Samuel_Tow

Yeah, the problem is that Grounded is part of Electrical Armour, whereas Lightning Rod is part of Electrical Melee. There really shouldn't be any interdependence between the powers, considering they're part of two different sets.

And again - it makes no conceptual sense to require it to be only used on the ground. I guess that could be some kind of summon convention, since I can summon, say, an Ouro Portal in the air (why?), but whereas the Ouro portal is a small utility power, Lightning Rod is a large-scale combat power, so if this really is unintended, then it's a valid complaint.

Yeah, no, not really. See this:

This has yet to be explained. I mean, I can just accept it at face value, but on face value, it speaks terribly poorly of you. I keep hoping that there's a more reasonable explanation than just your average run-of-the mill "F You!" variant.

Seriously, I'm not trying to be a dick here. I just don't get why you're so determined to insult me. Repeatedly, in fact. Did I kick your puppy or something?

I KNOW it's ludicrous. I just can't make the jump between expressing how ludicrous a POST is and how ludicrous a PERSON is, nor can I make the connection about how that leads you to throw obscenities at my face.

In fact, I thought I'd made it pretty clear that I, in particular and specifically, did not like the reference, not that you were wrong for liking it or not caring about it. That makes me twice as confused about why you felt the need to attack me, personally, when I didn't address anyone in particular with that statement.

To be honest, I kind of pulled the recharge number out of the air (I was thinking) of Full Auto, for some reason. I wouldn't mind a longer recharge. In fact, I wouldn't mind making it 120, 180 or even 360 seconds. You already have plenty else to slot the toggle for, so I'm not worried about recharge. And, yes, the point of giving it a long timer (and even if it got 1000 seconds, I still wouldn't be bummed out) was to force Granite Armour to behave like a contemporary T9, i.e. not be on all the time constantly, yet retain its ability to stay on for as long as a long battle takes. Contemporary crashing T9 powers have one crippling weakness - they have the capacity to end and crash you before you've killed what you're fighting, hence why popping them is a bit of a gamble. You CAN run away before they end, but if you're a Tanking tank, that's a REALLY bad idea.

The point of Granite Armour as I described it last would be to be able to tank ONE FIGHT for as long as it took, but then HAVE to detoggle and fight at least one more fight without Granite Armour on. The entire purpose of this exercise is to force people to fight without Granite Armour on at least some of the time, thereby forcing the rest of the set into having some relevance. Movement penalties that cannot be overcome are a very good way of limiting Stone Armour's use without limiting its ability.

...

In fact, you know what? All I've been describing is ways to let Granite Armour be usable in one fight within one general area, but to be unable to be used outside of that one area. So why don't we stop beating about the bush and design just that. Here's how it'd go:

Instead of running a toggle, "Granite Armour" spawns a Devouring Earth style eminator that gives you a buff equivalent to Granite Armour within a specific area around, not requiring line of sight. I'm not sure what that area should be, but I'd like to see it be BIG. Like 50-100 feet radius. Call it as big as Supremacy. This eminator would be immobilie and immune to teleportation. In this way, you ARE linked to the ground, but not by being forced to not move. Instead, you are linked to an eminator which is itself rooted to the ground. This gives you full, unchallenged mobility, full, unmitigated protection... But only in one specific area. If you want to have that protection in another area, you have to resummon the eminator, which would have a recharge between 600 and 1000 seconds.

The benefits to this are many. For one, you can have unlimited performance in that specific area without having to suffer annoying drawbacks. At the same time, this literally KILLS your efficiency if you try to constantly pull into the effective area of that eminator. You could, but... Would you really want to run a mission like that? Really? On the flip side, you get unlimited perfomance in siege type fights, be it a long brawl with a tough AV or Monster, or in situations where you're defending a choke point like the Stop 30 Fir Bolg mission, or either hero or villain respec. In essence, we've turned Granite Armour into a heavy point defence power that can hold ground, but not take ground, which I kind of think was the original design of the power.

I actually had more to quote, but I think I like this idea the most. It lets people keep their Granite Armour on indefinitely as they requested, it still gives people a reason to turn it off (if they need to move away from the area) and it sounds like it's balanced and playing to Granite Armour's original design. Plus, it introduces a mechanic that should be mechanically possible and is, to the best of my knoweldge, entirely and wholly unique. Best of all, it removes the need for performance-limiting penalties on Stone Armour in general, as its peak performance would be location-locked, and limited by that.

Let me know if you think we can work out some numbers for a setup lik this.

*edit*
Obviously, such a setup can't kill the rest of the set's toggles, so it would require your rebalancing to have Granite Armour stack on top, rather than replace.

Bases are simply not designed to work for a single player, nor have any of the redesigns really catered to that. For one, they've never allowed us to self-invite offline characters, self-promote offline characters, or indeed fund large bases just by ourselves. Bases are group content, and at this point, I don't want to try and retrofit single-player utility into them. You can't have it both ways, and rather than take people's status quo fun, I'd rather vouch for either a new system, or a new copy of the old system that's restricted to a single player.

Honestly, I don't want anywhere near the customizability that the current base editor has. I'd be perfectly fine with a Dungeon Keeper system of hollowing out rooms and putting "room tiles" into them without having to micro-manage specific item placement. Dungeon Keeper managed to produce AMAZING dungeons that way, I don't see why CoH can't. Or I could even go with the UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-Com: UFO Attack system of purchasing entire rooms without the ability to alter them.

I'm not an artist, myself. I don't pretend to be. One of the most fun parts of a game is me supplying the general parameters I'm looking for and having the game give me its interpretation of my designs. That's why I liked Dungeon Keeper, that's why I liked UFO's base attack missions, that's why I liked the odd RTS game that let me go first-person and see the base from up-close. I enjoy designing things on the large scale, then going down to the small-scale and observing the result. In this respect, building a base like I would in an RTS, then going in in person and actually entering the buildings/rooms, that's really all I want out of the editor.

I'm not a fan of editors that are TOO complex. A simple editor is a game in itself. A complicated editor is work towards an end.

How's about this: I'm too stupid to get why people are getting their panties in a twist just because I don't like a number in data field. Yeah, I'm pedantic, I can admit to that. Yes, I have plenty of reasons for it that no-one cares about. So? What is this sudden drive to make character assassination attacks on me over it? It's not like I signed up on a burger-lovers' forum to talk about how much better hotdogs are, not unless the forums turned into the one-stop shop for cheap reference enthusiasts.

You guys have been trying to spin my words five ways till Sunday just so you can find some way to take them out of context, misinterpret them, paint a straw man and insult me. I mean, I can take it, I've had worse, but why? I don't get it. Why? What unspoken rule did I break that all of sudden everyone and their grandma is determined to give me a "the reason you suck" speech?

And again, where the hell did I say what you claim I've said? I'd appreciate quotes with a link to the source post, if possible. Because I don't remember so much as alluding to that. All I said in what you quoted was that people are treating my reaction like some kind of red-face, vein-popping rage at the audacity of these guys putting in a minor reference buried in the code, so I should lighten up. And that's simply not the truth. I'm not angry at it, I'm not foaming at the mouth, I'm not seaming out of the years, I'm not jabbing at my keyboard with green, meaty fingers.

I just don't like this fact. You guys are the ones that have a problem with my dislike. And I don't get why.

Heh, in that case I guess I could self-plug and repost my mock video of alternate and more realistic Sniper Rifle sounds. I'd do one for Slug, but I honestly don't see the point.

If you care, I also made a few others for Full Auto, just as a thought experiment for the All Things Art thread.

It depends on the context. If we DO get a PPD Epic AT and it gets a power that grants 9.11% to-hit buff, then yes, people would very much argue over it. On Demon Summoning? Not so much.

It's kind of like watching car license plates. Every now and then you'll spot, say, your own birthday or a symmetrical number like 1221, or even eat the kids first, but those are rarely intentional, so they're rarely worth more than a passing remark. Then you meet someone with a license plate that says NEED4SPD, and you KNOW someone specially requested that. These are worth a lot more discussion.

So, what did you want me to say? Or rather, what did you expect me to say? Just curious?

Picture this exchange:

-Get the **** over yourself!
-No! Go to hell!

What part of that should, or indeed COULD have been different?

To be fair, Slug being stronger than Burst actually does make sense. True, burst fires, what? Five shots? But they look and sound like low-calibre rounds, like those of a submachine gun. From what I've seen, shotgun slugs tend to have a LOT more power and a LOT more kick, and firing it out of a long rifle ought to improve its accuracy over a low-calibre burst, as well. Basically, I have no problem with one big round being stronger than several small ones.

Personally, though, I feel Assault Rifle suffers from "unimpressive effects." Its sounds are embarrassingly tame, even for shots that are supposed to be high-calibre, like Sniper Rifle. Slug needs a bigger bang, in my opinion, and a bigger hit effect. When Alucard shoots vampires, he puts BIG HOLES in their chests. When AR shoots enemies, it kind of sparkles very slightly. Can't we get at least a bigger hit effect on that?

I have to agree with this, as well. Umbral, I respect your knowledge and skills, but your attitude here is really uncalled for and, to be honest, highly counter-productive to the topic at hand. You've been rude to everybody who challenged your suggestion very much from the start, and to be honest, it's starting to bother me in a big way. I'm not going to play ethic defender here, as I know better, but if you insist on insulting and belittling people like this, then I want nothing more to do with this thread.

I'm sorry. I've tried ignoring it, I've tried letting it slide, but enough is just enough.

Interesting... So, basically kill the offensive penalties, impose harsher movement penalties. Huh... I hadn't thought of that. Not a bad idea, actually, provided we kill the movement speed debuff in Rooted. That should keep Granite Armour giving significant survivability (how significant is a matter of debate), but would force you to detoggle if you want to move between spawns. Not bad. And since it wouldn't have the Achilles' heel problem of dropping the entirety of your status protection the way detoggling Rooted to move does, then I can see this as a form of toggle-juggling. Ostensibly, Granite Armour ought to be a power you use when you've walked in on something over your head, not as something you run around in as a status quo, so that kind of penalty I can actually see.

The -teleport alone is enough to burn ever Granite Tanker who ever lived, so just that is enough to get things moving, but killing the movement speed cap so you actually CAN'T go much farther even with a world of buffs... That I actually like. Again, it'd be good as a means of survival, and I'd actually put movement speed at around 15-20%. Enough to move around inside the spawn you're fighting, but not enough to want to move from spawn to spawn. Impose a mid-range recharge on the power, say 30-60 seconds, and you have a toggle you CAN use to gain serious survivability, at the penalty of having to turn it off if you want to move out to the next battle.

This gives Granite Armour two benefits: One, you get high survivability on demand, sustainable as long as you need it and ideal for one long, protracted fight that takes place relatively in the same general area. On the flip side, it's a power you WANT to turn off when moving around, losing PEAK survivability but, if the set itself is fixed, not losing enough to make you dead meat on a misstep. We retain the ability to use it continuously AND with less of a drawback, but we have a reason to turn it off, as well.

I like that.

No, I just meant that I don't think there's a good middle where Granite Armour still performs at the levels of a God Mode (its current levels) while still being considered balanced. Either it'll be too weak, it's drawbacks too severe or it won't run full-time. Granted, that's a case of "I'm not sure." There may well be a way, but from how things look, I can't imagine there being one. Even the above-mentioned way that I really like is probably going to end up being rejected.

Why not, though? That's its shtick, isn't it? Stone Armour is the one set that's all about ultimate protection. Back in the day, it was the only set with protection from Psychic attacks. I don't see why Stone Armour can't have the greatest survivability in the most situations, if for no reason other than because that's basically what it was designed to be. I have no problem with sets like Invulnerability and Willpower matching or even exceeding it by a little with saturated toggles, but Stone Armour would still retain its power in fights against single hard targets like AVs. And I'm fine with that.

Of course, once again that's a matter of concept, as I have no real numbers to support my position, but ideally, I feel that's what we should be shooting for.

In that case, go to hell.

I can testify to Mako's attitude. He basically hates you and would kill you if he could, but it is kind of fun to watch him try to suppress it so as not to get himself in trouble. It's refreshing to see these guys finally take notice of you because you're too big in Arachnos for them to mess around.

Then again, I agree with the spirit of the thread. Few of my characters (who aren't already servants of other of my characters) would stand for taking orders. In fact, the game has a really serious disregard for the fact that not everyone is working alone.

Why are you doing this to me? You say "correct me if I'm wrong" right after misusing "your" for "you're..." It's a trap, I just know it

More to point, perception is not proof of a problem, but it is a good indicator thereof. If there is the perception that a Tanker, once he reaches level 32, can respec and remove the majority of his set, then there just might be a problem. If there is a perception that certain powers are only ever needed until a "better" power comes along to replace them, there might be a problem. Empirical observations in this case confirm that there is indeed a problem. Even if the set looks well-designed on paper, if people consistently play it "wrong," then either the set needs to be fixed to be more like how it was originally designed, or the set's design needs to change to accept the way people are playing it. This is the Granite Armour conundrum and the source of the belief that "something" needs to happen.

As far as set-DEFINING powers are concerned, those are merely powers judged the most important in the set. I understand that Speed Boost is considered important to Kinetics, but is it considered the only power worth taking at all? Because I've heard people swear by Fulcrum Shift and others brag about Transfusion. There are, obviously, people always looking for Healers, but there are an equal number of people praising the benefits of Empathy buffs.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone but the very rare exception who would make an argument as to why it's better to run using the base armours over Granite Armour. I don't use Granite Armour, myself, and even I couldn't draw that kind of argument. That's the problem. There is no argument to be had. Granite Armour is provably superior to non Granite Armour in practically every instance, and since the system never FORCES you to turn the toggle off, there is very little reason to. This isn't a comparison between Granite Tanks and other Tankers, it's a comparison between Stone Tanks and Granite Tanks, and Stone Tanks are measurably worse off.

You can make arguments as to why Granite Armour isn't needed all the time, and I would agree. You can make arguments as to why going out of Granite Armour produces better results, and I would disagree. It's less annoying, but with the right build, it is ALWAYS better. That's the problem. As long as you can keep Granite Armour on indefinitely, you will always need to have good, strong, convincing reasons that would get give ANY build at least some tangible reason to not use Granite Armour all the time. Other self-protection sets don't face this, since their T9 powers are otherwise limited in use. As long as the use of Granite Armour remains unlimited, then it must have balancing factors just as severe as those of T9 powers of equal contribution. And the severity of those powers' balancing factors is crashes that kill you and a 1000 second recharge timer. That's over 17 minutes.

Think about the severity of penalties for every T9 power of similar performance and you should see why Granite Armour's drawbacks are little more than a slap on the wrist.

"Making Granite perma," as it were, is easily doable by picking the right AT and the right pool powers and slotting. However, a casual player may not necessarily know to do that. Few other sets are built such that you NEED specific powers to give them baseline functionality. I dare say Dark Armour if only because of its hideous endurance drain, but beyond that, most sets work well on their own. I should know. That's how I build them. But if you build Granite Armour like you would build, say, Invulnerability, you're going to be punching your keyboard by level 16. If you do not mitigate the run speed penalty of Rooted, the game will SUCK. If you do not mitigate the recharge penalty of Granite Armour, you'll be sitting on your hands. On the surface, those are half-way decent balancing factors. Except the game WITH these balancing factors is not what's baseline. The game WITHOUT those balancing factors is.

Any time you have a system where certain sets NEED certain supporting powers, then that is a sign that something in these particular sets is wrong. It could be an inefficiency in the set that the additional powers make up for, or it could be an exploitable feature of the set that these additional powers build on, such as limitations designed to make the set work being sidestepped, turning design on its head. The solutions to these problems are many, but we can't deny that they ARE problems.

When the drawbacks DO NOT MATTER (and it's not hard to achieve this), then the benefit of turning off Granite Armour becomes moot. I turn my Granite Armour off simply because I don't feel like fiddling with recharge, but I am well aware that I'm compromising my efficiency and survivability because I can't be arsed to bother. I realise that I am operating at below-average performance. I'm OK with that, but this is not a choice one should have to make. If drawbacks to a power exist, then they should not be circumventable. If they are circumventable, then they shouldn't exist. As it stands, Granite Armour is a TERRIBLE power, but Granite Armour + Swift + Hasten + Fury is a GREAT power. And I don't agree with this design.

I don't agree that I should have to grab three other powers JUST to get what is considered baseline functionality. Either baseline functionality needs to be made truly baseline, as was done with Domination, or this functionality must be forced AWAY from baseline, as was done with Unstoppable and Elude when people were running those perma.

Let me say it again - look at what happened to Elude and Unstppable when those were running perma. Now try and tell me that Granite Armour, which has similar survivability, has NEARLY the same balancing drawbacks as that.

Wait, do we disagree that Granite Armour removes death from the equation or the consequences that that should have on the power's balance? Because I can testify to Granite Armour's unkillability. You can turn on Granite Armour and Rooted and you can go AFK in a LOT of situations, which is one of the problems outlined by Jack Emmert as far back as I5's GDN. This is normal for other T9 powers, as well, but other T9 powers do not allow you to hold this level of survivability indefinitely. Granite Armour does.

If you want to essentially ignore danger, then you have to accept the consequences of that, which is that danger will ignore you in return. You can't have it both ways. You can't have ultimate defence AND significant contribution. This is the hallmark of the much-feared tank-mage. Again, precedent for this exists in powers like Personal Forcefield, Hybernate, Quantum Flight and so on. In fact, you can compare Granite Armour to Personal Frocefield in terms of levels of survivability. It's not quite the same, but it's comparable. And that prevents you from doing ANYTHING.

The penalties are not enough. And, to be frank, making them higher will just make the situation suck more.

Here's the thing: If the drawbacks you envision do not count for me, that's broken. If the drawbacks you envision are circumventable to you, that's broken. You can't go around the 1000 second recharge on unstoppable. Even with the cap of 400%, you can still only get it down to 200 seconds recharge to 180 seconds duration, and who has even that much consistently? You can't get around the 240 second recharge of Moment of Glory. Even if it's enhanceable (which I'm not sure it is), you still can't get it under 48 seconds, and the power still has only a 15 second duration. You can't get around the 360 second recharge on One With the Shield because you can't enhance or buff its recharge. You can't get around the limitations of Hybernate, because it puts you in Disable_All mode, which means you cannot use powers with it. At all. You can't go around the limitations on Rise of the Phoenix, because its limitation is "being dead."

T9 powers are serious business, be they God Mode, mini God Mode, resurrection or utility. Anything which gives you close to absolute protection comes with penalties specifically designed such that you CANNOT overcome them, or indeed even come close. Anything aside from Granite Armour. And that's the problem.

Well, most of their stuff is still comprised of people in power armours with ray guns and cryo guns, they keep developing new computer systems, new cybernetics and so forth. I'm not saying they don't have a bio-engineering programme, I'm just saying that's not all they're "about."

Hey, cool! I like that! We already have Vazilok Meat doctors in the Freakshow (yet not in the actual Vahzilok faction? WHAT GIVES?!?), so they're clearly receptive to recruits from other groups. And, really, who says only unpowered people can be dumb punks? Who's to say 4K Kelvin can't have a change of heart and decide to slap on some cybernetics? I mean frikkin' Duke Mordrogar makes a reappearance as a possessed Circle mage, and he's the lamest Hellion in the world.

In fact, we already have Riktofreaks as a cross-faction reference, so why don't they spawn as part of the actual faction? Is it THAT unusual that the Freakshow can blindside a bunch of Rikti and steal their guns? So what if they're boobie-trapped? The Freakshow are stupid enough to use 'em anyway.

Yeah, that really bums me out. I mean, seriously. Bad guys like that don't just die. In fact, in most franchises that feature a mad doctor of this nature, you just can't kill the guy. I mean, you can keep killing him, but he just keeps coming back. Seriously, how many times did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kill Baxter Stockman? Seriously. To have Vhaz go down ONCE and then just... Stop trying... That's really not as cool as it could be. I mean, he's the kind of guy you can fight at the end of every mission and it wouldn't feel weird for him to keep coming back FROM THE DEAD. That's his entire shtick.

So, yeah, a return of Dr. Vahzilok in the upper levels is probably my biggest request on this subject.

I fear that your combination of conditions may not realistically have any one point of intersection. In other words, I fear that what you're asking for is impossible.

Hmm... You know, that IS mechanically possible and would be a good way to impose an ever-increasing endurance cost to the power and its other drawbacks. The problem with this is that those debuffs would also linger after Granite Armour goes down. I like the spirit of the idea mechanically...

BUT

I'm not sure I like the prospect practically. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we can make buffs and debuffs cancel on power toggleoff. What you are now proposing is a maximal cost and debuff of the power, as achieved over time. How do we balance this? To make the power a bad idea to run constantly, we need to make the cost HIDEOUS (read, worse than Repulsion Field hideous) amounts eventually, because any reasonable-but-high cost you put to it WILL be worked around with Stamina and set bonuses, just like Instant Healing's and Focused Accuracy's costs were worked around. But if you do this, you basically enforce toggleoff at SOME point, again making the power uptime-bound and breaking your own request.

Of course, this is also a question of how long this takes to build up. I suppose you can give it a LONG time to build up, like 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes. I'm not sure that's a good idea, but even THEN, it's still uptime-limited, because you'll be forced to turn off Granite Armour at SOME point, and yes, some fights do indeed last longer than 10 minutes without pause.

And again - I am highly unconvinced you can give the toggle drawbacks that AREN'T crippling and still make people have god reason to turn it off. History has shown us that anything short of turning a toggle into a click will not prevent people from never turning it off no matter how bad the costs and penalties. That's why I fear that what you're asking for is impossible to achieve. I literally CANNOT imagine a power that both has such drawbacks that would make a diehard Granite Tank turn it off, and yet won't crush my will to live.