new mission style for devs... no regular powers and only temp ones you find in mish
By
Anti_Proton,
Posted on: 2009-12-28 17:55 in Suggestions and Ideas
/Hell yes.
'Nuff said.
@Mechaniker
Official Old Angry German Guy of CoV.
My Characters: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=247787
/signed
Unfortunately, I don't see this type of mission as being something too frequent.
This looks more like some kind of crazy Ouroboros challenge.
Finally! An idea from outside the nut house! I like it!
/signed!
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
And how would you explain our characters suddenly losing powers when a lot of mine, for instance, wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to be able to "lose" their powers? And I'm not talking "they're too strong" or anything. I mean, if they did somehow lose their powers, they'd cease to exist altogether.
In fact, this notion that a character can lose his non-human powers but retain his human ones, despite that character not BEING human or using these powers for basic locomotion, is one that never sat well with me.
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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.
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Well, I suppose it would depend on exactly how it was set up. You could go with that cheesiest of comic-book plots, the Cosmic Being putting the hero/villain through a test. Find out if you are truly worthy, or merely coasting on your powers. Heck, DJ Zero does it just so he can save money on bouncers...
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And how would you explain our characters suddenly losing powers when a lot of mine, for instance, wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to be able to "lose" their powers? And I'm not talking "they're too strong" or anything. I mean, if they did somehow lose their powers, they'd cease to exist altogether.
In fact, this notion that a character can lose his non-human powers but retain his human ones, despite that character not BEING human or using these powers for basic locomotion, is one that never sat well with me. |
However, it turned out that Smith was not a time-travelling Terminator
Hmm, I see where Same is coming from, and how it wouldn't work with all the origins.
It's a nice idea, don't get me wrong. I just worry about how it would be implemented, Reasoned and balanced.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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It kinda does work with all origins. Sophisticated and specific power dampeners are already part of the canon (the AE quiet room and Pocket D).
Even without that, if Crey, for example, captured a hero/villain they could tailor their treatment to remove their powers regardless of source.
Also, cap HP at a low level and maybe have different temp powers available (ranged, melee, controls, etc) so no single AT is at a disadvantage.
/signed
OMG! How like, totally kewl are these characters?!1
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Yes, and that's a horrible cop out I'd rather not see in the actual game in such a way as to acknowledge its existence. It's a utility tool to keep the room quiet, and as such it does a good job, but as an in-game conceptual thing, it fails miserably.|
Originally Posted by oreso
It kinda does work with all origins. Sophisticated and specific power dampeners are already part of the canon (the AE quiet room and Pocket D).
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| Even without that, if Crey, for example, captured a hero/villain they could tailor their treatment to remove their powers regardless of source. |
And in a lot of cases, it just doesn't make sense. If a character is lighter than air, how do you take away his ability to float? Weigh him down with barbells? Or a character who has wings. How do you keep such a character from flying, specifically since wings flap when you jump? And it gets even better when you go into characters who were never human or even humanoid. Why would a sentient walking rock suddenly lose its strength and the durability of the rock, yet simultaneously not lose the ability to move?
I hate "power dampening fields" because, in actual fact, they are nothing more than "humanising" fields, in that they render any hero caught in them into having human abilities and human abilities only. Even if he didn't HAVE human abilities to begin with. You can only take away powers if they were separate from the character to begin with, with the character having basic human powers besides. Any other endeavour to remove powers faces so many custom situations it's impractical to try and implement it.
And that's before we even get into how being depowered is the lamest, cheapest, cheesiest plot device in comic book history, second only to being killed off-panel.
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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.
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I remember the Devs mentioning that a new enemy group would be effected only by buildable temp powers. Wasn't it the name of the group the Rikti fought on their homeworld before they invaded Primal Earth?
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It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion.
I'm not going to join the argument about removing powers. All I'm going to say is if they do implement missions like this, I had better be able to drop the damn things. I'm paying to play City of Heroes not City of Average Joe the Plumber.
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I guess it's, more-or-less, how much you want to actually explain things on your end. I'm not sure how they'd set up the text to capture the entire concept of blocking out your ability to use powers, but it's not hard to explain on your own terms.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Yes, and that's a horrible cop out I'd rather not see in the actual game in such a way as to acknowledge its existence. It's a utility tool to keep the room quiet, and as such it does a good job, but as an in-game conceptual thing, it fails miserably.
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-For instance, if you took away old Positron's powered suit, he'd fall apart and probably blow up.
Engineered a device to attach onto his suit that will completely contain all of his radiation so he cannot expel it in attacks. It also shuts down most functions of the suit so that it will cause an energy build up inside the suit and could destroy himself if he doesn't figure a way to remove the device.
-Or, I have a ghost inhabiting a suit of armour, whose power is merely to repair it when it breaks. Take away his ability to repair and you take away his ability to MOVE it, so he falls apart into plates of armour.
Go Full Metal Alchemist route and completely bind the ghost to the armor using a special rune. Now, the ghost is just a suit of armor that can be destroyed. If the ghost doesn't find a means to dispel the rune, you'll be even more susceptible to death than a normal person in a suit.
-I have a character whose ability to even EXIST is a manifestation of his powers and his control over a specific type of energy. Removing that energy from him or preventing him from using it would prevent him from existing altogether.
Sounds more like a concept specifically made to thwart such a game mechanic to me, but creating a specific field that makes a specific wavelength of energy inert is possible but difficult to maintain. The energy still exists but its effects are made indistinguishably like other forms of radiation that pass through us every second and yet have no effect. You have to find a way to disable the device creating this field if you want any means of escape.
-Or what about the character whose super power is that he never actually leaves his base of operations but merely sends a "hard light" hologram out? Yes, you can take away his ability to project, but that just means he can't even exist.
Depends what you're projecting. But if your mission is to infiltrate a base and they have a some sort of scrambling device to block any outside remote communications, you're lucky you can send a radio signal in much less a hologram. But somehow, you managed it. Your hologram, however, is severely compromised in its normal capabilities.
-If a character is lighter than air, how do you take away his ability to float? Weigh him down with barbells?
How do people in-game alter gravitational fields around small objects within the earth's gravity to make them heavier or lighter? Same deal.
-Or a character who has wings. How do you keep such a character from flying, specifically since wings flap when you jump?
How do players in-game hamper flight or running or jumping? Same deal.
-Why would a sentient walking rock suddenly lose its strength and the durability of the rock, yet simultaneously not lose the ability to move?
Some scientific or alchemical process that changed the composition of your rock to something closer to packed dirt.
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| I hate "power dampening fields" because, in actual fact, they are nothing more than "humanising" fields, in that they render any hero caught in them into having human abilities and human abilities only. Even if he didn't HAVE human abilities to begin with. You can only take away powers if they were separate from the character to begin with, with the character having basic human powers besides. Any other endeavour to remove powers faces so many custom situations it's impractical to try and implement it. |
And the way I'd implement it is through some sort of enemy-group arc in that, if you face an enemy enough, that group will be the first to look into depowering you. Then, they'll sell that knowledge to any other group that's in the unfortunate situation of needing to deal with you.
PS: That brings up an issue I have with concepts.
Me? Personally, I like to play City of Earth or City of Carbon Based Creatures. Basically, my characters work within the confines of the game, for the most part. Not that I don't like coming up with crazy outwardly concepts or that I dislike them. But if you're going to complain about conceptual issues working against your concept, that was your choice when you made the character's concept, not the game's fault.
My Plant/Thorn dom can't be killed. He's immortal and the only way to destroy him completely is to destroy his spirit tree which he keeps hidden is some enchanted forest off in some magical realm that is hard to get to. That doesn't mean he can't be defeated though, because he does all the time but he'll just grow back like a weed. That's working within the confines of the game.
But if you're an energy being who can *only* exist as energy or a hard energy hologram projected remotely, then how do you take psionic damage? Or why can you nearly die if you fall from maximum height? Or why can you be defeated at all? See? You want to make *this* suggestion difficult for your concept but neglect all that *other* stuff that makes your concept hard to swallow? IMO, if you can wave away that other stuff, you should be able to wave away the enemy *somehow* removing your powers temporarily.
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Within the fiction of City of Heroes, power dampeners typically don't remove powers, they simply prevent their effects from occuring. That narrative assertion overrides your own narrative as it pertains to your character. All shared environments, even the original PnP ones, were collaborations between the game masters and the players, but the word of the GM overrides all. That is as it should be in a shared consensus environment. You can say your narrative makes it impossible for their powers to be suppressed, but if the game writers say differently, they win.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You can only take away powers if they were separate from the character to begin with, with the character having basic human powers besides. Any other endeavour to remove powers faces so many custom situations it's impractical to try and implement it.
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You might think depowering is cheap, and in some circumstances it is, but the fundamental issue of the game's narrative overriding yours is something that is always going to be true when the game's narrative has the force of the game mechanics. Its no different than saying your character's powers come from being an air elemental and therefore you should be able to fly at level one with no endurance cost and at mach 1. You can say it, but the game won't let you do it, so you're supposed to bend your narrative to fit the "laws of physics" of the game. Similarly, you can say your powers can't be suppressed, but since the "laws of physics" of CoH say that all powers can be suppressed, if you stick to your guns then your character basically cannot exist in the world of City of Heroes.
Just to toss one specific out there:
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| I have a character whose ability to even EXIST is a manifestation of his powers and his control over a specific type of energy. Removing that energy from him or preventing him from using it would prevent him from existing altogether. |
But as I said, your right to control your own narrative ends at directly contradicting the game mechanics. Saying your narrative prevents power suppression is no different than my saying my narrative is I'm a master of Shinanju and cannot ever get hit by an attack or that I'm captain of the Enterprise and capable of vaporizing Lord Recluse with a phaser strike from orbit. Some things you're just not allowed to claim.
Or, I suppose you could roleplay this to its logical conclusion by deleting the character the moment you walk into a power suppression area. That is a theoretical option available to obey the rules of that character's narrative, although its a bit of a severe one. There are people who play perma-death also, specifically to enforce a narrative that the game doesn't support on its own.
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This gets a big /signed from me!
I was just tryig to think of a (hopefully) easy, straightforward way for the devs to integrate some fresh, fun missions a little different than the standard "walk thru a map and queue powers in same-old sequence" or "now we time-travel and you have to play without your super-buffed upper level powers". Something like this would hopefully lend itself quite readily to the game code already in use so it wouldn't be a massive task to shoe-horn it into the gameplay.
I like temporary powers because the devs could be real creative, come up with some awesome ideas that are fun in the context of a specific mission, but which don't make sense or destabilize the game if allowed into regular play. A mish like this once in awhile, or in a specific zone, could be fun and allow you to play with melee powers if you're a blaster (hand-to-hand weapons you find or build) or ranged powers if you're a scrapper (you discover a case of experimental reverse-engineered Rikti blasters in the Crey lab you can use to bust out).
It is really just an idea that grew out of getting sick of getting trapped in the damn 5th column/council jail cells and having to break down the bloody doors over and over again with my own powers... couldn't you find something (a temp power) in the cell to help you bust out that made it a bit more exciting?
Obviously concrete story lines might not work for every origin you have developed for your own character, but time-travel level drops and PocketD/AE suppression fields, are worked into the game and I'm sure the missions could be made to work within the reality of the game... you get taken thru a rikti transporter and have your genetic makeup altered to reconsitute a modified, powerless version of you on exit (remember all those weapons getting deactivated on transport during Star Trek?).
I just think it could be fun and there is a lot that could be done with it to create the intermittant mission that lay outside the formats available now.
I like all the discussion though...
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
-I have a character whose ability to even EXIST is a manifestation of his powers and his control over a specific type of energy. Removing that energy from him or preventing him from using it would prevent him from existing altogether.
Sounds more like a concept specifically made to thwart such a game mechanic to me, but creating a specific field that makes a specific wavelength of energy inert is possible but difficult to maintain. The energy still exists but its effects are made indistinguishably like other forms of radiation that pass through us every second and yet have no effect. You have to find a way to disable the device creating this field if you want any means of escape. |
Let's throw one of my characters out there: Unstar is a sapient, anthropomorphic black hole. Taking away his power to control gravity would cause him to eat the entire planet. Still, I suppose you could still work around it by saying his powers are gone because the Crey scientists somehow were able to greatly reduce his effective mass... whatever, the mission concept does sound like it could be a lot of fun.
Shoving aside the concept albatross for a moment, I can see this becoming REALLY entertaining, but only if the temp powers gained were suitably epic. Forget baseball bats, breaking out of an Arachnos base by reprogramming a horde of arachnobots and drones to fight for you MM-style would be awesome! That's just one idea, but it could also be applied to PPD/Nemesis/etc.
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And a BFG. Because, every depowered hero should be able to get their hands on a big freakin' gun in an enemy base. I can see it now: Temp power: PPD assault suit gun hand or Arachnos mace, or Council sonic rifle/rocket launcher or Ascendant shield.
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Originally Posted by Garuta
Shoving aside the concept albatross for a moment, I can see this becoming REALLY entertaining, but only if the temp powers gained were suitably epic. Forget baseball bats, breaking out of an Arachnos base by reprogramming a horde of arachnobots and drones to fight for you MM-style would be awesome! That's just one idea, but it could also be applied to PPD/Nemesis/etc.
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For some, yes, it's easy - they take away the gun/tools/swords. But for others... |
Originally Posted by oreso
It kinda does work with all origins. Sophisticated and specific power dampeners are already part of the canon (the AE quiet room and Pocket D).
Even without that, if Crey, for example, captured a hero/villain they could tailor their treatment to remove their powers regardless of source. |
They make a MA/ stalker or scrapper or a Superstrength brute/tanker forget how to hit and kick?
They forcibly separate a Kheldian from the host? You don't have the same character, then.
For *some* characters, maybe - though you'd better have some *damn* weak enemies there. Masterminds are survivable because of bodyguard mode. Now, yeah, it "makes sense" they can't just whistle up their mercenaries/thugs (for instance,) but without them, that's one of the lowest HP, no-defense characters around. And who's going to say "Oh, they're weak now, we'll use the worst guards we have in the area to watch them?"
Don't get me wrong, I like the... I guess "gist of the idea," would be the best way of putting it. Some good (single player) RPGs have done that to players. (And don't most sequels, in general, end up with you back at square 1?) But on the flip side, I'd see it being annoying or frustrating - or just dropped - more often than not.
Finding some way of doing it where you *fail* if you use powers (inherents and autopowers aside - you can't really do anything about those) until you destroy a detector of some sort, for instance, might go over better - but that's going to be a hard mission to tailor. It'd pretty much have to be a stealthing (without using stealth!) sort of mission - no guard deaths, no indication you're there until you hit the device in question. Or you have to not use powers, sneak over and disable a detector - then you can start drawing guards into that room, working your way through, perhaps, so you get more "power-usable" rooms...
I'd say work through various permutations of the concept.
It might be neat, but I think it would be really hard to do in a way most people could enjoy it. That's what would be toughest to do about the idea.
Wanted: Origin centric story arcs.
If you've only played an AT once (one set combo) and "hate" it - don't give up. Roll a different combo. It may just be those sets not clicking for you.
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So how do you explain the fact that said character who would cease to exist without their powers didn't have those powers when they started out at level 1?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And how would you explain our characters suddenly losing powers when a lot of mine, for instance, wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to be able to "lose" their powers? And I'm not talking "they're too strong" or anything. I mean, if they did somehow lose their powers, they'd cease to exist altogether.
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Unless of course you mean completely without powers including the starting powers.
Incidentally I personally love this idea.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
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I still have a choice - I take my ball and go home. I don't do live roleplaying for this precise reason - I have no control over other people, and in so doing am limited in what I can have them do. My choice, however, is to simply ignore it and do what I want anyway, because the game doesn't force me through other people's RP. Here, however, is someone else's RP suggested as an addition to the game, and as long as it's not a direct mandate from the developers written into the game, you can damn well bet I'm going to argue against it.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Within the fiction of City of Heroes, power dampeners typically don't remove powers, they simply prevent their effects from occuring. That narrative assertion overrides your own narrative as it pertains to your character. All shared environments, even the original PnP ones, were collaborations between the game masters and the players, but the word of the GM overrides all. That is as it should be in a shared consensus environment. You can say your narrative makes it impossible for their powers to be suppressed, but if the game writers say differently, they win.
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In fact, Arcana, I would have expected a more reasonable position from you. What the developers say has nothing at all to do with this suggestion, because it is a suggestion for something which does not exist in the game, but is suggested to be added. As far as I'm aware, I'm not arguing against canon yet, and so far as it matters at this particular point in time, I have every right to pit my narrative against that of the suggester.
Fact of the matter is, "power suppression" in this game is almost always used for narrative utility and almost never for narrative concept. The Architect Studio B suppresses powers because a studio without the power clutter was needed, and as such, it's merely utility. We don't explain it, because it's not a big deal. Prison cells prevent teleportation, because it's pretty frikkin' cheap to just Recall Friend people out of cells as soon as they wake up. You have to go get them, so that's an easy excuse. We don't explain it, because it works to dramatic tension. A mission that has all of my powers suppressed in a situation where I expressly need them, on the other hand, gets no such excuse.
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| Or, I suppose you could roleplay this to its logical conclusion by deleting the character the moment you walk into a power suppression area. That is a theoretical option available to obey the rules of that character's narrative, although its a bit of a severe one. There are people who play perma-death also, specifically to enforce a narrative that the game doesn't support on its own. |
It comes down to the simple question - if you can prevent, for instance, a deity's avatar from having deific powers, why don't you simply make it stop existing? Explaining this is where things get fat, and where I roll my eyes. It's a forced system currently restricted to instances where it doesn't really matter, and all the better for it. Besides, look at the other side of the coin - we already HAVE a system in place specifically and purposefully designed with the express use of robbing super heroes of their powers. It's called endurance drain as used by Malta Sappers and a few others. The game goes at length, explaining how these effects nullify and sap powers, and from a narrative standpoint THIS ACTUALLY WORKS. Your powers cost energy to use, and lacking this energy, you can't use them. Believe it or not, that's a LOT better than "Deus Ex Machina says you're human now." I don't enjoy these effects, and I don't enjoy the concept, but I'm a lot more willing to accept it than a power suppression field.
And, at the end of the day, I can still argue against the system on principle. I DO NOT LIKE having my powers taken away from me. This is the primary reason I never exemplar (5 level rule notwithstanding) and why I dislike Sappers and Electrical powers as much as I do. If I were given a choice of new mission types I'd like to see, a full depower would be the LAST thing I choose, right after getting a three-day ban from the game, but right before a simu-click mission. As long as this is not written in stone, I reserve my right to disagree with it completely and utterly, both as being needlessly disruptive to the narrative and as being one of the worst aspects of gaming since the sewer level.
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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.
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Who says he started without them at level 1? What about "the power to even exist" suggests to you that he lacked this in the tutorial?
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Originally Posted by Mandu
So how do you explain the fact that said character who would cease to exist without their powers didn't have those powers when they started out at level 1?
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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.
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See, conceptually speaking, this I can get behind. It doesn't take away my powers, but it gives me a reason why I don't want to use them. In fact, I've done as much in... Very nearly every story I've always written. That's actually one of the most exciting parts in a story - inventing reasons why otherwise super-powered characters find situations they should be able to deal with easily problematic. One-size-fits-all power detectors might be a good idea, but there are other ways to go about it, as well. For instance, trying to pass yourself off as a weaker hero so the bad guys think they have the wrong man and stop their surveillance on you or don't ventilate your contact or trying to traverse an area on foot so your enemies don't know you're coming.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Finding some way of doing it where you *fail* if you use powers (inherents and autopowers aside - you can't really do anything about those) until you destroy a detector of some sort, for instance, might go over better - but that's going to be a hard mission to tailor. It'd pretty much have to be a stealthing (without using stealth!) sort of mission - no guard deaths, no indication you're there until you hit the device in question. Or you have to not use powers, sneak over and disable a detector - then you can start drawing guards into that room, working your way through, perhaps, so you get more "power-usable" rooms...
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There are possibilities in there, provided they are written well, as opposed to just slapping down a power suppression field.
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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.
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How about missions where you get captured by Crey (or something like that) and get your powers reduced to brawl plus some temporary powers that are discoverable in the mission(like 'baseball bat' or 'drug-filled syringe') until you bust out and destroy the 'power dampeners'...