Arcanaville

Note: I wrote that long before the whole "The Well Must Be Crazy!" story line was revealed.

A basic modification of the story justification of the mechanical idea.

Note: this was not directly in response to EvilGeko's idea in the OP, but a suggestion to use a simplified version of the idea I posted above using already existing Ouroboros content rather than a highly structured mission arc designed to be roughly as difficult as something in between the WSTs and the Incarnate trials. "Pebbles" here is the same idea as the "splinters" idea I spoke of in the past, but could not specify under what context I originally came up with the idea. This was the original context in which I came up with the idea.

To be honest, all my deaths to blue patches have come not from standing in them rooted, but from moving *into* them by accident while flying or hopping around. Compared to dodging orbital cannons, the blue patches of death are no big deal really.

Someone mentioned Hail of Bullets. I think that is (one of) the worst case scenario(s). If you don't have the pistols drawn, you will take about 0.83 seconds to draw them, 3.5 seconds to shoot, 0.83 seconds to play a trailer root animation, and burn a total of 5.16 seconds. And you'd still have enough time to shoot one fast pistols attack and jump clear.

Now, if you join a pug full of players running nothing but blue auras, you might want to consider taking a break for a while. That's a team that is either trying to kill itself, or you, or both. Of course, if you already have MoApex but don't have all the debt badges yet, knock yourself out.

Not to specifically shoot the messenger, but I'm going to put my security professional hat on now. I'm now speaking as an authority on information systems security, not just some shmuck that works the help desk at Symantec. I'm not fooling around here.

1. Asking people to use *truthful* personal information as authentication information is no longer considered best practice, as others have pointed out. Its considered about as stupid as using your own name as your password in the security community, or "123456". In fact, *asking* people for this information as authentication information could be considered both a breach of privacy *and* a failure to protect customers from phishing attacks. I would personally cite a customer for doing this today, and for a few years now. I *have* cited customers for doing this: this is not a "should remediate" but "must remediate" audit failure.

Back when this game was new, that was not a commonly held opinion, so they get a legacy pass. But the current system leverages it, and no reputable security professional would do that in a system intended to improve the security of the system for its users. No reputable professional with a brain.

2. Best practice for customers asked by a company to do this is to pick someone else randomly, and use their answers. A distant cousin, you mother's neighbor, some familiar but no one would likely guess off the top of their heads even if they knew you personally. Or, famous or fictional people work as well. Abraham Lincoln, James Bond, Spider Jerusalem - someone you can remember and easily look up the answers to even if you forget them. Its a variation on the "pick a password by picking a memorable phrase, then using the third letter from each word plus some numbers and puncutation." You can make arbitrarily long and strong passwords this way without having to remember them.

3. Tying the security to IP address is not a good idea in isolation. Its not as stupidly bad as the thing above, but its still not good. Cloud vendors like to do this, and its fine if the goal is not to secure the system, but to restrict the pool of potential attackers. Sure: if you IP address changes often, eventually someone else will have your IP address and could attack your account. But that is still better than everyone on Earth being able to do that. The problem, as others have specified, is that people whose addresses change a lot will have to reauthenticate often. This violates one of the cardinal rules of security: don't make it harder for the user than it would be for an attacker. I could *attack* the system easier than someone whose IP address changes every day could even use the system normally. In the security community, we call that an Epic Phail.

Incidentally, good cloud vendors at least tend to authenticate out of band. Meaning, they don't usually ask you security questions to validate the new address, they do something like send an email to you asking you to authenticate the address. Which is slightly more secure, but also less practical for a game. In this case, an encrypted cookie would have been better. Alternatively an SSL client authentication certificate would have been better yet: that is how I would have likely written the system if I wanted some level of authentication with minimal cost, without the problems associated with IP filtering and cookies.

4. If you're really serious about security take a cue from WoW. Give people the *option* to use two-factor authentication. *Real* two-factor authentication. These days, you can even get authenticator tokens built into software that work in smartphones: RSA (which was mentioned earlier) has an iPhone soft-token and I believe an Android one. Or you can go with the cheaper Vasco (I believe) tokens that Blizzard went with. I think the $6.50 price is the price break when you buy in crates of a million, but they are still fairly cheap even at non-blizzard quantities. Or you can even go with one of those services that will text message you a login passcode when you want to log in if you want to eliminate the hardware and software altogether (but those have issues, not the least of which is having to register a phone number).

With genuine two-factor authentication, you don't have to worry about all this IP address validation stuff. The token just works where ever the player is, however the player logs in, because the presumption is that the player isn't sharing the token with someone else. If they are, that's their problem (also, this presumes NCSoft protects seed records for the tokens better than Fort Knox).


You're supposed to leave corporate security to the professionals. Whoever advised NCSoft to do this is either not a professional, or not a good one. I intend to ask around.


Summary:

Option 1: Cookies. Okay. Unless your players like blocking cookies.

Option 2: SSL certificate auth with verification before issuance. Good. Assuming your web developers know what they are doing and your players haven't teleported into this year from the early 90s.

Option 3: Two-factor token auth. Better. Also more expensive.

Option 4: IP filters. Bad. More work for some valid users than statically allocated attackers.

Option 5: Personal information questions. Very Bad. Considered laughing stock by modern security professionals.

Probably another one of those things you shouldn't say during your CoX job interview.

You know, I suppose that's worth a shot.

Now *that's* pretentious, that you're certain you're more Bug Hunter-worthy than I am. At one time, I was told that a fair assessment of Bug Hunter was to report a bug that was so large in size and scope that a failure to address it promptly would be so catastrophic that it would require a roll back of the entire game to a point before the bug was exploited. I said at the time that I never reported such a bug, so I wasn't sure why I received Bug Hunter when I did.

However, the threshold doesn't seem to be that high. Excluding that (and in fact I've subsequently found bugs that arguably could be considered that large in theory) its a fairly safe assumption my resume for Bug Hunter is not inferior to yours. Unless yours has:

a. A bug that affects the survivability of every single player that plays the game, regardless of what they play and how they play it

b. A bug that would require rewriting significant parts of the game client to address if it was widely exploitable

and

c. Multiple bug reports with over 100 individual bugs listed involving powers, critters, and effects.

I'm not worried.


Also, when I say its difficult for me to get the attention of the devs, I'm simply stating the fact that I almost always get through when they are not busy by one communications channel or another, and conversely when they are busy I sometimes don't, and this seems to be one of those times.

Unless NCSoft has banned them from talking to me, which I suppose is theoretically possible, albeit weird. I'm pretty sure I would have heard about it if that happened by now.

I think of late the devs have been so busy they just don't have as much time for communication as they used to. Even I have extreme difficulty getting to anyone by any means. The Issue 18-19-20 cycle has been the tightest I've ever seen in seven years.


About a year ago I was talking to Castle about a specific issue and he told me at one point that he would have to table that because he was going to be in meetings all day for the next two days. And I was like "wouldn't you run out of people to even meet with after a day and a half?" The process of MMO development is really not like how I think most people picture it, where most of the work involves sitting at a computer doing design stuff. And not just at Paragon Studios. Sometimes I think MMO developers have to specifically schedule time on Tuesday to type a "3" on their keyboards.


Although, fearghas was an extremely light poster before he Ascended, so I don't know how thick a skin he has either. If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" And then I would post "First after me, ha ha ha!" And then I would dare the mods to ban a red name by face-palming everyone. You wouldn't be *able* to shut me up.

Of course, I do have this other career I can fall back on.

It isn't. I just can't help thinking about what I like and dislike without translating it into more of the same by way of illustration. Disregard if you feel it derails the primary point of the thread.

True story. This is entirely my fault, but during I14 beta I made three arcs to test in three different directions. I made my goofy Bug Hunt arc just to play around, and that eventually evolved into that ... thing. I made the Scrapper Challenge arc to push the envelope on custom critter design, and look for mechanical AI and powers exploits. And I made on actual story arc that tested my ability to actually use the AE as intended, to tell a story, called "Secret Weapons." I picked an actual story that I wanted to tell.

I shouldn't have done that. Patch after patch broke it, then I fixed it, then it broke again. Eventually I reached my limit and gave up on it. I fixed it one last time when I14 released, and then it broke *again* and I just removed the broken map and shortened it, from its original five mission length to its launch four mission length to its current three mission length.

Periodically, I try to go back and fix it up: put it back to what it was in Beta and also improve it using the improvements since then and also some of the original restrictions have been relaxed that originally hurt it - ambush count for example. But I find I can't. I'm actually still a little bit bitter over the process, even though as I said its my fault for using something I care about in a beta. I'm never making that mistake again. Every few months I tweak it a little here and a little there, hoping that I can eventually get over it, so I can return to it.

See, that arc was supposed to be the first in a sequence of three or four arcs at least, and if I can't fix it, neither can I write any of the others in sequence. But I can tell you what the arc was intended to address. Two things: first, its a veiled retelling of one of my alt's origin stories, but with my own character sidelined and the focus on the player.

The second theme it was supposed to address? Reconciling all of the problems with Origin of Power. Not making that up: Secret Weapons has basically been in the AE since beta and since launch, and you can see hints that this is where its supposed to go in that arc. Before Incarnates and the Well of Furies was a rumor of a rumor, I had an idea of how to supersede Origin of Power with something better. I still want to write that one day, eventually, because in terms of overall script outline and concept, its already done.


On the other hand, I would prefer it if you blamed Dr. Aeon. It was fearghas that got all those dev choices, not me.

I was actually thinking the very same thing the other day. Or rather, I was thinking that they should be one of the customizable options.


I was also thinking the other day that someone was taking notes back in I14 beta: just about everything I tried to do in the AE during testing, most of which was *removed from the AE* as being exploitive, is showing up as featured content one after the other. Clones. Continuous triggered ambushes. Heck, does anyone remember when I made the mission with the Dancing Swords protecting the Boss that were designed to attack you and you couldn't target them back, because they still had the untargetable attribute so only untargeted AoEs could defeat them?

Mark my words: in Issue 21 the Praetorian Hamidon is going to invade Primal Earth and take on our Hamidon.

I was actually thinking about a PvP zone coloring system. In the red zone you get higher rewards, in the yellow zone lower rewards, and in the green zone the lowest rewards. We won't have to force players into a particular zone based on skill, because I would think the players would do that automatically. The best players will hang out in the red zone where the best rewards for a kill drop. And that means the weaker players won't hang out there because they will just die. Or they will hang out there and get good enough to join them. Either way, the rewards will separate players by risk tolerance. Sure, a top player can eviscerate a low player in the green zone, but they won't get anything much for doing so. Killing a medium player in the yellow zone would generate much better rewards, but still nowhere as good as actually not sandbagging it and going after their equals in the red zone.

*On top of that* we could layer a universal rep system like you mention to ensure that over and above that, a high end player that decides to forgo rewards and attack weak PvPers in the green zone doesn't just forgo better rewards, but is actually penalized in some fashion, like with negative rep.

To make this work, the rewards in the red zone have to be really good. And to make that work, there has to be much better anti-farming code. And I have a pretty good idea how to do.

Just to offer a counter-point, the danger in all emotionally charged issues like the Lore pets is that the side opposed doesn't always realize there even exists a side in favor. The specific danger is when someone says something like this: the devs must be morons for thinking this was a good idea. That's actually a hidden slam on a lot of other players, whether the poster realizes it or not, because every single player that actually likes it the way it is, and may even prefer it the way it is, will consider that tantamount to calling *them* morons because in the devs place they would probably do the same thing.

I actually call the devs morons more than any other poster, but I'm really careful about it. I feel safe saying the devs made a stupid mistake when they, for example, misplace a decimal place in a number. Because I doubt many people are sitting at home saying "I object, if I were a dev I would be putting decimal points in random places all the time!" I'm willing to write off the two or three lunatics that actually think that. But I tend to steer clear of saying that a dev action proves mental defect when it involves something I know that whatever my opinion on the matter, there are lots of people who actually like what they did. Even if I think it was a stupid error, like, oh, say Shield Charge, I very narrowly say that the change was a stupid mistake given the rules the devs claim to follow. I don't say anyone who liked the broken power is obviously an idiot.

Most people know "I don't like it" is in bounds and "everyone who likes it is stupid" is out of bounds. Most people, I think, aren't aware that "the devs must be idiots for doing this" is over the line in a subtle way you aren't likely to notice unless you are one of those people on the other side of the issue and are thinking you'd do the same thing. And most posters won't give fair warning like I will, by saying "well, if you think the devs are crazy for doing that, if I was them I would probably have done something similar**." That's me saying "look: the devs are paid to take abuse, but you're also slamming other players who agree with the devs that don't have that as a job description. Tread lighter." And if they don't and in so many words say I have to be just as dumb, then at least there's no confusion about intent, and I'm free to respond accordingly.

Honestly, this thread has been really tame and I have no problem with it or any of its sidetracks personally, but the Lore issue now and especially the Solo issue before venture strongly into this territory more than once. And it can cumulatively set people on edge without other people realizing the cumulative effect over time. Even I feel it sometimes, and that's actually saying something.

I will also say that in every issue like this, this error eventually happens both ways, from both the players opposed and the players for. However, the asymmetry is that the players in favor far less often from out of nowhere say something like "I love this, and the devs are geniuses for doing something no one could possibly dislike." Its harder to cross this line *first* when you are in favor of something. Its far easier to cross the line first as an opponent. Then, once that is done, the threshold for the other side drops precipitously: "oh yeah, well maybe the devs are smart enough to make stuff for the majority, and not the insignificant minority of players." That's why its the players that oppose a dev action that have to be the most careful: they actually hold the keys to this door of using the devs as a bat to swing around. Its not about sparing the devs criticism: do it my way and you can criticize them all you want without incurring collateral damage among the other players. Its about not going nuclear first with the devs as the big red button.

Sorry for the side track, but as this post is more than a hundred words long, most people will skip over it anyway so the impact is probably low.


** For the record, under no set of circumstances would I have done, or recommended, that the Lore pets be what they currently are or connected to the Lore the way they currently are, because that is a high-pain no-gain design decision. That makes the decision, from a purely game design strategic perspective, a highly questionable one.

My recollection is that Positron stated that one of the reasons was content related, but not necessarily specifically "story" related. I'm also thinking of his public statement on the matter:

Note he doesn't say the slot had no benefit he says it didn't have the benefit specifically intended, which is to be intertwined with incarnate content. As it has always been my theory that the incarnate powers system is inextricably connected to incarnate content as an end game progressional system, this made perfect sense to me: one without the other violates the intent of the system being an actual system. This theory does not directly imply that every element of the incarnate system including Lore pets or the methodology of unlocking Alpha must have a Praetorian story connection, or even any specific story connection at all.

Remove all mention of the Well of Furies in Ramiel's arc, and just make it where the menders tell me that one day I would become a powerful incarnate, but all record of how was lost except that one day I would go on a quest to find a special shard, and the content connective game design requirement would have been satisfied mechanically. It is in that sense that I mean there was a content requirement connected to the Incarnate power system that doesn't have a specific story requirement. Large elements of this could have been relegated to future backstory or even left open to interpretation. I'm not saying that is always good, by the way, only that it was possible.

I can't say why the Alpha slot was ultimately delayed with certainty, but I can say why I was one of the people that voted to at least consider delaying it if not necessarily actually delaying it as it ultimately was. The problem wasn't something trivial like "there's no story attached to it." The problem was I could see the flailing around that was happening trying to make ad hoc ways of integrating Alpha into the main game as the bridge content between the standard game and the incarnate end game. And it was creating a situation where players would quickly get burned out farming shards through mass kills without anything to actually use the Alpha slot on. Psychologically speaking, that would have been a bad way to launch the slot. Some people wouldn't care, at least in the short run, but it would give a lot of players the wrong impression about what the whole point of the entire system was. And even if attempts were made to correct that downstream, that doesn't always work. Once a first impression is made, it can be extremely difficult to overturn it. The huge uncontrolled farming opportunities that existed in the AE at launch and were not instantly remediated created a first impression that in my opinion poisons the image of the AE to this day. It was seen as an accelerated reward earning platform, and when it was "fixed" it became valueless in the eyes of many, because its original primary usage was nullified.

When you make mistakes like that, sometimes you never get a chance to completely fix them. I'm not sure I would vote to delay Lore: the difference here is that I don't see a mechanical problem to solve that is likely solvable in any reasonable time. The core complaint looks like something that would require totally rethinking massive amounts of backstory that is already deep in the pipeline, and customization is likely to be potentially very time consuming as well without completely addressing the issue either. Given that, I'm not sure the delay would be worth it. But I can understand the objection nonetheless.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the less I like the entire premise.

No matter what they do period it will always look substandard to a lot of people. In isolation, that objection ceased to have significant impact to me sometimes around late 2005.


You had me (at least insofar as I understood the objection, even if I disagree with it subjectively) until the very last sentence. Then you lost me.

There have been more issues dedicated to Primal Earth entities than Praetorian Earth ones.

Also, Issue 17 did not focus exclusively on the Praetorians. Issue 18 and Going Rogue did not focus exclusively on the Praetorians. Issue 19 did not focus exclusively on the Praetorians. And I'm not nit picking the word "solely" by mentioning miniscule minor exceptions either. Issue 19, for example, saw the return of the Calvin Scott TF, a slew of additional tip missions, and the two 20s level story arcs (hero/villain). That's just story content, and the flip side had Apex, Tin Mage, Praetorian repeatable content, and the three Praetorian Zone events. That can't possibly be characterized fairly as "devoted solely to one enemy."

Without sidetracking too far into a balance discussion, there's a presumption that, say, the defenses in SR are already balanced against the def/res/+health of Invuln for the case of zero tohit buff, because if that wasn't true one of them would already be broken in PvE and have to be fixed. So assuming that SR and Invuln (and Regen and DA and EA and El and Ice and...) are balanced in PvE, the only question is how to deal with the fact that in PvE, players aren't morons and won't fight with one hand tied behind their backs by giving up tohit buffs like critters are designed to do (sometimes, although increasingly they are wising up also). The goal is - was - to soften those without nullifying them so the players that use them don't think they are worthless, but the players with defense don't think those are worthless either. And the way to do that is to essentially take the defense sets, and make a portion - but not all - of their defenses essentially resistant to tohit buffs (reducing them not to zero effect but making them only as strong as accuracy). So tohit buffs do some damage, but not total annihilation.

To make defense bend but not break, but also not any stronger than it already is, you have to essentially do what I mentioned above: add Elusivity but take back defense to even it out. That's what would be fair to both sides: the attacker and the defender. Adding any Elu without taking defense back would basically be making defense sets stronger, and by the time you add enough Elu to make a difference you've also buffed defense sets too high. That was the problem with the original 30% Elu. The converse problem exists with the current 10% Elu. I don't think 20% is a goldilocks number. I think its equally likely its both too weak against tohit buffs *and* too strong outside of them, meaning its only reasonable against the one guy with coincidentally the right amount of them.


Just to try to stay vaguely on topic, one thing I believe is that I've always felt the better PvP experiences were ones in which there was some semblance of fairness. That fairness did not need to be equality: if you're better than me, you should kill me most of the time. But if you're able to defeat me because of a mechanical imbalance that I can only remedy by making a special PvP toon that lacks exploitable failings, then PvP isn't about my character anymore. Its about me making a throwaway alt specifically for PvP.

For some people, PvP is a player vs player activity only. The characters are just generic playing pieces. They are really weapons, not characters. And that's fine: I have no problem with that. But I think the problem is that to get good cross-over enjoyment from PvE players that invest time and energy into characters, whether they are role players or just emotionally invested in their alts, PvP has to have some way to involve the characters that players want to play. It cannot *solely* be about crafting the perfect PvP toon. There is a place for that among the the people who want to do that. But just like many players think crafting their build from level 1 in Mids sucks the fun out of it, I think many people think making a special PvP toon sucks the fun out of it. For me, I want to PvP and win or lose with the characters I've played with for years.

That's what I meant earlier when I said mechanical issues should be corrected only when they hurt people's perceptions of PvP enough to make them reluctant to participate. You'd have to be practically nuts to venture into PvP combat with a melee defense character. Unless you were one of those fight-in-Elude-then-run-away people. That sort of situation has to be avoided whenever possible. But it has to be done carefully, so that in fixing one thing you don't break other things and reduce the enjoyment of the game for everyone else. That's counterproductive.


As an aside, I was discussing this with another player and we got on the subject of mini-games which involved both a place for the hardcore PvPers to battle it out, and PvE players to not face other players *directly* but still get involved. A spitballed idea was a zone with an above ground free for all PvP area and a below ground faction-separated area where PvE players could perform mini-game tasks that would assist their side battling above ground. They could defeat PvE critters in tunnels and repair turrets that would rise up and assist their side, for example, or intercept PvE drones sent by the opposite side to disrupt their side. This could be extended conceptually to low grade PvP areas where more "casual" PvPers could engage in combat without automatically being obliterated by the top combatants. This could be enforced by a reward system that encouraged good PvPers to go after other good PvPers in the high-reward areas, while the lesser PvPers would go after lesser PvPes in areas that simply had degraded rewards.

Of course, that is a completely off the cuff idea, but I thought it had promise, because it could tap the many different ways people enjoy different forms of player vs player engagements: indirect, casually direct, and hardcore, and in settings where the rewards would scale with the skill level of the players, encouraging them to get better but not forcing them to do so.

It goes without saying this sort of thing only works if you can get enough players to buy in and participate.

I should point out that no number is the "correct number" because Elusivity doesn't work that way. I should know. The correct thing to do for every defense set is to take their current defenses, split them up by some ratio (say, 50/50), convert one part into Elusivity and readjust the reamining defense (by a specific formula that preserves the combined strength of the two), and doing that individually for every +Def defense set and buffing set. The net result is that against a foe with no tohit buffs, all defensive sets would be just as strong as when they started (factoring out DR for now). Against foes with significant tohit buffs, those tohit buffs would be weakened almost as if the target was resisting them, but they would still have an effect stronger than accuracy. Which was the whole intent to begin with.

If you did that right, you almost wouldn't need DR for either defense or tohit: they'd be set to only affect very high values, not the moderate values that currently get clipped. The only question is what the tuning parameter should be that sets what fraction of defense is "resistant" to hit buffs for everybody.

On the DC side: Superman, Green Lantern, Dr. Fate, Firestorm. Four radically different ways to get to really high levels of effective power. Homogeneity is likely, but not inevitable.

As an aside, one thing I really think CoH blew it on was magic. The character I most want to create an analog to but cannot in CoX is Dr. Strange. The whole is he a controller or defender or whatever argument is really irrelevant to me. More relevant is that there is no magic in City of Heroes. Magic isn't a thing. Magic is a backstory of other things. There is no such thing as a magical effect. A magical fireball is only magical because someone says so. But there is nothing uniquely magical about magic in this game. For me, that is a lost opportunity. There's a difference between punching, kicking, and shooting. We have all three. We don't make one generic attack and tell players if they want to call it a kick they can. Magic is almost always portrayed as something radically different than just a power source in most comics, but in CoH it is barely that.

Some of this is cosmetic. We just don't have "magical" animations for stuff that look really otherworldly. We have Bullet Rain, but we don't have Dr. Strange's crimson bands of Cyttorak as a hold. Plants, lava, ice. No magical hold. The closest thing: probably Soul Storm.

But some of it I think isn't cosmetic. Its a longing I have to believe that there are things science and technology excels in, and things magic excels in (or should, if magical powers existed), and saying its all the same in the end is one of those elements of homogeneity I think is a lost opportunity. When magic and technology do exactly the same things, magic and technology might as well not exist. And they don't, except when people talk about them. Ironically perhaps, because magic doesn't exist, science and technology don't really exist either. Its like if the game was black and white, but the costume editor still allowed you to pick "colors" for costumes. In one sense, color exists, but in a more meaningful way it doesn't.

Where's the fun in that?

On the subject of homogeneity. I worry about it, because I ultimately think its counter productive to the game as a whole. I'm not sure how to feel about the Incarnate system specifically yet, because it has both worrying signs of unnecessary homogeneity, but also enormous potential for diversity.

Where I'm worried: we have four choices for base Alpha. We have eight choices for uncommon alpha. We have *sixteen* choices for rare Alpha! We have, wait, eight choices for very rare? Why do the choices converge slightly at the end? They didn't have to: it would not have been hard to expand the system to make the very rares have thirty two possible combinatorial choices. That worries me, because it suggests more work than necessary to hand craft these things rather than using a system for generating them, and that simultaneously limits their diversity and also creates the potential for them to ironically become more cookie cutter than they need to be. And it suggests that the system may be harder to expand in the future.

Where I'm hopeful: there are lots of slots to go, and lots of opportunities to do incredibly interesting things. I can think of all sorts of ways to use those slots to amplify the diversity of the game in ways completely within the balance requirements of the system. I can think of all sorts of synergistic effects that could exist within the system itself. Think about future slots buffed in special or non-trivial ways by the Alpha you slot. You can't slot Incarnate powers with enhancements, but Alpha can buff them which provides some unique opportunities there. You could make a slot that ignores player buffs but obeys Alpha, so that your choice of Alpha determines the strengths of that future slot. Imagine a power that had a rainbow of buffs, but used the Hover trick: it buffs and debuffs the same stuff, but the buff is enhanceable and the debuff is not. So by default, the power doesn't to a lot, but Alpha could cause it to suddenly do a lot of something.

Imagine an Incarnate power that buffs Damage by +200% and -200%, with only the former being enhanceable. Activating it does nothing. So what? But if it obeyed Alpha, slotting a +33% damage Alpha would actually mean that power would now generate a net damage buff of 66%.

Suppose this power *also* buffed Defense by +100% and -100%. Slotting a +20% defense Alpha would mean this power would actually provide a +20% defense buff. So your choice of Alpha would affect what this power did. This is a highly simplified example just to illustrate the point.

Where the system can encourage diversity is to make choices meaningful. Each choice in the system should affect other choices, which should affect other choices. I don't see that happening in the system yet except in small ways, but I'm hoping the first few slots were laying the basic groundwork for more interesting behavior later. If each slot is just going to be a placeholder for one kind of power: self buff, pet, attack, etc, then its a huge waste of potential. If the system interacts with itself in a way that generates a rich set of behavior, then no matter how far we progress in it we won't all be the same. We'll have eight Incarnates on a team all different, because few people will make exactly the same choices ten times.

Honestly, I can see why Positron picked this gig. I would love to design Incarnate powers, but I doubt Matt's will let me anywhere near the system, because its just too much fun to share.

The way I tend to look at it is that the Incarnate system as a whole is a form of "leveling" as an Incarnate, but in a two-dimensional way we have never had before because leveling has always been fixed and linear in the past. The powers themselves are like a Tertiary Incarnate power set that we can unlock and use as we progress at being Incarnates. In a sense, Incarnates are like an inverted VEAT. VEATs all start like one of two things, and then eventually mature into one of four other VEAT subtypes, unlocking more powers in the process. They never fully abandon their roots, but they become more than that. Incarnates start off like one of twelve different initial archetypes, and eventually mature into Incarnates. They don't abandon their roots either, but they all eventually unlock the same additional set of options as Incarnates.

I'll cop to that.

Here's the rule. Strength and Resistance can affect only one thing per effect in the game: either its duration or its magnitude. However, this is not hard coded by kind of effect. Every single effect of every single power in the game is tagged as either a Duration effect or a Magnitude effect. Its up to the devs to do the right thing here.

Damage is always tagged as a Mag effect. That means when you boost the strength of your damage, its magnitude rises. Damage resistance reduces the magnitude of that damage because its tagged as a magnitude effect.

Most holds and other mezzes are tagged as Dur effects. That means when you slot them for more strength, their duration goes up, not their magnitude. And therefore, when the target has resistance to that mezz effect, its the Duration that drops, not magnitude. This is not always true. Intangible powers are an exception: they are often coded so the intangible effect is a Mag not a Dur. So slotting for intangible increases magnitude in that case, not duration. Resistance to intangible would decrease the magnitude of that effect, not its duration.

Knockback is a mag effect in virtually all the powers its in. How do you know this? Because when you slot the power for KB, the mag goes up not the duration. Its that simple. The game can only do one or the other. Think of it as a radio button: each effect can only have it set this way or that way. There is no way to do both even if the devs wanted to, because there's no way to set a radio button to both positions.

So because slotting KB increases mag, its a mag effect. Resistance therefore reduces mag. It can do nothing else.

There are two different resistance formulas in the game. Mag resistance uses this one: Net = Initial * (1 - Res). Dur resistance uses this one: Net = Initial / (1 + Res). That's why duration resistance works differently: mag resistance can reduce a value to zero (unless there is a cap in the way). But duration resistance can't really reduce a duration to zeo, it can only reduce it to increasingly small values. That's also why resistances greater than "100%" are meaningful for duration resists but not really for magnitude resists.

KB resistances are 10000% because, I think, somebody goofed in the distant past and set the resistance to "100" thinking that would be 100%, when setting it to "1.0" would be 100%. That error has been propagated to this day. This would not be the first time this happened in the powers system. Also, if this sounds slightly confusing, don't feel too bad. The devs messed this one up in spectacular fashion themselves when they first designed Hamidon. They thought Hamidon was immune to holds because it had 100% resistance to holds. But all that did was reduce the duration of holds to one half normal. Oops.

To amplify, a level 5 AV has two sources of enhanced accuracy just for being a level 54 AV. They get the AV accuracy rank bonus of 1.5, and they get the +4 level bonus of 1.4 (against level 50 players). Those are independent and not additive: the net is 1.5 * 1.4 = 2.1. In other words, 54 AVs have 210% accuracy, or they hit over twice as often as normal. Even if you floor them with defense, that 5% floor gets multiplied by 2.1 (accuracy takes effect after the floor) to get to 10.5%. At the defensive floor, a +4 AV still hits you one time in ten, not twenty.

From a purely accuracy point of view, the nightmare scenario is a +4 AV Malta Gunslinger. Gunslinger attacks have 2.0 accuracy or +100% accuracy if you prefer. A +4 AV Gunslinger would have a net accuracy bonus in each attack of 4.2, and even at the defensive floor he'd still hit you a whopping 21% of the time, about one time in five. Defense can do no better against that dude.


On the subject of higher tohit: its uncommon, but not rare. Rularuu eyeballs, DE Quartz crystals, the DE in Tip missions, some other special Praetorians (including in Incarnate content) have higher tohit. Some LTs like the guards in Bank missions have tactics. Nemesis Vengeance as +tohit. Critters with fortitude also buff tohit (some vanguard do this, as well as some CoT scientists among others). On the red side some critters even have build up. Oh, and if you have build up or aim, your double in doppleganger missions probably has them also.