City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Archetype & Powerset Diversity

Dechs Kaison

By Dechs Kaison,
Posted on: 2010-01-26 24:40 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

First, let me be clear and state that this is not a SUGGESTION.

I've been thinking about the way that powersets are built in this game. And it occurs to me that if I settle on a given powerset, virtually every other character with those powersets will have exactly the same powers once they hit 50. Yes, you can take power pools, epic pools, and you can diversify your effectiveness with IOs and even standard slotting. But, let's face it: a fire/fire blaster still has the same primary and secondary powers as every other fire/fire blaster in the game.

I wonder what this game would have been like had the powersets been more like power trees. Again, I'm not suggesting that it should be. But it would be nice to see blasters, scrappers, controllers, defenders, and so on with more diversity in their builds than simply the way they're slotted. Further, I kind of think that this game is really well suited to that type of a power structure.

We're *big* on customization in this game. It just seems to me that this is a big gaping hole in the veneer of customizability.

I was wondering what you guys thought. (Again, not a suggestion, just an opportunity to discuss.)

 

Posted

It is impossible to take every power available to you at 50.

You may argue that the most effective build is exactly the same as all others. But there is the potential to make different choices. And honestly, if I were forced to have to skip even more powers from my Primary and Secondary than I already am, I would be quite frustrated.

Kheldians and SoA are way, way worse, as well. ESPECIALLY Kheldians...

 

Posted

Yeah, I have to say- there are very few power combos, if any, that can actually allow you to get all of your primary and secondary, as many pools prove too useful to pass up. To tell you the truth, those that do stick to their archetype abilities completely will play very differently than those that use pol powers.

This isn't including slotting choices, as those change a lot too. Don't underplay this here...there's difference between a fire/fire blaster whose attacks hold targets, and one who gets hit only a tenth of the time, or one who can fire their attacks twice as fast.

Add in custom colors/effects, you can get a whole new vibe as well.

There is a lot of diversity to be found as is. I guess my question is, what are you looking for?