get me started -
Quote:Unfortunately, I think that while combining OG and CoF breaks the cottage rule, a fear nova violates the cottage rule in a "Law and Order, Special Victims Unit" kind of way.Originally Posted by BlackestNight
Since you can't break the cottage rule and combine them
...
CoF would be something of a "Fear nova"
At the moment Cloak of Fear is a toggle that can be used continuously. The fear nova, while an interesting idea, would be an ultra high magnitude click that could only be used every so often. That would take Cloak of Fear away from players that wanted to use it all the time, which is the sort of thing the "cottage rule" is intended to protect whenever possible.
Also, I'm pretty sure the devs are generally listening, but not commenting, on balance discussions like this. -
Quote:Actually, my monitor is only a 26". I do play with 80% scaling of the UI, though.Originally Posted by houtex
To be honest, I'm not so interested in the changing of how you deal with powers... although, I imagine a sub 'folder' of powers could be made to work... maybe...
I'm more interested in the width of Arcana's screen, because, man that's gotta be something like Frank's 2000 Inch TV:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBF5bewa0ts
/..and I'm highly jealous about it.
I actually have a dual monitor set up, but playing City of Heroes on a dual monitor setup is like trying to drive a car while only staring out the driver's side window. -
Quote:You could also farm the bunkers during reactor three of Keyes and literally end up with like twenty of those things.Originally Posted by GATE-keeper
You should have done a Lambda first, then took that peekchur. :P
Now why, oh why, can't that be one power with a number of charges instead of a whole bunch of individual powers?
What's really ludicrous is that I did not make any attempt to farm the temp powers to take that picture. That's what I'm dragging around normally. I literally ran every story arc from launch, and I never used the temps. And then I became a badge hunter, and I continued to run arcs, and I do all the task forces and trials, and I bought all the boosters, and of course I did my share of ToT this time around, and then I noticed that the list was kinda long. Actually I've been thinking about this (this time) ever since the trials came out, and I would have to scroll to the bottom of the list to find trial temps. Yes, they are at the bottom so they are easy to find in that sense. But actually scrolling to the bottom is not the trivial task it sounds like for some of us. In my case, scrolling to the bottom of the temp powers today would be scrolling through about the equivalent of two thousand pixels of display. or to put it another way, about fifteen scrolls of that dinky impossible to resize power window. Also amusingly, you can't actually tell which version of the power analyzer power I have crafted.
Mind you, I don't want the devs to get rid of the temps: I just want a better way to manage them. You take away my stupid three story high rubble pile of temp powers at your own risk devs. -
Quote:Wait a minute. You can't just say that. If we both traded fitness for fighting, that's not becoming more alike. That's remaining equally alike. Your thesis is not that diversity didn't rise, its that it fell. So you can't just say things are the same: you have to show where they got worse.Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
I am not criticizing your build, I'm sure they both work fine. I'm just saying that they look pretty similar.
I don't put myself forward as a connaisseur of builds. The fact that I mixed up the two builds and saw fly in both, rather than superspeed in both, is proof of that.
So you both speed instead of fly. You say that you gained Fighting when you got free stamina. Either Arcanaville already had Fighting -- in which case your build became more like hers -- or she chose it also, proving that there are only a few viable options in the power pools. One way or another, your characters are more similar now than they were before inherent stamina. That's pretty undeniable.
In support of your thesis, you've said that inherent fitness drives builds closer together, so close in fact that you've strongly implied that everyone tends to get driven to similar choices. But in terms of powers, there are twelve power choices that are different: Power Burst, Sniper Blast, Bonesmasher, Power Boost, Total Focus, Superjump, boxing, kick, maneuvers, hover, fly, and repulsion bomb. You could say alternatively that there are six pairs of power choice swaps. That's six power choices out of twenty four choices, one of which *has* to be identical (power thrust) and two of which are extremely likely to be identical in blasters power bolt and power blast. In practical terms of the 23 real choices presented to us, 26% of them were different. That ratio is probably similar to the ratio before inherent stamina for energy blasters.
And that overlooks the stylistic differences that address the core of your thesis, that inherent stamina reduces options. Both builds are range-focused blasters. However, the way I "spent" inherent fitness was to fill in a melee option: I have bonesmasher and total focus. Those aren't just filler: they give me a melee option separate from my primary ranged focus. I am range-focused, but not range-exclusive. St Angelius' build spends the same power choices to add additional ranged options beyond conventional ranged shooting: it has sniper blast and power burst. And interestingly, power burst is not being used primarily as a short-range alternate attack. Its actually being used as a kinetic crash mule. While the attack does still do damage and is partially slotted for damage, its an inferior attack to bolt and blast: but it offers recharge bonuses and knock protection. This build is still almost exclusively a long-ranged blaster.
Yes, 75% of the power choices are the same, but I think that belies the fact that energy blasters were always approximately that similar in terms of counting powers, and that 25% difference masks a much greater playstyle and conceptual difference. As an energy blaster, St. Angelius' build seems almost as different from my build as a randomly generated one would. Between us, we have the speed, leaping, fighting, leadership, and flight pools, plus coincidentally the same epic pool (one build version earlier and I would have had cold). About the only pool we don't have that would have been common in the old days for energy blasters is the stealth pool and the medicine pool, and that was negated not by inherent fitness or incarnates, but the invention system in stealth IOs. And the invention system added far more diversity than it removed.
I'm not specifically trying to beat you up on this, but rather explain how your view of what is choice and diversity isn't taking into account what other people actually see and play. You seem to have a thousand foot view of energy blasters, for example, whereas most of the people I know that play them have a much more nuanced view of them. And this gets all the way back around to tactics and options. I have options Angelius lacks: I have total focus, I have bonesmasher. I can blap, albeit not as well as before. I have hover: I can hover-blast. Angelius has snipe, that build can long-pull better than I can, even with boost range. The build has maneuvers, it has ally buffs which I lack altogether. And *neither* of our builds has aid self, which is still used by blasters not uncommonly. It cannot be true that the game has eliminated or radically reduced tactical options, when people are still building around different tactical options. -
Quote:I see lots of radical changes in the last twelve months. And the previous twelve months. And the twelve months before that. Freedom was a radical change; Incarnates were a radical change; side switching was a radical change; real numbers was a radical change; the architect was a radical change; inventions and the wentworths/black market economy were a radical change; ED was a radical change, City of Villains was a radical change, increasing the level cap to 50 was a radical change.Originally Posted by MajorPrankster
"The game has radically changed in the last 12 months."
How, exactly?
I don't see any radical changes. Everything I could do 12 months ago I can do now.
They were all radical changes to someone, and not so much to others. Tomorrow, another radical change will happen that 99% of the players won't notice, and someone else will decide has suddenly hampered their ability to enjoy the game. It happens to all MMOs. The question is whether you stay because of what you can do, or leave because of what you can't do. What I liked about the game, when I first started playing it, was playing it. I like playing my characters. Incarnates can't change that. ED can't change that. Inventions can't change that. Every other player getting killed in a Zombie apocalypse can't change that. As long as I like playing my characters, everything else will be things I like or don't like within that context. I will still want to log in and play them. Sometimes more often, sometimes less. I've taken the occasional break here and there, but I never go far, because ultimately I still like playing the game. -
Quote:Terrorize itself is not a non-existent benefit: terrorize has evolved to become one of the best mez effects in the game (right behind confuse). Contrary to popular belief, damage doesn't just break things out of it: I have videos of Dark Armor with the damage aura and Cloak of fear on, and minions remaining terrorized for long periods of time (they can basically attack only about once every ten seconds).Originally Posted by EvilRyu
Arcanaville what is your opinion on CoF costing as much as it does vs the near non-existent benefit it gets when its supposed to be the signature power of the set.
The endurance cost is pretty high compared to practically all other defensive melee toggles. However, I think the main problem with Cloak of Fear is that its a toggle. I suspect if it was a PBAoE click with the same terrorize/endurance ratio, it would be taken and used more often. Because players don't like to toggle-manage, they pay the cost all the time rather than paying it only when Cloak of fear is really needed. If it was a click and players actually only used it when needed, I think its endurance costs would not be a problem.
No idea on the accuracy, though. I'm inclined to believe that's an error.
The best comparison analysis I can think of to make comparing Cloak of Fear to a comparable power is probably Arctic Air. Its also a PBAoE toggle, and it has both a debuff and a mez. It autohits rather than has an accuracy penalty, its mez has a 30% chance of firing instead of 100%, and its confuse is mag 3 not mag 2 like Cloak of Fear's terrorize. It also hits more targets and has a wider radius. But when I factor everything in, I get numbers that suggest both arctic air and cloak of fear pay about the same amount relative to effect, which suggests the endurance costs of Cloak of Fear, while they are way out of line for defensive toggles in general, aren't out of line relative to PBAoE mez toggles. A comparison to choking cloud, which doesn't debuff and doesn't autohit, ends up in at least roughly the same territory.
Actually, what would make Cloak of Fear perfect for me is: increase the accuracy to at least 0.8, which would match AoE mez accuracy, and reduce the cast time of toggle activation to 0.64 seconds and 19 frames of animation. Then I could turn it off and on relatively fast as needed without interfering with the flow of combat too much (in Arcanatime terms, this would reduce rooted times from 1.32 seconds to 0.79 seconds, cutting activation time almost in half). -
Quote:But ... but ... but what if one day I am in dire need of some rocks? Or a shotgun, or a divining rod, or a rock, or a baseball bat, or some tear gas, or a rock, or a stun grenade, or a jetpack, or a rock?Originally Posted by Matuse
One way to manage those powers would be to toss a few of those rocks. Surely 1 is enough to properly represent your solidarity with your earthen friends.
Oh darn, I think I forgot to replace a nuke. See, this is what happens when you have to shove all this stuff into your pockets: its easy to misplace a suborbital warhead. -
Quote:That happens when you side switch: one set is greyed out when you are on the other side. It can confuse players sometimes, though, because they still see the power in a power tray and they wonder why they can't use it, because there's another version of the same power in their power lists. And really strangely, I don't think that happens for all the accolades.Originally Posted by RosaQuartz
Two questions:
1. How did you get both versions of the accolade powers?
1. Power burst has a shorter range than bolt and blast. If my attack chain was bolt/blast/burst I would need to always be within 40 feet of the targets, or use boost range more often than I do now.Quote:2. Why not take Power Burst?
2. Regardless, having only bolt, blast, and explosive blast isn't viable as an attack chain unless you have a whole lot of recharge. Which I do. Ultrahigh recharge opens the door to dropping burst. Burst does have the superior DPA, but only by the tiniest of margins. Its one of the long-time flaws of energy blast: it doesn't have that one really high DPA attack. If we were talking about Blaze, then short range or not I would take it.
3. What possessed me to try to make a build that can have a complete or nearly complete attack chain with just bolt and blast? The Infinite Freem mission from Ramiel, actually. I wanted to duplicate to the best extent possible that experience of just letting fly with my long-ranged attacks, which I thought was all sorts of fun. -
Quote:The OP's suggestion wasn't actually a buff request. It was more of a usability change: the notion was that Dark Regen was so powerful its benefits could be more than necessary, but it had to pay a high cost all the same. So cutting the heal in half and the endurance cost in half would then mean you were still paying the same amount of endurance for the same amount of base heal, but the power would be more manageable.Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
I can't say which is more ridiculous: that we're up past 100 posts on yet another "dark need buff!" thread, or that the pro-buff position is being sustained by one-sentence non-replies and people are bothering to put thought and effort into detailed rebuttals.
It is obvious that dark armor does not need any buffs, dark armor is not going to get any buffs, but sufficient lobbying may land it a nerf. Think we're nearly there yet?
However, it gets sticky for reasons I've mentioned. Unless you cut the recharge in half as well your maximum heal per second drops dramatically. And if you do, you still have less benefit from slotted recharge than before, and you also have to use it twice as often to get the same effect unless you saturate it, and that could mean almost doubling the amount of time you spend rooted and not attacking. And DA is already the powerset with the *highest* theoretical rooted time.
It was presented as a neutral usability improvement with no bad side effects. Unfortunately, it has a number of bad side effects, not the least of which it damages the playstyle of the existing Dark Armor players that have already adapted to, and now leverage the way Dark Regen already works. That makes the proposal problematic.
But to be fair its not just a "buff Dark Armor" thread. -
Quote:I think not as well. Let me know when you find such a powerset so I can avoid it.Originally Posted by EvilRyu
So playing a powerset that needs IOs just to function thats still the equivalent of a super hero with asthma is balanced? I think not.
Mind you, I played both a dark armor scrapper and a dark armor brute before I9. And to the extent that I was playing a super hero with asthma, I radically increased the chances of asthma related death in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. -
Quote:It actually seems to be rather important to your point, since your overall point hinges on what choices people are presented with. If you can be wrong about how players value Boost Range, you can be wrong about lots of other choices players are presented with. You argument hinges on the notion that of the choices we're presented with today, more of them are trivial than used to be. You can't argue we have numerically less actual choices, because that's not true enough to a high enough magnitude to be interesting. Its certainly not the "1/3rd" number you mentioned before, because your approach to counting options fails to account for the fact that many options that exist today didn't exist before. Did inherent fitness reduce the amount of choices available to players in a meaningful way is I think the more important question, and I can say with reasonable certainty it so far has not.Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
I'm going to explain this simply and in kindergarten terms.
Sally, Joe, and Betty all have baskets that can hold three fruit. They can each take one of apples, oranges, pears, and bananas.
Sally takes everything but the oranges, Joe takes everything but the pears, and Betty takes everything but the bananas. They all have different baskets.
Now someone gives them all baskets that can hold more. They all take an apple, an orange, a pear and a banana.
Each of their baskets are more diverse. But the baskets as a whole are uniformly the same.
Diversity arises both because of what you can take and because of what you have sacrificed. We lost more than we gained. I don't think I can make it any clearer than that.
I am, however, very sorry for everything I said about Boost Range. Thankfully, the fact that it's useful doesn't change my point at all.
If your argument was true that removing fitness as an option automatically reduced the number of choices available to us, and therefore diversity went down as a consequence, then what to make of the devs plans to give us three more slots? That is *adding* choices, so adding slots should automatically increase the diversity in the game, according to your argument as you've presented it.
Does it, as you see it? -
Quote:Your math is in error. For one thing, you're assuming that all possible power pool choices that exist now also existed before. That's obviously false: you're limited to four power pools total. So options that exist now didn't exist when fitness wasn't inherent. Second, you're assuming that all possible combinations of power pool choices are equally viable with and without inherent stamina. Take my posted energy/energy build. Technically, that basic possibility existed before without inherent stamina, but only by eliminating several powers. The logical ones to remove are flight, power boost, and boost range. However, that eliminates several options that exist to me now: they are not trivial eliminations. It eliminates flight, which to me is a deal-breaker on my blaster. Swapping flight and jettisoning superspeed eliminates stealth stacking, which I got used to back in my blapper days (before I9, it was stealth+SS; now its proc+SS). Power boost boost defense, and I can have it up more than half the time. And boost range gives me a significant advantage when it comes to using torrent+EB: torrent is the only ranged attack I have that isn't 80 feet range. Boost range can be up perma, and it boosts torrent from 40 to 64 feet of range (and a correspondingly wider arc to hit more targets).Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
Well, let's use an energy/energy blaster as a concrete example.
Before, the blaster would have to get a travel prerequisite, a travel power, and the three powers in Fitness. They had room for for 20 powers up to level 38, after which we can assume are filled with epics. Minus 5, that's 15 powers and 3 powers less than they have available in their powersets. Let's assume at least at first they all drop Boost Range, since it's probably the worst power in the AT.
The blaster can choose to drop utility powers (Aim, Stun), or drop offense that doesn't fit into an attack chain (Sniper bolt, Nova), or decide not to use melee attacks much (Energy Punch, Power Thrust). They might decide that they didn't like to use self-buffs (Aim, Build Up) or status effects (Power Push, Stun). There's many different options they could have gone with. Numerically, there are exactly 8*7 = 56 options for what powers they could skip. 8*8 = 64 if you allow the possibility for taking Boost Range.
Now we get inherent stamina, and we get travel powers without prerequities. The blaster has four new slots. The blaster now takes...every power. They have to. Including Boost Range. With one slot still open, we're forced to take a single pool power with no slotting. I'll be generous and say that there are 21 possible picks from the nine power pools, including three secondary travel powers, although to be realistic some of the pool powers should never be taken alone and unslotted. Our 64 options possible before have now been condensed to 21. About a third as many character design options as there were before.
In *both* cases the blaster could choose to sacrifice more powers from their primary and secondary and take power pools instead. Nothing has changed in that respect, and there are no advantages to pre- or post- Stamina from that. The number of possible combinations is still very large because you can choose to sacrifice AT powers to take pool powers. But those combinations were multiplicative with the basic combinations and they haven't changed. The basic options have been reduced to about a third of what they were, and so that reduces all options by the same amount. Character design diversity is a third of what it was.
Adding a fifth power in the travel pools helps a little. Allowing epic powers to be taken at 35 helps a little. (I haven't respecced to take advantage of that yet.) But the essential fact is that meaningful choices require a sacrifice of the non-selected options. We were given the ability to make fewer sacrifices, and that reduced our options. They needed to give us more options -- more power pools -- to compensate.
The bottom line is my energy/energy build is an option that exists today and didn't really exist pre-inherent fitness. The question is how many such builds does your math overlook. -
Quote:I posted my Energy blaster build already. Here's my MA/SR:Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
I'm not worried about prereqs. I'm worried about being forced to take powers but not having slots for them. That doesn't mean you have to take useless powers. Combat Jumping is an excellent power unslotted, and Assault is adequate. But that leaves fewer options. You can choose to take Maneuvers or...I dunno, anything from the Presence pool. Then you're taking useless powers. The diversity -- the choice -- is an illusion. In reality the only choices are few: CJ, Assault, maybe grant invisibility, Recall, or another travel power.
People don't take useless powers, Arcanaville. They do anything to avoid them, including taking the same powers that everyone else takes. That's my point.
Here's my Ill/Rad:Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1529;704;1408;HEX;| |78DA65936B53125118C7CFB28B288A425E5011C13B1759A1CB4C535653998689A1A| |8EF1A5AE1A85B1B308033FAB2AF5033DA4CF5AEACDEF4CDBA7C82E8619FBFC80C3B| |B3F33BCFFF3CB773F6D9CCC94ADFCFB5B70F84D2FFD8326AB57CAE50352A1559756| |D1AF5E3AA61097A3C7B66D992F5F0F6F19B7D4BBA48095CBAE533D29252CF18D5BA| |6958F987D57A2DD4DA5B9107B254937AEEB8696DCB034B9EC89A2F5D3A925559AAE| |B978BBE6CB96CE91BD2A898A5438F6DAC9A8747F596959145B36096A4DBB6721529| |8BBE2715B3A03F2A174FF319A35697D5D351EA2B4AEF59B341FB696862DE21444A1| |38E0818636A5130CECC346314C4ACAAB6D6B5CEF4AE3147D2CCD167CC7317422846| |792938A6C8ECDE070B4CB7646E528CCA75541575DCC83F8AFCE3A8FB817C9D9CDFE| |9FCC27DF67D052F98FDDFC0EF4CEF0FE6738A75711D87CB418B054DCC3684CDF97F| |CC2CF9F4707ED113E7FE4648EBE538A5F7164153C5E4B062EF29B4E781BF6799F7B| |6481B409D816EAE33AF8188FB483E3E9CC377C075AEBD028F9843AFC1A7C460F3AE| |992AC50EE2BE0647145B8B2DF1FDC4FCB0AFB3BD4DBEC3EC2B86139C4F23CD8F783| |FFA1AF7725F135D6C4FA0CF4FE43B86EF397697EF71F236788739B5CC9CBDC7CC51| |4C00E70F0C719E59E45B401D3FF904716FC108F7F599B4106A85303B61CC4C18331| |3C62C4D61767628661A679946EE994110B567503B48BE739C5F99DB453F396688F6| |22BCA746B0B718E01A8B3BB0E19BA3AB8DA3F738666497341DF1FA12DFC3920E26C| |145E6050D4C123D27512B85DCA92DF09C7D27B4D67F2B04E66BA35DC337CD6AADFF| |4E28E829A4B5FEDF46D66D7BDBEB176D6BA36DBDDFB6EEF1D23F89F52FD215CC908| |27ABFDB357CBF3F579A5349F31C4571AE28CE99B8CFF39958E7FDC41EEB7FAF6255| |E50C73853B5878CF8CBE6326DBCFDFA047C43A94548772B343B9D1A1FC070DECDA5| |4| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
I literally do not see or encounter the problem you're claiming exists, without giving specifics. If you can tell me what powers I was either forced to take that without inherent fitness my builds could lose without deficit, or alternatively where I took a power just because, or how inherent fitness caused my builds to end up looking like everyone else's, let me know.Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1538;703;1406;HEX;| |78DA6593594F13611486BFE94CA965911664A7500A582876E808E89DA86C41012B1| |8AE4432C220938C6D332D095EFA03F4C20D970B3716BDF1528DBFC3A88946FD030A| |6ED7783AEF813699499BE77C6FCF36E7EB995C1D2E7F35767D504881214BCF66E78| |7D2A99C9DB62CC3F6CD2C98466AC110F4549C5AB1D3B61E9E4DDB3963D5474A7BC1| |712F461DB7AC95AC994EED0991229FD32B4B4BEAB4BE68EAB9BCC7C855339B770D8| |EA7960DDB48E5D43DA32A99A654170CCBC85031C7BBD291260C7DD1B0B3CB66A6CC| |398F5AE695E55CA963CF640C633138923117D451D336E627F56CCEB0AFD553A3DDF| |47D2C097E761511F708A129A24405CB7BC18309A6064E15C79C951CAD63128C9D63| |4E81F124F88420718CB446882A22709FF900AC7D08363E02F3A964276857965FA37| |6FB3BB0E32DF30DF88CFCBC9CDF3B0CAD65046C1BE5D831E638986FCD87FC5EDF2D| |68076E33EF80A5779937782637C14EBA693FEA097F4C385A94B432D6CA583B4FF92| |BA049156DD0E2CC75FAAD12F545650DE6B44108C2DF1BDC41ADAADFCC3FE0A16DE6| |20587B129CA1D86AAE5FDD881ACF49AB410DA9866BC402E053421DCFAC4E478EFA8| |BCC39B0F712A8CD839B14D3C0310DDF91A7F133D8FC95F90D6CF90206692E4DE8C1| |D3C43DB40DD051914594594D3E21BE8BD03ADFDF0618DD646E81DD2F982FC12D8A6| |BE599B5F2CCC23CB330CF2CFC8BFF0BFF3097DEBF38FBA96E84E713E1DE34EE6996| |8E9DC82B77BE27FF90220E7F627E607E04D76521BA782E5D7DDC5F3F786480790C8| |C1F073728A687E7D27354864F9DE4E4D3349C23D49FCAFDA93DDC3B739AF404DF77| |82B566657F37E9438F98702949657F1785E428A182CF6EB2D4F174ECB9225B2FB22| |F17D9FE006D29DB3F4897A4E2CC3F5DCA7641F14827F0B69E3392B3F19E59DCC04E| |C14796D6302D853754E10D2DB907265CEF1773299A4BE977297D2EE53F628306C4| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
To me, there aren't "useful" and "useless" powers: its not a binary thing. There are the powers I want the most, and the powers I want the least, but rarely are there powers I literally would rather not have or take but then don't use. And there's no rule that states powers are only useful when slotted a particular way, and there's no compromise that exists.
And here's a build for my Kat/Invuln that dates all the way back to I9. In fact, the empty slots in the build are empty because they are empty in the actual build: I never finished it. It still has standard fitness: it hasn't been respeced, so it doesn't have inherent fitness.
The build is missing the invuln resistance passives, like many invuln builds skipped back then. If I ever respec, I will probably put them both in, like many current invuln builds put them back in. This is a loss of diversity to the game in what way? What options did Katana/Invuln scrappers have then that we don't have now, or in what way are the number of different builds possible different now than then?Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1391;650;1300;HEX;| |78DA65935D53DA401486376431454044C58F0A0AA8A02201467BD1D1D6A96015AB1| |D9599DE3AA96E95994C649268D55EF5BE5FD3F6A67FA2FFB0931E765F6947329027| |39FB9EB36FCEEE1EDC3462BF773E6E326DA86E5B9E77D23A75AD4E47B8C66BCBBF7| |22D9BD1157D65F996636509C2A0F7D4BDE8E440D8429818EE451BE29D703C61369D| |EB2BDB11AEF5B66DB7FDDB64D3B910AE707CF3FE61F0F0F2D2365B1D21CE62F2F16| |5DB7784E7C5F1727EE1B79DF3847CDB17D69970BD8B766764BBD33E35B76CEB4E9C| |1C589E2FDCDB497295A7FFE7AE3D790561B64BC870166A827B8A7C8B3849AC2B0E3| |414D7FFE5EAACAA3156A3B19AE2A335708218E16C83B49AD286348C0D423B88DC2F| |A4D1E1457FCF642C760DDE280EDD82778AC31F8839CEBE526E18F5C3258C8123015| |DEC19290C54375A6AC69123C5B163B0492C7236BE03EE2A7EA3C488F41F84224F09| |5C67930F98274D140EA298F9F103CE9126AE342CBEAEF2362996405E029D49A3336| |974E63B69924AC393E8CC0C3A3083CECCA033D90D557780724631D7A8EC80419114| |664AED51E53CA9DF68B27FD9E7C418AD176926A099C8AA8AB907FC419A29B8993A6| |4B24EEE4871EE186C8170F38272A65507F5E93F8471CEE687D5D7CD8F112B44E9F2| |13293358A70C7664013BB2801D59C08E2C624716B1237F52EE2C9CCDA23F45F46B0| |97D5A429F96E06CCB5027A1EB2C0F47CB70B43C4AAC12A5B33A2917A05C78A2942B| |58A99555102BAD917611DD5F94D93A454AC82E619DCBC82E639DCB3995CD496B426| |BC253059E2AF054915593A4AC425985A206454D2AD43DCD7B67957EDDC8FEFF9148| |88B1026787BC774A99862F99EDEA64300822C3BD131AFC4ACA4CF95CEDABBEDC17A| |9F545D6FA22AB7D91BF04BBDE4F| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
Incidentally, I mentioned earlier that in some ways the incarnate system made my scrapper "scrappier" and you challenged me to ask why that doesn't imply homogeneity? Well, that the incarnate system did to this build is I slotted Alpha and put in cardiac. That allowed me to run at full power with all toggles up for a much longer period of time: almost indefinitely in many cases. Before, I used weave and maneuvers mostly as burst temporary protection, but I couldn't run them permanently or risk running out of endurance. With them up now all the time, I'm definitely "scrappier." Am I identical to all other Kat/invulns? On the surface, probably: we all have most of the Invuln set and divine avalanche. I doubt, though, any of them are actually just like this.
(Ah memories: this build has kinetic combats slotted in Soaring Dragon because at the time they cost practically nothing. This was designed specifically to be an economy build.)
I keep coming back to the fact that your knowledge of how people build seems limited mostly to how you build, and you seem to think everyone else must have the problems you have, or face the same limitations you face. Technically, we all have the exact same choices, but clearly we aren't all evaluating those choices in the same way. The problem you keep saying is totally unavoidable to you is a problem I don't even see the tiniest hint of at all. Not even a hint of a whisper.
The question is, at least in this context, do the vast overwhelming majority of people see what I see, or see what you see. I'm willing to bet real money its the former, and not the latter. There is also the separate point that the position that diversity options don't exist requires only one counterexample to prove false, while the position that diversity options do exist require only one example to prove true. -
Just saying, is all.
-
Quote:I've been advocating choice with consequence - using those exact words - since 2004. However, I think this goes too far. For example, I think its an entirely valid choice to decide to decouple appearance from function: its actually a novel and innovative choice on the part of the original designers that I believe makes City of Heroes interesting. 99% of the time, appearance does not dictate ability (excluding actual animating weapons in weapon sets), and that allows for a level of character customization that I think is a good thing. Which is not to say appearance driven ability is a bad thing: its just two different ways to address the issue, and I think the way we do it is more applicable to the genre in the general case. In the case of character appearance customization, flash *is* substance.Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
This game loves choices without consequence. It's reflected in everything from being forced to choose useless powers to the easy death penalties to the accelerating profusion of costume pieces. Flash without substance -- gimmick content. If that's what people want then there's nothing I can do. I just don't think it makes for a healthy game.
But being forced to choose useless powers? I've *never* been forced to choose useless powers, across literally over a hundred builds and virtually every powerset option. Let me put it this way: there exists no power in any character build I've ever played that I have not used dozens if not hundreds of times. I've probably used boxing hundreds of times, and its among the powers I take most often primarily as a prereq. Even then, I've eventually used it when slowed. But inherent fitness did not increase this need to take prereqs. I could post dozens of builds and ask where the useless powers are, but that would be besides the point I think. If you are a more focused builder that only needs X number of powers to realize a build, then the more of those powers the devs give you for free, the more likely you'll complete the build with options to spare. But that's not something you can blame the game on, because its specific to you. The vast majority of the players don't build that way, and its not necessarily because they are ignorant or inexperienced. Its just a matter of preference. I'm a pretty advanced builder when I want to be, but I don't have that limitation. Its not something I will one day in some way outgrow, nor is it something you can account for as me somehow wanting less. I certainly want more complexity, provided it doesn't abandon the entire rest of the player base in the process, but this area is not one where I find the game lacking in complexity. -
Quote:Interestingly, none of your options include the two options most commonly recommended when inherent fitness came out, including the only two I offered at the time:Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
When inherent fitness came along I was presented with the option of either taking powers from my primary and secondary that I skipped, or taking a new power pool or some combination of pool powers. The problem was slots. The new powers I took would not receive any slotting, unless I stripped slots from the powers that I had already designed the character to have.
That left four choices:
A. Take powers from the primary and secondary that didn't need slots.
B. Take powers from power pools that don't need slots (Combat jumping, or Assault->Tactics->Vengeance).
C. Take some powers and never use them.
D. Take multiple travel powers.
E. Rethink the build from scratch factoring in inherent stamina.
or, if you really don't care:
F. Do nothing.
Perhaps you're just unlucky and the alternatives just happened to not exist given your build requirements, or perhaps they did exist and you didn't consider them carefully enough, but there are often powers in a build that are six slotted that could be five slotted without a critical loss of function, or five slotted powers that could be four slotted such that the benefit from shifting that slot to another power is higher. My Ill/Rad used to six-slot flash and blind, because I could. But when I respeced around inherent fitness, I slotted fitness. As part of the slot-shuffling, I five slotted both powers. I could have gone even lower on Flash, but I wanted to slot it with Unbreakable for the recharge bonus. If I wasn't slotting purples, I would have probably been willing to drop another slot.
Its virtually never the case that there exists only one slotting for a power that will work. If you have power A, you might decide to put six slots in it, because there's nowhere better to put those slots. But if you suddenly get power B for free, you might decide to slot A with four and B with three (that's the same five discretionary slots), because a four-slotted A combined with a three-slotted B is overall better than a six-slotted A and a one-slotted B. It happens all the time, *particularly* when you are slotting inventions and set bonuses come into play.
My MA/SR has aid self. If inherent fitness did not exist, she would not have physical perfection, and those slots would be in Aid self. However, with physical perfection in the build it makes sense to split the slots up between them. Instead of a three-slot aid-other and a six-slot Aid Self, I have a two-slot Aid other and a four-slot Aid Self and a four-slot PP. That's essentially what adding inherent fitness, which in my build allowed for PP, did to my build: it shuffled slots. With no other choice, the logical place for the slots is in Aid self, for maximum aid self strength. Or perhaps in weave, to add more buffer above the soft-cap. But with PP in the game, adding slots to PP not only adds additional regeneration to my build through direct slotting, it also adds additional regeneration and MaxHealth bonuses via Numinas. That additional passive regeneration and increased health can reduce the need for aid self, and all other things being equal I would prefer aid self to be a less necessary power. In terms of total maximum health recovery, that was a loss. But in terms of improving the overall ability for the build to play without resorting to aid self, which roots and stops offense for a significant amount of time with each use, its an overall improvement.
I mention this as a conceptual preference that drove a specific slotting change that ultimately took slots away from one power while giving them to another power available due to inherent fitness. Which means its a form of example of my option E that is not listed in one of your four options. If such options don't exist for you, they certainly exist for other people. -
Quote:Since both the playerbase and the devs imply that most players took fitness, giving everyone fitness and then allowing them to pick other powers is likely to have had a neutral effect on diversity overall. You're replacing powers most players had: to reduce diversity players would have had to be driven into the same set of powers to an even greater degree than which they took fitness. In other words, suppose 75% of all players took fitness. For diversity to have dropped, for each powerset combination, say energy/energy, more than 75% of all players that had fitness must take the exact same three powers (assuming they drew three from fitness in the first place) to replace them, and this must be true on average across all powerset combinations. That seems unlikely to me.Originally Posted by RemusShepherd
More diversity since launch? Sure, I'll go along with that. But we had a peak of diversity sometime after the release of IOs. (Issue 11?) Since then characters have been given various free power slots, and that has decimated diversity in the game. Where we are now is better than at launch but worse off than we were a few years ago.
It does beg the interesting question: not counting slotting and inventions, how many different possible powerset choice combinations exist, starting from a given primary and secondary choice, and is it more likely that the players are dispersed more evenly among all possibilities now than before. That is a computationally lengthy question.