Incarnates and Homogeneity
By
Angelxman81,
Posted on: 2011-03-02 09:01 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Quote:
Except the bulk of your damage/survivability is going to come more from your own powers rather than a high damage click on a 90 second timer. Does the bulk of your damage in AR come from fast recharging cones and TAoE's, or from that 1 full auto? At least some of this is perception and not rooted in actual performance. It's like loving Inferno on a fire blaster (and I do love me some inferno....); yeah, it's a big boom that wipes out a spawn, but when you factor in the recharge time and down time, spamming fireball and firebreath do more for your damage numbers than Inferno every two spawns does.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
And therein lies the danger of handing out new powers. They must be awesome, since they're end-game powers, and if they're not awesome they won't be worth the trouble. But now everyone's getting the same ones. Rather than make your character better at whatever it is you do, you now get to do the same thing as everyone else does. Everybody nukes. Everybody buffs. Everybody debuffs. Everybody controls pets. What's next, everybody gets an AoE control? Everybody gets a tier 9 godmode with built-in taunt?
And what is most galling about it is, our best powers will no longer come from us (assuming we choose to ignore the Origin of Power nonsense.) They come from somewhere else. Epic = flashing lights and pretty colors and huge numbers and all our individual characters getting lost in a mass of flashing lights and pretty colors and huge numbers. |
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Quote:
That would fail to satisfy my statement "regardless of slotting." Its trivial to make powers recharge in half the time assuming no slotting or external buffs.|
Originally Posted by Tenzhi
I just work from the assumption that the zone buff applies first, ergo all powers are recharging twice as fast before other factors come into play.
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I don't know how to cut the recharge of a power in half given non-zero recharge buffs, and this is not a trivial hypothetical. During a balance discussion I had with the devs once, the question came up as to whether it was possible to do this. No one could think of a way without resorting to very exotic means outside the current capability of the game engine.
No "trick" in #2: as I said, I have no idea if this is even possible given game engine constraints without tampering with the actual mechanics of recharge.
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I'll have to agree with what seems to be a general consensus, everything looks awesome except for the Praetorian pets. If it were changed so that we could use the regular character editor to customize a costume (and maybe even pick an AT/powerset) for the lore pet it would go from a slot that I don't even plan on unlocking to one of my favorite things in the game in 3 seconds flat. Lore be damned.
Let me answer this question briefly (or not so briefly as it turns out), for myself.
I do worry about the homogenization of what the Incarnates will bring, but more specifically I personally am worried about how hamfisted some of my characters will be into the Incarnate system.
Let me clarify what I mean. I have a level 33 Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu stalker that I created. I love his costume and loved it when ninja sprint was added to the game, but stopped him dead at level 33 because at the time, the PPPs, since GR had not come out at this point and the coolness of APPs for everyone, did not fit his ninja concept. Now I can take him to 50 in order to extend his ninja theme, but have not do so for various reasons. But my problem now with the Incarnate powers, such as the Judgment slot is that he will have to use powers that are not ninja themed. I do understand that I can explain anything away in my head, but personally in my head a ninja does not shoot ice shards, electric bolts, fireballs, or negative voids out of his being. So now due to the implementation of the Incarnate slots, I have lost this toon's theme. And that makes me not want to level up some of my toons due to the limitations of the Incarnate slot, I have just described. This goes for my my ultimate dream of having an all natural toon such as my DP/Traps corruptor.
Although I do have a fire/dark corruptor that I love and will be able to greatly benefit from the Incarnate slots, for me personally with my own thoughts concerning theme continuity, I am saddened that many ideas I have for a myriad of other characters have just stagnated due to not feeling like their themes have continuity into the Incarnate system.
I know this post now feels more like a Samuel Tow post (no disrespect Sam), but to be honest the Incarnate slots are a bittersweet feeling for me. I feel like a lot of toons themes are now limited due to how the Incarnates slots have been implemented and do hope greater customization is granted later on down the road, although I do doubt that happening. Since my fire/dark corruptor is my main toon I am very excited for the Incarnates. And right now loving that I can go with 2 of the Judgment slots with him thematically, but sadly enough not every character fits so neatly into these 4 themes. I do worry about the homogenization of our toons themes in the future, since such a high damaging power is only going to have 4 available themes for it at the neglect of all the other cool power ideas they have implemented in the game over the past 7 years.
Which is a reflection of my own thoughts concerning the limitations of the APPs (don't even get me started on my negative thoughts concerning the PPPs) in helping people to perpetuate a theme for a toon they have only to be redirected to APPs that lost the theme. Radiation and Soldiers of Ararchnos come to mind here. And i mention Arachnos, because to me an arachnos mace is not a continuation of my crab spider, or widow, or fortunata. This is also echoed in the APPs and PPPs not having power custimization, another limitation that I feel drops a theme that is established in the primary/secondary power selection.
And what is most galling about it is, our best powers will no longer come from us (assuming we choose to ignore the Origin of Power nonsense.) They come from somewhere else. Epic = flashing lights and pretty colors and huge numbers and all our individual characters getting lost in a mass of flashing lights and pretty colors and huge numbers.
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