Where's my kryptonite?

Vulnerabilities are a staple of comic book lore. Oh, sure... not everyone has them. But the closest we have is certain resistance sets having less protection against specific kind(s) of damage such as Invulnerability's lack of defense or resistance to psi damage. I don't consider that a weakness, though, so much as it is just a hole in the character's defense.

And everyone may not like the idea of having an additional element to which their character is suddenly vulnerable to. But what about those who are looking for something like that?

My recommendation is new IO sets that give the player a noticeable hindrance with two enhancements from a given set, and then reward the player with bonuses at three and more from the set. And because we're taking a penalty to something up front, the rewards later on should be more appreciable.

Let's say I want to make a character that's flame-based and want him to be vulnerable to cold. As it stands, unless you make a melee character with the fiery aura set, you're as vulnerable as anyone else to cold attacks. But let's say they make a ranged damage set that throws a -10 to 20% resistance debuff to cold attacks when you have two from the set. You could really gimp your character to ice attacks if you slot this set in more than one power. But at the cost of becoming more vulnerable to that, perhaps one of the bonuses for having three or more in the set is a boost to fire-based attacks... a noticable defense or resistance bonus to fire attacks... or a chance of a fire damage proc each time the power affects your target.

And that's just with fire and ice in mind. If you do this with the various damage types, players could better customize their character's weaknesses and strengths at the same time. I'm sure there will be arguements about how such an idea could be abused to min/max and create uber powerful characters... but aren't we getting that anyway with the IO sets as they are? With hindrances to balance out the gains, its just a matter of someone crunching the numbers when creating such sets to make sure things are balanced properly.

/unsigned. for the reasons you mentioned in the end of your post.

Khelds have Voids. . . Everyone at higher levels have Sappers! Close enough to Kryptonite for me!

Interesting idea.

Personally, I think a 'Flaw' system would be neat.

That is, on character creation, you can pick a bonus, either a boost to Recovery, Regen, Max HP/Stam, or maybe even a new ability or Resistance/Defense buff, but at the cost of a flaw tied to the bonus. Hampered Regen/Recov, Slower Recharge, maybe even a permanent -20% Res/Def debuff to a particular element.

This thread is full of fail... I play the game to feel epic, and that is arguably how the devs want us to feel, I dont want to be weak to something, including the Voids/Quantums. Since nothing else has a real weakness to anything, why do Khelds? they should not, they are plenty weak enough as is w/o the Voids/Quantums. Take out anything that wields a quantum rifle. While I am on the subject of Khelds, why is it that most of a WS powers use MORE endurance than ANY of the PB powers? I want the WS end numbers to be changed so as to not leave me tired after 2-3 of my WS attacks, as opposed to 5-6 of my PBs attacks. Powers that cost 26 points of end on a WS and do LESS damage than the PBs most damaging attacks that cost about 18.21 or w/e end to use seems HIGHLY unfair to me.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Several of my characters have various types of kryponite already.



My Broadsword/Fire scrapper has Cold and Psi attacks. Both are a doubly whammy of being able to get through my resistances and do lots of -recharge which seriously weakens me.


My Dark/WP Brute has spike damage to contend with, along with anything that does -regen.*


My Fort/Widow is highly vulnerable to enemies with +ToHit and can suffer serious cascading defensive failures very quickly.


My Plant/Empath suffers greatly against Nemesis, as does my Illusion/Stormy and my Dark/Sonic.*


Kryponite and vulnerabilities exist already within the game for a lot of characters. They just aren't lampshaded as such (other than Quants/Voids for Khelds, which was rolled back somewhat a few issues ago when the damage type was changed from a special one to Neg NRG).

OP, I have a small experiment for you to try. Roll up an /sr scrapper or brute heroside. Level them to 50. Spend the money to softcap them. Run around and do all sorts of epic stuff for awhile. Tank AVs. Laugh at 8-man spawns. Enjoy the feeling of being almost unkillable.

Then take a trip to the shadow shard. Find a good size group of rularuu that includes a few of the giant eyeballs. Go try to kill them and see how long you survive without using any inspirations.

Then come back and tell me there's no kryptonite in this game.

To be a little less tongue in cheek, nearly every character in this game already has something that they are weak to.

My softcapped fire/sr scrapper as I mentioned gets shredded by anything that has large +tohit buffs, and attacks which do not have a positional component (I'm looking at you mind control).

My stone/fire tank has some pretty serious problems with psi damage.

My NRG/NRG blaster has trouble going up against enemies who have KB protection.

My earth/fire dom has problems going up against enemies who have mez protection.

Implementing this system outside of the armor sets we already have leads to the system being gamed for min/max potential, and there's already enough of that out there. We don't need any more of that.

You want a tank with weaknesses? Ignoring the fact that Invulnerability has a kryptonite in the form of psi, Ice Armor in the form of fire, and Fiery Aura in the form of cold (et cetra), I have an idea for you.

Don't take the power that grants protection from your weakness. Solved!

Oh, but you wanted a benefit to having a kryptonite? Sorry. Doesn't make sense, seeing above named powersets with kryptonite already have the opposed element strength. You do get a benefit, though. Since you skipped taking a power, that's one more other power you could have! See? Benefits.


Oh, and for that one poster who said everyone gets screwed by sappers, watch the vid in my sig.


Finally, this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow To nip it in the bud, a system of JUST disadvantages with no associated advantages to them, becomes a gimmick. It's not something I can make a case against because, really - who does it bother? But as a gimmick, its development priority is pretty much rock bottom, and my stance on it is "eh."

Just for emphasis.

Personally, if they did do the advantage/disadvantage thing, it could easily be balanced in a similar manner to some PnP systems on some games I've played.

Have each disadvantage give you a number of points, and each advantage cost some.

You want to take Ice Res Debuff to get that big shiny advantage because there aren't many Ice Enemies? Well, too bad. Ice -Res Debuff isn't worth as many points because of that, so you've gotta take something else, too!

Just how many people would even take it were it implemented?

I mean, if it were a popular idea, I could see it, but this could take some time to code and msot people won't even bother because it'd make the game harder with no reward.

Stop dodging the question.

Less than 'some' people would use this, I'd say 3-5% max, there's no incentive to use it.

Heck, there's incentive not to use it as it makes the game harder for no reward.

I'd rather the devs work on something we all enjoy rather than just a small benefit to 3-5% of the population, thank you very much.

If you want kryptonite just play a blaster and don't slot your attacks. Set mission to +4x8 and fight malta or KoA.

Kryptonite wouldn't work because people would just pick an AE fa...er mission and avoid their weaknesses. There would have to be enough gain to make it worth it to people and all we would get later on is whiny threads about how people avoid their weakness and use whatever bonus they get to mow stuff down faster.

I'm just saying I'd rather the devs work on things that a greater percentage of the playerbase would enjoy.

I mean, what would you rather have? New mission arc, or a weakness? New Praetorian Epic AT, or a weakness? The Incarnate system, or a weakness?