RemusShepherd

I really want someone to explain this one to me. This book was the worst thing ever in its first issue. Then Durakken rated issue 2 as a D, and now it's up to C. Can someone tell me how it's pulling away from the awfulness it started out being?

I have a Supersoaker Monster XL, the largest gun ever made by the Laramie corporation. Twin adjustable nozzles, 1.5 gallon tank, quick-fill attachment, and a bipod so that you can use it as a mounted gun emplacement. There's one on eBay for about $240, last I checked. I can't decide whether to sell it or to give it to my nephews when they're old enough to lift it.

Your build gained Fighting and a second travel power, and Arcana's build...gained Fighting and a second travel power. Your specialties weren't lost (although they could have been if you had chosen to take more AT powers), but your characters became much more similar.

Maybe a comic book analogy would help. Banshee was a long-range specialist sonic blaster who can fly. Psylocke was a short-range blapper with no travel powers. (You could argue she's a scrapper with psi melee, but let's say blapper for now.)

Psylocke at one point wore a costume that gave her the ability to fly, and she learned telekinesis that allowed her more long-range attacks. She's always had good Fighting ability. Let's say that at the same time, Banshee learned to fight (and defend) with his bare hands.

Before we had two blasters, one of whom could fly and shoot at a distance and one who mostly fought at close range. Now we've got two blasters, both of whom can fly, shoot at long range, and mix it up in melee. They're still very different. They're still specialized in what they do. But they're a lot more similar now than they were before.

I'm not saying that everyone will take the exact same powers. But large fractions of the players will. They have to; there just aren't enough alternate options.

I'm probably not representative of the player base as it is now. I said that in this thread yesterday. I probably am on the fringe; I'm probably not the kind of player that Paragon Studios wants in their game anymore. I want substance -- as in challenging gameplay -- over flashy gimmicks like costumes and meaningless choices.

That's the entire point of the thread. If the game relies on flash and gimmicks, the people who want substance will leave, just as true wrestling fans left the WWF when it became all show. Can the game survive with just the players who are happy with the sparkly bits? The WWF didn't. The original poster drew an analogy between two industries where customers were lost over the lack of substance in the product.

Maybe that analogy is false; maybe people like me will leave and CoH will continue on happily as a sandbox-like button-mashing costume sim. But because I loved this game I would be remiss if I did not speak out over what I see as potential disaster on the horizon.

They all have health and stamina *now*. And now they also all have Leadership and Combat Jumping.

Pointing out that stamina was ubiquitous before doesn't matter. It's ubiquitous now. But now that their slots were freed up, the Fighting and Leadership power pools are near-ubiquitous also.

There are the *same* number of choices. (Actually a bit fewer, because you can't choose not to have Stamina.) But you have more opportunities to choose, so you end up with more of the limited number of choices available. That means your choices overlap more with other players. Characters are broader, so diversity is less.

AND THEY STILL DO. THEY DIDN'T HAVE LEADERSHIP BEFORE, BUT THEY DO NOW.

The choice is not binary, but it's pretty sparse. There are only a few options available. That's my point -- we need more options to fill our power slots.

If you're not taking Fitness, Leadership is the natural next option. A second travel power is a third option. After that...well, concept characters might go anywhere, but most players interested in performance shun the Concealment and Presence pools. Medicine might be a valid fourth option but it's terrible unslotted, so it requires reworking of the primary and secondary. That's about it. Four, maybe five options max, and most players will choose the same one or two.

In contrast, before inherent stamina players had to make sacrifices in order to fit power pools into their design. This made the pool powers much rarer. Not everyone had Fitness or Leadership or Combat Jumping. Secondary travel powers was almost unheard of, outside of PvP. Now nearly everybody has at least one and often more of those pools.

It was not the choice between Stamina and no stamina that made builds unique. It was the choice of making sacrifices to take the other power pools. Some people made that choice, some didn't. Now, no sacrifices are necessary -- everyone has all the AT powers they want and all the power pools they want, and they're a lot more similar now than they were before.

I'm postulating that characters are more similar to each other than they were before, and that's something we can only measure by comparing two characters. Seeing your build alone doesn't help (and I can't see them from work, anyway). The one comparison that we did supported my theory.

Although I don't think anything you've shown has contradicted me, Arcanaville, I believe everyone in this game will agree that you are an edge case. You are widely known as the most methodical and knowledgeable player in the game, and the only one who, it is rumored, has the developers on speed dial. You're not going to get anywhere by claiming to be an Everyman. Just so you realize that.

I'll frankly admit that I'm not typical either, although probably not as far out on the edge as you. I've quit this game once due to decisions I disagreed with (ED). I lost my SG in the process, and when I returned I never regained a pool of friends to help me enjoy the game. So I'm more concerned with the gameplay available than all the social constructs (like -- feh -- costume pieces) that the developers keep rolling out. That makes me unusual compared to most players.

I disagree with this also. If you find one black swan among a thousand white ones, it doesn't mean that there's a diversity of swans. It means there are outliers. Perfect diversity would be a heterogeneous population with no build more prevalent than another. I don't think that's possible, but I worry that we're a lot closer to the bland homogeneous mean and on a trend further in that direction.

No, it is not. Stamina was such a strong draw that it effectively reduced the number of available power slots by three. Now that Stamina is inherent, players have the ability to take more powers...but only from a small pool of choices. This causes large populations of characters to share power choices. Diversity goes down. The concept is very simple.

I disagree. Before, all those characters had Stamina in common. After, all of them will have Leadership, multiple travel powers, Fitness and/or Combat Jumping in common. Those that were unique by having those pools before will lose their uniqueness; those who pick the 'superior' option will all end up picking the same pool.

These power picks are usually made by level 30, in my experience -- the 30s and 40s are filled by the top tier AT powers and then the epics. There's at least one gap in character building at level 30 where you cannot pick an AT power (unless you've delayed one), and most ATs have questionable powers that can be skipped in their teens and 20s. There may be a few power slots left open in the 40s, but overall I think most people have gotten into their power pools by level 30. And most of their pool picks are the same as everyone elses' in their AT.

Yep, the incarnate powers are another symptom of the problem that I've been ranting about. The overall trend is toward giving the players more gimmicks and less substance, where 'gimmicks' are defined as meaningless choices and 'substance' defined as gameplay. Both inherent stamina and the incarnate system are symptoms of that problem.

Different players want different things for their characters. Some will choose power pools to min/max, some will try to fit a power concept, and some will seek to make a role-playing concept. I'm saying there should be power pools that encourage all of those types of gameplay. If they are 'inferior' to combat jumping than the min/maxers will take combat jumping...but concept players will take inferior options if it matches their concept. Tons of players will take a weak ice shield, or a fire resistance aura, or a body armor passive in a gadget pool, if they fit their characters..

I'm not the one who started the thread. I just adopted it. Look around on this forum and you'll see that I'm obviously not the only one with complaints.

Almost but not quite. I am saying that there were few choices for powers to take. Most of the time people will choose primary or secondary powers over power pools, because they are stronger and generally more useful unslotted. But if you had powers in your AT that were just undesirable (like the Invuln passives) then you'll go after pool powers...usually, the same pool powers as everyone else with your powersets. There just aren't enough choices.

All three of your regens and one of your brutes now have Leadership, all of your fliers have Combat Jumping, and two more of your characters (who already fly) have super speed. Yet you're not seeing a problem with lack of choice here, or with character diversity?

I think you're proving my point, UberGuy. The only disagreement left is whether or not everyone else with the same powersets chose the same power pools for their characters. You say no, but I believe most of them would have. There aren't many good alternatives.

What we have now is City of Combat Jumpers. We need more options.

I'm talking about diversity throughout the playerbase -- different players should have characters that play differently. Restrictions allow that. More power pools would (contrary to intuition, I know) create more restrictions by making it so there are many more powers available than the slots a character has to put them in. Players would have to make choices, and those choices would lead to a diversity of builds.

You're talking about diversity in a single character's abilities. I'm not concerned about that at all.

This. If they give us more free powers, then they need to also give us new power pools to fill the holes in our builds.

Medusa revolver. It's a special six-shot revolver that can fire almost any ammo from 9mm up to 45 magnum.

For a melee weapon I'm not sure. I'd want something blunt; a katana can break and won't do much damage to zombies unless you get a decapitating blow. Hard to go wrong with a crowbar. A fire axe might be sturdy enough and just as useful.

Just as dangerous, if not more. Furies may harm your body, but furries will destroy your mind.

I am not saying that the builds are not different. I am not saying that diversity has decreased to zero. I am saying that it has decreased somewhat -- a noticable amount.

Okay, that's a good way of looking at it, so let's try that framing. I maintain that characters cannot be as specialized as they were before. They have too many power slots that have to be filled, so they have to take some generalist powers.

Before inherent stamina, St. Angelus was pretty long-range specialized, with a knockback power, few melee attacks, a snipe and no fighting pool. Arcanaville's build was more generalist, with no snipe or dedicated KB (beyond the natural KB in her attacks) and several melee attacks. (I'm unclear on whether she had the fighting pool before or not.)

After inherent stamina, St. Angelus picked up the fighting pool...and now their blaster is more of a generalist, with both range capabilities and some ability to mix it up close to the enemy.

You'd be hard pressed to make a true specialist out of these powersets. You'd have to avoid 7 powers in the primary to go pure blapper; there are 5 melee attacks in the secondary you'd have to avoid (one you can't) to go pure long-range. You already can't avoid taking 2 pool powers (not counting epics), so you're looking at either 9 or 7 power choices that have to be filled by pools. Doable, but there aren't a lot of options: Fighting for the blapper, a travel power for both, and then both builds will probably dabble in leadership or medicine. (I still don't understand having multiple travel powers, but I suppose that's an option also.).

Before inherent stamina you'd have either 6 or 4 power choices free. There was much less chance that the two builds will both choose the same power pool. The blapper would need Fighting, and after a travel power it would have only one power pick free, which would have probably gone to either combat jumping or hasten. The ranged specialist would only overlap if their travel pools were the same.

No overlapping powers before; several overlapping powers afterwards. Decrease in build diversity. A small decrease...but we are talking about two very loose powersets in possibly the least restrictive AT. If we replay this with a tank then you'll see a lot less options available.

That's an interesting counterargument. Inherent stamina did make players create more alts, and that alone might have led to more diversity. You've got a good point here, and I think I agree with you.

I still maintain that the game needs additional power pools, to increase character diversity and customization and to give more gameplay options. The devs are busy building costumes. We're getting flash, not substance.

I agree completely. Nobody wants the extremes. The question is where in the middle we want to be.

And as I said before, I maintain that most people were wrong.

Oh, that doesn't bother me as much. There's still plenty of diversity in slotting. In fact, giving us more enhancement slots will help the power slot problem, because it will allow more power pool picks to be viable. Yeah, that's a fine bandage over the problem. New power pools would be the better solution.

I'm sure they play very differently. I'm not saying that they don't. I saying that they play more similarly now than they did before inherent stamina. If nothing else, both have Fighting now, when they didn't before.

Noooo, the other extreme would be two power slots, but still 24 powers + pools to choose from. Then every character would truly be unique. I'd have a Power Thrust blaster, and you'd have a Boost Range one, and they wouldn't resemble each other at all.

I am not criticizing your build, I'm sure they both work fine. I'm just saying that they look pretty similar.

I don't put myself forward as a connaisseur of builds. The fact that I mixed up the two builds and saw fly in both, rather than superspeed in both, is proof of that.

So you both speed instead of fly. You say that you gained Fighting when you got free stamina. Either Arcanaville already had Fighting -- in which case your build became more like hers -- or she chose it also, proving that there are only a few viable options in the power pools. One way or another, your characters are more similar now than they were before inherent stamina. That's pretty undeniable.

That's not saying that either character is inferior, or bad, or ugly, or that their mothers didn't love them. I'm not criticizing your character or your creativity in making them. I am saying that you and Arcanaville were herded into similar choices by the changes to the system.

Then I think we simply disagree. I believe the number of meaningful choices has decreased. I also believe that the number of trivial choices has expanded.

I hadn't heard about that. I think it's an awful terrible no-good idea, unless it also comes with new power pools.

What will your blaster take with three new power slots? You can't take any more power pools. You're stuck with either the 5th power in your travel pools or filling out your primary and Epics. Either of those choices gives you near-identical power choices to St. Angelius' blaster.

Take it to the absurd extreme; let's say the devs give us all 55 power choices. That's every AT power and every Epic, and four powers in four power pools. Whee, more choices! Except, no -- everyone will have the same powers, except for some minor differences in which pools they take.

Restrictions create diversity. By removing restrictions diversity is lost.

I'm sorry. I am getting annoyed, and I wasted most of my day at work responding in this thread.

No. That was never my point. My point is that people do not take useless powers if they can help it. Because of that, they are driven to take the same powers in the power pools. Everyone takes combat jumping because nobody wants to take Provoke. (Barring concept characters, of course.)

Let's get past the 'useless power' argument and just assume that every power is equally useful. ("Everrrry slot is saaaacred...") Before there were 64 possible combinations of the base powers, and permutations on that with the power pools. Now there are 21 possible base combinations, plus the same permutations. There are less possibilities. Characters are more similar than they used to be. It's basic math. I'm sorry if I'm getting frustrated explaining it.

In any event, this is only one facet of the complaint lodged at the beginning of this thread: The developers are not delivering new gameplay experiences, they are commited to delivering flashy gimmicks. You can't blame them; flashy gimmicks sell microtransactions. Character diversity is just one example of how the game has lost substance that is not being replaced.

You sacrificed powers from your secondary to take Fighting, two travel powers, and Maneuvers. She sacrificed equally from primary and secondary to take Fighting, and two travel powers, and Combat Jumping.

That's supposed to be diverse?

Before Stamina, you would have taken Super Jump and she would have taken Fly and the two of you would have been much more different. She's better in melee, you're better at range, but that was possible to do before or after inherent stamina.

(I should also note that I don't see any use in your two-slotted maneuvers. What is that, 2.28% with Weave as your only other defense? Combat Jumping would have been a shade less defense, effectively no endurance, and free up a slot. But then -- with a smarter build -- the two of you would have been even more similar.)

The builds you posted prove my point. Instead of one blaster who jumps and one blaster that flies, we have two blasters that both fly. One can jump and one can superspeed, but they're a lot more alike now than they would have been before.

I'm going to explain this simply and in kindergarten terms.

Sally, Joe, and Betty all have baskets that can hold three fruit. They can each take one of apples, oranges, pears, and bananas.

Sally takes everything but the oranges, Joe takes everything but the pears, and Betty takes everything but the bananas. They all have different baskets.

Now someone gives them all baskets that can hold more. They all take an apple, an orange, a pear and a banana.

Each of their baskets are more diverse. But the baskets as a whole are uniformly the same.

Diversity arises both because of what you can take and because of what you have sacrificed. We lost more than we gained. I don't think I can make it any clearer than that.

I am, however, very sorry for everything I said about Boost Range. Thankfully, the fact that it's useful doesn't change my point at all.

I am not arguing that we should couple appearance and function. I am arguing that the devs have been obsessed with appearances, and for a few years they have given us very little in the way of functional gameplay. GR was an exception. Incarnate content is another exception, but it's been badly implemented. I am also arguing that with Freedom and microtransactions, the trend towards appearance over function seems to be accelerating.

I'm not worried about prereqs. I'm worried about being forced to take powers but not having slots for them. That doesn't mean you have to take useless powers. Combat Jumping is an excellent power unslotted, and Assault is adequate. But that leaves fewer options. You can choose to take Maneuvers or...I dunno, anything from the Presence pool. Then you're taking useless powers. The diversity -- the choice -- is an illusion. In reality the only choices are few: CJ, Assault, maybe grant invisibility, Recall, or another travel power.

People don't take useless powers, Arcanaville. They do anything to avoid them, including taking the same powers that everyone else takes. That's my point.

Yes, you could replan your character to slot out your pool powers and make them useful. But you could have done that before. Nothing has been gained. Only lost.

Well, let's use an energy/energy blaster as a concrete example.

Before, the blaster would have to get a travel prerequisite, a travel power, and the three powers in Fitness. They had room for for 20 powers up to level 38, after which we can assume are filled with epics. Minus 5, that's 15 powers and 3 powers less than they have available in their powersets. Let's assume at least at first they all drop Boost Range, since it's probably the worst power in the AT.

The blaster can choose to drop utility powers (Aim, Stun), or drop offense that doesn't fit into an attack chain (Sniper bolt, Nova), or decide not to use melee attacks much (Energy Punch, Power Thrust). They might decide that they didn't like to use self-buffs (Aim, Build Up) or status effects (Power Push, Stun). There's many different options they could have gone with. Numerically, there are exactly 8*7 = 56 options for what powers they could skip. 8*8 = 64 if you allow the possibility for taking Boost Range.

Now we get inherent stamina, and we get travel powers without prerequities. The blaster has four new slots. The blaster now takes...every power. They have to. Including Boost Range. With one slot still open, we're forced to take a single pool power with no slotting. I'll be generous and say that there are 21 possible picks from the nine power pools, including three secondary travel powers, although to be realistic some of the pool powers should never be taken alone and unslotted. Our 64 options possible before have now been condensed to 21. About a third as many character design options as there were before.

In *both* cases the blaster could choose to sacrifice more powers from their primary and secondary and take power pools instead. Nothing has changed in that respect, and there are no advantages to pre- or post- Stamina from that. The number of possible combinations is still very large because you can choose to sacrifice AT powers to take pool powers. But those combinations were multiplicative with the basic combinations and they haven't changed. The basic options have been reduced to about a third of what they were, and so that reduces all options by the same amount. Character design diversity is a third of what it was.

Adding a fifth power in the travel pools helps a little. Allowing epic powers to be taken at 35 helps a little. (I haven't respecced to take advantage of that yet.) But the essential fact is that meaningful choices require a sacrifice of the non-selected options. We were given the ability to make fewer sacrifices, and that reduced our options. They needed to give us more options -- more power pools -- to compensate.

Wrong, because of the sacrifice necessary for Stamina. People could sacrifice offense, defense, support or travel powers, or they could sacrifice slots to end rdx and build the character so that Stamina wasn't necessary. When characters had fewer power-slots than powers available, the powers they chose to take and the ones they chose to sacrifice defined their characters. Now there are no sacrifices and diversity is lessened.

Consider the options after inherent stamina:
C and D are effectively 'Do nothing' options -- they're just wasting power slots, unless those powers are used for role-playing reasons. So there's really only three options, with one of them being 'do nothing'.

Consider the options before inherent stamina:

A. Build your character around not having stamina.
B. Take stamina, sacrificing pool powers that you would otherwise have gotten.
C. Take stamina, sacrificing primary and secondary powers.

Same number of options, except the 'after' case includes 'do nothing'.

Don't get me wrong, I like having inherent stamina. But they needed to give us more power pool options at the same time.

Maybe I'm wrong, then. Maybe I don't understand character design in this game. Because I don't see the point in having multiple travel powers (except maybe in PvP), or running powers that are useless unslotted. (I already mentioned Assault and Tactics as viable without slots. Maneuvers is generally not.) If you take the power and never use them then you've chosen the 'do nothing' option, and I don't understand why anyone would do that. But maybe I'm out of whack compared to the rest of the playerbase. I don't care about choices that have no consequence.

This game loves choices without consequence. It's reflected in everything from being forced to choose useless powers to the easy death penalties to the accelerating profusion of costume pieces. Flash without substance -- gimmick content. If that's what people want then there's nothing I can do. I just don't think it makes for a healthy game.

Yes, you're right. I need more options. That's my point.

Okay, I find this very interesting.

I don't like running out of endurance, so I like to plan my characters to be able to run without endurance problems. This means at least a Miracle in everyone's health slot, and I'll go to Numina's and Perf. Shifter for real problem cases.

When inherent fitness came along I was presented with the option of either taking powers from my primary and secondary that I skipped, or taking a new power pool or some combination of pool powers. The problem was slots. The new powers I took would not receive any slotting, unless I stripped slots from the powers that I had already designed the character to have.

That left four choices:
A. Take powers from the primary and secondary that didn't need slots.
B. Take powers from power pools that don't need slots (Combat jumping, or Assault->Tactics->Vengeance).
C. Take some powers and never use them.
D. Take multiple travel powers.

Between my various characters I did all of those options except D. I may also have redesigned a character or two to juggle some slots and make the new powers useful, especially for those that could benefit from Kicking->Toughness->Weave. But the basic truth is the same: Diversity was lost with inherent stamina. Option C does nothing to improve character builds but at least it didn't standardize them. Option A and B both reduce character diversity.

All of my characters are running around with the same power pools with minimal slotting. I expect the rest of the playerbase is doing the same thing because it's logical. Add onto this that travel powers no longer require a prerequisite and there are new, purchasable travel powers that one could use instead of a power pool, and there are even more slots available that have to be shuffled into Combat Jumping, Leadership, and Fighting -- with no other sensible options.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most people use multiple travel powers, one-slot Toughness and Weave, and have taken a lot of unslotted powers from Presence and Medicine. I don't understand why anyone would do such a thing, but I'll admit that it's possible. I wouldn't take those powers unless my role-playing concept demanded them, in which case I already had them in my build and had planned to give them slots already.

And for concepts that required *not* having certain powers, like petless masterminds and blappers? Well, they were usually already maxed out on power pools, so they were just out of luck. Take your primary powers, be like everyone else, embrace conformity.

I had two characters that ran without Stamina and I was delighted to have made them work. Now they're just like everyone else.

I expect that you did make the same choices, because there weren't that many choices to be had and some of the options are just sucktacular.

Now to give credit, they gave us a fifth power in each of the travel pools and that helps. But not much; each character should only get one of those, unless you have multiple travel powers, which I don't believe in doing. There are still fewer options for more power slots than there were before.