Powerset-based elemental resistances/vulnerability

I honestly am not sure if this is a good idea or not, but I thought I'd throw it out there (and I'm sure it won't take long for someone to inform me which they think it is!) Here's the thing: whenever I'm playing a fire blaster (say), I look over at an ice-based villain like a Chiller and think, "Oho, icicle-boy, I'm going to melt you into a puddle!" But then my fire powers don't particularly work any better against him than they do against anyone else (or not that I can tell). Similarly, I feel like I ought to be extra-wary of ice-based villains, and a bit less concerned about being burned by fire-based ones.

So, might it make sense for characters with elemental powers to get a slight bonus (damage resistance rather the defence, probably) vs those same elements, and a slight penalty vs the opposite? (Where "opposite" might need some defining: maybe fire/ice and earth/electricity would be reasonable pairs.)

You'd have to limit it to main powersets, otherwise you'd have fire/ice blasters who would be ambiguously defined in terms of what element they favoured. And none of these should be so large that they would either make the character immune to fire or instant-killed by ice . . .

It doesn't seem like it would be terribly hard to implement, but at the same time maybe it would create other problems. I do like the idea of Ice Guy rushing forward to confront the Chiller, while Fire Girl keeps her distance . . .

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The problem with elements in game as they are now, and this system, is that they dont quite lock together.
Fire and Cold both seem to be strong and weak against each other at the same time. Fire armours give some cold protection, while cold armours give some fire protection.

There is also the problem of balancing such things. If it wasnt kept closely monitored, you'd have Tankers, frexample, doing more damage than blaster in some circumstances.
Theres also the fact that sets based on smashing/lethal damage would need tweaking, or else be left out in the, heh, cold. Again, in some cases.
Overall, its not a 'bad' idea, per se, but it would be a lot of work to get to work not only 'right' but balanced too. Its better that the powersets and, more importantly, the Archetypes work in the way they should.

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a while back there was suggestion that you should gain some kind of bonus from your power set so maybe having fire blast gives you 5% res to fire damage and fire manipulation gave you another 5% you could get your self a small 10% resistance to fire or if you were fire/ice get a 5% res to both fire and ice.

One problem is tho what would all the different sets give the elemental ones are easy the the weapon sets could give smash or lethal res (body armour or something maybe) empath i suppose could give a Regen bonus as could pain domination.

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Body Armour is already available to Blasters, in the Weapons Mastery ancillary.
The thing is, Toughness/Damage is already built into the AT. Blasters do high damage all the time. Tankers are tough all the time. Any shortfalls are allowed to be patched up somewhat in the Epic pools, but adding anything extra to the powers themselves, or to the sets would take a lot of time to create, test, balance and so forth.
IMO at least, Dev time would be better spent giving us more options for sets on ATs, and on making things like power customisation feasible.

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empath i suppose could give a Regen bonus as could pain domination.

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Since no one's going to do that anyway... Don't ask for ponies when you can ask for Friesians Think bigger! Thing status protection Mag 2 would be fine

More seriously though, that initial example may be put absolutely the other way around, - heat and cold cancel each other out and so neither party has the advantage. (That's how the current system works more or less.)

On the still other hand let's not make the system look like AD&D (or Rolemaster or any early PnP roleplaying, with 10000 rules that are all "logical" taken separately but produce quite... unobvious results together. (What happens to Thief who've read scroll of Mordekkainen's Disjunction and rolled "caster loses his spells permanently" result? Thief hasn't got any spells to begin with. Can he read another scroll afterwards? ) )

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Don't ask for ponies when you can ask for Friesians

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When can we have a pony? Maybe a NEMESIS HORSE?

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[b][color=blue]Coldest War /[color=red]/ Omega Patient[/b]
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Dev time would be better spent giving us more options for sets on ATs, and on making things like power customisation feasible.

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agreed more options are allways better ideally i would love to see the ability to tweek stats even if it was only a 5 - 10 percent margin either way so that we could create our own defencive holes and strengths.

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or maybe even give 1% resistance for each elemental based power taken, so a fire/nrg blaster with 5 fire powers and 6 nrg powers would get 5%resistance to fire and 6% resistance to nrg. not sure how hard it would be to add to powers as inate bonus.

or maybe even 1% resistance for each elemental based power and -1% to its oppersite type so using the eg above the blaster would have +5 vs fire and -5% vs cold and +6 vs nrg and -6 vs neg nrg

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Best method then - base it on the attack type of primary and 2nd and make 1% res for each. This adds serious parity for all and wouldnt make defensive/res based chars too powerful at all.

Example:

gravity/thorns dom - gravity being smash gives 1% smash res, and thorns being lethal gives 1% lethal

but say a brute now
fire/wp - he would get 1% fire res but as his secondary set is not dmg oriented being a shield set he would not get a bonus (and no /fire and /shield would not give a buff either before some knowall pipes up lol)

and something like an energy/energy blaster would naturally get 2% energy res.

Its far simpler for balancing imo to make it based on their own primary. However, certain chars and ATs are incredibly squishy and certain foes would be overkill. So I would say rather than make the paired debuff -res, maybe make it -def of say 0.5%.

This way it wouldnt be crippling to the squishies and shielded chars maintain their edge that they should have. Remember they change invun recently due to its underperformance at certain levels due to its own -def component. By making it a small amount like I suggest it creates serious balance and adds a unique aspect to a char.

An additional extension is sets with multiple dmg types overall could say do 0.5% res to each instead so /thorns could do 0.5% lethal and toxic res - but imo to be a best benefit all round to all ATs it'd be better to make it 1% res and -0.5% def to that attack type as then its a beneficial thing. Plus the only set this -def doesnt apply to is pure toxic and as it stands there are no true toxic ATs. Its arguable a necro MM should give toxic prot but ofc there is no def to toxic, so that would give dark +res/-def as thats its other key attack type.

Yes I have thought about this before lol

The other one would be psionic offensive chars as the thematic opposite is technically toxic. But thematically this could easily be smash as its opposite given that a punch to the face is kinda the opposite of using your thoughts to kill someone so we got:

energy 1%res, -0.5 def neg
psi 1%res, -0.5% def smash
pair fire-cold, smash-lethal, etc and it could really work

Plus this also keeps toxic as something that is very unique and to be feared as it is now meaning those sets remain all good. And should they ever add toxic based attack sets they could make it:

toxic res 1%, -psi def 0.5% - nice and easy

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How would this work? Would a Fire/Ice tanker melt himself?

Facetiousness aside, I think you're putting a lot more consideration into the powers than the devs did - hence there's not much organisation. This reminds me of the poorly organised Invention system ... and WW.

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Please fight My Brute: http://2hero.mybrute.com

Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.

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How would this work? Would a Fire/Ice tanker melt himself?

Facetiousness aside, I think you're putting a lot more consideration into the powers than the devs did - hence there's not much organisation. This reminds me of the poorly organised Invention system ... and WW.

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If all the CoX fans ganged together, pooled money, programmed, designed and built up a game, it would probably be...

Really, really complicated. Possible good and fun as well, but...yeah
Still...maybe they should start recruiting from the forums, even temporarily?
Gods help us XD

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History lesson: (I'm old, I like history. )

This topic is not new (I'm sure no one is amazingly surprised) and got discussed way back. The reason given for not implementing a system like this was that it could put starting players off.

The reasoning goes like this: You start a new toon with no knowledge of what the game has in store for you. You like the look of ice powers, so you make yourself an ice/ice Blaster, or similar, and with it comes a resistance to cold and a weakness to fire. You think Magic would be a good origin. You start playing and the tutorial seems to be going okay, and then you walk into Galaxy City, get faced by a truckload of Hellions and are constantly having your bottom handed to you on a platter. You give up in disgust.

Why? Because you didn't understand the game enough to actually make that kind of choice.

Now, I think it could work as an optional feature which you could select at character creation, but then I pretty much know what kind of hell awaits me when I start playing these days.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

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History lesson: (I'm old, I like history. )

This topic is not new (I'm sure no one is amazingly surprised) and got discussed way back. The reason given for not implementing a system like this was that it could put starting players off.

The reasoning goes like this: You start a new toon with no knowledge of what the game has in store for you. You like the look of ice powers, so you make yourself an ice/ice Blaster, or similar, and with it comes a resistance to cold and a weakness to fire. You think Magic would be a good origin. You start playing and the tutorial seems to be going okay, and then you walk into Galaxy City, get faced by a truckload of Hellions and are constantly having your bottom handed to you on a platter. You give up in disgust.

Why? Because you didn't understand the game enough to actually make that kind of choice.

Now, I think it could work as an optional feature which you could select at character creation, but then I pretty much know what kind of hell awaits me when I start playing these days.

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^ This

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Very true it could be confusing to new players but as a added layer for more advanced players i recon it would be a great feature

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I think a "weakness" element would be great. They did it with Kheldians (the Quantums are their weakness) and it works fine. Heck, I'd go so far as to say it's fun (but I don't have a K).

There are other ways to give players weaknesses, however, like picking one from a list so that it's in keeping with your character, or having your contacts kidnapped/attacked/turned to the dark side (they are pretty much the only "emotional" attachment your character has in the game) - many traditional heroes' weaknesses are the normal people who they love. Perhaps these might be better ways to give player characters a weakness?

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Please fight My Brute: http://2hero.mybrute.com

Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.

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I think a "weakness" element would be great. They did it with Kheldians (the Quantums are their weakness) and it works fine. Heck, I'd go so far as to say it's fun (but I don't have a K).

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Well, by the time you get a Kheldian, it's assumed you know what Quantum Guns do to them, and also, personally, I find Q-Guns about as much fun as an acid enema.

Selectable weaknesses are generally used in RPGs to allow you to select more, or more powerful, powers, and there's no mechanism for that at the moment in the game. So, presumably, we would be selecting weaknesses with an opposing increase in resistance to something else. That would need to be very carefully balanced.

Dependent NPCs are a whole different ball game. Tha would be an absolutely massive new system. I would be against it because it's creating a machine mechanism for something better handled by real roleplay. Honestly, do you really think Superman wants to keep having to rescue Lois Lane from yet another predicament she's got heself into because she's too stupid not to? Having to rescue your beloved, again, and again, and again, would get old real fast.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

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I think a "weakness" element would be great. They did it with Kheldians (the Quantums are their weakness) and it works fine. Heck, I'd go so far as to say it's fun (but I don't have a K).

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Well, by the time you get a Kheldian, it's assumed you know what Quantum Guns do to them, and also, personally, I find Q-Guns about as much fun as an acid enema.

Selectable weaknesses are generally used in RPGs to allow you to select more, or more powerful, powers, and there's no mechanism for that at the moment in the game. So, presumably, we would be selecting weaknesses with an opposing increase in resistance to something else. That would need to be very carefully balanced.

Dependent NPCs are a whole different ball game. Tha would be an absolutely massive new system. I would be against it because it's creating a machine mechanism for something better handled by real roleplay. Honestly, do you really think Superman wants to keep having to rescue Lois Lane from yet another predicament she's got heself into because she's too stupid not to? Having to rescue your beloved, again, and again, and again, would get old real fast.

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^ This, also.

You say Q-guns are cool, but havent got a Kheld?
Get to 50 and start a Kheld. Play for about fourteen levels.
If you come back and honestly claim to like them still, you are thenby classified as either insane or macho.
The only good Quant is a deadflattenedguttedandpushedbackintothevoidthatspa wnedthem Quant. -nods-

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