Oneirohero
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Source-code rewriting is pretty serious business when it comes to this game. Power customisation needed at least a year of work to get even as far as the Primary/Secondary sets and only because it was the most highly requested feature since the game began.
For the Size manipulation set to be feasible, a very high percentage of the userbase would want to 'have' access to a set like this in the future, to the degree of how 'everybody' wanted to see power customisation. Then, if there's room in the schedules, they would see that the userbase wants to see this power and proceed with the hard work in rewriting the source code to make it work
In fact, from the way some people are saying this, they would only start to consider rewriting the code if it would actually bring new subscribers and old subscribers back, the ones who left the game and would be highly interested in returning if a size-change power were implemented. Size manipulation sounds like a set for concept characters than the entire userbase.
If the powerset isn't trashed, it's most likely going to be the bottom of the backburner pile, the place where they implement ideas only after they've done everything else and there's nothing else to implement before it. And that could take a while. -
I've used Walk a number of times, sometimes just to move towards a goal at a leisurely pace, sometimes because it seems more relaxed when in small room buildings like shops and bases. You get a chance to see a lot more of the maps when you pass by alleyways and pavements. I sometimes wish another player would momentarily mistake my character for an NPC purely by the fact they're walking where civilians walk around.
I also use the Walk power for positioning on seats as well, I can even get my largest huge body-type characters into small seats and table setups because of this and it can even achieve that sort of 'character to environment' snap accuracy reserved for NPCs.
I didn't think of using walk as a passive rest power on autorun, I doubt I could walk across an even-level zone without monitoring the situation, but missions sound like a good idea. -
Quote:Ah I see now!Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
There's a difference between setting the scale of an entity and changing the scale of an entity...much less doing that via the powers system.
I can make a 400 foot tall fire imp in about 10 seconds by changing a couple of values in a script. But I can't do that via a power, I can't make the imp actually grow to be 400 foot, there's nothing to prevent me from doing that in an office map or while standing under an overpass, and there's nothing to fix the dozens of different problems that come from having a giant anything in the game...much less a giant something that's player controlled.
I see that Size manipulation is ready for the trashcan, better to try and fail than not at all I suppose.
Thank you for your feedback everybody -
Quote:Even though this was a result of unauthorised hacking, the fact a tech-savvy used was able to make a really big character at least shows that having oversized characters is possible.Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Castle has explicitly said that the game engine cannot do any sort of "size-changing" powersets. What we can do at character creation and via the Super Tailor is the long and short (no pun intended) of it.
As for the engine not being able to create a powerset over it, I'll just have to sit and wait for a change there. It's like what I said before, today's explitic is tomorrow's possibility. -
Today's suggestion is another Power Pool power I thought of for a while now, and for this one I decided to search on past threads using the search to see what I was up against, but without any more delay, I begin my proposal. The purpose of this power pool is not only to allows characters to exceed the current minimum and maximum sizes for characters, but also provide a see-saw effect on their stats that provides equal strengths and weaknesses.
Power Overview
Size manipulation
Tier 1: Body Expansion [Toggle]
Tier 2: Body Reduction [Toggle]
Tier:3: Reduction Wave [Cone AoE]
Tier 4: Expansion Wave [Cone AoE]
- Body expansion when activated will enlarge the user by a certain scale, their greater height and mass increases the power of their attacks, with relatively increased movement and jumping height-speeds. However their enlarged size makes them slower and easier to hit, as well as being more of a threat to others.
- Body reduction causes the opposite and shrinks the user by a certain scale. Their smaller size reduces the power of their attacks as well as their movement. But their small size makes it harder for their opponents to hit them, as well as making them harder to spot.
- Shrink radiation is a Cone AoE with a wide angle and short range. ANYTHING hit is affected with similar effects to Body Reduction, this effects characters and critters. Shrink radiation has a duration that lasts for a short time but can be nullified by Growth radiation or reversed one level with Body Expansion.
- Growth radiation acts similar to Shrink radiation except that it causes all targets hit to be affected by Body Expansion instead.
Power Specifics
- Body Expansion buffs the character with
+Damage, +Range, +Resistance, -Knockback, +Run and +Jump
However the character is debuffed by
-ToHit, -Defence, -Stealth, +Threat and -Recharge
- Body Reduction buffs the character with
+Defence, +Stealth, +ToHit, +Recharge and +Recovery
While it debuffs the character with
-Damage, -Range, -Resistance, -Knockback, -Run and -Jump
- The Wave powers are AoE cones with a short range but possess a very wide angle of effect, 90-140 degrees possibly. As they are cone AoEs the users must be in close range of the main target before they can fire it off, ANY other person in range of the AoE will be affected by the size-changing effect, even critters.
- Body Expansion/Reduction are toggles and thus don't have a proper accuracy, however the Expansion/Reduction Wave powers do have an accuracy rate against critters and affected by the con system. Team-mates are NOT affected by accuracy and will have the same success rate as normal buffs. (100%)
- Critters affected by sizechanging may have their con level altered to match the increased or decreased difficulty of spawns. Enlarged critters receive most of the buff effects of the power, while reduced critters recieve most of the debuff effects. This effectively makes enlarged critters much more powerful and reduced critters much weaker. Depending on the rank and con level of the critter, the duration may be longer or shorter.
- The amount a character grows or shrinks is relative to their normal size. If a 4ft character grows, they won't be as big as if a 6ft or 8ft character uses it. This effectively means that if an entire team expands or reduces, they should end up the same relative sizes as before, except their environment would be smaller in perspective. Same applies to reduced characters, where smaller characters end up smaller while larger ones won't be as small.
Problems & Solutions
- Problem: Most of the missions are indoors, enlarged characters are going to be too big to fit in or cause clipping issues!
Solution:
Due to the fact that Body Expansion is a toggle already answered how characters can fit through doors, clicking mission doors automatically detoggles and retoggles powers like flight, so why can't it do the same with BX?
However the later tier powers like the Expansion/Reduction Wave powers have durations that don't cancel prematurely without it's opposing polarity. A fix for this is having two different body-scaling modes for instanced missions and outdoor areas. Where the interior missions have a smaller scale that causes minimal problems, while having a larger one when used outside.
- Problem: Why would anybody want to enlarge enemies if it'll make them harder, and what would stop them from shrinking all the enemies for easy kills? Wouldn't people exploit these difficulty changes?
Solution:
If enlarged enemies offer more risk to the player, then it's reward in that state is increased. If the reduced enemies become less threatening to the player, then it's reward in that state is reduced. And to prevent exploitation with trying to defeat enemies when their shrink timer runs out, all critters remain enlarged or reduced indefinitely until they are affected by an opposing effect. On top of that, the state that had the most damage inflicted on it becomes the reward modifier.
So basically, if you inflict more than 50-75% damage in a certain state, you get that state's reward modifier.
- Problem: How big can characters get? If the power makes you too big it'll never work!
Solution:
In this powerset, the growth aspect is the most problematic. Shrinking is almost universally flawless, especially with interior maps it will rarely clip into. But the scale of growth wouldn't have to be really intense at all.
Most people would think doubling in size when they think of growth powers, but clipping wise, 50% can achieve a good enough effect as well. This would bring most normal size characters up to the scale of Behemoths and those really big Lost guys (These lost especially appear in office maps where they clip doorways a lot, so it's not like it doesn't already happen)
But ideally, setting a flag would enable growth powers to be limited in interior maps, while more extravagant scales could be used in outside missions, double or even triple normal size. I would assume a character who could enlarge themselves could control how large they grow, and these flags could reflect this.
Another possibility involves making crouch animations for enlarged characters that duck low enough to avoid ceilings/doorways while maintaining their movement, ignoring the 'too much work' excuse, if the character doesn't fit in the environment, adapt! Most of these issues come from being unable to reduce in size, which is not a problem at all with toggles, but a bit more problematic with duration effects.
- Problem: Do these powers stack, wouldn't it be unfair to shrink a character into nothingness or crashy to make them grow forever?
Expansion/Reduction won't stack, nor will their effects.
- Problem: If everybody starts going huge, isn't this game going to get laggier or crashier?
If you say that huge characters would cause lag, you'd have to ask yourself why giant monsters exist in the game, why did they make Lusca with all his gigantic tentacles? As far as lag goes, that would be more of how many giant characters are on screen rather than how big they get. If you were standing around in AE buildings (back before the nerfs), you'd find that regardless of size, it was the number of characters/objects on screen that caused the lag, not their size.
Furthermore, my suggestion isn't calling for Atlas sized heroes either, it's more likely that heroes with such powers won't exceed normal giant monster sizes.
- Problem: It's not cost-effective to implement such a power because of the work needed to do it. It doesn't have enough demand and devs have said in the past it was impossible or unlikely to ever be done!
They also said that power customisation would be almost impossible to do ever, and even as I speak, BaBs is working on redoing the weapon sets so they can function without unnecessary redraws, another issues that was fairly 'minor' and wasn't in 'epic demand either. Just because someone said it was impossible or too difficult in the past doesn't mean it's impossible or too difficult now. Paragon Studios has moved a long way and have done a lot of super gaming feats in the past, you can trust them to find a solution where others had given up.
Problem: This power pool is unbalanced, enlarged characters would be tons more powerful and reduced characters would be useless.
Solution:
I made it very clear that Enlarging and Reducing character sizes would give a see-saw effect on their abilities. Enlarged characters possess increased power and strength from their size, but find it harder to hit 'smaller' opponents as well being slower, also more likely to be seen and aggro mobs.
Shrunken characters aren't useless squishies either, they possess an increased accuracy for attacking larger opponents, harder to hit and actually lighter so they use up less energy in movement and attacking. Also to mention that they have bonus stealth that allow them to sneak past certain opponents.
Enlarged and reduced characters are equally good in certain situations, and overwhelmed in others. THAT is the balance! (As well as to mention the fact that Toggles use up Endurance and the Wave powers CAN MISS!)
- Problem: We've heard in the past this will never happen, so I will tell you that right now! This will NEVER happen!
You are entitled to your opinion, but you'd be surprised how often their tune changes when a redname comes in to save the day. Personally I take with what was paraphrased in the past with a pinch of salt (More than three months old specifically). I would guess that the situation changes every quarter of the year, and will definitely change once Going Rogue is released and thus release all the GR-staff members from the task to work on other tasks.
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Alrighty then, that's about the end of my rather ironically huge thread, it's now time to hear your views. Think this power's viable this year? Even as suggested? Or are you going to be ironic yourself by replying with one of the problems I just answered?
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It would be interesting to see what the rest of the Co* planet looks like. Each zoneset could be based on capital cities and regions of other countries. Considering there are british superheroes in the game must mean there is a United Kingdom in the Co* universe.
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I actually wanted to apply for a Powers Designer position when it was still open, however I was (and still am) involved in my Games Art & Design course at university, and will be for this and the next year. Sadly the position got filled and hasn't come up since, which sucks for me because I am really, REALLY not qualified for anything else on the list.
It's hard for a new designer to get into the biz when they require you to have been on a AAA-title development team first. -
In my most unconventional suggestion yet, I propose something that doesn't affect the City of game directly, but can indirectly improve the rate of content creation.
After viewing the front page so many times, I quickly noticed a banner saying City of Heroes was hiring, for months and months I've seen the occasional position come and go, but nothing special.
But this is the thing, there's still a bunch of positions left to be filled and as of the date of posting, included an Animator, Character Artist and a few game and server engineers. Most of the list feature some rather critical content-related positions, as well as some coding and stability positions for servers. The requirements are pretty high, necessary to keep a game like Co* at the top of it's game, but it's reachable for any person with experience.
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It's not enough for us to just 'say' what we want the game to have, because ultimately it's the devs that are hired that have to do the suggestions and work already scheduled. If we want to help this game and the development team improve their diversity and productivity, it will be necessary to keep up with demand, by boosting their manpower.
What I suggest is for people, anybody really, to spread the word. "Paragon Studios is hiring!" The more the news is spread, the more chance that some budding animator, artist or engineer will see that there's a job opening suitable for them and might apply for it. With the kind of requirements stated in the job descriptions, the ones that do get hired will be top-quality members of the team! (give or take a few months to get used to the environment and systems involved)
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The idea of the playerbase helping advertise job positions for a game studio sounds rather crazy, but I see it as a way of helping out the devs achieve some of the more difficult tasks put off due to a lack of resources for the time given. It will also mean a slight productivity boost. Content can be created faster or more different types of content at the same time.
Perhaps it will work amazingly well, or realistically it might take a long while. But if more people talk about the open positions in Paragon studios, the more chance suitable candidates will pick up on it and give it a go.
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Who here would be even the slightest bit interested in spreading the word? Would you say it loud and proud, or keep it discreet? Or is this suggestion just plain silly? -
Setbacks happen, but I'm not fazed.
BaBs cons Purple to pesky issues like redraw! -
Super-Wow! I never realised this thread would gain so much precedence! It just goes to show that the devs really do get involved with the community when something good comes up!
Quote:You misunderstand my suggestion, I will try to clarify the intention of this thread.Originally Posted by Darkelven_Vixxin
WHY is the WORLD are you people DISTROYING the animations?.. the weapon draw is part of the freeking Look, and i just can't imagin WHY the heck a game that is so great on looks even considers cutting out the animations, or make them look crappy by cutting out the weapon draw...
if you want to now draw a weapon DON"T freeking pick powers that use a freeking Weapon, GAWD
stop trying to be a speed clicker and use your freeking mind, tachtices and let us have the weapon draw and movement lock down during the draw, Re-Draw is good too, if you devs want to make these people that complain happy just put up a kinda minor defensive buff boost while redraw or something, or make the blast a few cliclks harder hitting after the draw, or maybe a acc boost for a few seconds
Stop distroying the game for a Body count in PVP
that's another thing, look at the powers themseves, not all powers should be equal, and targeting should not be automatic epecually in PVP
when one tleports drop targeting, maybe add a laggy targeting system to when someone speeds past, harder to hit a moveing target, but the teleport is my bigest concern, when one ports they shoudl be off the other person target screen, and it should interupt the attacks, ( if I am targeted, and I port, the next attack they tryed would cancel becuse I'm not there)
make the Powers the focus, Not the body count, and Stick it to the PVP'ers make them freekign Work for it.
My suggestion was to find a solution to an annoyance known as 'unneccesary redraws', the effect generated when a character is forced to put away a weapon to use an attack or power that they could easily perform without having to drop everything in hand. Like throwing a grenade despite the fact you're holding a one-handed weapon, or sillier still, putting away a weapon to use your LEGS!
My suggestion never intended to be viewed as getting rid of weapons draws entirely. It's not the Weapon draws that were the problem, it was the unneccessary REDRAWS. Pulling out your weapon to start a battle isn't bad, it's logical. But being forced to put it away when it's clearly possible to multi-task isn't.
In a game where heroes and villains put their life on the line to do what they do best, you'd think they'd be smart enough to know that their limbs are independent from each other. A character should be able to throw their knives if they have only one sword in hand, heck, even claw users can still throw things because most likely their fingers are free to grasp objects.
Having good combat flow in a game isn't destroying City of Heroes, nor is it solely for PvP'ers and DPS, it simply makes combat more logical. Are you also aware that weapons appear out of nowhere when you cue an attack power while running? That's been around in the game for AGES and is the only workaround to the issue so far, but it's most likely a bug, a kind of animation-cancel people use to get an edge in combat. Fixing weapon redraws now means that everybody will have the same intelligent combat flow as everybody else.
By going against this fix you're actually letting those "dirty, filthy PvPers" have the advantage over those who don't know the bugs and tricks to saving time on redrawing weapons. What is illogical is somehow thinking pulling out your sword will make it hit any harder than a normal swing, or pulling out your gun will make you more accurate. So those 'defensive buffs' you're suggesting would only make the logical issue make even less sense than than it already is.
But I digress,
Whatever inspired BackAllyBrawler to find the solution to this problem, I would like to formally thank him for taking an interest and glad to see good news of a possible solution! Even if my Assault-Rifle/Devices Blaster is still affected by redraw issues even after the fact, I have faith that the development team will get to it eventually, and that's good enough for me!
I read the list of affected powerset changes, it's cool to see my Tanker and Mastermind are going to be redrawless now. I can finally make use of the Fighting pool to it's fullest! If I get my Blaster to the Epic levels, Munitions mastery will be delicious! -
Quote:We, as players, are always whining and griping about features we want, changes we didn't like and new features we get that weren't exactly the way we like it. So one powerset got new animations and another didn't, so what? A slow-release would placate some of the userbase while the rest would rage, but are the devs hurt by all this?Originally Posted by Ad AstraAs far as a gradual replacement/reworking of animations with just a few done in each release - I doubt that would go over very well. Can you just imagine the clamor on the boards and in Broadcast - "Waaah! DB got new animations and War Mace didn't! No Fair!"
You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time. Removing unnecessary redraws from one set is better than none at all. And moving them one at a time is better than never trying at all. -
Wow! I check back to the thread to find BaBs and Arcanaville posted on it. I must have mentioned a doozy of a suggestion!
So official confirmation from BaBs states that removing redraw from one powerset is a powerset unto itself. That is a lot of work to do just to shave off a couple of seconds from an attack chain. I'm not sure what a sequencer does exactly but bloat is never a good sign anyway.
Isn't it always the way? An irritating niché problem that ends up requiring the same amount as a whole new powerset to fix even a little bit? I can very well understand why devs won't go back revamping zones left and right. If I had to choose new powersets and removing redraw from previous powersets, I would lean towards the new. BUT I would want those new sets to have minimal to no redraw issues, the best way to stop redraw issues is Prevention!
It's a very half n' half problem too. Most powerset combinations work perfectly with one another, and others, horribly. But those horrible combos aren't horrible enough to warrant the priority to fix them right away. We just have to either deal with it or have a large dry spell of no new content to get it done in a reasonable time-frame.
It's a big job, but I'm fairly certain a slow-release might still be feasible. Since we already have to workaround redraw issues, removing one instance of unnecessary redraws every patch would be a nice compromise. But if the sequencer bloat is a big issue, then perhaps redraw issues need to be put on the backburner until there's a really BIG dip in the development schedule. Which I doubt would happen considering the game has to have new stuff to play with to keep the attention of the audience.
But you never know, since most of the staff have been focused on the Going Rogue expansion this past year. Even if they wanted to eradicate redraw issue, most of the resources are pooled towards the expansion and it's just not sensible to divert any of it away until it's completed and released.
But regardless of the details, it's nice to hear that the issue is being thought about. Thanks for the heads-up BaBs, and your input Arcana! -
630 animations does sound like a large load to get rid of Weapon redraws, a great deal. I will admit I didn't take into account that body-types and the number of powers to work on was extremely neglected.
But Weapon redraws will still be an annoyance upon the game until it's sorted, so perhaps it's not that it should be done all at once, but attempted every few patches until one day all weapons can avoid redrawing.
After all, there's nothing to say that if the devs have spare resources, they can't work on a particular power and all the body types and flight/ground animations. You could see Kick being compatible in one patch, then Boxing in another patch. It would probably have no mention aside from the patch notes, but those who had problems with that power and their weapons before can feel better that they're no longer restricted.
630 is far too much for one release, but spread it over a number years and it doesn't seem so threatening anymore. -
Today I am proposing a fix for issues regarding weapon redraws, specifically unnecessary ones that interrupt the flow of attack chains.
What you can do...
If you're holding any sort of weapon and use the [Brawl] or the origin-temp power attack, the character is able to perform the attack without forcing them to de-equip their weapon at all, sometimes even having their own alternate animation to compensate (Ninja Sword bashes the opponent with hilt instead of going to a punch)
What you can't do...However, in some power pools like [Fighting], even when you're holding guns or melee weapons, [Kick] somehow requires the use of BOTH HANDS to use, this is not only illogical but the fact that Brawl and any throwing animation ([Dual Blades] still allows [throwing knives] power) works with single and double-handed equipment, but something as different as using legs to kick doesn't? Heck, if you play [Dual-Blades] the Brawl attack IS [Kick], the exact same animation.
How it they could fix it...My suggestion is simple: Whatever techniques were used to make Brawl and the origin-temp compatible with weapons should have give an animations tweak to allow all relevant powersets to work harmoniously with a character's weapons. Power pools like [Fighting] aren't the only ones that are heavily affected by any weapon redraws, this also applies to powersets like Devices! Even if you're able to have one hand free to throw grenades and such (Assault Rifle + Devices), you still have to put away your guns to throw a grenade.
Because really...!Players really hate wasting time they could be spending supporting the team or attacking enemies and shouldn't have to limit their attack chains because there's no hands-free kicking allowed. Heck, even Fighting's Boxing punch could be transposed onto weapons, like being struck with the butt of an assault rifle.
So what if it's minor...?Sure, this may only apply to non-brawl physical attacks and non-origin item attacks, but this suggestion is the difference between an efficient ranged and melee combatant and a clunky one. And I definitely know people have had issues like this at least once in the past because of it. The only ones unaffected by this issue is the non-weapon power users. My Fire/P-Dom Corruptor has Fighting and is able to use it to it's fullest, but my Assault/Devices Blaster is plagued with Primary and Secondary redraws and applying Fighting to her powersets would be catastrophic.
The solution highlights
- Make Fighting's 'Boxing' and 'Kick' function without redrawing weapons, ESPECIALLY Kick. Also applies to any other physical attack that dedraws weapons unnecessarily.
- Make single-handed item powers (grenades) compatible with one handed weapons (Assault Rifle, Broadsword, Mace...etc).
- For a little pizazz, give these newly compatible attacks new animations if applicable. (Rifle-whip with Assault Rifle)
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I would like to see more City of ads around the UK, out of all the stores I've been to there's no game boxes, time-cards or anything City of or NCSoft related to buy at all. Even Champions Online can be found in just about any proper gaming store. If they did more ads for Europe I could see the EU side getting more players to fill their servers.
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I must admit I was hasty on some details, I should really try to post suggestions during the day rather than 1am in the morning. I will try to respond to the points made so far.
I do agree that Damage-Protection would have some overpoweredness in high amounts, but generally it should be seen as a small damage standard. I do think Invulnerability would still require Resistance to scale well, but having unenhanceable Damage-protection to make them immune to the weakest attacks possible makes sense within their power. If you keep assuming something like this will have high values then of course it's going to be overpowered.
As for Defence not being entirely skill based, I also agree on this point. If an Stone-armoured character is partially covered in tough rock, it makes sense that there would be a chance that the opponent would hit something that doesn't actually damage the character itself. However in the case of Forcefield users, it 'usually' covers their entire body like a globe like someone mentioned before, weak attacks shouldn't be able to get through at all, but stronger attacks should begin to penetrate the forcefield as it's not strong enough to deal with all that force. So with this, perhaps Defence isn't entirely skill-based on the character's half, but a chance that the opponent will hit something that has no effect on the character.
Someone early on in the thread mentioned getting rid of typed damage, here I must clarify. I am not getting rid of ALL typed damage, it's still very relevant to survival factors like Resistance. What I was talking about was reducing the importance of typed damage of Defence in place of positional defence. It shouldn't matter if a ranged attack is bullets, fire, ice or whatever. If your character is adept at avoiding ranged shots then they should be able to dodge them all. Psionics is a difficult one to class, but since psi blasts seem to take their time reaching their targets like other projectiles, it wouldn't be silly to categorise them as something like ranged.
Damage-Protection is only overpowered if it's set high and enhanceable. What's wrong with being able to reduce damage by 5-10 points for certain types? If it was set as high as 50 or 100 points then I'd think it was overpowered, I would view Damage-protection as a minor supplement for Resistance and Defence, not an core mechanic.
My suggestion does not involve adding a block mechanic to the game. I tried 'that other Superhero MMO' and it made me so glad I play Co* instead.
Lastly, someone mentioned that this issue was discussed by the devs a long time ago, that the actual event was fuzzy to their memory but remembered it was a no. All I can say is, ah well, back to the drawing board.
Thank you for the feedback everyone, feel free to discuss more if you wish.
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Today's suggestion features a proposal for an expansion and standardisation to the current mechanics used in Survivability. The three main mechanics in place today is Resistance, Defence and Protection, which is absolutely fine and all, but I do see some logical errors involved in some powers.
So what I recommend is this;
- Powers that give the ability to reduce the amount of pain and injuries one suffers, but does not nullify pain or injury, will be given as Resistance. This mechanic isn't problematic as every power that fits is already applied. But the intention that no matter how high your Resistance is (to the cap), every single attack will hurt to some degree. You'd expect a Willpower Defence user to take less pain through honing their ability, but not an Invulnerable Defence user who's special ability is to NOT be harmed.
- Powers that grant the character the ability to evade or deflect attacks with skill will use Defence. This is the one that needs most standardisation as Defence should be the measure of skill to avoid damage, not because you're made of rock and somehow your body can deflect attacks without any after-effect.
Defence is suited towards Super-Reflexes and Shield Defence sets which cause the character to react or act skillfully to save them from harm. Much like Reflexes to swerve out of the way, or moving your shield to block a blow.
Furthermore, to rid of all typed defence and convert it all into positional defences. If defence is all about the character's skill, it shouldn't matter if it's physical, temperature-related, psionic or anything. Melee, Ranged and AoE are sensible categories to avoid damage, as one character might be a brawler skilled in close combat, while a shield user might be good at blocking ranged blows, or a reflexes nimbly dashing between [Rain of Fire] drops.
- And for Protection, to inplement Damage-protection much like Resistance is to Status duration. Damage protection is a fixed amount of damage reduction that works in the same way as magnitude does. If a character has 15 damage protection to Smashing, dealing 16 damage will only inflict 1 point of damage with the attack. But if the Smashing attack is 15 or lower than it will have no effect.
And before you go on about 'abuse/unbalance' issues, much in the way of status magnitude, if Damage over time powers are involved, Damage protection will stack in the same way. An attack that deals 20 damage over 20 seconds will start seeing the protected character taking damage after 15 seconds have passed. And also if the devs did take it on, I'm pretty sure they'd know the right values to use for the powers.
An easy example for Damage protection would be like Invulnerability, if you can take bullets to the chest and be smashed through buildings, why would a regular punch to the chest have any effect? Resistance cannot do that as even 99% RES will deal 'some' damage as a result. And there's no skill involved to being invincible as I would guess most of it is automatic. If the Invul character can nullify the most weakest attacks whilst taking less damage on more powerful attacks, it would make it a lot better than simply taking less damage from anything you're supposedly 'Invulnerable' to.
A simple summary for tl;dr readers is;
Resistance is for pain-reduction, not pain prevention.
Defence is about the average success of skilfully avoiding damage, not some random attack failure chance.
Protection should be extended to bring a hybridisation of Resistance and Defence, the inherent ability to avoid low-damage while lowering higher damage attacks.
That is the conclusion of my suggestion for today, now it's time to hear the judgement of the public. I also apologise for any errors in the proposal, I finished this post at around 00:58 GMT.
Do you think Survivablity mechanics could do with some standardisation and improvement? Do you think some powers are logically inconsistent with their effect? Is there any sense giving Damage-Protection in the same way Resistance has with both Damage and Status? -
I believe it would be nice if the lists merged into one, it would eliminate the problem of buying two versions of the game based on location. I know I actually lost money because when I was running the trial I didn't realise that it was based on the US server list, and foolishly brought the european version thinking it was the same thing.
I may be in the UK but I still want to keep the progress I made during those 14 days.
But then of course there would be that migration problem. EU players going off to the high-pop US servers for 'better teaming' that could leave those EU servers less populated and Freedom and Virtue stressed out. But more likely than not, it'll just mean that the timezone difference between the two server groups will increase the average minimum players online throughout the day.
When the US players are all heading to bed, the EU players would still be in the middle of their playing day. And about the time the late-nighters in Europe are calling it a night, the early birds of the US are logging on. It might not be as simple as that, but that is the benefit of timezones. -
I don't see why Ninja pets can't have the ninja run animations and such, it would be a pretty good cosmetic enhancement to an existing powerset. And it's not like it would be giving Superbooster material for free, as it's only an animation for a non-playable entity. No in-game benefit for players as a result.
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From what I remember, they tried to do a movie before but it got stuck in 'Development Hell', it might have been during the Cryptic era of Co*. I have no idea whether they're still even considering trying again with a movie, especially as the team isn't even finished with Going Rogue (which will require some monitoring after release to catch bugs).
If they did do a movie it would also be a big risk too, are they really popular and rich enough to get one in production, and the rights negosiation would be horrifying considering Paragon studios is under the control of NCSoft. -
Regarding the Defender's inherant, I do agree that it's fairly underpowered for an AT designed to protect and /defend/ the team. I've had my own ideas on how it could be improved that would make the Defender break teams out of critical situations. Currently they receive a endurance discount for powers, this is good for heal spams.
But I would also think that boosting their secondary effects and giving a heal bonus to those who can heal. Increased Magnitude to Knockdown and debuff effects, increased duration for buff and debuff effects and a boost to healing powers by a percentage.
Since the power doesn't work solo, and that the average team health has to dip pretty low for it to have maximum effect, this would allow the Defender to do what they do best, defending weak team-mates with improved healing and fending off attackers with improved attack effects.
I also felt that the Scrapper's inherent could do with a tweak to get them in line of the Stalker's maximum critical ratio. They get 5% for minions and below, and 10% for Lieutenants and above. Maybe it would be nice if Elite Bosses and above got a 15% chance. 5% isn't much but it would make Scrappers feel more like the 'against all odds' fighters their inherent embodies. -
A suggestion for a new power pool that focuses primarily on allowing a supercharacter to possess the ability to make copies of themselves that may have offensive capabilities as well as some tactical advantages associated with clones.
Duplication functions on the lines of a Mastermind for other ATs, though there are clear differences and restrictions to prevent other ATs from outshining a real Mastermind.
Duplication set
Tier 1: Aggressive Duplicate
Tier 2: Support Duplicate
Tier 3: Uncanny Facsimile
Tier 4: Clonefusion
Aggressive Duplicate(s)
Summons between 1-3 duplicates based on tier level that possess a small amount of powers in the character's offensive powerset. (i.e. Primary set if Scrapper, Secondary if Tanker) These duplicates will proceed to attack enemy targets either specified by the player or those who attack them.
Support Duplicate(s)
Summons between 1-2 duplicates based on tier level that possesses a smaller amount of powers in the character's defensive/buffing powerset (i.e. Primary set if Defender or Tanker, Secondary set if Corruptor or Scrapper). These duplicates will proceed to help out allies and the player with buffs, or if they cannot cast buffs or heals, pull aggro towards them using their Defense category powerset. (Tankers)
Uncanny Facsimile
Summons one duplicate that possesses a number of powers in both character's powersets. This facsimile will be balanced between offense and defence, though they won't be as strong as the original, it would be difficult to tell the other apart without overhead names.
Duplicate Rave
Summons a large number of duplicates, ranging from 10-15 that possess only the offensive powerset of a character. Individually they are very weak but will proceed to attack any enemy in range, functioning similarly to Gang War.
Notes/Balancing Factors
- The number of duplicates for each power works similarly with a true Mastermind in that you only possess one of a type in early levels but able to summon more as you progress. To fit in with the structure of a Power Pool, reaching Lv14 and Lv20 (third and fourth tiers) will grant the player access to 2 and 3 Aggressive duplicates, and Lv20 to access the second Support Duplicate. Only one Uncanny Duplicate can be active at a time.
- Tier 1, 2 and 3 duplicates spawn as -2, -1 and 0 respectively. As they are duplicates of the original they can never be more powerful than the original. Duplicate Rave pets spawn at -3. Typically they all have half the health of the original character at the levels spawned.
- Duplicates do not respond to the Mastermind's inherent at all. They do not receive a Damage-ToHit boost nor can they bodyguard. This balancing factor prevents Masterminds from creating a miniature army to dominate the field with. They can however be controlled, and most likely other ATs who turn the pet window on can as well.
- The tech needed to produce this power may be able to use parts of the character creator and custom critters creator. In that, the pets generates copy directly from the original character rather than using in-game models. Power customisation-wise, duplicates could be altered in the same way as a player character or custom critters. Duplicates may be customised into 'groupies' or 'bodyguards' of the player's design.
- Like Masterminds and other pet owners, duplicates are expendable but if the original is defeated, so are all other duplicates.
- Duplicates do not possess the inherent power that ATs receive. Therefore duplicate brutes cannot get damage bonuses from Fury, Defender duplicates will not receive a discount for low team-mate health...etc.
- In comparison to Masterminds, Duplication is a non-specialist form of minions, as shown by the lack of upgrading, attacks and pet specific heals. Masterminds will generally have stronger minions than any AT making duplicates, however duplicates could have a cheaper summon cost as a result.
That's all I've got for this power, now it's time to discuss it. Does it cheapen the Mastermind powersets, or does it reach out to all those players who wanted more controllable minions? -
While I do not doubt that having a physical hand-to-hand set for Blasters would be pretty good for defending one self without having to redraw weapons constantly. I don't think Martial arts as you put it fits into the Blaster's Secondary.
First off, the Blaster's secondary is known as 'Support'. And Martial Arts is under the category of Melee. Having a set Melee set for a Blaster seems a little counter-productive given their low survivability. The main point of the Support sets is to debuff enemies and keep them away from damaging the blaster too much, not to cause direct damage.
So basically, unless Martial Arts is full of new powers made to keep enemies at bay, or incapaciate them. It's not going to work on a Blaster. -
I think the damage for Self-Destruction is fine, extra damage would be nice but nothing in comparison to accuracy. Whenever I try using the power, I usually get around 1-3 enemies around half the time, and all the other enemies just stand there like 'Ho hum...'.
If the accuracy was set higher, 1.2x or even 1.1x, it would be less frustrating when a group gets away from a string of bad-luck misses. For a power you have to pay $10 for, I would expect a 90-95% hit rate on a power that kills me and can only be activated per hour. -
If there were some sort of anthropmorphic set of costumes, it would be best to try and hit all the different species with some alternate styles on each. Such as Canines, Felines, Reptiles, Bovines...ect. Maybe some aquatic species as well. With enough patterns and styles one category can cover a number of species. Like the difference between Dogs and Foxes, or Dragons and Lizards.
Personally I would like to see more aliens costume pieces as an alternative to just humans. But anthropomorphic animals would still be nice anyway concept-wise.