Discussion: Interview on Ten Ton Hammer about I13
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2008-09-26 24:19 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
This sounds ominous:
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To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
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Patron buff or Epic nerf?
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I think my favorite part of the article is this:
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Ten Ton Hammer: Can you talk about the power rebalancing at all? How are you balancing you PvP and PvE powers?
...
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
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That leaves me really curious/hopeful for some good changes to Patron Powers (finally!)
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This sounds ominous:
[ QUOTE ]
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Patron buff or Epic nerf?
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i bet they either gutted out power boost or added it to GW or Mako.
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This sounds ominous:
[ QUOTE ]
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Patron buff or Epic nerf?
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Likely a little from column A, a little from column B.
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ehh it may be a nerf, but it may be a buff, either way people will complain. But overall who cares now that we have the ability to respec our patron powers we can choose ones that we would like better after the change.
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Yep. Nerf or Buff, people will (censored). Hopefully we will see good parity.
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Yep. Nerf or Buff, people will (censored). Hopefully we will see good parity.
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Depends on what you mean by parity. if all the apps were "rebalanced" to reflect the uselessness of MOST of the patrons, well . . .
But I'm optimistic it was a slight nerf to apps, and a larger buff to ppps.
A little bit of both would be okay.
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This sounds ominous:
[ QUOTE ]
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Patron buff or Epic nerf?
[/ QUOTE ]
Epic nerf. Bye bye Power Boost.
Doom.
Yep.
This is really doom.
[ QUOTE ]
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This sounds ominous:
[ QUOTE ]
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Patron buff or Epic nerf?
[/ QUOTE ]
Epic nerf. Bye bye Power Boost.
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k that's two people for the whole power boost is out thing.
you know what could be awesome though... grantable powerboost from pain domination *wink* *wink*
Power Boost is the only one I find useless on my character, but I can see how it would be a good power for other controllers that have buffs/heals/holds they use, etc... My illusion controller can't really use it from what I can tell, so an AoE attack would be nice 
Well, Freespec with I13 is pretty guaranteed.
yay?
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diasfh'asdhfiashdfiphsadfiohsad
'fhas'dfhasdfhas'dhfa'sdfhashdf'ashid
fhas'dfhia'sdh
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this is what i was expecting from your name.
What I'd like some clarity on is a statement by Castle where he says the powers will be just like they were in PVE, and in PVP enabled zones they will have a nerfed performance.
My question is if a given power that only buffs me gets a PVP nerf, does that mean when I go to a PVP Zone for PVE reasons (Shivans, Nukes, RV prestige hunting) that my powers are similarly nerfed?
This might be a serious issue with some folks who love their APPs.
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Either way, improvement for villains in pvp.
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This sounds ominous:
[ QUOTE ]
To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
[/ QUOTE ]
Patron buff or Epic nerf?
[/ QUOTE ]
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Yeah because I'm sure castle totally said nerf.
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What I'd like some clarity on is a statement by Castle where he says the powers will be just like they were in PVE, and in PVP enabled zones they will have a nerfed performance.
My question is if a given power that only buffs me gets a PVP nerf, does that mean when I go to a PVP Zone for PVE reasons (Shivans, Nukes, RV prestige hunting) that my powers are similarly nerfed?
This might be a serious issue with some folks who love their APPs.
[/ QUOTE ]
SadysCHICK ALL the Badges! (I can get. 1396)
Full image by David Nakayama
Arc ID 1435: Performing without Annette
Arc ID 7206: Sadystic Tendencies
Arc ID 3864: The Chronicles of (In)FERNIA!
Please revamp PPPs entirely. No amount of tweaks can make the current powers good.
And, uh.. Does this mean Defense and Placate are getting fixed?
If Arcanaville's anti-Defense idea got implemented, I might die of pure joy and delight. Very little chance of that, though.
I'd look for Aim and Buildup to be much less potent in PvP. After all, if I invest my entire secondary in gaining Defense, why should someone be able to overcome it 100% with only 2 powers? The answer of course is, they shouldn't. Aim and Buildup should improve your chances of hitting in PvP, but it shouldn't necessarily guarantee it.
And I can't believe the PPPs are going to be buffed. That's long overdue and beyond fantastic!
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Concerning Epics:
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We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
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Now this scares me. I'm not making any new characters until I see these changes.
Problem is, PPPs are still just Web Grenades, a pet and an armor.
Unless they buff these through the roof, which may need to be rebalanced, they're just better off sharing the hero APPs with villains.
Everyone has the same epic powers, same choices...works out well for everyone.
Or they can hit Power Boost and ther others with the nerf-bat again. 
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Noone knows how many options we will have as far as powers for created enemy NPCs. If we can select powers to build NPCs that would be great, but I suspect it will be more like we choose existing NPCs and just reskin/rename them. That's fine with me, but I do have a suggestion.
[b][i][color=orange]Don't just make AVs/Heroes reskinnable. Make all enemy NPCs from minions on up reskinnable. If possible, even make the pedestrians walking around customizable.
My main suggestion is to allow us to pick and choose minions, Leuitenants, and bosses from different enemy factions, reskin and rename them, and put them together to form our own player created enemy factions. These player created factions can be listed just like the player created missions to be rated and even used by other players. Player created factions that earn the Devs Choice or Hall of Fame could even find there way into radio/paper missions.
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Brian: The most important thing that most of the players are requesting is the ability to change the costumes and customize the look of the bosses and things like that in the mission creator.
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You know, there's a side to all this I don't really think anyone's considered yet.
The improved MA has to work both ways, doesn't it? By improving the toolbox so that players can customise allies and baddies, surely that means the Devs will now have much greater freedom to do exactly the same thing in the official missions?
From what I can remember, the MA started out as a Dev tool. Unless I'm misreading something somewhere, a greatly improved MA will surely result in more and better mission content in the Issues, as well as giving us the customisation we wanted.
Great interview. I can't wait for more details to come out about much of what is being changed. With that said, I only have one serious concern about the up and coming changes.
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Basically, we got more people, had more code time, and created a new technology system so that when you're in a PvP zone some powers act very differently than what they do in PvE. Hopefully this will bring a more balanced PvP game to the CoX franchise and allow new players to find this enjoyable.
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I understand why this is the direction chosen. I get that the game probably can't be balanced between PvE and PvP. I'm also pretty certain, as the interview indicated, that this is also one of the main reasons multi-builds is being introduced (multi-builds becoming a game wide feature is cool btw).
However, I think that making powers work differently in PvP than they do in PvE is the wrong direction for this type of game. CoX is a very casual game, where many players only play well, casually. The PvP crowd are generally very passionate about PvP in CoX and therefore put the time and effort it takes to learn just how their powers work in PvP and use their builds to the best of their advantage. Now there is a lot of skill involved as well I make no mistake about that.
Still, learning how to play the same character differently simply because of the type of zone the player entered into may not go over very well for many of the type of people that play CoX. I'm certain that you may get a small influx of new PvP players a short while after i13 goes live as some players begin to use the multi-build feature and get PvP-curious.
I'm betting though, that many still won't bother. Those few that do will probably drop off leaving only a smaller number that were added to the PvP community. With the casual nature of CoX, I think the only way PvP will really take off is when it becomes as seamless as possible for a casual player to go from PvE to PvP with regards to understanding how their character operates. Skill will always take time to master, especially when up against another thinking individual. But having a strong grasp of how your character performs (when you are a casual player) will help smooth out the learning curve for skill when entering PvP.
I know that there are plenty of other great ways to lure more people into CoX PvP, and I won't bother to rehash many of those ideas brought up in previous threads through out time. I'm merely replying and voicing my thoughts with regards to the particular point brought up in the interview.
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Yeah because I'm sure castle totally said nerf.
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To start, we rebalanced the Patron powers and the Epic powers that villains and heroes get so they're more in line with each other. We looked at what players were picking more often and changed some powers completely and pruned some powers.
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No Matt said "pruned" = Euphemism in it's purest form...
And he used the infamous phrase "more in line with" which is also a common way to say "nerfed the stuffing out of".
or roughly - "we changed stuff and we already KNOW y'all aren't gonna like it - but that's just tough luck sucker!"
And the infamous "We made some changes for er... uhm... Game Balance - Next question, (*whisper* quickly, please?!)"
All joking aside - it was said elsewhere that Power Balancing changes wouldn't affect PvE at all.
So, I'm guessing they aren't going to "Axe" any powers completely - or if they really do add or remove some powers they'll consider that something other than a "PvP Power Balance change" per se. IDK, we'll find out soon enough I suppose.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.
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It's not even that Patrons suck so much as it's that there is no neutral powers that can be used by any character. If your character doesn't want to shoot electricity, puke chum on people, fart ghost sharks, or use an arachnos mace....your SoL.
How bout' an Elite Malta Gunslinger patron with dual pistol powers? Vangaurd Patron? Rularru patron? Carnie Patron? How about opening up a bit? or just give villains a choice between Patron powers or the same EPPs heroes get.
Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement.
Ten Ton Hammer Managing Editor Cody Bye sat talked with Executive Producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller to discuss the specifics of the recently announced changes to Issue 13 and Issue 14. Here's an excerpt from the article:
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Ten Ton Hammer: Is the character customization in the Architect as robust as what players have in their own character creation? Or are players going to be limited?
Matt: We are making it as robust as possible, but there are some powers that players have access to that the AI won't be able to handle, like the Mastermind summoning powers. We would have to program a specific AI just for that. It's just something we haven't done before.
Brian: The most important thing that most of the players are requesting is the ability to change the costumes and customize the look of the bosses and things like that in the mission creator. Both of these features were going to be a part of the next phase of the mission creator, but because of the overwhelming response to the mission creator and the need for that feature in particular, we really just wanted to listen to our customers and give them what they really want. And it's not just the ability to make great content but to be able to specialize and personalize it as well.
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Click here to read the full article
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