A new endurance idea. (Really, I promise!)
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2009-05-15 08:57 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
I've gotta say, this ain't half bad. From a coding standpoint, it'd be much easier to create a "Fatigued" global debuff than to cut the effect of each power individually.
The exact numbers are very debatable. I'd suggest something like -30% Damage, -25% Recharge and -50% Run/FlySpeed. Those are just rough figures off the top of my head.
Fantastic Idea. Very inventive. I love it.
Like I said earlier, I really like the idea. It doesn't do away with the need for endurance management, but removes the crippling effect of running out.
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
I rather like this idea, honestly. I'm not sure how it would balance out for electricity or end draining abilities, however.
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I rather like this idea, honestly. I'm not sure how it would balance out for electricity or end draining abilities, however.
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Good point. I agree overall--this is a pretty nice idea...
We have enough ideas about--er... Hm, actually, I kinda like this idea. Good job, citizen!
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I rather like this idea, honestly. I'm not sure how it would balance out for electricity or end draining abilities, however.
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That's a good point. I can think offhand of two options: #1, increase the strength of -end powers, or #2, keep NPCs working the same way as currently, so that they just sit there when they're out of juice.
I suspect #1 would be somewhat more balanced overall, but #2 would avoid upsetting the "sapper"-type characters.
That's an interesting idea, Pippy, but I see one hurdle and one problem with it:
[u]Hurdle[u]: The implementation. You mentioned two solutions in your post, the first being the best, but would time / CPU intensive. Time because the devs would have to alter every attribute in every power to check the player's current endurance. CPU intensive to actually make all the checks. (There may be a better way to implement it - I don't know enough about their system, but that's how I see it from the outside.)
The debuff would be much simpler, but it begs the question "what is the right debuff value?" This is vitally important when you factor in enhancement value. Adding a 50% debuff would cut an aspect in half unslotted, but only cause a 25% decrease in an SO enhanced build. If you add a 100% debuff to balance the SO case, then powers not slotted (or aspects of a power) become useless. (Imagine this happening to a lowbie w/o SO access.) Not sure how hard it would be, but I suppose they could add a table to scale up the debuffs from a low value at low levels to higher at high levels (when SOs become available). I still don't quite like it.
[u]Problem[u]: This would penalize toggle based characters more heavily than click based ones. As soon as a toggle user drops below the end threshold, their toggles would drop in effectiveness. This would negatively effect their survivability and cause a higher rate of health fatigue than normal.
Example: A Tanker is fighting and runs low on endurance, while waiting for his end to recoup in order to have his toggles come back to full effectiveness, mobs will deal more damage to him, causing him to suffer downtime due to health.
Compare that with a more click based set like, hmm, a Controller. If they use a control and drop below the threshold, the hold's duration isn't immediately slashed since it was used above the threshold. They can now wait to peek above (if they choose) and suffer no other detriment.
At any rate, I could see people not wanting to drop below 10 end so they'd never be debuffed, this would give them 10 end less to work with.
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Having said all that, I like the general idea you've put forth, Pippy. It's definitely food for thought. Hmmm...
Or you don't really need a fatique state. If a power needs certain amount of endurance and you don't have it, the power will use whatever end you have and lose certain effectiveness as you described.
In principle, if you have zero endurance, a power should be ineffective. That means an attack should do no damage, and a toggle will do nothing. In some sense, this is equivalent to dropping your toggle and prohibiting you from attacking. Under the new idea, I can avoid the hassle of re-toggling. Maybe, do you want the power to maintain certain amount of effectiveness even you have zero endurance?
This thread is probably more appropriate in suggestions and ideas forum. I guess you don't want to post there. 
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Snazzy. I like it.
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Same.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
But since a debuff would reduce the strength of a value no matter what the source that means that if you entered a "fatigued" state then inspirations would function at a lesser value as well.
Sir Zane (Lvl 50, Inv/SS/Nrg Tank);Atomic Jake (Lvl 50, Kin/Rad/Elec Defender)
Nikolai (Lvl 50, DM/EA/GW Brute);Raging Stallion (Lvl 50 MA/SR/Weap Scrapper)
Archmage Tristam (Lvl 50 Ill/Son/Psi Controller)
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Snazzy. I like it.
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Same.
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Good points, Serrate, and I certainly agree with you about the implementation. In principle, if you were going to go with the debuff option, a sliding scale as you level up would be pretty reasonable. Particularly since it's easier to avoid running out of endurance at higher level. It's a bit of a kludge, but I think you could overall end up with the right effect. I'd suggest starting at something like -40% dmg/duration, -40% rech, -30% spd, at level 1 and increasing up to double those values by level 32, after which it would remain constant. Def and res are a bit tougher to address -- starting at something like -10 to -15% def and -20 to -30% res, (resistable), and again doubling by level 32 might be appropriate. It would probably be good to add a sizable -regen component as well; I'm not sure that whether or not it would need to scale with level. You could just throw out something like -20000% regen, which basically means nobody gets any HP back when they're fatigued.
If you were going to go with the debuff route, it might be better to leave def and res alone, which would address the toggle/click disparity you mention. However, I'm not entirely sure that this is much of an issue: the current system already penalizes toggle users more heavily than clickers. As soon as you run out of power, your toggles start dropping entirely, and your survivability crashes. Worse, once you have endurance again, you have to spend time retoggling, whereas the click user retains the same survivability the entire time, and doesn't have to retoggle.
In the proposed system, the retoggling downtime is eliminated and the survivability drop is mitigated. And, of course, the controller has to slow down the rate at which he's throwing out holds in order to stay above the fatigue threshold, thereby reducing his survivability and/or effectiveness.
Of course, in the debuff version, this really wouldn't be much of an issue: everyone gets the same penalties when they're fatigued.
Regarding implementation: I wonder if you could use a purple-patch type construct to reduce the powers' effectiveness? It'd probably be a lot easier than adding a "if (Fatigued==1)..." flag to every power, although that would certainly be an option.
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However, if you're below some value -- I'm thinking 5 or 10 -- you would be in a fatigued state, and all your powers would be reduced in effectiveness by some significant amount
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What would happen with powers that cost less than that threshold to activate? Would they lose effectiveness despite having more than enough end to use them normally?
(Powers like Consume/Dark Consumption and One with the Shield/Unstoppable which only use 0.52-2.6end to activate anyhow.)
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
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However, if you're below some value -- I'm thinking 5 or 10 -- you would be in a fatigued state, and all your powers would be reduced in effectiveness by some significant amount
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What would happen with powers that cost less than that threshold to activate? Would they lose effectiveness despite having more than enough end to use them normally?
(Powers like Consume/Dark Consumption and One with the Shield/Unstoppable which only use 0.52-2.6end to activate anyhow.)
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Yep.
The idea is your endurance could never go below zero, and you'd choose the fatigue threshold so as to enforce the amount of recovery time that you'd want after hitting that floor. That means, in principle, that you have less endurance to burn before you start running into penalties; the flip side is that those penalties would be less severe than they currently are. If it were a big problem for people, though, you could offset this with an endurance cut: if the threshold were set at 5, for example, then you'd only have 95 endurance before penalties are imposed. But if you reduce all endurance costs by 5%, then that 95 endurance would go as far as 100 endurance did previously.
I'm not sure that this would be necessary, but it's an option.
I'd have to say I really don't like the sound of that.
I would probably simply come to view it as "I only have 95endurance" and I think that would become a very common perception.
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
How about, instead of there being a threshold where you become fatigued, simply allow endurance totals to become negative, and apply the 'fatigued' debuff whenever the current endurance total is less than 0? Cap this 'endurance debt' at -10 or -20 or something, visually represent it by a short red endurance bar overlaid over the (empty) normal bar which grows as you spend more endurance and shrinks as you recover closer to being positive, and allow end to recover at the normal rate but enforce the penalty until endurance becomes positive again. This has the same overall effect, but avoids the 'my end bar is now effectively smaller' perceptual issue (because you still have the same 100 end to play with before you hit the fatigued state).
(If you can't tell, I really like this idea)
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
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How about, instead of there being a threshold where you become fatigued, simply allow endurance totals to become negative, and apply the 'fatigued' debuff whenever the current endurance total is less than 0? Cap this 'endurance debt' at -10 or -20 or something, visually represent it by a short red endurance bar overlaid over the (empty) normal bar which grows as you spend more endurance and shrinks as you recover closer to being positive, and allow end to recover at the normal rate but enforce the penalty until endurance becomes positive again. This has the same overall effect, but avoids the 'my end bar is now effectively smaller' perceptual issue (because you still have the same 100 end to play with before you hit the fatigued state).
(If you can't tell, I really like this idea)
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That's a nifty idea.
Also, to 'conserve' energy...they ought to let us 'throttle' the speed on travel powers to 'conserve energy'. That would rock as I've wanted a throttle on fly and hover since day one.
Sounds very nice.
Kind of reminds me of the "Energy Recovery" state from the early Armored Core games... Under this state, a character couldn't boost, jump, or use energy weapons, and on top of that, their radiator cooled less efficiently... Though in Armored Core, the effect lasted until you got somewhere around 90-100% Energy back. THAT would be a too-harsh penalty. d:
However, I do like what your idea puts forward. I think that there are a couple *fundamental* problems with it, such as Nukes at 0 Endurance, and the -recovery that goes with it... Even with a negative buff of 25-50% to almost everything, it seems like characters could (moderately) easily build around it and just god-jump from one group to the next. Maybe have the debuff scale from 25-50 endurance until it reaches 0, to a slightly greater overall penalty? That way, hopefully the 0 Endurance penalty would be sufficiently difficult to work around that people couldn't ignore it.
Just my thoughts on it, though. :P Feel free to... Ignoooooore me!
I don't like that idea at all. It would be a nerf for many of my characters. I tend to play near the edge, and that involves in some situations being close to 0 end.
Endurance management has always seemed fine to me, so I don't even understand why would this be necessary.
I like the idea, the only problem (and I do like it) is that most players don't seem to want to think when they play. The binary nature of END makes it quite easy for them as all their powers shut down and then they realize "Oh I'm out of END". A system where your powers became weaker and weaker the lower your END might be a bit hard for some to cope with. These players will continue attacking/whatever forever and getting a 10% heal because someone isn't managing their END is a bad thing.
Plus in a lot of ways you are just setting the bar in a different place. Instead of using END till you get close to 0 you use it until 10% then don't dare use it or your defenses will "invisibly" drop. It is a soft cap like the Enhancement "soft cap" which no one ever goes beyond, effectively making it a hard cap.
But it does let you do something all the time even if it isn't as useful. Also adds more tactial thought to combat which I always like myself. I am just afraid of alienating others.
That said I rarely have END problems on my characters after 20. Often I don't even fully slot Stamina for a while.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
I don't like the idea.
It's so easy to keep in the blue. Let's not add penalties that kick in sooner than they do now.
I MIGHT be willing to go for your idea IF:
The penalties don't kick in til you hit ZERO end, just like now
AND
the penalties only effect powers currently being used, not powers used prior and still in effect, and not base values.
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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I don't like that idea at all. It would be a nerf for many of my characters. I tend to play near the edge, and that involves in some situations being close to 0 end.
Endurance management has always seemed fine to me, so I don't even understand why would this be necessary.
[/ QUOTE ] I agree. People need to slot better. If somebody is new and doesn't know how, well, they will learn.
Okay, I'm sorry for starting yet another thread about endurance. But this idea seems sufficiently new as to be worth its own post. And I promise I won't even mention that one power that everyone always argues about. Anyways, almost verbatim from the other thread:
One of the problems (as I see it) is the binary nature of endurance. Either you have endurance and can do anything you want with no problem, or you don't have endurance and you're helpless: no attacks, no defense, no nothin' until your endurance comes back. (With attacks, this just slows your attack rate. Defense is more problematic, as your toggles all drop.)
My suggestion would be to make it possible to execute powers -- and keep toggles running -- regardless of whether or not you're out of endurance. However, if you're below some value -- I'm thinking 5 or 10 -- you would be in a fatigued state, and all your powers would be reduced in effectiveness by some significant amount -- here I'm thinking a 50% reduction in effectiveness. So, a 10-second hold would become a 5-second hold, a 200-point attack would only do 100 points of damage, Mag-10 mez protection would only give 5 points of protection, etc.
Alternatively, it might be easier to implement to make Fatigued into a status effect, involving large debuffs to movement speed, damage, control durations, etc. I think the other way would be preferable, but I have no idea how easy it'd be to implement.
This would eliminate the complete helplessness that comes with running out of endurance, and is consistent with other MMOs. Thematically, it makes sense -- if you go until you're exhausted, you can still run, just slower. You can still punch someone, just not as hard. There's still a substantial penalty for not managing your endurance, but it introduces more choice into the matter -- do I keep fighting even though I'm really tired and not going at full capacity? Or do I regroup until I can hit harder again. And it would eliminate that gosh-awful, "You Suck!" "Out-of-Power" thing, which I really, really hate.