Signature powers... for players -- I had this idea

after bug fixes I still think that this is the best idea ever posted on the forums. All benefit and (except for the coding) no drawbacks. So much potential here that it's staggering.

I want my Tanker to be invincible for 60 seconds. I mean REALLY invincible. Yeah, the recharge will be like 1000 and at the end of that time I'm going to be down to 1 End and Disoriented but who cares? No, I can't take an AV or a GM in 60 seconds so it's not an 'I win' button but when the rest of the team is faceplanted with all of their Rez powers on the four minute timer and the third red Boss shows up they're all looking at me to win the day.

Oh yes...me want!

I think signature needs to step the thin line between making characters even more personalised, and making characters more powerful for no reason. I would love something I can use to make my character more unique.
"Sure, I may be a DM/SR scrapper, but can other DM/SR scrappers do... this?" *Sounds of awe from the audience... that's awe, not awww.*

Yes.

I like the idea of getting a signature power. Seems like all the AVs have it (usually it being added resistance).

Or statesmans hammer of justice. Or his freaking oiver-powered insta recharged lightning of zeus. Recluse gets to summon ten Bane Executioners all at once. Positron has the ungodly ability to be a tanker with rad/rad. Snyapse has an evil electro-tornado and electro-flurry. Don't even get me freaking started on Sister Psych.

Oh, and if I ever see this on the second page again, I will seriously snap. THIS THREAD MUST MAINTAIN FRONT PAGE STATUS FOR TWO YEARS OR MORE UNTIL IT GETS IMPLEMENTED!

RAWR!

Yes, yes for the love of all that is holy, yes.

Oh gawd. Am I gonna have to do this every time this goes blank?

Sigh.

On the offhand, here's a list of sig powers that sig heroes/villains have.

Statesman:

Hammer of Justice, foot stomp resulting in your death.

Lightning Bolt of Zeus. Recharges every 1 second when he reaches 5% hp. Auto kills you if you are missing even 0.01% of your health. Unless you dodge. Which won't help, since he'll spam it every second or so.

Positron:

Positron has no "official" sig powers. However, he has the ungodly ability to be a tanker with rad powers. Evil.

Synapse:

Electro-Storm, whirlwind animation with static. This is NASTY, knockback, high mag stun, and anywhere from 600-1000 damage.

Hyper Flurry. Flurry with senergy and stun thrown in. Hits for 800 on par.

Mrs. Liberty:

Nasty nasty NASTY uppercut attack. Looks a tad like knockout blow minus the windup animation. And knockback instead of up.

Infernal:

Summon demons. Summons 5-8 demons to help him.

Fire Axe. Seriously, do I even NEED to tell you what this does?

Valkyrie:

Power burst, power spread. Long Range AoE attacks. Resemble energy blasts, but she uses the sword slice animation to use them.

Malaise:

Basic illusion controler. Only all his attacks are Illusion/Neg. Most of his summons have neg damage attacks along with normal, and he can use dark servnt. ((No proof of this, but several friends tell me he can use it.))

Lord Recluse:

ALL of his attacks are original. No other NPC in the game uses them.

Summon Executioner. He summones a bane spider boss. Uses once every minute or so.

Emergency Summon. Summons 6-10 bane spider bosses off the bat.

Wicked Blow. Knockout blow with a snazzy red energy aura.

Arachnos Power lance legs. Fires a bnch of beams at you via his arms.

Arachnos Power lance strike. Just hits you with the sharp ends of his legs.

Don't even GET ME started on the patrons...

I would list more, but I'm tired now.

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The addition of drawbacks to signature powers (I.E. Self Stun, Self -Recovery, Damage self, etc) should add points for use in power creation. However, to prevent people from creating a power that is just weaknesses to give themselves more points, the ratio of drawbacks to power effects should be 1:1 for powers with only one effect, 1:2 for powers with two, and 1:3 to powers with three or more effects.

Kadmon's Fury of Mu, for example, has one Damage effect (Energy) and one -Recovery, fitting into my 1:1 ratio of Positive to Negative effects.

An example of a power currently existing with a 1:2 ratio is Energy Transfer, with one Damage (Energy, Smashing), a Disorient, and a Self -HP.

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I'm not sure I quite follow, unless you're assuming players are allowed to have more than one signature move? If there is only one signature move, then why would someone create a move with all drawbacks, since they have no other way of using the extra points?

I'm in two minds. From one side I like the idea of being able to up the power somewhat by taking on negatives, and indeed I included negatives in one of my signature powers earlier, but balance would be a lot harder. What's a high-mag stun to a tanker or scrapper? Or -HP to a regen? Maybe the list of negatives could be pruned based on powerset or AT.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychoti "....so I headbutted the blind chick."

(mewling in the corner)

Me want...please?

now that this topic has been going for almost a month, i was wondering if anyone knows of any Dev reactions.

sure, having a comment here would be the best way to know that, but since there isn't any.. i thought maybe someone knew of a raised eyebrow or some such thing.


and by the way
/signed.. again!


an additional thoguht, i just had this thought that since we'r also all clamoring for new ATs, perhaps this idea would be best implemented after new ATs are included, thus giving us more choices to toy around with when creating these SPs.

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now that this topic has been going for almost a month, i was wondering if anyone knows of any Dev reactions.

sure, having a comment here would be the best way to know that, but since there isn't any.. i thought maybe someone knew of a raised eyebrow or some such thing.


and by the way
/signed.. again!


an additional thoguht, i just had this thought that since we'r also all clamoring for new ATs, perhaps this idea would be best implemented after new ATs are included, thus giving us more choices to toy around with when creating these SPs.

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To be fair they're still messing around with I9 and Inventions.

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To be fair they're still messing around with I9 and Inventions.

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oh, well yeah.. i don't expect this to be worked on anytime soon.. i'm just wondering if they've heard/read this idea and whether they think it's a good one or not.. regarless of timeline.

Negatives to powers does sound like it could be good, but it's also quite exploitable, really. After all, give an SR scrapper a -def and end-crash penalty to their +dam, +acc click, and all they have to do is turn it on at the same time as Elude. Hey presto, their defense is still sky-high, and they don't have to worry about the end-crash since that's coming already.

/signed in everyway its about time were able to have some originality

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Negatives to powers does sound like it could be good, but it's also quite exploitable, really. After all, give an SR scrapper a -def and end-crash penalty to their +dam, +acc click, and all they have to do is turn it on at the same time as Elude. Hey presto, their defense is still sky-high, and they don't have to worry about the end-crash since that's coming already.

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By that logic, having Blues and Lucks already counter-acts the weakness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venture I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe. You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off

FIFTH PAGE?

I. Am. Disgusted.

Might as well make this blatant bump worthwhile though, so here's a list of more signature powers.

Hamidon: All of his powers are signature. Go figure.

Dats all folks!

Really though...I wonder what kind of actual time frame this project would take?

We already know the Devs have to manually "Bake" all the powers in game to the point at which they are at now. HOWEVER, Observe Sister Psych. She has SEVERAL energy attacks which are purple, YET THEY ARE STILL THE SAME POWERS as ordinary energy attacks. What's up with that?

Plus, just look at auras. They move, they shift, and they change color. It's the same general principle.

So why would this project even be that hard? Recreating the color alone on powers would be easy, they already do it with most if not all of the main heroes/avs. And if all they are doing is changing the animation, that means it wouldn't be much harder to set up then basic aura costumization...

So really, what is it that's holding the DEVs back in this department? Not that I'm saying it isn't difficult, but it can obviously be done, and I'm fairly sure it could be implemented as another issue feature...But if it could, on the other hand, they probably would have done so already.

I am dissapointed in you, Ghost Widow.

We want Caslte!

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Negatives to powers does sound like it could be good, but it's also quite exploitable, really. After all, give an SR scrapper a -def and end-crash penalty to their +dam, +acc click, and all they have to do is turn it on at the same time as Elude. Hey presto, their defense is still sky-high, and they don't have to worry about the end-crash since that's coming already.

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By that logic, having Blues and Lucks already counter-acts the weakness.

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True but that has a negative already, in that it takes up precious inspiration slots that could be used for other things. The above quoted example essentially means there are no negatives at ALL to the power, aside from a end crash at the end which would be coming anyway with Elude. It opens up 'power points' and allows players to make their signature ability a bit stronger for essentially no cost.

My point is that negatives are quite open for exploitation.

Which is why I suggested limiting possible negatives based on AT or powersets. But I can see that getting icky, and thus it may be simpler to just not allow negatives.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychoti "....so I headbutted the blind chick."

No, that would wreck some signature moves.

My Stalker, "The Lord of Rags" has a planned sig called "Curse of Rags." It's not supposed to do any damage, it just debuffs the holy [censored] out of the target. (-acc -dam -def -res -regenhp -regenend)

Remember, these things are being designed with INSANE recharge timers. Anywhere from accolade recharge length to an hourly usage only. Negatives can be allowed. Remember that people won't be spitting them out every ten seconds, rather ever hour or so. Which means that over multiple fights, or even multiple enemies, the sig is practically worthless, especially ones designed to target one enemy. (Like mine)

rarararar

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No, that would wreck some signature moves.

My Stalker, "The Lord of Rags" has a planned sig called "Curse of Rags." It's not supposed to do any damage, it just debuffs the holy [censored] out of the target. (-acc -dam -def -res -regenhp -regenend)

Remember, these things are being designed with INSANE recharge timers. Anywhere from accolade recharge length to an hourly usage only. Negatives can be allowed. Remember that people won't be spitting them out every ten seconds, rather ever hour or so. Which means that over multiple fights, or even multiple enemies, the sig is practically worthless, especially ones designed to target one enemy. (Like mine)

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Um, if you check the context of my comment, I'm not talking about debuffing an enemy - we're discussing the wisdom of allowing negatives appplied to the player in return for greater power or choices, since some powersets or archetypes can effectively ignore many of the "downs", and thus get extra power for free.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychoti "....so I headbutted the blind chick."

I guess I'll add in a signature power of my own:

Scarlet Fiend - NRG/Elec brute
(Short version of his story - his attacks and defenses run off the souls of the dead he has captured.)
Signature Attack - Absorb Soul
Uses the Siphon Power animation with negative energy-styled graphics. Short range (impale range.) Medium Negative burst damage. If it hits, +Acc +Res(all but toxic) +DMG to Scarlet for a decent time. (10 seconds?)

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No, that would wreck some signature moves.

My Stalker, "The Lord of Rags" has a planned sig called "Curse of Rags." It's not supposed to do any damage, it just debuffs the holy [censored] out of the target. (-acc -dam -def -res -regenhp -regenend)

Remember, these things are being designed with INSANE recharge timers. Anywhere from accolade recharge length to an hourly usage only. Negatives can be allowed. Remember that people won't be spitting them out every ten seconds, rather ever hour or so. Which means that over multiple fights, or even multiple enemies, the sig is practically worthless, especially ones designed to target one enemy. (Like mine)

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Um, if you check the context of my comment, I'm not talking about debuffing an enemy - we're discussing the wisdom of allowing negatives appplied to the player in return for greater power or choices, since some powersets or archetypes can effectively ignore many of the "downs", and thus get extra power for free.

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Maybe I wasn't clear enough when I suggested the negative effects. The negatives would probably be fairly severe, such that you wouldn't want a -Def effect on your SR because Defense is all that Reflexes has going for it.

Or maybe the drawbacks idea was a bad one. I threw it out here to get the general opinion of it, and to see what holes people might be able to find in the setup.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Venture I'd never use a nuke in a superhero universe. You nuke a city, you kill 1.5 million people minus one. The last guy not only gets superpowers from the explosion, but ones that let him survive a nuke...and wow, is he torqued off

It's not a bad idea, just that it's a lot harder to balance debuffs when there are powers in the game for dealing with most debuffs in some form or another - each person can choose the debuff that effects them least and gain free boosts.


Anyone else think games would be so much cooler if people didn't constantly min/max them? :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by Psychoti "....so I headbutted the blind chick."