Power Appearance Enhancements

Power Customization was a massive step in the right direction. By simply changing the colors of a power, a vast array of options open up to players from a story telling point of view. We can take something like energy blast and color it orange and white and say we are taking the power of the sun and directing it at our foes. And none of this affects the way a power is balanced.

By using IO Proc's like chance for immobilize and chance for fire damage we can expand upon that customization. When chance for immobilize is successful an electric field pops up and immobilizes the target. Take out the immobilization effect and leave the graphic and we have a new form of enhancement that allows characters to apply effects like fire and electricity to whatever power they choose. The depth of customization increases allowing players to change the effects of their powers on their foes. Back to my Sun based character, If i wanted to further express that trait, powers originating from the Sun, I could use a Fire effect modification to alter the way bonesmasher affects the foe. Causing them to burst into flames (again not for damage just for appearance) or bouncing the flares off of them. These effects would be moderately subtle so as not to affect the preexisting effects. Using Vines from the plant control set wouldn't cause the vines to dissappear but would cause the foe trapped inside to burst into flames or to start arcing. The end effect if paired with red or blue vines would be wholly new and all the more interesting.

Implementation. There are two ways to implement this sort of customization, at least that I have thought of. The first is to add the custom component to common IO's or enh. Say a damage enhhancement with a fire customization. How often these drop is not something I want to address but rare or ultra rare is not something i think most people would appreciate.

The second option is a generic Customization enhancement that can be combined with any existing enhancement or IO. The customization enhancement would carry no effect bonus and would be a little more flexible than the previous implementation as you wouldn't need to worry about getting a fire/acc or an electric/recharge.

Thanks for reading, I know it was a bit long but I hope you've been inspired.
~Roxy

A few notes here...

-Don't make them drop. Put them in a shop in Atlas and another in Mercy.

-Have them function as Damage and Recharge IOs, equippable at any level, but at power levels of 10, 25, and 50. This prevents them from being a significant disadvantage power-level-wise (as the few powers that can't take damage or recharge probably wouldn't have an effect anyway)

-Have them all function as follows: 100% Chance for Mag 0 Immobilize. So our standard would look like...


"Tendril Grab
50 Damage IO
+42.4% damage
100% Chance for Mag 0 Immobilize for 2s, Midnight Grasp animation."

This could be placed in, say, Siphon Life show an animation of you grabbing them with tendrils, and have the tendrils vanish a moment later.



There's only two real issues I see here.

One is DURATION. IOs that do this have a duration independent of the actual power. Sometimes they're available in powers that don't even have durations (like Pounding Slugfest.) This would make it very difficult to synchronize your vines with your fire, especially as one duration may be affected by Resist more than the other. (I'm assuming all of these would use the Immobilize animation, as it's the only one I see go off even when the Mag is too low to stop them.)

The second is GAMEPLAY DISTRACTION. Most people expect a foe who is grabbed by tendrils or surrounded by ice to be not moving, and they expect one sparkling with purple bubbles to be on their side. As amazingly awesome as this would be, it would bother a lot of teammates who would see foes under the effect of a mez animation they weren't under. This would not be as much of an issue if duration were fixed, though (causing animations to only last as long as the actual power's duration)


All in all, /signed, but it needs a lot of work.

~Cap'n Geist

I was just using the chance for immob as an example of where this already exists in the game. The primary goal is to add customization on a 3rd level and give it a little twist so that it's not a further aspect of the CC. Ideally they have zero affect on your powers and simply mesh with whatever you already have or replace what you already have for something that provides the same benefit (when compared to something of the same level) but with the added customization.

I think that in the case of TT or similar the affect wouldn't need to mesh with their host power. If you slotted TT with the fire custom, a hit would result in the enemy bursting into flames or shooting flares, whatever, but if the fire goes out ahead or time that isn't really a big deal or if they continue to burn afterwards because the affect is purely visual. It's a storytelling aid, it's to sell the idea that your character isn't tapping into a netherworld but some sort of fireworld, or however you want to spin your choice of combination.

If there is a vendor in mercy and cap au and atlas and TI that sells level 1 customization enhancements in all sorts of flavors for 50inf a pop that is perfectly fine by me. If you have to wait for that dark energy PAEnh (trying out some different names) to drop to change one of your powers over or buy it from the BM/WW then hey alls well.

The delivery method and application are really irellevant. I'm mostly looking for whether or not being able to change this characteristic that is difficult to change using colors alone is something that people are interested in.

There are a few powers I think this would be seriously problematic with. Quite a few of them are in the Dark power sets, and though they're all over the place, Dark is what I know best, so...

Twilight Grasp targets a foe and is a PBAOE. If I set it to all allies, only the foe will probably get set on fire due to the pseudopet status of the PBAOE, but it's worth noting. Howling Twilight is similar.

Soul Drain, Dark Consumption, and other similar powers (like Fire's Consumption), on the other hand, don't use such Psuedopet Mechanics. These powers are notable in that they've a tendency to confuse procs. I'm fairly certain this was dealt with, but I'm not exactly sure how or what the initial problem was, so they might similarly get confused by new methods.

I agree, it doens't work out great for all powers at first glance. I'd say if there is a proc you can slot in that power then there's probably a way to make it work.
One of the reasons I choose the enh route rather than the PC in the CC is that it's an option close existing code. There's no need to add another drop down box in the CC or edit the powers code to add yet another piece of variable data. Basically, you could take the procedural code give it a 100% chance to hit and remove any modifiers like damage and mez. It's just the animation. Sure you have to add in a few more animations but by comparison I think this is the easier route.

That said i'm not a developer familiar with the code governing Procs. But i'm not here to argue the difficulty, just the concept.