Let's talk about pre-20 endurance management.
By
AprilShade,
Posted on: 2009-04-18 16:05 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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I still say Beginner's Luck for Endurance. Give it a cute name, like Wippersnapper, or Too Many Energy Drinks Last Night. One through twenty, you get this bonus, and it diminishes slightly every level. Or maybe every five levels...
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That's what I was thinking. Some kind of endurance discount that gradually decreases. I'd do it differently than the Beginner's Luck though. I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
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I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels
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I still hold to my original position. 35% endurance discount is almost exactly the same as 50% more endurance recovery. As, for instance, you get from Stamina.
So my level 10, with one toggle and gaps in his attack chain, is going to handle endurance MORE efficiently than my level 28, who also has to run three toggles and a 100% full attack chain, and took three powers for the privilege.
Yeah, that's a great idea. Really makes people want to get to the "good levels".
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Endurance issues between levels 10 and 20 are an albatross for this game. Levels 14-19 are the worst. I've had Tanker characters in these level ranges where literally all I could do after throwing 5 or 6 punches was stand in melee and twiddle my thumbs. I've had Scrappers stuck doing the same. It's silly.
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Levels 14-19 are the worst.
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My experience mirrors this. Once I hit the early teen levels it gets so bad I'm just done. Time to PL the rest of the way to 20.
It is a bit baffling that those who feel it's fine are often so vehemently opposed to changes that would help those of us who don't feel that it's fine. I can only guess it's a combination of them feeling they are more skilled and if I would just "lrn2ply" it would be fine, combined with a knee-jerk opposition to anything that doesn't benefit them directly.
I've done the frankenslotting of low-level multi-aspect IOs for end redux. I've used the SG base +recovery empowerment buff. I've still had to wait for end with Rest not recharged.
Getting Stamina at 20, or even SO-slotted Stamina at 22 doesn't magically make end problems disappear. Not for me anyway. It's usually over the course of the next five to ten levels after getting Stamina, and getting my powers fullys slotted, that end usage is truly put under control most of the time.
What Stamina does do though is improve things enough to make my toons playable without AFK time while my bars refill.
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That's what I was thinking. Some kind of endurance discount that gradually decreases. I'd do it differently than the Beginner's Luck though. I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels.
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/signed 
Definite QoL improvement there.
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I still say Beginner's Luck for Endurance. Give it a cute name, like Wippersnapper, or Too Many Energy Drinks Last Night. One through twenty, you get this bonus, and it diminishes slightly every level. Or maybe every five levels...
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ADHD Adolescent.
-Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.
-I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
-When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. - Thomas Jefferson
I kind of missed this earlier. Not sure if StratoNexus is still following the thread, but here goes anyways.
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I've simply said that a character who's sole means of endurance management is Rest is, because of Rest's inherent downtime and other drawbacks, will take longer to get through a mission than one who also has other means of endurance management.
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Your statement is irrelevant. Will someone who has Rest on a three minute timer and uses other means of endurance management take longer to get through a mission (several missions) than someone who has Rest whenever they want?
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Yes, obviously, because if you have enough endurance that you don't need to rest then you can spend the time that you would spend resting killing stuff and earning xp. This seems sufficiently self-evident as to be axiomatic.
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Perhaps I team more than you and have a different perspective. I can see using Rest almost all the time with nothing but benefit. Tanker runs in, Blaster / Scrappers unleash hell, repeat.
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This is how high-level teams already run, at least in my experience. Except the scrappers don't generally wait for the tankers to jump in to unleash hell. And sometimes the blasters have killed everything before the tankers or the scrappers even get there. Generally not too much need or opportunity for resting.
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When attackers are low on end, they can Rest while Tanker gathers spawn. If Tanker gets low on health, he can pull out and let the team take remaining aggro (since all AoEs are usable at whim because endurance is a non-issue, taking aggro from a lowbie tanker is even easier than normal, and with enemies dying faster less of a problem) and Rest while the team finishes that spawn. You can also choose to cease Rest early without any real penalty when needed. "Hey, I am up to half end and the Tanker got an extra spawn he didn't count on, I'll get in there now." There are more concerns like these that should be taken into consideration, IMO, before simply declaring that Rest with low to zero recharge is not over the top and would be lower performing than other end management techniques.
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First, I think you have an overly optimistic appraisal of how easy it would be to use rest in the middle of combat during the low levels -- it just takes one or two stray hits to send you to the ER if you're resting.
However, even if we concede that you're right and it becomes possible to rest literally whenever you want, a group that needs to rest on average once per spawn will be going slower than a group which can defeat an entire spawn and be starting in on the next spawn with close to full health/end in less time than it takes to rest -- which is the normal situation for nearly every high-level team I've been on.
Rest would speed the game up for lowbies, and for sub-optimal teams and sub-optimal builds. In a more optimal situation, it wouldn't really make much of a difference.
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I use Rest pretty frequently right now on almost every character I play, even in the higher levels. I can use it and have no one notice in many, many cases (my teammates can occasionally handle the last 10 seconds of a spawn and the first 5 or 6 of the next spawn while I am kneeling) . If you give it to me with zero recharge, you better believe I can and will use it to much greater effect than you seem to believe is possible.
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Not to belabor the point, but every time you rest, you are spending 10+ seconds not doing anything to contribute to your team. I'm sure that you would be able to find a way to get a great deal of benefit from insta-rest. But you'd still be going slower than a team that's built not to need rest except in exceptional circumstances.
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However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.
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How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?
Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.
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It's not that endurance is supposed to be really bad in the early levels, just that when you create a character, you should start out relatively normal. That's one of the defining traits of MMORPGs, that you start out more or less as a normal person, but gradually gain experience and abilities and become stronger and stronger. The devs have implied a couple times over the years that they wish they had handled endurance differently, but it was too finely ingrained into the game mechanics to just do away with it. They've done a lot to address many of the issues, but those early levels are still left.
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I'm not sure if the "starting out relatively normal" is appropriate to the genre. I didn't spend all that time flailing around in the vat of toxic waste to wait 20 levels before I could use my new superpowers without sucking wind, thank you very much.
FWIW, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about a gradually-disappearing endurance discount, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, if it were phased out by level 20, then it would be diminishing in the very levels where it's most necessary. It also runs counter to the idea of progression as you level up -- you spend the first 20 levels becoming less accurate and less endurance-efficient. (I dislike Beginner's Luck for much the same reason. They could've had exactly the same mathematical effect on accuracy without the conceptual problems by imposing a defense debuff on NPCs prior to level 20.)
I think my first choice would be reduce the recharge on rest. I've yet to hear a convincing reason for it to be longer than 60 seconds.
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I'd probably have a flat out 35% endurance discount at level 1, leave it untouched until 15, and then gradually disappear over the next 10 levels
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I still hold to my original position. 35% endurance discount is almost exactly the same as 50% more endurance recovery. As, for instance, you get from Stamina.
So my level 10, with one toggle and gaps in his attack chain, is going to handle endurance MORE efficiently than my level 28, who also has to run three toggles and a 100% full attack chain, and took three powers for the privilege.
Yeah, that's a great idea. Really makes people want to get to the "good levels".
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Like getting to the "good levels" is anything but inevitable?
Then knock it back down to 25% or so. Whatever. I just thought it would ease some of the problems certain archetypes have with endurance at the early levels. They do it now with accuracy, so I can't see where there's no precedence to do it for endurance. Many people support slotting for endurance reduction. You hear it all of the time when someone posts that they have endurance problems. Get stamina and slot for endurance reduction. You can't get stamina until level 20, and slotting for endurance reduction with TOs has almost no noticeable benefit since the enhanced value is too small. With damage, you're directly adding on damage in a proportion equal to the enhancement value. Accuracy directly adds to your to-hit chance. With endurance reduction though, the discount is less, requiring 100% of enhancements to bring down endurance usage by 50%. TOs just don't cut it, but that's all you have access to until level 12. That's why I prefer that the endurance discount not start to dissipate until you're high enough to start using DOs.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
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However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.
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How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?
Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.
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It's not that endurance is supposed to be really bad in the early levels, just that when you create a character, you should start out relatively normal. That's one of the defining traits of MMORPGs, that you start out more or less as a normal person, but gradually gain experience and abilities and become stronger and stronger. The devs have implied a couple times over the years that they wish they had handled endurance differently, but it was too finely ingrained into the game mechanics to just do away with it. They've done a lot to address many of the issues, but those early levels are still left.
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I'm not sure if the "starting out relatively normal" is appropriate to the genre. I didn't spend all that time flailing around in the vat of toxic waste to wait 20 levels before I could use my new superpowers without sucking wind, thank you very much.
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It's standard for all of the MMORPG genres. You start out at level 1 and grow stronger as you progress. And my early suggestion for an early endurance discount addresses that issue of "sucking wind". I generally don't like the concept of early buffs that disappear, meaning you get weaker as you progress, but the fact is that the game was designed with endurance usage interwoven into its mechanics. It's incredibly unlikely it will go away, unless the devs totally rewrite the mechanics and redesign all of the powers, so we have to work with not only what's possible, but what's feasible and can be executed with a reasonable amount of work and time.
As for reducing the recharge of rest that you mention..... I find no problem with that suggestion. If that would help people, then I'd happily go along with it. Personally, I don't think Rest should even have a recharge at all. I think the long delay for it to kick in is "punishment" enough for using it.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
Just played a new stalker up to 30, ninja blade/willpower, toggle heavy, scrapped it out quite a bit, never really noticed my end usage.
Made a mace/invulnerable brute last night, got him to 6th street-sweeping Mercy, the only pauses in his path of carnage were imposed by defeats and leveling breaks.
end at the low levels just isn't a big deal for most ATs. if you don't like the low level game being different & in some aspects more difficult than the high level game, recruit your friends to help you skip over it (which is what I do most of the time).
I think it's good for new players to experience an organic growth in power from the low levels to the mid levels to the high levels, and experience 'landmarks' in their own time. Getting stamina is one of those landmarks.
Presumably, by the time you've gotten burned out running around Atlas or Mercy you've made enough friends to opt out of the experience if you want.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I think it's good for new players to experience an organic growth in power from the low levels to the mid levels to the high levels, and experience 'landmarks' in their own time. Getting stamina is one of those landmarks.
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This is exactly why I play MMORPGs, and why I have no problems with starting out relatively weak. I like watching my character grow. I feel it's very organic like NG just said, and hitting the landmarks lets you appreciate the characters and the work you put towards them.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
"Life is just better boosted!" -- LadyMage
"I'm a big believer in Personal Force Field on a blaster. ... It's your happy place." -- Fulmens
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As for reducing the recharge of rest that you mention..... I find no problem with that suggestion. If that would help people, then I'd happily go along with it. Personally, I don't think Rest should even have a recharge at all. I think the long delay for it to kick in is "punishment" enough for using it.
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^This. I concur.
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As for reducing the recharge of rest that you mention..... I find no problem with that suggestion. If that would help people, then I'd happily go along with it. Personally, I don't think Rest should even have a recharge at all. I think the long delay for it to kick in is "punishment" enough for using it.
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^This. I concur.
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I'll third this.
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Your statement is irrelevant. Will someone who has Rest on a three minute timer and uses other means of endurance management take longer to get through a mission (several missions) than someone who has Rest whenever they want?
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Yes, obviously, because if you have enough endurance that you don't need to rest then you can spend the time that you would spend resting killing stuff and earning xp. This seems sufficiently self-evident as to be axiomatic.
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It does not seem self-evident to me. That might make me blind, but I do not think so. Having enough endurance so that I do not need to Rest comes with the cost of taking powers that manage endurance, sacrificing powers that help kill faster or survive better, although Stamina comes bundled with Swift/Hurdle/Health, all of which have a big impact on speed through missions. The Fitness pool is pretty amazing, but it is not Stamina alone that makes it that way.
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Perhaps I team more than you and have a different perspective. I can see using Rest almost all the time with nothing but benefit. Tanker runs in, Blaster / Scrappers unleash hell, repeat.
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This is how high-level teams already run, at least in my experience. Except the scrappers don't generally wait for the tankers to jump in to unleash hell. And sometimes the blasters have killed everything before the tankers or the scrappers even get there. Generally not too much need or opportunity for resting.
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Of course we do not need to Rest currently in the higher levels, we take Stamina, QR, Energy Absorption, Transference, etc. If I could rest every 30 seconds (even though I would probably only need it every minute), skipping some of those powers is much more feasible. Rest also comes bundled with that nice heal aspect, which means blasters could go all out for three or four spawns and then take a knee for 18 seconds. Having rest available removes some of the thought process, why not use Fireball or Fire Sword Circle when nothing else is recharged? Why not keep all my toggles up? You may find those questions annoying, but some people like the part of the game where you have to consider those questions. I am not of the belief that the preference to manage endurance with thought, instead of just powers, is a bad or even unpopular preference. Sure, people will [censored] about end management, but many of the bitchers probably enjoy it as is anyway. That is to say nothing of all the people who do not [censored] and who feel fine with the current set-up.
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First, I think you have an overly optimistic appraisal of how easy it would be to use rest in the middle of combat during the low levels -- it just takes one or two stray hits to send you to the ER if you're resting.
However, even if we concede that you're right and it becomes possible to rest literally whenever you want, a group that needs to rest on average once per spawn will be going slower than a group which can defeat an entire spawn and be starting in on the next spawn with close to full health/end in less time than it takes to rest -- which is the normal situation for nearly every high-level team I've been on.
Rest would speed the game up for lowbies, and for sub-optimal teams and sub-optimal builds. In a more optimal situation, it wouldn't really make much of a difference.
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First, you keep bypassing the heal aspect of Rest as if everyone in the game is a regen scrapper. Second, needing Rest every spawn would definitely cause some slow-down. However, even without Stamina, most builds in the mid-higher levels can go three or four spawns on a 3 or 4 man team before needing Rest. My experience in the low levels is similar and in some cases better. Solo, some builds have issues, but solo is not the only part of the game one should consider, IMO. Third, learning how to use Rest during a fight is not hard and is much more possible than you believe. I do it all the time now, because I do not build my characters to be endurance management free. If my blue bar is perpetually capped, I am wasting a resource that could have been spent on more damage, control, or survivability.
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I use Rest pretty frequently right now on almost every character I play, even in the higher levels. I can use it and have no one notice in many, many cases (my teammates can occasionally handle the last 10 seconds of a spawn and the first 5 or 6 of the next spawn while I am kneeling) . If you give it to me with zero recharge, you better believe I can and will use it to much greater effect than you seem to believe is possible.
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Not to belabor the point, but every time you rest, you are spending 10+ seconds not doing anything to contribute to your team. I'm sure that you would be able to find a way to get a great deal of benefit from insta-rest. But you'd still be going slower than a team that's built not to need rest except in exceptional circumstances.
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You have no idea how fast 15 seconds can go and are very much discounting the massive amount of corpse beating that goes on at the end of fights. Trust me, your damage contribution at the end of every third or fourth battle is not going to make the mission speed up by 3 minutes. Those other people on the team are generally capable as well, no matter how good it feels for you to get a bunch of kill shots (and I am not belittling you personally here, believe me, I play a Fire/Fire/Flame blaster for a reason).
A tanker, brute, scrapper with a taunt aura can contribute massive amounts to a team on minimal endurance. Rad defenders seem to operate under 10% endurance quite frequently and still help. There are tons of ways to work in a current spawn with minimal endurance for a lot of builds, and then take a knee after, while the rest of the team moves gets into position for the next fight. Using Rest totally stops a soloer. Using Rest lowers (if I Rest with my Emp or Bubbler, but Fort, CM, or Bubbles are up, I am still contributing, even though I am currently kneeling) or stops 1 part of a team, but does not necessarily have any impact on speed through missions for that team.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
They need to just make DOs and SOs available via random drops from level 1. One thing that's always bothered me about CoH is how difficult the early game is compared to how easy the late game is (with the exception of Task Forces and other certain missions).
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It does not seem self-evident to me. That might make me blind, but I do not think so. Having enough endurance so that I do not need to Rest comes with the cost of taking powers that manage endurance, sacrificing powers that help kill faster or survive better, although Stamina comes bundled with Swift/Hurdle/Health, all of which have a big impact on speed through missions.
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After you posted this, I thought it might be worthwhile to run through the math... I think I ended up using approximate numbers, but taking 15 seconds as the time to go from zero to full endurance under rest, it works out that to have Rest provide an average endurance benefit equal to (slotted) Stamina, you'd need to be spending about 1/6 of your time resting. Solo, that's a pretty substantial slow-down. As you point out, the situation on teams is a little more complicated, but at first glance, I'd guess that your time investment for each rest goes up by at least a few seconds, since you also have to make sure you've shed any aggro and are parked someplace where you're not likely to pick any more up.
As you point out, for characters with long-duration click buffs -- FF, for example -- taking the time off to rest isn't as big a deal as it would be for a blaster or a scrapper who has to stop dealing damage. I'd argue that endurance use for such characters is generally not as much of an issue in the first place, and therefore making it easier for them to manage their endurance would be a bit like handing Bill Gates a twenty.
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The Fitness pool is pretty amazing, but it is not Stamina alone that makes it that way.
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No argument here. It's not all that rare for me to take, and slot, all four powers.
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Of course we do not need to Rest currently in the higher levels, we take Stamina, QR, Energy Absorption, Transference, etc. If I could rest every 30 seconds (even though I would probably only need it every minute), skipping some of those powers is much more feasible.
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I don't see why that's a bad thing. If a large proportion of players take power X, then adding alternatives to power X seems like a perfectly reasonably course of action. (Not of course, that I'm saying power X is "required" or should be made inherent or anything like that.)
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Rest also comes bundled with that nice heal aspect, which means blasters could go all out for three or four spawns and then take a knee for 18 seconds.
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And would they go faster or slower than if they played a little smarter and didn't need to rest? I don't consider myself a blaster expert by any means, but my experience thus far with my fire/fire has been that adding fireball and/or firebreath into my attack chains doesn't do anything to increase my single target dps. In fact, it probably hurts it, although I haven't worked it out. And if you're hitting multiple foes, the AoEs are more endurance efficient than the ST attacks. (I forget if the break-even point is 2 enemies or 3, but it's not that big.)
As far as the heal aspect is concerned -- all of the arguments I've made about endurance-related downtime being unfun apply equally to health-related downtime. Sitting around doing nothing between fights waiting for either bar to come back is boring, and to enforce such downtime is poor design. (Furthermore, it's entirely possible to design a successful MMO where out-of-combat recovery is rapid without introducing balance problems. I didn't like much about WoW, but this was one thing they got right, IMO. At least in the early part of the game, which was about as far as I could make it.)
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If my blue bar is perpetually capped, I am wasting a resource that could have been spent on more damage, control, or survivability.
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The only real resource in this game is time. And using Rest involves a substantial time cost. (A cost which is much less than just sitting around waiting for stuff to come back -- hence my desire for a lower recharge despite Rest's sizable disadvantages relative to other means of managing health and endurance.)
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end at the low levels just isn't a big deal for most ATs.
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So very very false. End at the low level isn't a big deal for SOME POWERSETS. For most powersets across all ATs, it IS a big deal.
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.
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End isn't that big a deal if a) you slot some end red in your attack chain and toggles, and b) you don't try to play like you're already level 22.
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That's exactly the point.
You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22. The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22. Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.
If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.
Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
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You're just reinforcing the argument that the system is flawed as it currently exists. At level 1 the game ought to play like 22.
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It's important to understand that the above is an opinion, and not a fact.
While I'm not a fan of being weak and slow, it's not an opinion I agree with. I beleive we should start weak and grow stronger. I absolutely do not believe we should start the game at level 1 as strong as we are at level 22.
Do I think there's no room for change? I wouldn't say that. I could agree with the notion that we don't have to be as weak and slow at level 1 as we are. But everyone's degree of tolerance for how we do function at level 1 is different, and your particular lack of tolerance for it is not a hard-and-fast proof that the system is "flawed". It just means you really dislike it.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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The game doesn't even start to become fun until after 22.
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I disagree. I often find the post-22 game less fun. The slowest levelling I've had on my higher level characters has come at points when they are trouncing just about everything they meet.
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If the end redux were actually effective it might be a different story, but until you reach SOs, you might as well not even bother with enhancements; the difference they make is negligible.
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Do you solo much?
The reason I ask is that I solo a lot, and if my TOs or DOs go red I will notice. On a team... not so much, if it's a reasonably competent team, but then a lot of carelessness can go unnoticed in a team.
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Eliminating TOs and DOs entirely and starting with SOs at level 1, as has been proposed by others, would go a long way towards fixing the problem, but it's still not sufficient because there simply aren't enough slots available to a pre-22 character to make a significant difference. Something like a universal reduction in end costs to every power in the game, or something easier, like a universal boost inherent regen and recovery, is needed in addition to that.
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Are you seriously proposing that the upper two powers of the Fitness pool should become an inherent? Why not make the Tier 9 an inherent as well? What's the difference?
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Downtime is bad. Downtime is boring. Forcing downtime on the players is not good design.
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Handing everything to the players on a plate isn't good design either.
I don't recall who all may have proposed it, but I am more and more sliding into the opinion that doing away with TOs and DOs completely is the answer.
Then there would be no need of the current Beginner's Luck function, nor would there be any need for an endurance version of it. There would be no need for inherent health/stamina. No further changes would need to be made to the game engine at all.
Would it mean a lot of work anyway? Oh absolutely. Drop tables would need to be fixed, all the stores would as well. Something else would have to be done with Mr. Yin's(?) store in Faultline.
But what would it fix? Well, everything that sucks about the low game. The question would be whether we'd become too powerful.
I don't believe so. We'd still be very limited in our slots. We'd still have all of the various AT mods and Level mods in place to keep us in some semblance of check. EDIT: Granted, low level enemies may need to be adjusted accordingly as well, and that may be the killing point.
I honestly believe that this course of action should be considered by the devs.
Be well, people of CoH.
Supernumiphone said
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It is a bit baffling that those who feel it's fine are often so vehemently opposed to changes that would help those of us who don't feel that it's fine. I can only guess it's a combination of them feeling they are more skilled and if I would just "lrn2ply" it would be fine, combined with a knee-jerk opposition to anything that doesn't benefit them directly.
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... so wait. I'm selfish because you want a buff? Huh?
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
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However, there's the fact that at lower levels, you're NOT supposed to be able to attack like a madman, and a continuous pace, throughout a mission. It's good training for end management that should serve you well later in in the game when your enhancements allow for a bit more leeway.
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How is having endurance management suck early in the game good training for anything in the late game, where endurance management is dramatically easier because you have so many more options, all of which are more effective?
Endurance management in the lowbie game isn't good for anything except making me not want to play my lowbie alts.
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It's not that endurance is supposed to be really bad in the early levels, just that when you create a character, you should start out relatively normal. That's one of the defining traits of MMORPGs, that you start out more or less as a normal person, but gradually gain experience and abilities and become stronger and stronger. The devs have implied a couple times over the years that they wish they had handled endurance differently, but it was too finely ingrained into the game mechanics to just do away with it. They've done a lot to address many of the issues, but those early levels are still left.
Arc ID#30821, A Clean Break
The only problem with defeating the Tsoo is that an hour later, you want to defeat them again!
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