A New Take on Fitness

I actually agree. I see no reason to make the fitness powers inherent. My only wish is for the pre-stamina levels to suck less. We've made great strides in that area already:

Beginner's luck for hitting our enemies
Temp travel powers
Better lowbie contact/missions design redside
Inventions (if you really want to get silly and frankenslot that early)
Vet attacks

I'm sure that there's more. I really only came into this thread to argue against the "you don't NEED stamina!!!" crowd.

You don't *need* enhancements to get to level 50 either.

I like your list. A lot. Those things have helped me enjoy so much of the game in the past couple years. Even a slight end improvement in the 1-19 levels would be appreciated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba I actually agree. I see no reason to make the fitness powers inherent. My only wish is for the pre-stamina levels to suck less. We've made great strides in that area already: Beginner's luck for hitting our enemies Temp travel powers Better lowbie contact/missions design redside Inventions (if you really want to get silly and frankenslot that early) Vet attacks I'm sure that there's more. I really only came into this thread to argue against the "you don't NEED stamina!!!" crowd. You don't *need* enhancements to get to level 50 either.

Yup. And I would actually be in favor of adding a recovery portion to Beginner's Luck (Like, if your endurance hits zero, and you have less than 50% health, you get an extra 20 endurance or so to simulate adrenaline rush).

THIS I would find to be a legitimate concern, even if a lieutenant + 6 minions isn't exactly stock. I face those on my chosen difficulty (-1x3, for the record) all the time, and I can agree that if these kill your end, there's a problem with the system.

There's where the disconnect between us occurs. I agree with you that performance BETWEEN spawns is crap. Utter crap. And I don't think this is what the endurance system should be managing.

However, the endurance system IN combat shouldn't be so bad. By and large, you SHOULD be able to finish any fight you started at full endurance without bottoming out, special circumstances (e.i. draining or resistant enemies) notwithstanding. If you can't, something is wrong WITH THE SYSTEM. If you can, but end up with too little to fight the next spawn, then this is actually "working as intended."

This part of "working as intended" is the one I feel needs the most fixing. If you are able to finish a fight without dying or winding yourself, then that's a victory for you. That should NOT prevent you from fighting your next battle. This is where instant-recharge Rest comes in. It means that any "subsequent fight" will be started at full bars, so that your only concern is surviving that one battle you are fighting with, not surviving it with enough left in your bars to fight another one right immediately thereafter.

In short: If you are running out of endurance from full to zero in a single fight, then we need to look at fixing the particular powerset combo that's doing this. If you can manage one fight but are left too drained to manage another, then we need to look at improving post-action recovery, either by "non combat" recovery buffs or by, again, speeding up rest. You shouldn't be running out of endurance in one single regular fight at any level, and if you are, you have a good argument to demand change, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm going to wax philosophical here for a bit, because I want to get to the root of the problem. The lower levels suck for endurance and leave you sitting on your hands unable to fight, which is a legitimate problem. However, the source of the problem is not recovery itself, but rather how how recovery is balanced between in-combat and out-of-combat situations. In-combat, you can't really expect to be able to gain your whole end bar back in five seconds, because that would be utterly overpowered. Out of combat when you're not actually USING your endurance bar, you are well within your right to ask that it come back in about 5-10 (or up to 20) seconds because waiting for it to come back is dead air and bad gameplay.

It's true that people use recovery to solve that problem, but the cost of that solution is high, balance-wise. Because recovery buffs apply at all times (including in combat), then their magnitude has to be low so as not to offset combat balance. However, this makes them poor for the kind of fast recovery one would expect out of action. People strive to get high recovery bonuses to recover more from battle to battle, but the cost for this is prohibitive, because those are VERY powerful buffs.

The only way to fix endurance woes without actually unbalancing the system is to completely and utterly divorce combat recovery from out-of-combat recovery, by the inclusion of an overt "in combat" mechanic, if need be, allowing us to define out-of-combat powers that are simply blocked with enemies around or enemies aggroed on you or your team-mates. The current tech for distinguishing between in-combat and out-of-combat is interruptibility and serious debuffs, which constitutes Rest. The problem with Rest is that its use is very limited by the recharge that it has. Speeding that recharge up, possibly making it instantaneous, would give us an instant toggle between in-combat and out-of-combat stances. While in combat, out stats are limited and our recovery slow. This is conducive to balanced, fair, exciting fighting. While out of combat, our stats are more lenient and our recovery is much greater to basically fast-forward us through the times when action ISN'T happening and prepare us for the next battle.

As long as combat recovery and out-of-combat recovery overlap, no-one will ever be happy.

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.

Of course the Fitness pool isn't required. But this is really not the issue: the question is whether the things you're giving up are actually worth more than the benefits provided by Stamina.

A character gets 24 powers. There are 9 primary and 9 secondary powers. If you take all your AT's primaries and secondaries, that still leaves you with five powers to take from the pools. If you take three powers from Fitness and two from Travel, that leaves you with nothing extra. Sounds terrible, doesn't it?

But it's not really that bad. There are many primary and secondary powers that aren't particularly useful, or duplicate other powers in either the primary or secondary set. Omitting them is a no-brainer.

Then there's the issue of an attack chain. If you've got a tight attack chain with four to six high-damage, high-recharge, low-endurance attacks, adding three more suboptimal attacks is more of a waste than taking three powers that let you jump higher, run faster and last longer in fights.

If you're a ranged blaster, for example, you may not take any of the melee attacks in your secondary. I've got a blaster that took only four of the nine secondary powers (and actually only uses two of them in the 95% of fights -- an Ice/Ice blaster with with Chilblain, Ice Sword, Build Up and Ice Patch).

Furthermore, those powers you take instead of Fitness will use more Endurance than you have. For example, many players these days want to maximize defense. That means taking toggles like Maneuvers, Tough and Weave on top of any defensive toggles you may already have. These use Endurance at a higher rate than most primary/secondary defenses (often 50% more). If you've got four or five defensive or damage aura toggles, then you add Tough and Weave, you're going to be hard-pressed to stay in combat very long. Slotting attacks for endurance certainly helps, but won't solve your problem.

Then there are powers that allow you to recover endurance by draining it from enemies (Dark Consumption, Consume, Power Sink, Energy Absorption), or things like Conserve Power. These are great and I take them frequently. But most of these powers have a very long recharge and cannot keep your endurance up -- though some can. And many of these powers you can't get until level 26, 28 or 35.

Finally, the charge of "power gaming" is off the mark. I take Stamina and slot powers for end reduction because it makes the character easier to play. I don't have to sit around and wait between fights. I don't have to decide which attacks to use, which toggles I can afford to turn off for this mix of enemies. In effect, I can just play the game without having to know details that power gamers know to maximize their character's effectiveness. A power gamer would take an obscure power because of its utility in rare circumstances (like those who took Vengeance when it gave outrageous buffs). A power gamer takes essentially worthless powers in order to slot an IO set that gives a specific set bonus.

A person who takes Fitness so that they can just leave their defensive toggles on all the time and attack non-stop is not a power gamer. They're using the "fire and forget" method of play, which is the antithesis of power gaming.

That's why people automatically recommend taking Stamina. It's not out of nerd-lust for ultimate power (though Stamina is often required for that). It's because the average person will be much more satisfied playing a character with Stamina than one without it.

Untrue. The mechanic for in-combat and out-of-combat already exists in the game, as demonstrated by the powers granted by the Clubber and Caregiver/Pain Specialist Day Jobs.

Unless you want to explain what those mechanics actually are, I have to assume they're based off the same system which governs the Hide mechanic, which IS NOT a good way to determine in-combat/out-of-combat distinctions. For a minor temporary power buff, that really doesn't matter too much. For Rest, which has the potential to become central to certain playstyles, a little more care is needed.

And, yes, I was aware of the powers. I'm not convinced their implementation is better than how Rest is implemented.

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.

24 - 9 - 9 is actually 6. That typically means two powers for a travel power and potentially four Epics.

Trying to figure out what you're giving up by not taking Stamina strikes me as an incredibly backwards way to look at it, because you should actually be looking at what you're not taking by going with Fitness. That's three power picks, and not every combo has powers that are easily and unambiguously "skippable." You mention skipping melee powers on Blasters, but as far as I'm concerned, that's a capital mistake, considering how much of their damage is in those melee powers. You CAN skip them, just like you can skip everything else, but that doesn't make it an easy decision.

Then you have things like Super Reflexes or Willpower. Then you have things like Kheldians.

You CAN skip powers to take Fitness, but it's not as simple as being a no-brainer to do. Your powersets are not filled with redundant, useless powers that you'd have to be confused to take. Every time you drop a powerset power, you give something potentially useful, potentially cool up for a straight-up stat boost. You can probably make that up with other forms of min/maxing, but then, I can make up for the lack of Stamina in just the same way.

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'm not a fan of such a sacrifice in a casual based game.

Just because you state it with conviction doesn't make it any more true.

In fact, it is patently untrue. As the game progresses it becomes easier for a team to overcome the endurance hurdle, but it is also possible for the team to lack those tools. There is a huge list of potential objectives in this game that would not be completable without some form of recovery boost over base.

I'm not a fan of my powers getting worse just because I'm leveling. I get what you are trying to do, but I can't agree with it.

Anyway, I agree with those saying leave fitness alone. While every single toon I have has stamina (and a lot more endurance management beyond that) I don't want it to be inherent, or free.

I tend to play combos that consume a lot more endurance than others because once you build past the endurance bottleneck they have higher peak potential. For such toons the growth is very linear. You'd expect stamina to be a spike in their performance while leveling, but it really isn't. It is the gradual accumulation of slots, stamina, and IO's.

I won't pretend it is always "fun", but it tends to be very rewarding as the toon matures and the performance goes from below garbage to godlike.

So, it's my fault that I cannot purchase SOs before 22, only have a certain ammount of slots to put in powers till that point, run out of insps due to using them during fights and that mobs take a while to kill due to base chance?

Yeah, I'll buy that like I'll buy a pound of horse manure, thanks.



(Sorry, its been a long night, and I really don't appreciate being told what seems like a slightly rusted game mechanic is somehow my fault)

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Not your fault that you cannot purchase SOs before 22. It is however your fault if you play like you had SOs before 22. Not your fault about the number of slots you have. It is your fault if you do not use them to include room for end redux. Not your fault for having a small amount of room for insprations. It is your fault if you pop a blue every time you are at half a bar instead of waiting until you are at 1/4 or less when it is actually needed.

Other common blue bar killers are using toggles that are not needed. IE mez protection vs mobs without mez or energy resist vs mobs that only do S/L.

Overkill is a common blue bar killer. Using heavy hitting attacks vs mobs with only a few HP or using aoe attacks on single mobs. A little patience for another attack to charge saves that blue bar some damage.

Leaving sprint on while fighting or rushing to the next mob with half a blue bar is another common mistake. If you are at half a bar and just turn off sprint and just jog over to the next group you will have more endurance at the start of the fight and you will need to rest less often. Now on brutes I can see using sprint alot since your damage is based off of your fury bar. But anyone else needs to either learn patience at the lower levels or expect to be out of breath. It is your choice.

It seems far too many people get used to their level 50 toons and expect their new lowbies to perform the same. Sorry, it just does not work that way.

While certain combinations of primaries and secondaries are definitely not no-brainers (scrappers and tankers often have a hard time fitting everything in between attacks and defense), many really are. For example, in an Ice/Ice blaster you have ranged holds at tier 5 and 8 in the primary, and a melee hold at tier 8 in the secondary. If your concept is a ranged blaster, it really is a no-brainer not to take that melee hold. (I often take the two ranged holds to hold bosses straight out of the chute, so don't get the idea I'm against the holds.)

Then there are power sets like Claws, which has four relatively fast-recharge single-target melee attacks, two of which are nearly identical. It's pretty much a no-brainer to omit one of the melee attacks after a respec into a high-recharge build (though picking which one may not be). It's also a no-brainer to omit Confront (I have never actually seen a scrapper take it, though I'm sure some do and you wouldn't be wrong for taking it).

Also, if your character never dies, it really is a no-brainer to omit self-rez powers like Revive or Resurgence. Because in cases of extreme unction you can nearly always combine inspirations, or let your team help you. And while it's not always a no-brainer, it's very easy to justify the omission of Tier 9 defensive powers like Unstoppable, especially if you're replacing them with something that increases survivability without a crazy hit-point and endurance crash (say, Tough and Weave).

But don't get the wrong idea: I'm the one who advocates taking little-used melee powers like Stun so that you can stack mezzes on bosses easily. On my Ice/Ice/Arctic tanker I took Freezing Touch and Block of Ice to easily hold bosses. And I advocate taking sleeps: they're much better than they're given credit for, especially when you solo.

I might have agreed with you more in the past, but especially now with multiple builds, you can have access to all the possible powers with one build or the other. For example, I have two builds on my Ice/Ice blaster: one is ranged, and the other is melee-oriented with Frozen Fists, Ice Sword, Chilling Embrace and Ice Patch, and high S/L defense.

I'm not saying people are wrong for not taking Stamina. I'm just saying that I feel no limitations when I take it. I'll gladly accept fewer powers for the ability to run faster and last longer in combat.

The Fitness pool makes my characters seem more "super," and isn't that what the game is about?

Actually, you also advance from completing missions and story arcs, as well as Task Forces, as well as teaming with people who kill enemies. I realise you're like me, in that we both prefer to be hands-on and kick *** (believe me, I agree with you), but reducing the game to death toll accounting seems a bit... I don't know. Depressing? Yeah, killing stuff is important. It's the point of the game. But killing things in cool and interesting ways is, at least to me, much more important. City of Heroes is not such a hard game where JUST surviving and JUST defeating your enemies is any trouble at all for almost all the ATs. I guess you can go for speed and efficiency, but I personally prefer to go for style points. You can call it fluff if you want, but to my eyes, the whole game is fluff. And there's nothing wrong with it.

To give a different-game example, I see this a lot like Assassin's Creed. Many people have criticised the game for being too easy. Yes, you COULD just sit back and wait for enemies to attack so you can counter-attack them, but where's the fun in that? It looks bad and it's boring, just as reviewers the world over have pointed out. So what I did was seek out large groups of enemies and tried to be as aggressive in attacking them as I could be, counter-attacking only as a last resort. I gotta' say, I actually killed them FASTER that way, only because I didn't have to sit on my *** and wait, but I dare say it was a lot more fun.

I agree with you on a purely technical level - Stamina allows you to rest less, which allows you to act more, which allows you to kill more, which gives you more experience, which levels you up faster. If that is fun for you, then clearly Stamina is your way to go, and I can respect that. However, I don't agree with your approach just the same, and it would actually be pretty scary to me if the game assumed I DID. It was actually insulting to me back in the day when it was revealed Jack and his dudes were playtesting the game with characters that had Stamina and Tough and all the extra-min-maxed builds and balancing for that, if for no reason other than because it suggested that if I wasn't taking Stamina, I was doing it wrong.

I have nothing against helping things along so you folk who like more recovery can have an easier time 1-20, but I do NOT want to be forced into following you.

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.

Such as?

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 find it to be extremely common, myself. Especially with any character that's running toggles or has staple AoE powers. With some characters a single spawn may run me dry on End solo, and I don't run above default difficulty/spawn size (solo) at those levels.

The game included a lot of bad limitations, with several added (and a few removed) along the way. I haven't expected any of them to be changed, which saves a bit of disappointment, and in the rare cases when something gets properly addressed creates a pleasant surprise.

Goat's point isn't that this shouldn't be looked at and possibly fixed, but merely that this is not going to happen by tweaking recovery values or adding recovery buffs, but by radically redesigning the "cost" system in its entirety. Which, by the way, I'm not specifically an opponent to, but if that's what we're looking at, let's talk about that, instead.

---

By the way, I'm constantly reminded of something Arcana said (when pressed) about possible alternative ways to formulate power costs. To avoid misquoting Arcana, let me see if I can't examine a few inspired ideas on what form this could take.

The current system of Endurance we have is a sort of "battery" set-up. We have a limited amount of energy that we drain with power use, but which recharges on its own at a fixed rate. That's fine, as that's one way to handle it. How about something else?

How about an "Ammo" system? Thee Ammo system would give you a certain number of "shots" which would not regenerate on their own. You would have comparatively much more ammo to spare on attacks than an energy bar would permit, but since they wouldn't recovery, you'd be hard-limited on how much you could do before you had to "reload." Now, reload could take many forms, but the one I'd give it is a relatively long-animations, debuffing power that slows you down in combat and puts you at risk, meaning that you have to take cover to do it. This would constitute a tradeoff between having more shots to fire without running out, but facing a stiffer penalty when you DO run out

An "Overcharge" mechanic could give you a LOT of recovery for your powers, but a SERIOUSLY limited amount of energy to go around, with a penalty of no recovery for some time if you overcharge your energy bar. The benefit of this would be that you had almost instant recovery which topped you off as soon as you stopped attacking, allowing you practically infinite action, but capping the amount of actions you do and the speed with which you could do them. As long as you kept under the limit, you could go on forever, but overstepping that limit would always be a potential danger.

A "Building up" system would, on the other hand, be something similar to what Champions Online has. Under this system, you would have a large pool of energy to draw from, but NO natural recovery whatsoever, requiring you to use an energy-building power to recover your strength. Unlike "Ammo," this energy-building attack would not be crippling and paralising to use, but would probably not be very strong. And, as with Champions Online, this could probably be allowed to put you some distance above your natural maximum, from where your energy will drain back down to 100%.

I realise that none of that stuff is applicable to a game this far into its life cycle, but I'm just trying to illustrate a few options that could exist to give "energy management" some more variety.

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.

It's a typical way of handling the matter, and *would* be fine if it followed form in being a pool that increased as you levelled (which would, methinks, necessitate the base recovery rate being a fixed number rather than a percentage affected by increases in Endurance).

A system that essentially forces you to use "Rest"...

And in such a system, rather than ticking off End every pulse, toggles might reduce your max bar, thus giving you a lower cap on your actions.

If I buy TOs and then DOs then I sure as heck cant afford SOs at 22 when I get there, unless I transfer money from another char (at least I17 will make that easier). There is very little I can avoid at lvl 1-21 anyway. I dont take end heavy attacks or toggles I know I wont use. I do pretty much everything I can to keep end use low at low levels.

See the above arguement about money limitation. And I only pop blues when Im literally about to lose all my shields, or in desperate need to get rid of the last bit of health on the LT/Boss before he kills me.

I know it doesn't work that way. I still object to how much sprint costs (it costs MORE than an armour toggle, for heaven sake) but I do de-toggle it, and tend to use brawl to finish off near dead foes.
I don't expect my chars to perform at level 50 levels at low levels. But I dont expect to have to accept sucking endurance like an old man as 'Fun'. Because it isn't. And it makes 1-22 feel like a horrible grind, for the most part.

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Rather tangental, but I've found that at 35 tickets apiece, grabbing DOs from the AE is rather economical at level 12. Around 17 slots, because you got a level 15 Acc IO from the Invention tutorial, and maybe less depending on drops, so around 600 tickets or so, which is one or two good story arcs. I, being neurotic, turn off xp to do this, but to each his own.

I can't reccomend this at SOs though, as SOs are 70 someodd tickets apiece.

While this used to be the case before inventions and the markets and AE this is really not true any longer even on the villainside unless you team zerg to 20 and won't use the markets.

I mentioned AE because now that is what I do with all my new characters. Once I get them the Atlas Park mayhem/safeguard raptor pack I hop into AE and generate some tickets (one mission is often enough). Then I can either take my chances on a recipe or some random salvage or work for enough tickets to buy a good rare.

That's even better than how I do it...so obvious, in retrospect...

I tend not to use the markets, for various reasons. And, frankly, you shouldn't have to. TOs, DOs and SOs haven't changed since before IOs and salvage came out, and, if you dont use the market, you still cannot afford to actually slot the Enhancements for your level when they come out (12 and 22) Which, IMO, is rather silly. If you level to 22 without buying enhancements, by all rights I should be able to buy SOs. I could understand having to buy it bit by bit, if you didn't end up out-levelling enhancements within a short time.

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Before IOs came out we couldn't afford our SOs at level 22. So you are wrong.

So if you don't use the markets you will not be able to afford your SOs just as it was the first 3 years of the game.

Being forced to use an 'optional' feature of the game to even slot up on standard enhancements strikes me as 'wrong' frankly. And its something I object to having to do.
For the most part, and come I17 will be the norm, I ferry inf from my bank char blueside and whoevers richest at the time redside.

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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.