Speculation: More power pools?

I'm not offering suggestions for new power pools. Rather, I'm speculating that either i19 or i20 will contain new power pools, and I'd like to hear from others who may have evidence of it from the test server or from talking with the devs at conventions.

Why do I think there will be new power pools? Because Stamina is becoming an inherent. This frees up three slots in almost every build. Every character has 18 powers from their primary and secondary, and 19 power slots from level 1-38. When Stamina is inherent, a player will easily be able to take every power available in their archetype save one, plus a travel power and a prerequisite -- and for veterans with the City Traveller badge, they won't even need the prerequisite. This means that cookie cutter builds will be rampant, with the only differences being how slots are assigned. (More on that later.)

Now, there are existing power pools to flesh out our characters. But there will still be standardized builds, because there is not enough variety in power pools. if you subtract the Fitness pool (now inherent) and assume a character will only have one travel pool, there are only five power pools available. And one of those is Presence, which I have never seen anyone use in-game. Four power pools, three of which are primarily taken for defensive purposes (Fighting, Medicine, and Concealment) does not give players many options for rounding out their characters.

Want more evidence? Count up the enhancement slots you have available. The Fitness pool took two enhancement slots (assuming Health gets none but Stamina gets +2), but it also occupied three power slots. Powers from your primary or secondary will almost certainly require additional enhancement slots to be useful, and for most powers 'useful' is +3. (Accuracy + 3 damage, or endurace + 3 defense/resist.) You're gaining 2 enh slots but creating the need for 9 more -- a net loss of 7 slots. The only good way to make this up is to take more powers that do not need additional enhancement. Power pools, especially the prerequisites taken on the way to the better powers, are a good way to eat up power slots without losing enhancement slots.

Even more evidence? Look at the proliferation of temporary powers with i18 and i19. There are now guns, hammers, grenades, resuscitation and recovery devices, shields, stealth powers, and jetpacks that can all be assembled from recipes. You could easily put together several new power pools using only the existing recipes: A 'Weapons' pool with baseball bat, revolver, and grenades; a new 'Gadget' travel pool with a grenade, a shield, and a jetpack; and a 'Chemistry' pool with recovery and resuscitation and maybe a defense buff on loan from the Secondary Mutation power. It has never been easier to envision new power pools that contain powers already existing in the game. Even though these temporary powers are available by building recipes, players will choose them as power pools both to get permanent access to the powers and to flesh out their characters.

It seems obvious to me that when Stamina becomes inherent, new power pools must be on the way. But I've heard no rumors nor official announcements about it. Does anyone know anything, or has anyone heard anything, that I might have missed?

If anyone says anything about i20 their account would be banned and this thread would be deleted.
They've only officially announced an incarnate system.

Haven't heard anything about new pools, no. But I think you're making a lot of assumptions on how people build.

For one, why are you only assuming people will take one travel pool? They may not take more than one travel *power,* but they'll more than happily dip into Speed for Hasten, or Leaping for Combat Jumping, or Fly for Air Superiority. Several support builds will take Recall Friend from teleport. Without feeling a need to take Fitness, I'd say you'll see more branching out there.

Plus, presence - it certainly is taken. "Tankerminds" (and even non-tanking masterminds) come to mind right away, just to grab the taunts. (And concept builds, admittedly.) Common, no.

Also, you're *not* creating a need for 9 more slots. Not all powers need slotting, and you'll see "one slot wonders" becoming more popular (Stealth taken for a LOTG +Rech, for instance, or Temperature Protection for Fire armor types for the slow and another KB IO.)

I don't think the temp powers point toward new pools. *shrug.* I wouldn't MIND seeing others, depending on what they are, but I don't think they're high priority.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Issue 20 has the strongest NDA I've ever heard of currently in effect.

Whatever issue 20 is you can bet it's impressive.


as far as OT.

Yeah, I assume they're looking at making a few new pools now.
Naturally thats only an assumption on my part and has no actual basis in reality....
Yet.

Oh yeah, quite a few of my toons have 2 travel powers. Usually Fly and SS, on rare occasions SJ and SS. Mostly for concept reasons though.

Personally, I think that instead of making a new power pool, I saw an idea on here about adding a 5th power to the existing pools, which I think would be a great and unexpected idea.

one possibility would be to allow people to pick from 2 APP/Patron Pools

Did you somehow miss this?

I'd rather see them fix the power pools that already exist rather than make new ones.

I agree with the OP that there is a possibility that new pools are on there way.

I find it odd that you think making the worst-designed power pool of them all inherent means that they are adding new pools. The devs are simply working to enable the level of variety they intended characters to have from the very start, before they realized that their game pretty much sucks without Stamina. In other words, players have been unfairly penalized in the area of customization by poor power design the entire time, and by fixing that error, they are opening up the level of individuality that was originally intended.

Also, from a game design standpoint, creating new temporary powers via the invention system seems to me to be a strong indicator *against* the creation of new power pools. I mean, why spend significant development resources to design a number of new power pools, which must be balanced against other pools (and probably will need to be at least somewhat superior to most pools, to combat player inertia--that is, the inherent resistance players always feel against anything new) when they can cover any situational holes in the powers structure with invention powers?

Basically, you're making an assumption based on fairly illogical premises. You assume that just because they're removing one pool, they have to add another one to replace it. This is simply not true at all. The most important question a developer has to ask when adding a new feature is, "What is the purpose of this feature, and does this feature fulfill its purpose?" The only compelling reason to add a new power pool would be if the developers feel that there is adequate design space for a new set of powers that would add unique new capabilities to existing characters. If the devs think of something really cool that players should be able to do, and that either inadequate development resources or game engine limitations previously made impossible, THEN they should add a new power pool. But adding a new pool just because you removed another is a major mistake that will only serve to produce a marginal, "filler" pool that will probably be either useless or redundant.