Strengths and Weaknesses

Ok a question to the suggestion. How many folks would like to have a stronger defense/resistance to a certain damage type, but have a weekness to another?

I suggest such a feature be optional, but not nessesarily based on your power sets. What I mean by this is having to option to be weak against energy, but strong against lethal even though your a Fire/Fire blaster. This would prevent PvPers from tailoring attacks to specific sets. I have no suggestion as to how significant the numbers would be, but I would imagine they wouldn't be AT breaking.

This would give players new challanges in their playstyles and would also add thematic options for RPers.

Personally, I think there's already too much fiddly-*** math in this game nowadays. When I started playing it was one of the simplest, least stat-fiendy games out there; that's one of the reasons I started playing it (that and there was no crafting nor PvP - oops). You had your powers, you had Enhancements, and... that was it. One of the few things I really liked about Jack's management style was the dark glee he seemed to take in keeping the min-maxers in the dark as regards the actual numbers happening behind the curtain. That's all gone now, of course, and too bad too, but I see no benefit in making building a character even more like doing your taxes. If I wanted to play an MMO that was like doing my taxes, I'd play EVE Online.

I actually have to vote against this, myself. This is already the case based on what powerset you pick, and that's about as much "fine-tuning" as I'd like to see. For instance, my Fire/Fire Brute chuckles at Infernal and his meagre damage, while my Electric/Electric Brute quakes in his boots. Then on the other hand, he can get shot at by Rikti Dropships and not even notice.

Personally, I don't find the system in City of Heroes particularly simple or easy, and I'd rather not make it any more complicated or any harder. Customization is good, but simple gameplay is better. I tried the Champions Online way and I was not happy. I am SICK SICK SICK of stats, and I'm really glad we don't have them.

*edit*
We don't have stats as a pool of values we can add points to directly. We still have stats, but they are largely constant, only temporarily modifiable by our powers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, while I don't see it happening for many of the reasons listed above, I WOULD like to have something like it.

It doesn't make much sense to me when I choose, say, a robotic looking body and character whose background includes mechanical things, to be just as weak to Toxic or whatnot, as a fleshy person. I'd choose a vulnerability to electric and improve resistances to other things.

I think it'd be cool, I DO like that kind of tweaking on a character, it's kind of what I'd hoped the game would do originally.

If we ever get a truly global modifier that we can use some kind of enhancements on, that may be where they could put this sort of thing. Where you'd maybe get drops for "energy resistance with fire vulnerability" or whatever. Always coming with a minor + and - to each.

Sadly while the concept of "strengths and weaknesses" can be adequately handled in a tabletop pen-n-paper RPG setting I beleive in an automated MMO game such a feature would tend to be exploited by most people for purely min/max purposes. A human GM can counterbalance a player trying to "work" the system much better than a MMO can.

I'd love to have the idea of strengths and weaknesses better expressed in this game for RP purposes but I honestly don't see how it could be done effectively. Besides it's already been proven that most people don't really like the idea of being "weak" to anything anyway. One of the most obvious examples to Krypotnite this game had (Kheldian vulnerability to Qs/Voids) was so heavily toned down that that built-in weakness practically doesn't exist anymore.

The suggestion is all meant to be optional and, as stated, not meant to be AT-breaking.

AE wasn't meant to let people hit 50 in a couple of days, either.

While I would like this conceptually, I would have to vote against it.

Damage types are not equal across the game, so it would be a trivial matter to sacrifice mitigation against the very rare types (Cold for instance) to gain a benefit against very common types (Lethal).

The overall rarity of Cold verses the prevalence of Lethal means that it's very unnlikesly you'd ever even notice that weakness.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

I'm in favor, but only if the idea is fleshed out so that something doesn't get broken in the process.