Samuel_Tow

There are a few problems here. First of all, damage in this game does not scale well enough to implement a flat damage number protection. For such a thing to be meaningful against high-damage targets, it has to be pretty high, but because of the chasm of damage between different enemy groups, this would render the damage done by many of the them trivial. This is actually how Torchlight handles it, and the result is just that - a select few bosses can threaten you, everything else deals glancing blows. Percent damage resistance scales a lot better, which is why we use that.

Also, Invulnerability is only a name. This doesn't mean that the Invulnerable character specialises in not being hurt. Even the Juggernaut gets hurt, just not very much. In fact, the Statesman (character in the Top Cow comic book) said something along the lines of "I don't care what they say about invulnerability. That. Hurt!" Basically, an Invulnerable character has two lines of defence. One is puffing up his chest and deflecting bullets. The other, when these bullets don't ricochet but deliver their full force, is that he isn't as hurt by it. He actually has a third level of protection, as well - just being one tough ******* who can take a ton of punishment. Far as I'm concerned, especially against physical damage, Invulnerability lives up to its name the best of all powersets.

Finally, "defence" has nothing to do with skill. Defence is the other side of the coin from damage resistance - you simply don't get hit. That said, defence usually comes in two forms: avoidance and deflection. Some degree of care has been put forward to make sure that most defensive powers could pass for skill- or luck-based, such as covered in stone... Only partly. But, at the end of the day, hitting someone through deflection defence is not a question of accuracy, but rather a question of penetration. We don't have penetration as a factor in the game.

Think about it this way, though - if someone is covered in stone, then small arms fire is going to be less effective, but a high-velocity, armour-piercing round could just make it through. A flaming fist on a slab of rock probably won't be very effective, but a flaming sword would focus the force and pierce. In other words, certain powers could have better penetration than others. And, really, some defence can only be circumvented by penetration. Forcefields, for instance, cannot be gotten around, because they're a complete globe around the target. You have to punch THROUGH the forcefield if you want to have any hope of hitting the person inside, and with how it's shaped, chances are your bullets will bounce and your sword will slide off to the side.

I don't actually have a good idea how to fit this into the defence formula, to be honest. It'd have to be done in such a way that penetration does NOT help you hit things without reflective defence better, and just raw accuracy doesn't help you pierce their armour, but I just don't know how to rig that.

This is sort of an eccentric idea that's been running around my head for just shy of 15 years now, and for all this time I've never really been able to put it into words. Basically, it comes down to the title question. What if, instead of the lone, underpowered hero who has to fight a stronger, more capable enemy and triumph against all odds, you were the level boss, and the enemy were the weaker but more agile character? Or, in fact, if the enemy were weak, helpless enemies who couldn't hope to do much more than take off a bit of your life bar? Before we delve into City of Heroes, let me explain where this comes from.

"The level boss" is, classically, a creature of arcade games. My fondest memories of the best of these kind have been the MegaMan X games, specifically played with Zero, as you had to get in close to do anything with him. In this game, as you progressed, the bosses became larger, faster and more complicated. X4's General is as tall as the screen and a third of it wide, and he only takes damage if you slash him in the head. And, OK, I'm fast on my keyboard, but why am I always the weaker one? Why do I take damage if you touch the boss? Why do I die in a few hits, while having to slash his damn head eleventy billion times? X (MegaMan) gets it a bit better in most games, as with enough upgrades and special armour pieces, he can sort of boss it up to some extent, but even then, with flash timers, ultimate shields and uninterruptible powers, he's still just a player.

Enter Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the PSX. It's an old game a friend of mine had on his PlayStation back ten years ago, which I only recently rediscovered on a chance find. It stars Alucard, son of draculA, (stupid name...), who starts out as basically a fighter, but towards the end starts developing pretty dang amazing powers, including a lot of powers from the actual Dracula final boss from Castlevania: Bloodlines. I'm not actually through the game yet, and I missed a lot of secrets already, but at the very least one spell he has has him teleport away, reappear and shoot fireballs out of his cape. That right there is perfect example of a Capcom boss tactic (despite the game being made by Konami). It got me thinking... Alucard isn't just some schmuck with a sword, you know... He's the son of Dracula. He has powers. He can turn into a bat, a wolf, into mist, he can teleport, drain people's blood, summon ghosts... Yeah, the game still treats me like a player and has me do jumping boss fights, and I still get kocked back from every frikkin' breeze, but... Well, with enough armour and levelling up, I can actually take quite a beating, even from bosses. Why, I'm like a boss, myself.

Which brings me back to an old PSX game, Jurassic Park from probably 15 years ago. Hell if I can actually find it, but it had you play a little dinosaur, a Raptor, a guy with a gun, and even a T-Rex. Now, the T-Rex was where the real fun started, because you're huge, you're slow, and people are shooting at you ALL THE TIME. They can't really hurt you, but they're constantly draining your health, which turns it from a fight for survival into an endurance race. You can eat people for some health, but basically you need to outlast the humans and get to the end. Which is, typically, how a Capcom boss usually wins. Throw out attack after attack and hope to take you down before you chip off too much of his health.

So what does this have to do with City of Heroes? After all, this isn't an arcade game, and characters are already powerful enough to take on bosses one on one. But here's the thing - even now, unless you downgrade bosses, the game still follows the same pattern as those old arcades. You fight through a level of bad guys, maybe take on a mini-boss mid-way, and end up at the level boss. Think Frostfire and you'll know what I mean. Basically, even though you're strong, the game still treats you like "just a player" engaging in "just a boss fight." And that's just regular missions. The "epic" content has you square off against archvillains, usually in groups. It still treats you like the weak player squaring off against a powerful boss, trying to find a way to win anyway. The odds are always, at least narratively, stacked against you.

Why? Why not go the other way? Let's look at an example from the game already - Mercedes Sheldon's third hero arc, the Crown of WhatWasIt. The final mission has you square off not against an AV, or even an elite boss. Instead, it's one boss, who calls in two more bosses, and when he dies, another boss arrives, who calls in two more bosses. It's an ungodly hard fight, especially since the Warriors are THE heaviest hitters at that level, but it actually has the right idea. I'm the boss of the level. I'm the strong one, the unstoppable one. I don't need to bring together seven of my friends to just hope to take on one guy. The bad guys had to bring out six of their best just to take on ME. The game's balance isn't really different, but the fight is more epic AND it feels so much more satisfying. For once, the AI is working hard to kill me, rather than crouching behind a mountain of hit points and offensive stats for me to chip through.

It's part power balance, part presentation. What makes MegaMan X's X feel like a boss is his ability to hover and crush-blast some boss projectiles. He ACTS like a boss. What makes Alucard feel like a boss is the fact that he can teleport at will, become invincible and shoot out boss attacks. He LOOKS like a boss. What made the T-Rex feel like a boss was that the enemies plain and simple could not take him down, or even phase him much. He ENDURED like a boss. What made my little ole' Scrapper feel like a boss in Mercedes' arc was that I fought back six Warriors bosses with their entire posse despite my team-mate going down. Any of these is cool. All of these is a game the likes of which I've never seen before. You're always facing some cheap, annoying problem, like enemies being too strong, having nasty effects, or what has turned me off so many Hulk: Ultimate Destruction clones - STUPID KNOCKBACK! With a zillion soldiers shooting rockets at you, you can't stand still for a nanosecond. What's the point of Prototype's Alex Mercer being a super weapon if he's a fragile little girl unless he's constantly prancing around?

Basically, it all comes down to feel. A few games have come pretty close to making me feel like I'm playing the level boss, with my enemies being the players (though, oddly enough, not Dungeon Keeper), but never completely. Frankly, City of Heroes has come the closest.

It sounds interesting, but I don't want to install Microsoft Silverlight.

Tray 4 is part of my standardized system:

Tray 1: Attacks, attacks, attacks. If I don't have many attacks (such as on a Mastermind) I put in Support powers.

Tray 2: Brawl, Sprint, travel power prerequisite, travel power, then defence on Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers, Melee/Support on Blasters and summons and upgrades on Masterminds.

Tray 3: Back-to-front: Rest, Jump Pack, then my three veteran attacks, my utility pet summon and the Reveal power on that end. Front to back, Walk, Ninja Run and whatever else there's room for. Once I run out of room, I shift my veteran reward attacks and pet off to Tray 5 to make more room.

Tray4: Back-to-front: Tempermanent origin attack, Pocket D VIP Pass, Base Teleporter, Assemble the Team, cosmetic vet-pet, Mission Teleporter, Ninja Run (occasionally), Mystic Fortune and Self Destruct. There's something else in there, though, that I can't quite remember.

He-hey! Thanks a million, Lady You even made my mediocre glove look pretty Should'a posted Razor's rendition of it...

I love your colouring. And you did this in a day? I've been dicking around for a week on this, and produced something that was just above "meh," and you did this twice in two days. Yeah, I need a LOT of work if I want to even contemplate a large project like this.

I really like how this turned out. The reflections are just ingenious, and I really like that shading. I'll definitely spend some time studying this one.

One last detail - I'd like to repost this back to the original creators of the pic, and I want to ask of you would mind me doing so. We're sort of discussing it at length with them, and I'd really like to show them.

Ack! I'm an idiot! This post was made while I was responding and I never saw it!

First things first, please let's not criticise the picture, itself. It was done as a favour to me for free and out of the goodness of their hearts. It is what it is, and I'm working on it as best I can.

Of course, I do have the original line work. Here is a resize down to a file size I can upload on the 'net.

Also, and this might sound weird, but what you have so far helped me greatly in one particular regard - fixing the crotch. Aside from the shoulders, this was the other big thing that I could never quite see past, but since it's somewhat difficult to describe, I opted to not mention it for the time being. I tweak things here and there as I go, and I'll probably tweak that, too.

Also, if you do a full flat of this, I'll probably want to repost it back to the original creators, and I have to ask for your permission to do so. It may be a formality, but I have to ask nevertheless.

I think I've heard this idea before, but either way, I completely agree. It'd help Ninja stand out a LOT more.