Wait, why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?

That's a very good point. Our game is a fighter, to be honest not that far removed from things like Streets of Rage or Final Fight. We come into a mission, and we go from beginning to end, beating up bad guys along the way until the hand points to the right and the narrator shouts "Go! Go!" It's a rather very basic game design principle, and it's interesting to note that old arcade fights do have characters with different roles, including those weak on defensive ability but strong on ranged offence, yet still manage to allow a single player to progress at a reasonably fair state of balance.

But ours is a fighter. In order for "other" approaches to become truly valid, the game needs to support them via mission design. The old MDK 2 actually did this very well. You have Max, the four-armed cyber super-dog whose approach was to basically quad-wield chainguns and blast everything head-on, and his stages reflected this. For the most part, they were a straight-line offence between killzones where you had to kill enough enemies so you could progress. The Doc, on the other hand, was completely powerless, having only a Nuclear Toster, his wits and whatever he could cobble together, so his stages were basically a series of either item puzzles, button puzzles or combat puzzles. Kurt, on the other hand, inherited his gameplay from the original MDK, having a mix of light combat, some stealth elements, a few jumping puzzles and plenty of sniping opportunities.

In fact, while everyone always had completely different stages, the final stage has all three attempting to beat it in different ways, with a final boss who is radically different. Kurt's stage has a lot of climbing and sniping, with the fight inside the final boss's body requiring you to snipe little orbs orbiting his brain really fast before he spat you out (long story), basically requiring an annoying degree of precision. Max's stage, on the other hand, was one long, long plough through hordes and hordes of enemies, with the fight inside the boss's body having lots of annoying enemies flying about and requiring you to shoot his brain dry of hit points while it constantly regenerated at a pretty disquieting pace. The Doctor's level, on the other hand, was mostly puzzles, with the fight inside the boss requiring... I don't remember. Finding a monster serum so you can jump up to his head and slash his non-regenerating brain, I think. I should really find that game again.

Basically, level design determines what works and what works well. Our levels (or missions, if you will) are, for the most part, just one long gauntlet from the entrance to the end, with their very POINT being to kill stuff and level up off it. You can miss some enemies, but at the end of the day, THAT is what you get experience from. A mission which emphasised stealth, on the other hand, would need a completely different design, possibly offering a reward for not getting into fights, giving you places to hide and avoid pursuers and giving you level design and game mechanics which both limit your mobility and reward you for mobility in some way that is completely out of the scope of the game. Puzzle gameplay is a third option, with skills that help with the puzzles in some way. And, yes, I know the commonly-held wisdom of "someone will just write a guide for it," but sufficiently random-state puzzles would still offer enough of a mental challenge. For instance, MDK gave us bombs tied to buttons via lots of tangled wires, forcing you to trace which wire goes where. A more complex variant of finding the WSPDR generators if you don't know where to look, as it were, as you can just follow the very simple cables. Randomise those, and you have a repeatable puzzle.

This game is really only built for combat. That's part of the reason it mystifies me every time people claim the game should be catering to everybody by adding more "depth." It's a glorified fighter, and as I'm sure we've all noticed, the more they tack onto it, the more cumbersome it gets. The most I can hope for is a lessening on the price of damage and self-defence when it comes to game balance.

This is where the balance breaks down. There are no enemies that kill Scrappers without them being able to do anything about it. Some are harder than others, but even the hardest ones are still not actually HARD. For a Scrapper, it tends to go from "Am I still awake?" to "Hey, my health is going down, time to use the other half of my powers." That was actually the cornerstone of the boss buff failure. The problem was that Scrappers (and some others) were soloing bosses left and right, several at a time, and those were deemed "team content." Bosses were made a lot stronger, Scrappers just shrugged and kept killing them about just as easily, but everyone else was completely boned. This isn't something that can be addressed by global changes, because the leaders will always be leaders. It requires sideways thought.

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.

Everyone being the same IS a step back, but that isn't necessarily what it takes. What I'm talking about isn't the SAME tools, but merely tools with a similar end effect. To go back to D&D (or my limited understanding thereof), warriors had hit points and armour to pritect themselves, rogues had dexterity and skills to protect themselves, mages had spells and shield bubbles to protect themselves and clerics had blessings they could cast on themselves. Different classes, each with its own specialization, but if the player so chooses, each of which is equipped to save itself from death, in different ways and to different degrees, but the capability is still there.

Much as people detest the Champions Online system (as do I), the one thing I liked about it was that, from what I saw, each thematic speciality offered a selection of tools for a lot of situations. To the best of my experience, most have melee attacks, ranged attacks, self protection and team support. You can't take them all, but they're there to be taken if you wanted. From what I've seen, you can still specialise, and since there are never enough, err... "Points of different kinds" to take everything, you more or less have to, but you can pick what you specialise into SEPARATE from the team you have chosen. I don't know enough, so I'm probably wrong, but that's sort of what I'm looking at.

In essence, I'm not looking for a system that ENSURES everyone is always equally capable in combat regardless of how they build. That WOULD be homogenous. Rather, I'm looking for a system that ALLOWS everyone who wants to to be able to fight at some "sufficient" level if he so chooses. This really isn't true for a lot of MMOs where some specializations just don't let you fight very well, and even though it's much less true here, it's still in effect. Inversely, while such a system would allow you to be able to fight well no matter what you choose, it should also always allow you to do something BESIDES fight no matter what you choose.

Think of it as always being locked into multi-classing, with one class always being a fighter.

Alternately, we could go the route of stances or multiple classes. We already have multiple builds here, so just let people have TWO ATs to switch between with all limitations of build switching. That way, each class can over-specialise while still allowing the character to double as a fighter if the player so chooses. That way, you don't need to ensure fighters can do anything else and that everyone else can fight, as people can just switch between them depending on their mission, team status or flight of fancy.

What's more, this position doesn't (or at least shouldn't) actually produce too much of a balance issue and should be applicable to an existing game (say, this one) with the only limiting aspect being actual art and graphics. As long as you can ensure each "theme" has a version in all ATs, balance should be maintained. Themes are kind of hard to define once you step away from element, but it's still not an unsolvable problem.

Basically, I don't want everyone to BE the same, merely that everyone have ACCESS to the same (or at least similar) performance at a time AFTER character creation.

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.

To me, tools with the same net effect are the same tools, with cosmetic differences.


I think you're starting to play games with "different degrees." You keep saying you're ok with "different degrees" and then reversing and saying if two things have disparate capability (or opportunity) to solo, that's problematic. I'm becoming convinced that what you want is something that *looks* different, and can be claimed to be different, but isn't really different.


In my opinion, one of the things that is wrong with the CO system is that you *cannot* "specialize" in any sense of the word. The "thematic specialties" are really mostly convenient containers for the powers. The prereq thresholds become meaningless by the midgame for the most part. What you have in CO is really a big set of powers you can choose from, nearly at will, and no choice affects your future options much. Your electric blaster can never be better than my super strength fighter in using Gigabolt: no one can "specialize" in anything in the sense of being better than anyone at anything.

That is homogeneity on a massive scale, and its forced upon them by their implementation of an "open" powers system. Specifically, its what happens when decisions have no consequences.


You seem to be suggesting that a player that self-nerfs themselves is ok. The game shouldn't protect them from that sort of decision. But you are also implying that there are certain classes of decisions the game *should* protect the players from. For example, by the definition of "specialization" you're using above, the game should never allow someone to *ever* be able to pick any specialization that increases their solo combat effectiveness and conversely the game should never allow someone to ever be able to pick any specialization which impairs their ability to solo in any way.

Why? If I choose to be a Defender and that choice locks me into lower offensive ability, that's bad. If I choose not to take any attacks, that's fine. I have absolutely no idea why there should be a distinction, in terms of what a game will allow, between those two kinds of choices. If you consider it bad game design to give players the choice to play Defenders because that choice comes with lower offensive ability, why not also force the players to take a certain number of attacks that you deem necessary? What's the difference between those two options?

there is one mission (in the whole game) where you can fail if you don't Stealth it. One of those Vanguard arcs, if you wipe out all the patrols it will be a failed mission (or maybe it doesn't--I never failed that mission on purpose to see if the mission text was lying and you could murderize all the rikti with impunity or not)

MA probably has a better variety of stealthier/READ YOUR MISSION CLUE type objectives.

CO was bad. A clunky, terrible interface to FIND groups and then everyone was a tankmage = nobody grouped to do anything because nobody needed anybody...except, maybe, against the Giant Monsters.

There's a blueside mission with a 10 minute timer that I've never come close to completing without stealth of some sort.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Either you mix up effect and nature, or we'll just have to disagree on that point. To me, it's not a matter of WHAT you do, but rather HOW you do it. If you want to kill someone, you can shoot him, encase him in stone permanently, scare him so he runs away and never comes back, or convince him to give up, just to make up a list. Each of these methods has the same end effect - enemy is defeated. None of these is the same tool. Not from where I'm looking. And when you consider that this game in particular, as well as most in general, has only one desirable end effect - you are alive and the enemies are defeated - it really isn't fair to downplay the nature of the tools to such a degree.

If that's what it comes down to, but not necessarily.

I disagree with your definition of what it means to specialise. You seem to view specialization as one character being better than another with a particular power. That's one way to look at it, but I view it more as one character having a lot of one kind of power. No, my Electric Blaster will never be better than a Super Strength Fighter at using Gigabolt, but he will be better than a Super Strength Fighter by having more ranged powers and stronger ranged powers, because the Fighter will have spent his points on defences and his own melee. Or if he hasn't spent his points on just that, he'll have spent less points on ranged combat than my Blaster, because my Blaster has spent his points over fewer powers.

Specialization isn't about making you intrinsically better at using particular tools, it makes you better at a particular job by having more tools appropriate for it and having better tools for the job. A generalists has tools for more occasions, but for each occasion he has fewer tools to choose from, and while he has tools for many situations, none of them are very good. Specialization doesn't, and quite frankly SHOULDN'T come from picking a class, but rather from picking what you want to do. That's why I like the prospect (if not the execution) of the Champions system. It doesn't lock you into one role as soon as you pick your class, and while you can still lock yourself into just one role, you don't HAVE to.

You seem to have misunderstood me completely. Maybe I didn't explain well enough, so let's try and keep things simple. I'm against classes that, upon choosing them, prevent you from having decent/appropriate/enough/whatever ability to fight your own battles, alone and by yourself. I don't require that there be safeguards to FORCE people to be fighters, as long as the choice for them to be one no matter their class exists. I've heard a lot of arguments that Defenders solo just fine, and while that may be true, they are STILL at a severe disadvantage as a general AT when it comes to that. They can go some ways towards making up for this, but not powerset combos can and not all players are even capable of pulling it off. By comparison, any player who doesn't get bored playing Scrappers very much CAN pull it off, completely guaranteed.

I was looking at this from the aspect of new game design, offering ALL players significant combat skills if they choose to take them. Alternatively, it CAN be retrofitted into old game design by just giving players access to multiple classes which can be changed between with specific restrictions on when, where and how often. This will allow people to completely neglect their combat prowess, yet still have an out for when combat matters and nothing else does. It's a crude solution, but it's in the spirit of what I had in mind.

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.

I think a better approach would be to remove the "experience point" altogether and transfer character development into the realm of "playing" rather than "achieving." Applied to City of Heroes, this would be like being able to pick new powers after you've completed whatever story arcs; NOT after defeating a certain number of enemies.

To be frank, MMOs don't need to be about fighting. If your argument is that a game doesn't need to fit into some long-established mode of operation, then why pidgeon-hole games into fighting scenarios in the first place?

That was just an example. CO doesn't allow specialization as you're describing it either, because the only way you can have more ranged powers than me is if you take excessively large numbers of them, and in CO you can't make use of all of them. In CO when I decide to take melee powers and a defensive passive, I haven't burned enough choices to be less effective than you are at Electric blasting. You'll just get there a few levels sooner. By your definition of specialization, there simply aren't enough choices to prevent someone from basically becoming a specialist in everything. And that perverts the entire concept of specialization.


Champions doesn't lock you into a "class" because Champions has no classes. But that's nothing special about the system, its a side-effect of the fact that there aren't enough options in Champions to prevent saturation.



You have specifically contradicted that statement earlier. You said that the question wasn't a question of what was "decent" but rather whether there was sizable difference in ability:

I contend that while Defenders are probably at or near the practical lower limit of satisfying the requirement of being able to solo at a reasonable rate, they meet that definition or would with very minimal changes to damage efficiency and therefore CoH itself is an example of a game that allows players to solo at a "decent rate." That's at least partially a matter of opinion, but that's a different discussion. They tend to be much lower in soloing ability than some other archetypes, but you're not consistently stating whether that is a problem.

If you want everyone to have some minimal amount of soloing ability, then I agree: I may disagree about what that value should be. But if you're saying there should be no significant difference between the soloing ability of the different classes, then that's something else entirely. Then my question becomes, why? What is it about choosing a class that makes it deserving of special consideration. If CoH started with just one class, and within the first five levels you had to pick a special power from a special power pool that altered your archetype modifiers to one of the established classes and was the mandatory prerequisite for the powers of that archetype, CoH would be an "archetype-less" system where the choice you're objecting to would no longer exist. Instead, you'd be arguing that the choice of *power* at level five, which modifies modifiers and is a prerequisite for other powers, is fundamentally wrong. Which means modifier modification and power prerequisite choices presented to the players have to be wrong. And again I ask: why? I get that you don't like the choice. Why must everyone else be forbidden from choosing it?


You have to pick one. Either everyone should have a minimum level of soloing ability, and then everyone gets to pick additional abilities beyond that, some of which may improve soloing ability more than others. In which case the debate is over what level of ability should the minimum be.

Or:

Everyone should have the same level of soloing ability, or be presented with the same options for improving solo ability. Furthermore, regardless of any choices made in the past, that statement should hold into the future. In that case, the question is over why this restriction on player choice is necessary or desirable.


I'm still not sure which one you believe, because you have made arguments for both, but they are mutually exclusive.

You can make the entire MMO into an extension of the costume creator: make anything with any powers and any abilities, at any time. However, it ceases to be a game as the game developers define it. The game developers want to make a game, not a non-gaming sandbox, so the answer to why the game doesn't go this route is simply that its not what the developers want to make. This may sound completely arbitrary, and it is, but its no different of a decision than the one they made when they decided to make a superhero game and not a fantasy-based one. Neither decision is one that is up for a vote or subject to reversal.

With this talk about different kinds of missions, I wonder if instead of having contacts by origins, if contacts by archetypes could work (make them in addition to, rather than instead of - like what the epics have). Missions that are geared or better suited for the general makeup of the archetypes. Maybe even go back to comics as a guide rather than MMOs; identify superheroes that are defenders (or controllers, etc), then determine what sort of stories those heroes might have in their own titles. Then try to work out the mechanics for those stories.

It's not in the main game, but I recently completed an AE mission (heroic morality) where you need to break into a Longbow base and click a number of glowies. It's not enforced by the game mechanics, but for roleplay reasons, you really want to do this mission without engaging in combat. My AR/dev blaster completed it using only Cloaking Device (+stealth) and Smoke Grenade (-perception); my plant/storm controller could do it with Steamy Mist (+stealth) and Vines (hold). I think my FF/Rad defender could do it using Personal Force Field (+defence, +resistance), but I haven't tried.

I'm aware of one other mission in the game like this: a Rikti War Zone mission where you fail the mission if you defeat certain opponents.

While I could be off since I'm newer to the game, this sounds like bad game design or at least bad enemy design. We tend not to have that many mob groups like the Tsoo who have a unique and varied bag of tricks. Most AVs and GMs seem to be of the lolfootstomp meatsack variety.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

The fact that everyone bases how good or bad a character is on how they play at level 50 has always been a problem for me. On the one side, people say you can play an empath Defender to 50 solo, but as soon as your standing in front of an EB and you've been killed a half-dozen times, these are the same people that tell you you need to get a team.

Team-play should be an alternative way of playing, not the only way. I am still an advocate of "zero-sum" measure of abilities where every AT is able to meet the "3 minions = 1 Hero" goal, but each in they own way.

To be fair to Sam, that article doesn't really address what he's talking about (at least part of it) because it doesn't really address soloing. It addresses team roles, and how critical the trinity concept is to it. I think Sam is asking a different question: should we be forced to pick one of those three roles, and be locked into it not just on every team we're on, but even solo when we aren't even on a team.


And I would contend that somewhere between CoH and CoV this game broke the trinity as that article defines it. Think about CoV. Which one is the DPS class? Which one is the aggro class? Which one is the healing class? Its pretty clear that these roles have been heavily "smeared out" over the CoV archetypes. Both Brutes and Masterminds were specifically designed to handle some aspects of what is traditionally considered "tanking." There is no healing specialist (both Corruptors and Masterminds have significant access to healing, and neither focuses on it). DPS is remarkably similar across the archetypes (certainly, one can make arguments for which archetype generates the most damage, but in CoV those arguments revolve much more around powersets than archetypes).

In CoH, they cracked the holy trinity, but only by accident. They wanted Blasters to be the DPS class, Tankers to be the Tanking class, Defenders to be the Healers, Scrappers to be the soloing specialist, and Controllers to be a different kind of support class from Defenders. But they massively screwed up and ended up first giving everyone so much ability to enhance their damage that most classes had the same offensive ability as most DPS classes in other MMOs, and second giving everyone enough survivability that only Blasters were really under as much threat as the trinity ordinarily proscribes. At some point, they realized that although they missed their design marks all over the place, they had inadvertently hit a different set of marks: everyone could comfortably solo, and liked it, and yet this *didn't* destroy teaming. We were never more collectively able to solo than in I2, and yet we were never more willing to team than in I2, at least as I observed the game. So solo ability didn't *automatically* mean teaming was damaged (there were, of course, specific issues with teaming which were addressed with various degrees of success).

In CoV, however, these design decisions were deliberate, and much more thorough. I don't think the CoV team gets enough credit for that. While I think they made lots of mistakes, one thing they did do was make a set of archetypes that all could solo reasonably well, none of which was locked into a trinity role, and yet all of which had some nominal role on teams (their biggest miss was, of course, Stalkers). There are still people claiming that's impossible, or implying its so difficult no one has done a good job of it yet. I think CoV is actually a very good example of doing that pretty well. Not perfectly, but it suggests what is possible in future designs.

Whenever I see a discussion involving discussion of the Trinity (and it's not exclusively to MMOs, it's been around for at least as long as video games have had classes), I always get all smiley inside and bring up 4th ed. D&D. It's a wonderful thing from point of view of role interaction.

In 4th ed., there are 4 roles as the designers have set them: Defenders, Strikers, Leaders, and Controllers. Every class fits within the confines of these 4 roles, often with a secondary role or two depending upon your specific choices within the class in question. Defenders are harder to hurt remarkably (with slightly higher hp and slightly higher defenses) and have the only real methods of encouraged target differentiation (by getting free attacks when specific enemies attack their friends and not the Defender). Strikers are all about damage (specifically single target) and are equipped with the ability to bring the pain to targets of interest (whether by having excellent range or gobs of mobility). Leaders are about support and healing surge efficiency (which only matter in long, drawn out campaigns with little rest time). Controllers are about AoE damage and control (though not always in that order).

Upon first glance, it seems like the entire game was designed around the trinity: there is a "tank" (Defender), a "healer" (Leader), and 2 "DPS" (Controller and Striker). The interesting thing, however, is that none of those roles eclipse the fundamental role of simply dishing out damage. Defenders protect their team while dishing out damage (and oftentimes specifically by dishing out damage because their "taunt" is balanced to such an extent that it allows them to deal slightly more damage per turn than a Striker if the targets trigger their retributive damage capabilities). Leaders support their team while dishing out damage (their primary heal is only a minor action, allowing you to still use attacks, all but a small number of which deal damage and provide a supportive effect as well). Controllers deal damage while they're controlling.

It's an incredibly well developed system because no specific role is absolutely required for a well rounded party. Defenders aren't needed if you can tactically spread the damage around in a fair manner or everyone is already tough enough. Leaders aren't needed because there are already numerous methods of healing available to everyone: all Leaders do is make the healing more efficient (which makes them the only role that could, feasibly, be considered "necessary", but only for campaign structures that don't allow for many extended rests). Controllers aren't necessary because every class has some degree of control and AoE damage available to it. Strikers aren't necessary because they're not the sole source of damage. I've run one party with 4 Strikers and a Leader, another with 3 Defenders, a Leader and a Controller, and another with 2 Leaders, 2 Defenders, and a Striker among more traditional splits.

The best way to describe it is to say that everyone was given the ability to perform at 100% before any character choices were made. From that point on, every choice you made serves only to make your character more than that 100%, but only by a few points. Every class totals out to 120%, and the differences between the classes are in their implementation and playstyle, which makes that 20% extra seem like so much more. It's a wonderful design for a class based game. All of the classes are different and specialized based upon specific roles but none of them are necessary but all of them synergize.

I think this is very true.

When you get right down to it, I love playing the COV ATs more than any other blueside with the possible exception of blasters.

I think the biggest problem with CoV is that they halted the differences in the two games squarely at the AT level. What was needed was a way to make villains stand out and apart from heroes besides just the way they fight.

I think they placed too much hope squarely on the PVP aspect of the game filling that void. Now as we have all seen, this game's strengths aren't in its PVP content.

I think my biggest fear with GR is that there will mostly be a mass exodus over to blue, and red(with nothing being done to make the underlying villain game more compelling), will kind of get pushed aside even more.

I have this fear as well, but I have a feeling the Devs have something in store for Red Side as well. Villainous content is plainly in need of updating, but I think the path to being a villain will show how the new content will be.

I am playing a Bear Shaman in AoC right now. For the entire MONTH of November they had Dbl Exp. And the pots still work now, I have them on all my characters

a fire/elec (blaster) build made by Umbral I think exceeded 320ish DPS, without factoring procs...

a fire/fire/(mu?) dom build has also breached the 300 benchmark

but yeah, i dont think it's possible as of now to use raw power (solo) to bring down a GM, you'll need some debuffs

I never understand this. I can't wait to make some of my blueside toons come redside. What does CoH have that's so much better than CoV?

More task forces? Which are all "defeat all Clockwork/Council" 15 times in a row? Repetition to the moon? Some of which take 3-8 hours to complete?

More zones? More than half of which aren't ever visited or useful in any sort of way? And are annoying to navigate or even get to?

More story arcs? Which have 10x as many FedEx and hunt missions, which send you to one of the 90 unused zones for no particular reason (hey go hunt rikti monkeys in the abandoned sewer)?

Accolades which overall require more AVs, GMs, hunts, and TFs to earn?

Easier content? As if the game wasn't easy enough already?

I'll take my redside content please! And really, why would everyone just migrate to blue when they could all be rogues and vigilantes? <>

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I actually prefer playing redside myself, Dispari. I like having content be more streamlined and spend less time waiting for a contact to finally give me their main story arc. I also appreciate contacts that are invested in their story arcs, rather than have 4 or 5 contacts all possibly giving the same arc and saying the same things as if they were all the same person.

I do notice though, that most of my friends gravitate to blue. Even when we get together on red and have a blast playing, they head back to blue.

I think some of it is the mentality that it is more of the same on red...just different looking zones. So then why bother to move over?

In the end I think that the fundamental flaw with villains is that there is no payoff for being one that heroes can't get. For some folks like you and me, that's ok and we enjoy the streamlined content and different ATs, but it may be a bigger hurdle than the devs anticipated when designing COV. The purposeful decision to make the contact system and missions all mirror what we have on blue is likely the reason that people don't feel inclined to play on red.

That's my take anyway.