Powersets and respecifications?

Well it's not like we didn't see this response coming. It's almost formulaic.

1. Someone suggests a powerset respec.
2. People respond with posts explaining why it's a bad idea and inform the suggester of the devs official position on the matter
3. Suggester gets defensive and dismisses anyone that doesn't agree with him as jerks.

It's so predictable.

Seriously what more could that have added to this by making that comment? That was completely uncalled for.

I gave you my reasoning/opinions for why I would like to see a power respec. You and a few other individuals gave your reasons/opinions on the matter (and like to stress that the developers stance on the matter).
I even gave a preemptive 'I'm sure I'm coming across as being defensive' spiel, but you seemingly bypassed it as you did with your #3 point.

Are you just trying to make me upset? Just let it be, let somebody suggest the idea again - and you and whoever else can go right ahead and reply like you have again. That might just very well prove that there are, in fact, people that wish for a power respec to happen.
But do yourself and others a favor: Get rid of the attitude, it's unwarranted. We get it, you agree with the developers that a power respec should not and will not happen - that doesn't mean that other people can't still ask for it.

:sigh:
Okay, okay! I'll do an extensive search next time I have a question to post to eliminate the redundancy of discussion. My question's been answered and I'm fine with it, even if I still think there's a way it could be made to work feasibly.

No point in beating a dead horse, now.

Ya gotta love Tenzhi's attempts at revisionist history. Notice how he tries to hide a lie in with the truth?

Truth, for years the devs said no to inherent Fitness.

Lie, for years the devs said no to power customization.

Unfortunately for Tenzhi a large percentage of the players in this game have been here for 5, 6, 7 years and have no qualms debunking his version of what was said.

There have been a number of issues that have been discussed at length across multiple threads. I see nothing wrong with starting a new thread on an old topic. Ideas have also been tagged as hopeless only to be implemented (i.e. market merge, inherent fitness, etc.) Developers change their minds. People have new insights. That's kind of the point of a forum.

I also would like to see a power respec offered within certain parameters. I don't think a scrapper should be able to change into a defender but altering a scrapper's primary or secondary is appealing. A 4th mutant build perhaps that only unlocks at level 50 after 100 mutant tip missions or something. I think folks greatly enjoyed redesigning and re-thinking their toons after inherent fitness and going rogue opened up new possibilities. It's fun to revamp an old toon. And it is hardly the end of the world.

The arguments against such a change don't seem that compelling to me.

1. Changing the powersets somehow severs a player's psychological link to a toon. I can change a toon's appearance and name, I can change from hero to villain, I can suddenly learn to fly, turn invisible, summon spiderlings, hurl a fireball, create a waterspout and so on. But changing from a martial arts/invulnerability scrapper to a katana/invulnerabilty scrapper is too much change? Really?

2. Changing the powersets is too hard to handle without months of practice. Losing a job and starting a new career, having a child, moving to a new city - these life changes take time to adjust to. But I think most people can understand fairly quickly how spine attacks are different from claw attacks. It's not that big of a deal.

3. Too hard to implement. Possibly. But hard to think it would be trickier than allowing a toon to switch from hero to villain.

4. It can be exploited. Not sure why it would matter once you hit level 50. I suppose some scrapper powersets, for example, are easier to get to 50 than others. But it seems as if all scrapper primaries should be roughly similar. At least similar enough that the time spent leveling to 50 should not vary enough to be an issue.

Bottom line - it is a decent amount of work to get accolade powers and shards and badges and such. Rolling a new toon just to switch from katana/willpower to dual blades/willpower seems a bit silly to me. But I would certainly love to re-invent a couple of toons given the opportunity.

Oh here we go I found an old post by one of the devs about why they hadn't given us power customization yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler Q: What's so damn hard about power customization? A: The pipeline from power to effects just wasn't designed to be flexible. The powers designer creates a power def. This def defines all of the things associated with a power. What it's called, how much endurance it costs, whether it's a click, toggle, or auto power, its range, radius, etc. Power defs also contain a series of attributes such as doing this much smashing damage and this much energy damage. Power defs are softcoded, but they can't be changed on the fly or vary between one player and another. Power defs also call continuing FX on specific attributes. Ie, play the FX script for stone cages on the Hold attribute. So if the target is actually held, it plays the effect...otherwise it doesn't play anything. This is also softcoded as part of the power def and can't be change dynamically. Nothing related to power defs are stored on individual characters. Power defs also point to another file called a PFX. This file contains a series of things that happen on events. The first half deals with animations. Play these animation bits when the power is activated. Play these when the power hits someone. This animation takes X amount of time before the damage should actually happen and takes Y amount of time before another power can be used (ie activation time). The 2nd part deals with the effects in a similar way. Play this FX script when the power activates. Play that FX script on hit. PFX scripts are also softcoded and can't be changed on the fly, yadda yadda yadda. These are also not stored on individual characters. The FX scripts are a series of events and particle emitters. The color of particles are part of the particle scripts set as RGB values. Particles CAN inherit RGB values from the player, but they have to be attached directly to a costume node to do so. Also can't be changed on the fly, also not stored on characters. So all of the things that determine what effects plays, when they play, where they play, and what color they are are all softcoded. They're in one location, shared by all players with the same power, and can't be changed dynamically or stored individually on each player. All of that, is stage one of power customization. Figuring out how to retool the system so it can actually work. That's the part that involves writing the new code and making the necessary changes to all of the player power defs and/or PFX to support it. Stage 2 is a massive overhaul of every single effects script used by player powers that we're going to customize. Right now, the colors for the various effects are softcoded into the particle emitter scripts. Most of our particle emitters use grayscale textures that are tinted to an RGB value through the particle script. In order for a particle to inherit the tint from an outside source (currently only from a costume node it's attached to), it has to be set to red. So 255,0,0 as an RGB value means that particle is going to inherit 100% of the costume node’s RGB color. The more white a particle's RGB value is the less color it inherits. Most basic example of this would be the effects for Energy Blast powers. Those are all tinted various colors, from blue to white. All of those particle scripts would have to have their RGB values shifted to red instead...So there would be a pretty big chunk of work required to 1) tracking down, collating, and duplicating all of the FX and particles scripts currently used by powers 2) change all of the RGB values used by all of the particle scripts so that they can inherit the color from an outside source. On top of that, we also have some particle scripts that use pre-colored particle textures. Dark Miasma is a good example of that. We also use geometry in some of our FX scripts, and most of them use some sort of pre-colored texture So things like the bubble for Force Fields, that teal blue-green is the color of the texture that's on that sphere. Those particles and FX geometry would have to have new grayscale textures made for them and then they would need to duped and set up to use color tinting. Stage 2 isn't difficult work, it's just a ton of it. There are tens of thousands of FX and particle scripts that would need to be tracked down, duplicated, and modified. Stage 3 is hooking all this up into some sort of system or UI to allow you guys as players to change your fireballs from red-orange to green. Most logical place for that is the costume editor, probably something similar to how you currently deal with auras or custom weapons. Other ideas involve special color enhancements that you can slot into powers, console commands that you could type in, options set in the graphics menu, etc. Those are all implementation ideas...probably the easiest step of the whole process. Can it be done? Sure. Given enough time almost anything can be done. But is it more important to do than all of the various other things that can also be done in the same amount of time? That's the step where power customization as a feature has repeatedly fallen off the list and pushed back to the next issue. We still continue to discuss it, trying to figure out some way to do it in a way that won't require as much new code, or won't require so much time from an FX artist to make it happen.

Let me add a little color to the important part.

Quote:

We still continue to discuss it, trying to figure out some way to do it in a way that won't require as much new code, or won't require so much time from an FX artist to make it happen.

Sorry Tenzhi but that doesn't sound like the devs were shooting down power customization. In actuality it sounds like it was a very difficult project that they spent a lot of time and effort on trying to figure out a way to get it to us.

Dismissive posters aside (as in being dismissed)...

I don't really see a problem with doing a primary or secondary power respec as a concept under the following rules.

1. You get one primary or secondary power respect in your character's life.
2. You can get the respec at level 10 or level 20 by doing a trial. You can do it once, and never again.
3. You can't change your AT.

Why? Because
1) by the time you get to 10 or 20 you know whether or not you hate the powerset you're stuck with.

My wife gets to level 8-10 and knows whether she's going to love or hate her character based on how the powers play (can't convince her that things will get better later). Ok so we're always in a leveling pact... all the time, every character pair (this is a husband-wife thing--part of having a wife who loves playing COH with me.). So when she hits level 10... and I've got a character that I'm really getting into, and she hates hers... Well, there we go... we sell off everything mail the INF to ourselves and start over. A little frustrating sometimes--but happy wife, happy life... If she could just change that one powerset, and it's usually the primary or the secondary and not both or the AT... well things would be a lot easier for both of us. So I've had to restart umpteen characters because of this.

2) By 10 to 20 nobody's had a chance to level to the 'Good' bits of their character development, avoid the hard stuff, and exploit the system.

3) There's still plenty of time to learn your new powerset before you hit 50 so you don't act like a newb with it on a TF.

I read all the previous posts so you can save any comments intended for my edification on why it's not going to happen.