Raumornie

Personally, I like to look for the Question Mark (shown here: ?) to help me identify if what I just typed was a question. Was there a question mark? Well, there certainly was in that last sentence! We can be pretty sure it was a question.

Your post, however, seems to be lacking in this essential characteristic of questions and so, despite any ambiguity you might feel, almost certainly does not contain a question. I think that remembering this simple rule might help you in the future. That's all for this edition of: You and Your Post. Until next time!

Thanks! I thought you might.

Smileys are annoying. Your ability to communicate is improved without them.

Further restrictions will be made in the future. Coming soon:
1. 'lol' will not be regarded as a punctuation mark.

2. The letter combinations 'u' and 'ru' will not be permitted except inside actual words.

3. All acronyms will need to pass a stringent review board composed of several people your mom considers reasonable.

4. Violation of these rules will result in the offender being retroactively purged from the bowels of the internet. (It's actually worse than it sounds.)

All of this is done to improve the forums in general and my sanity in particular. Except for the last rule. That's there because I can be a little mean at times. Enjoy!

I think the 'defense' of the limitations of power customization happens at several levels:

1. Story/Theme: This is where the 'Ice powers should look like Ice, Kheldians should look like Kheldians' type of arguements are mostly thought to go. The primary objection of course is that many people don't want to work within the limits of the existing story/theme and really want a water blast set, or a 'power to turn into a creepy tentacle monster that just happens to look like a Kheldian'. Power customization isn't really an answer to this anyway (your water blasts just happen to look like a pallete swapped verson of my energy blasts and they do the exact same thing), but it's a step and that's important. Saying that it isn't enough of a step is a legitimate arguement, and if there weren't other factors to consider I doubt it would hold up. Why can't I have cartoonish gemstone armor? Perhaps because...

2. Artistic quality: It's their world; we just play in it. They still have to sell it to other people, and to the media. Screenshots of people making yellow snowmen or patches of very slippery emeralds might seem amusing to some, but they don't, in the opinion of those who have to justify such things, look professional. Polished. The sort of thing that people want to spend money on. And if there's isn't a steady influx of money, then there's no way to get people to do the work. There needs to be a balance between players being creative (which often means looking really, really stupid) and making the game look good. Purple fire is on one side of the equation; yellow snow is on the other. Oh, and in addition to playing with the colors of everything, there's also...

3. Gameplay considerations: This is maybe just as big as the second reason. Someone has already mentioned damage types, which could certainly get confusing for newer player, but the consistency of animations, colors, and visual effects contribute significantly to the ease with which people learn this game. The white squid monster is a Peacebringer and the purple one is a Warshade. Sure you can click on them and bring up their info, but consistent visuals means you don't even have to. I know that I want more fire resistance because I keep getting killed by something that looks like fire. What kind of defense do I need against a water blast? This has already been broken to some extent by the new animations that go along with many of the powers (Footstomp may or may not involve actual stomping and one could make an MA character with 6 'kick' attacks that all leave both feet firmly on the ground) and, as above, there is almost certainly a balance to be struck. Is this it? That's certainly not my call to make, but I think that seeing things through the eyes of a new player might make the desire for wild customization diminish somewhat. It certainly does for me.

I think the question is fair, btw. I just don't think that the justifications for a balanced approach are weak. It will be interesting to see exactly how far it goes...

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Actually the solution at the time was so blatantly obvious that i'm surprised they never thought of it (or am I? )

Very few of the pseudo-pets that were receiving the i7 caster buff transfer actually have "attacks" as we think of them. The vast majority opperate like blizzard with "activate periods".

*If recharge was never meant to boost a power like LS all they had to do was change it from using lightning bolt with cast+rech, to lightning bolt with activate period = 5 seconds akin to something like bonfire with an activate period of 2 sec.

The question is "why" it wasn't done?


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Anytime something seems like an obvious and easy fix that hasn't been implemented, it probably isn't.

In this case, I would guess (and since I haven't seen the code, I would imagine that it's a not even this 'simple') that going from a targeted power to an 'activation period' would make these powers unable to shoot at individual targets inside their range and instead work as something closer to an AoE where all targets in the area would be hit. If that's not the intent of the power (as is the case with Lightning storm or Voltaic Sentinel), then an entity casting single targeted powers seems like a better solution.

Is it possible to write a combat system such that your suggestion works best? Certainly. Is that the combat system we currently have? I think it's safe to assume that it isn't and that making become so would require ripping out more of the codebase than would be beneficial from a time perspective (i.e. The General Coding Rant).

I think that there are clearly a couple of different camps here: people who are willing to assume that the reasons stated are a coverup for something unstated (developers are liars, lazy, have some hidden agenda, are shortsighted, can't write decent code, etc.), and those who have accepted the stated reasons and are looking to get some kind of compensation for the powers they believe will be negatively affected by this change.

Perhaps those in the first group could get a thread started in the "For Fun" section of the forums in order to make the helpful feedback easier to sift through in here...

Oddly enough, I've screwed up and run Katie on Invincible, resulting in a 2+ hour time with multiple team wipes. I have no idea why so may people chose to stick it out, least of all one of the more experienced and skillful players I've had a chance to team with.

I'm referring here to Squez.

Also, why don't more people listen to you? This is the best response to the "OMG TASK FORCE (by which I mean Katie and Eden) REWARDS ARE NERFED" flavor of doom that's been seasoning this issue.