Beastyle
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Hello and welcome to the fourth installment of the Intrepid Informer!
This week, just in time for Issue 20, Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney will be discussing the process behind designing one of the four new Incarnate slots: Destiny. Take it away, Tim!
<b><big>Destiny Slot: The Power of Defensive Nukes</big>
by Tim Sweeney</b>
Hey all, Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney here to talk more about the design behind the new Incarnate powers coming in Issue 20: Incarnates. Today I would like to focus on one of the four new Incarnate slots, Destiny. One of the goals of the Incarnate powers was to increase the toolbox of abilities to players for doing challenging content like the Incarnate Trials. We devoted several slots to improving existing powers held by the player, but we also wanted to offer new, potent powers which could be used in the Incarnate Trials themselves. We themed the Judgement Slot around large AOE damage powers: nukes. But we also came up with a counterweight slot, one which offered large AOE buffs: the Destiny Slot.
Major buffs and heals are common in City of Heroes. We have several support Archetypes that are designed with those playstyles in mind: Defenders, Corrupters, and so on. But if you're not playing one of those archetypes, your access to buffs and heals is limited. This was an intentional design choice, and we didn't want to make those Archetypes feel obsolete. So our goal was to make the Destiny powers worth earning, but still allow our support Archetypes to shine.
The fit which made the most sense was to put the Destiny powers in the role of a panic button - a major, game-changing buff or a massive immediate heal. One button can shift the balance of a fight rather dramatically, but the full effect only last a few seconds. The lingering effects of the power are nice, but not as strong as having an actual buffer in your party. The powers also have a substantial recharge time which is unaffected by recharge time bonuses which means that while you're not afraid to expend the power on a regular basis, you won't be putting these powers on auto-cast.
For instance, the powers in the Barrier tree provide significant defense and resistance bonuses, to the point of capping damage resistance for most Archetypes, but only for 5 seconds. Now, when you're first tackling Marauder's army in the final push for Lambda Sector, those 5 seconds could mean the difference between safely taking the initial blows or having half your league take a trip to the hospital. You'll still receive some small benefit from the Barrier afterwards, but the main reason to keep that power around is a quick burst of neigh invulnerability when your League needs it.
And yes, League. Because these powers were designed with the chaotic tumult of the Incarnate Trials in mind, we gave them all substantial range to ensure they can catch most of your League. Higher ranked versions of the power can have an even wider range. It doesn't do your panic button much good if the team has to cluster around you to use it.
Each tree is themed around providing a major boost in one area as a baseline, and offering a choice between improving that boost on the Core path or adding similar thematic boosts on the Radial path.
- Ageless tree powers provide major endurance and a recharge time bonus for most powers, and can be coupled with recovery boosts or major debuff resistance.
- The Rebirth tree starts with a substantial heal, which can be coupled with lasting regeneration or maximum hit point boosts. The Rebirth tree would be a natural place for a rez power, but we felt as though the tree was strong enough with its healing potential.
- The Clarion tree offers immediate large scale protection to status effects. The Radial path adds buffs to range and most secondary effects like mez durations, defense and to hit buffs/debuffs, and heals.
- The Barrier tree I mentioned above can be improved via the tree to either provide a longer and stronger resistance and defense buff in the Core path. The Radial path instead adds a revive capability as well. Think of it as putting a Barrier between death and your ally. This is one case where game balance trumped theming.
As if that weren't enough, the Destiny Slot also provides an Incarnate Shift at the Rare and Very Rare levels. An Incarnate Shift is similar to a Level Shift in that it raises your effective combat level versus your opponents, but it will only kick in on the Incarnate Trials. This restriction is part game balance but also comes directly from the lore; As you claim power from the Well of the Furies, it becomes clearer that the heights of your Incarnate power only becomes accessible when the situation demands it.
The flexibility of the Incarnate powers and the speed at which you can acquire the common abilities for each tree means that even if you devote your efforts to building up one tree to the Very Rare height, you can still expand laterally and pick up the various common powers in the other tiers to provide the flexibility and diversity to tackle the challenges of the Incarnate Trials in Issue 20 and beyond.
Whatever your particular Destiny holds, I can't wait to see you on the battlefields of the Incarnate Trials come Issue 20! These powers aren't going to earn themselves, you know... -
Quote:Wouldn't you know it, the one thing we do have in abundance is FREEM. We overstocked and demand has been far less than supply.Originally Posted by Y3kbug
I still want my FREEM! -
In an interview given earlier today, Paragon Studios Senior Designer Matt "Positron" Miller was asked "Why can't we level our characters past level 50?" In a surprise admission, Miller replied "We'd love to but we simply can't allow it. We're running low on Experience Points to hand out and want to make sure that we have enough to cater to lower level Heroes and Villains."
Running out of XP?! Has this ever happened before? Our investigations led us to several examples of companies running out of seemingly unlimited virtual goods, but never anything on the scale of an MMO running out of the basic requirements needed to level up your character. "Everything seemed to be on pace in the early days of City of Heroes", said Brian Clayton, studio manager for Paragon Studios. "We were looking good to last several comic book life-death-resurrection cycles, but along came Going Rogue and threw our projections out of whack."
When asked to comment, Lead Designer Melissa "War Witch" Bianco mentioned other things that have impacted the supply of XP. "All those Task Forces, Trials, Strike Forces, Mayhem and Safeguard missions;. It adds up. We tried alternative forms of rewards, but players still want XP, and our stockpiles have continued to dwindle."
"We even implemented a feature that allowed a player to turn off XP as an austerity measure," said Senior Designer Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney. "Unfortunately the major marketing push to raise awareness of the issue was tangled up and shelved, and the whole 'Conserve XP' movement never really took hold. Patrol XP was a possible substitute, but it just whetted the appetite for the real thing. Proposals to raise revenue through increased XP debt penalties were never on the table to begin with."
Nate "Second Measure" Birkholz, Producer for City of Heroes, had this to add: "We've tried to increase supply, but it's difficult. Every point is handcrafted from the finest gems of insight, pearls of wisdom and seasoned with the harsh sweat of overcoming your setbacks. That's a time consuming process, not one you can rush."
When we asked experts outside of Paragon Studios, we got some surprising rebuttals. "Their accounting methods budget a full 50 levels of XP for everyone who steps into the city. How do they know if that character is ever going to actually reach level 50? They could be a simple entrant to a costume contest, or just there to keep tabs on a fellow Super Group, or even try out a new Power Set. Level 50 is an aspiration, not a requirement. We are far from the days of 'Peak XP'."
"Based on current usage and our projections," Destin Bales, Development Director for Paragon Studios said, "we predict we will run out of Experience Points exactly one year from today, April 1st, 2012. And I would like to point out that Influence isn't looking too hot either."
Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann, one of the masterminds behind the player generated content system Mission Architect was only able to give the following statement: "No Comment."
You can discuss what this means for your characters and the future of CoH here. -
In an interview given earlier today, Paragon Studios Senior Designer Matt "Positron" Miller was asked "Why can't we level our characters past level 50?" In a surprise admission, Miller replied "We'd love to but we simply can't allow it. We're running low on Experience Points to hand out and want to make sure that we have enough to cater to lower level Heroes and Villains."
Running out of XP?! Has this ever happened before? Our investigations led us to several examples of companies running out of seemingly unlimited virtual goods, but never anything on the scale of an MMO running out of the basic requirements needed to level up your character. "Everything seemed to be on pace in the early days of City of Heroes", said Brian Clayton, studio manager for Paragon Studios. "We were looking good to last several comic book life-death-resurrection cycles, but along came Going Rogue and threw our projections out of whack."
When asked to comment, Lead Designer Melissa "War Witch" Bianco mentioned other things that have impacted the supply of XP. "All those Task Forces, Trials, Strike Forces, Mayhem and Safeguard missions;. It adds up. We tried alternative forms of rewards, but players still want XP, and our stockpiles have continued to dwindle."
"We even implemented a feature that allowed a player to turn off XP as an austerity measure," said Senior Designer Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney. "Unfortunately the major marketing push to raise awareness of the issue was tangled up and shelved, and the whole 'Conserve XP' movement never really took hold. Patrol XP was a possible substitute, but it just whetted the appetite for the real thing. Proposals to raise revenue through increased XP debt penalties were never on the table to begin with."
Nate "Second Measure" Birkholz, Producer for City of Heroes, had this to add: "We've tried to increase supply, but it's difficult. Every point is handcrafted from the finest gems of insight, pearls of wisdom and seasoned with the harsh sweat of overcoming your setbacks. That's a time consuming process, not one you can rush."
When we asked experts outside of Paragon Studios, we got some surprising rebuttals. "Their accounting methods budget a full 50 levels of XP for everyone who steps into the city. How do they know if that character is ever going to actually reach level 50? They could be a simple entrant to a costume contest, or just there to keep tabs on a fellow Super Group, or even try out a new Power Set. Level 50 is an aspiration, not a requirement. We are far from the days of 'Peak XP'."
"Based on current usage and our projections," Destin Bales, Development Director for Paragon Studios said, "we predict we will run out of Experience Points exactly one year from today, April 1st, 2012. And I would like to point out that Influence isn't looking too hot either."
Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann, one of the masterminds behind the player generated content system Mission Architect was only able to give the following statement: "No Comment." -
Quote:I was also hoping for this when I saw the thread title.Originally Posted by NinjaPirate
I was hoping he was voicing Galvatron.
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Quote:Toph was only 12 years old during the series. At 82, she'd likely still be alive. Remember that Bumi was 112.Originally Posted by Inazuma
Um, dude. She's dead. It's been stated all the Aang Gang are dead and gone by the time of the new series. It's 70 years later.
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Hello all, we have brought all live servers for extended maintenance to investigate a potential issue that arose during this morning's maintenance. There is currently no ETR, but we will let you know as soon as more information is available. Thanks for your patience, we apologize for the inconvenience.
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Quote:My sentiments exactly. How are you going to have the Blue and Gold bros for life when one of them isn't Ted?Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
Bah, if you're going to have Booster and Beetle in it, use Ted Kord.
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Quote:Escher disagrees!Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
And exactly where would you put the stairs? Above the door? I can tell you that that won't work.
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Quote:City Hall was built during a buyer's market on extradimensional space.Originally Posted by Wolf Bait
I have noticed that the inside of city hall is larger than the outside. I know this, because I took the time to step it off with my character.
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Today on Massively, Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney offers an exclusive look into the creative design process involved in creating the Incarnate abilities. Read how these awesome powers (coming in Issue 20!) went from concept to implementation. Head over to Massively and check out the dev diary, "Designing the expanded Incarnate trees for City of Heroes."
Discuss the article here. -
Today on Massively, Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney offers an exclusive look into the creative design process involved in creating the Incarnate abilities. Read how these awesome powers (coming in Issue 20!) went from concept to implementation. Head over to Massively and check out the dev diary, "Designing the expanded Incarnate trees for City of Heroes."
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Lord Recluse would be proud.
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Great costumes, everyone! We've put a couple of them up on Facebook!
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Quote:Speed falls under the powers working the same way that they do in PvE, doesn't it? It's an accessibility thing, if you expect your travel powers to work one way so that you can use certain tactics, and in PvP they don't, that's something on the accessibility side of things for people playing PvP.Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
Thanks for still being here, but you forgot
- speed.
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Quote:Originally Posted by prophet_8
Im pretty sure hes not allowed to comment. Possibly even forgot about this section of the community as well.Quote:
Beastyle Ha! Never. Seriously, I could never forget about this community, nor would I want to. My first interactions when I started here at Paragon was Mod 08 telling me to keep an eye on you guys.Quote:forget about the PvP community 
I apologize for not having so much of a presence in the thread, but be sure I've been watching it closely every day, including over the weekend.
So, to explain my thinking and why I brought the topic up, and also why I gave the criteria of everyone giving me one aspect of pre-I13 PvP, is because I was looking for commonalities: specific things that users echo, because that tells us (in OCR) what the main points are. And over the past week, I'm really appreciative over all the feedback in this thread because almost all of what the PvP community has said in this thread can be boiled down into two really simple terms:
- Diversity
- Accessibility
About further thoughts or a general timeline...I'm not going to blow smoke at you guys about what this may or may not accomplish in the future. That's not something I want to do, not just because I'm "not allowed" to comment, but also because it's something I don't want to do to any of our subcommunities, least of all PvP.
So while I won't say anything to one effect or another about what will happen with PvP, I do want everyone to know that this feedback serves two vital purposes:
- It helps OCR understand the community's issues better
- It says that you're still here and still have enough passion about PvP to actually come in and post feedback
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Some of your costumes are now up on Facebook! Thanks to everyone for participating, and sorry there was a delay.
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When I got up this morning, I had no idea my life would change. My day started off as usual: waking up groggy and disheveled, having fallen off my bed onto a pile of days-old laundry as my alarm clock blared "Highway to the Danger Zone." I threw on some wrinkled clothes and made a mad dash to the public transport hub, because that's how I roll ever since my Impala broke down on my front lawn.
After 3 bus transfers I arrived at work, creeping through the back door into the kitchen so I could snag some grub while on the clock. (I'm technically at work, right?) There was no one in the kitchen this morning, but I spied an unmarked package sitting atop one of the tables. Sometimes, people leave stuff and if you're discreet about it you can totally take it.
This particular package was odd: a hermetically-sealed metal box wrapped in chains with a tumbler lock, roped off with yellow caution tape. It rested on an eerily-glowing shamanic circle that had burned itself into the table. The box held my gaze, and I swore I heard the distant, plaintive baying of wolves.
Surely, this heavily-warded box was filled with the donuts that're sometimes bought for the whole office. Donut day is always a good day. Stripping away the tape and fumbling with the lock, I silently hoped nobody'd taken the last crumbcake.
Inside, instead of delicious, high-caloric breakfast treats was a single, neatly-folded black shirt emblazoned with three werewolves howling at a stark yellow moon. I could feel the waves of energy rising off of it; tentatively I reached out and touched the shirt. Instantly, the craptacular non-werewolf shirt I had been wearing exploded into flames, burning to cinder even as the werewolf shirt materialized on my torso--my torso which now began to bulge to Huge-size proportions, my guns popping out to fill the rapidly expanding shirt. I felt--knew--then that I could lift 700lbs., and my ridiculously muscular chest--that looked like someone turned the slider up to MAXIMUM--could deflect bullets.
Sitting down at my cubicle, being careful not to break my puny keyboard with my now-massive arms, the office visibly dimmed and the pale light of the moon shone down on me, which was odd because it was like 9am and I don't even have a window. Seriously, I'm surrounded by walls and I sit underneath an air conditioner. As if in response, my body underneath the mystical shirt began to grow a thick, insulating pelt.
Logging into the game I was met with similar phenomena: the in-game clock sped forward to night, and a full moon appeared over the horizon, which is pretty crazy because I know we don't model the lunar cycles in the game unless someone's been working on that but I'm pretty sure they haven't been. As the light from that moon hit my character, all my powers were slotted with purples, and I had unlocked the Incarnate abilities. Like, all of them.
In the chat window I started getting notices that I'd sold stuff at Wentworth's, even though I hadn't put anything up for sale. When I went to collect there was 1 trillion inf waiting for me.
With my newfound abilities and loads of (now unnecessary) currency I headed out to chill in Pocket D. As soon as I stepped into the club the music actually changed and my emote list filled up with every dance style known to man and wolf. All the catgirls instantly hit the dancefloor and started spamming /e grind around me, which was the only dance emote available to them. Everyone else in the place got jelly but they couldn't hate because they recognized my alpha status.
Deciding to run some missions, I started a league with my catgirl harem and we ran the Incarnate Trials, which were totally available to me even though they weren't supposed to be active on the live servers. I one-shotted all the bosses and everyone leveled up like 20 times and got more shards than they knew what to do with.
Logging out of the game, I headed onto the forums. Checking my moderation inbox I saw there was drama on the board; I let out a howl of frustration and everyone apologized to each other and began following the rules. Also every thread that asked for yo-yo melee powers was instantly obliterated.
I've only been wearing it for one day but this shirt has already made my life 10,000 times more awesome. I'm going to go home and throw out all my other clothes because I'm never taking off this werewolf shirt. Speaking of going home, it's almost time for me to head out. I think I'll super leap home today. With the power of the three werewolf moon shirt, I can do anything.
What would YOU do if you had a three werewolf moon shirt? -
Quote:There's a lot of things people enjoyed about the old PvP system, laundry lists of likes, but I want to know what you think is the absolute, most standout thing about pre-I13 PvP. If you were to say, "Hands down, out of everything I liked in PvP before the changes, the thing I liked the most is _____," that's what I'd like to hear.Originally Posted by Terror1
Why just one?
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If there's one sentiment that's echoed throughout the PvP community it's that most of you preferred the old PvP system to the new one. And while we got some great feedback in the last thread about things you like in the I13+ PvP, I now want to ask you all what your favorite aspect from the old PvP system is.
Please limit it to ONE aspect. What was the most standout thing for you in pre-I13 PvP? What was, in your opinion, the single best thing about it? -
In part 2 of Examiner.com's interview with Melissa "War Witch" Bianco, Examiner.com asks the ever-pressing question(s) of, "What next?" Check out the interview here for the answers!
Join the discussion here! -
Quote:We caught it too, and we've let them know.Originally Posted by Turgenev
Gaah, first sentence too... rest of the article was fair but brief, wanting the 2nd part to see where they take this.
Rednames: Can you ring up Examiner and give 'em a healthy correction?...
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In a two-part interview, Examiner.com spoke with Melissa "War Witch" Bianco about community, content, and what's on the horizon for City of Heroes. Read part 1 now at Examiner.com, and be sure to check back tomorrow for part 2!
Join the community discussion here. -
In a two-part interview, Examiner.com spoke with Melissa "War Witch" Bianco about community, content, and what's on the horizon for City of Heroes. Read part 1 now at Examiner.com, and be sure to check back tomorrow for part 2!