What would you change for CoH2?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-04-30 17:51 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
The game engine is fine, there is no need for CoH2.
Mains (Freedom) @Auroxis
Auroxis - Emp/Rad/Power Defender Pylon Video Soloing an AV
Pelvic Thunder - SS/Elec/Mu Brute
Sorajin - Elec/Nin Stalker
Neuropain - Sonic/Mental/Elec Blaster
I would like to add on a regular basis all of these changes including the engine upgrade (or even replacement) through the live updater and not call it COH2 but just 'Issue 30: Volume 2' or something.
Second versions will again split the community in half. It will never work.
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So a game which produces a universally worse framerate than games which look many times better and have far more advanced visual effects "is fine?" I wouldn't complain if it at least ran well, but it doesn't even do that.
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Originally Posted by Auroxis
The game engine is fine, there is no need for CoH2.
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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.
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In my experience it runs well and looks better than a lot of the other MMO games out there. |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
So a game which produces a universally worse framerate than games which look many times better and have far more advanced visual effects "is fine?" I wouldn't complain if it at least ran well, but it doesn't even do that.
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Maybe my standards are too low, maybe yours are too high, or maybe I'm not aware of the exact performance numbers and the industry standards.
Mains (Freedom) @Auroxis
Auroxis - Emp/Rad/Power Defender Pylon Video Soloing an AV
Pelvic Thunder - SS/Elec/Mu Brute
Sorajin - Elec/Nin Stalker
Neuropain - Sonic/Mental/Elec Blaster
First thing I'd change: The engine and the server-side level of infrastructure. Basically, I'd like the game to run smoother, faster, and with less lag regardless of the level of system you play the game with.
Once the system was up to it, I would build the game in two directions (which is somewhat what has happened). First, I would build the game for bigger battles. As a solo hero, you would be equal to an enormous amount of minions, a large amount of lts, and a fair amount of bosses. Essentially, the aggro cap would be larger and powers would hit more targets, mobs would be designed to pose less threat in lower numbers. This give the potential for the game to feel epic to those who like mowing downs tons of guys.
The other direction is the polar opposite: I would try to create creative one-on-one encounters with AVs, GMs, and the like, and I would try to put these encounters throughout the game, starting at nearly the beginning. Take for instance, an encounter with Dr. Vahzilok that I came up with in about 3 minutes:
Your contact sends you on a story arc to uncover why bodies have gone missing in Kings Row. You find that they have been kidnapped by Vahzilok to use as experiments. Further raids on Vahzilok bases discover that the experiments were to create a water-based form of a virus that would kill large portions of Paragon City's citizens, but the survivors would be immune to most forms of disease, cancer, and have extremely prolonged life. Vahzilok will attempt genocide in order to form a master race.
With no time left, your contact sends you directly into Vahzilok's sewer base. He himself is weak, without his supersuit of bodies, but you cannot kill or arrest him because he has rigged the virus to be loosed on his death or incapacitation. You could either try to destroy the base by force, which would give him time to put on his supersuit, or try to to stealthily sabotage the virus-holding tanks, then incapacitate him, knowing the virus tanks wouldn't work.
This isn't a perfect example, but I'm created it in a short amount of time. I'm sure the devs could do better. In fact, I'm positive. I'd love for a large number of AV fights to require thought, rather than x amount of DPS. Before I go on, I'd make 1 Hero = 1 AV as my metric, instead of the old 8 heroes = 1 AV used by Statesman.
Other things I'd change:
I'd create the ability for GIANT monsters. With a new engine, the current inability to fight large mobs could be erased. I alluded to the fact that I want a general power increase. Heroes, of almost any stripe, should be equal to an AV, or large numbers of mobs. These are what multiple heroes are for. The new Supergiant Monsters would start at the 5th Column/Council giant robots, and go to Ruluruu, Shiva, and other Galactus type supermobs.
I'd reduce the number of city zones on the heroes side of the game. There are WAY too many, and they tend to spread out the population enough to make the game look like a wasteland. Say the Rikti finally won for stories reasons, and all that's left of Galaxy City, Independent Port, Brickstown, and Peregrine Islands are charred craters. All the remaining zones would get a huge facelift, equivalent or greater than given to Faultine, and a new zone will be established for the 40-50 range to replace PI. These zones would all be GR quality or better. A similar thing would happen villains side.
Costume parts would be added. You know what people want from this thread, so I won't go into great detail. Basically, moving body parts and customizable animations.
Contact numbers would start fairly reduced. All extraneous contacts would either be erased (killed by the Rikti/Preatorian/Shivan invasion), or updated to current game standards. Story Arcs would be polished! I would say at least 1 unique map/enemy/enemy group per contact, so that they are more than the newspaper contacts that are spread throughout the game.
Sound would be good enough that I will finally run the game with sound. Also, maybe an actual ingame score would be added. The Atlas Park theme that you hear when you first enter there would stay (that is the only time I turn the sound on now).
More space/underwater/volcano environments. We've been stuck in Paragon City (and the Rogue Isles) for 7 years now, and while we've managed to go to different dimensions we still have never left the state of Rhode Island as far as I know. That would change. We still have S. America, the Arctic/Antarctic, Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. Not to mention more exotic locations.
No more suppression. I understand that rooting makes powers look better and is simpler to do, so I wouldn't necessarily erase rooting, but travel powers will not suppress in PvP, PvE, or in any part of the game. On that note, travel powers will be divided into 3 levels of strength: Combat, Zone, and Interzone. Because the War Walls would go down (did I not mention that? Oh well, that will happen too), you will need to travel faster to move between zones at a decent speed. To do so, you would use your max power Fly, SS, SJ, or TP. You know how Superman can fly faster than a speeding bullet? That's interzone travel. Combat level would be things like Combat Jumping and Hover, and would give a small combat bonus, as well as being more maneuverable. These would all be ONE power however. You'd pick up SJ, and get the three teirs of power.
I understand most of the above is impossible or next to it. Still, this is what I would want from a CoH2. Since the above might take 10 years (or more!) I think I'll stick with my good old-fashioned CoH1 for now.
TW/Elec Optimization
Yup,
I saw that Paragon Studios is hiring fow a "next gen-mmo". Well, we know they've got a new project but I think it's the first they're actually saying it :
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here and
| Paragon Studios is seeking a veteran Senior Graphics Engineer to contribute to the development of the graphics engine on an exciting new project. |
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| Paragon Studios, a software game development studio focused on creating outstanding innovative MMORPG’s, is seeking a veteran Sr. Tools Engineer to support development of a new project at our Mountain View, CA office |
Am I right or these were already know ?
They are not talking about super hero in it...
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I can run an Unreal Engine game at 60 FPS at any one point anywhere in the game irrespective of the amount of things going on on the screen. I have yet to play an Unreal Engine game that City of Heroes looks better than. I can play any Source Engine game and never see any slowdown at any point, and this includes instances that throw far more props at me than the game is intended to allow. Some of the older Source engine games are on about the same level of graphical quality as City of Heroes, some of the newer ones are far superior.|
Originally Posted by Auroxis
In my experience it runs well and looks better than a lot of the other MMO games out there.
Maybe my standards are too low, maybe yours are too high, or maybe I'm not aware of the exact performance numbers and the industry standards. |
I play City of Heroes at give or take medium Ultra Mode settings, without any Ambient Occlusion, with mid-level reflections and high-quality but short-range shadows, without Bloom or Depth of Field and with conservative anti-alising and texture filtring. I will routinely see my framerate drop below 45 FPS doing nothing but looking in a specific direction. This is true all over Praetoria, this is true in many places in Cap Au Diable, especially in Grandville, this is true in a variety of Praetorian Labs rooms, as well as in the new warehouse big rooms, and none of these require more than just me as a single player. I see plenty of instances where my framerate drops to below 30 FPS, which I find to be unacceptable with a machine as meaty as I have.
Let me put it this way - ever since I got my current video card at around the summer of last year, I have not found a single game that has shown me any degree of framerate slowdown that I've been able to see at the maximal settings that it provides. City of Heroes is quite literally the ONLY game I currently own that lags for me. And it's one of the most spartan-looking games with the worst graphics that I still play to this day. City of Heroes is ugly, which I wouldn't mind all that much if it didn't make my system stutter and cough, all the while reminding me that I could be playing something which looks ten times better while have twice the framerate.
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Incidentally, the ONLY other game that I have consistently failed to run at even medium details without graphical slowdown is Criostasis, a game which appears so badly coded that a powerful machine from three years after the game came out still can't run it for ****. And it's not all that good of a game, anyway.
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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.
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This is actually something that I'd like to look at, myself. I remember Arcana once talked about "weaning people off AoE," and I know that every time the subject of making battles with larger numbers of weaker enemies, people always bring up the problem of this making AoE even more prolific and punishing single-target damage even more.|
Originally Posted by Combat
I would build the game in two directions (which is somewhat what has happened). First, I would build the game for bigger battles. As a solo hero, you would be equal to an enormous amount of minions, a large amount of lts, and a fair amount of bosses. Essentially, the aggro cap would be larger and powers would hit more targets, mobs would be designed to pose less threat in lower numbers. This give the potential for the game to feel epic to those who like mowing downs tons of guys.
The other direction is the polar opposite: I would try to create creative one-on-one encounters with AVs, GMs, and the like, and I would try to put these encounters throughout the game, starting at nearly the beginning. |
So what if we got rid of the distinction, at least to a large extent? Arcana's suggestion was to have AoE attacks given a specific level of damage which was spread around the enemies you hit, so the more the affected targets, the less damage they took. I can see this going in the opposite direction, as well - single-target attacks could be defined as smaller-scale AoEs that condense this damage into a single target when just one target is affected.
This kind of setup should allow everyone to have access to decent levels of AoE, or at least decent enough to handle armies of underlings, but still give them the ability to focus their damage enough to oppose single, tough foes. I can even see a system in place for choosing if you want to focus your damage or spread it out.
To my eyes, this would sidestep the problem of hurting people by not giving them enough AoE or enough single-target and having to compensate them, and it should open the game up to fights of various sizes without outstripping its own in-game systems. After all, just today my Stalker was jumped by no less than 30 Ghouls, pretty much all at once. For lack of AoE damage, even if I were completely immortal, it would still have taken a very long time to deal with those. And before that, the same Stalker ran the "Save TPN from 100 Weakened Destroyers" mission. Not fun, either.
While I believe that some characters should be able to specialise in concentrated damage and some in AoE, I fully believe that all should have significant skill in both, if the game is to provide fights both of the huge 1-on-50 varieties and of the equally epic 1-on-1 without either being totally hamstrung in either situation, as right now sets like Blaster Assault Rife and Stalker Martial Arts are.
And while I know this is wholly impractical for an addition to THIS game, that's exactly what makes it a meaningful suggestion for a sequel.
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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.
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That's actually the thing I most dislike about many CoH mechanics: they are "paper-simple" but "intuitively complex."|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
In fact, my ideal game system would be one which allowed me to have a viable character of the theme and abilities that I wanted without necessarily knowing HOW one goes about making this.
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Defense and tohit are paper simple: Acc * (Base - Def). Doesn't get any simpler than that on paper. But that leads us to: 5% defense: good or bad? On a blaster with no defense, it reduces incoming damage by ten percent. On an SR scrapper with 40% defense it reduces incoming damage by half. That's kind of a big situational difference you have to intuitively understand the math to appreciate. And notice that in neither case does "five percent defense" do five percent of anything the player intuitively grasps. Its actually five percentage points of defensive bonus not "five percent defense."
If you are earning one percent interest in a savings account and the bank said the interest rate was going up fifty percent, I doubt you'd think it was going to be fifty one percent. It would be going to one point five percent (this is why in these situations financial and economics-minded people use the term "basis points" when there is the strong potential for confusion). But in the more abstract world of City of Heroes, there have always been and always will be people who wonder if "33% defense enhancement" means Focused Fighting increases from 13.875% defense to 46.875% defense. Because there's no obvious intuitive cue (fortunately, the real numbers displays now at least do the math for you).
Anyway: Acc * (Base - Def) is paper simple. This is paper complex: Acc * Base * [1 - (1 - Def1/Base) * (1 - Def2/Base) * (1 - Def3/Base) ...]
On the other hand, it has an intuitive way to describe 5% defense: for standard critters, it reduces the chances to be hit by 10%.
Always. Is it worth the power pick and the endurance costs and whatever to reduce incoming damage by 10%? That's a judgment call. But the power will always do that, for blasters with zero defense, for scrappers with 30% defense: everywhere. This means you don't need to know the math, because the text description provides an unambiguous description of what the power will do, in terms easy to intuitively grasp.
In my game, that wouldn't even be *called* "five percent defense." It would be called "five points of defense." What does five points of defense do? Against standard critters with "base fifty points of accuracy" it would reduce their chances of hitting you by ten percent, five from fifty.
Interesting to note that in a system like this, it is easy to know what a power will do *incrementally* but harder to know what a group of powers will do in sum. Three five percent defense powers stacked together in CoH is fifteen percent defense. Three five point defense powers stacked together in the system above is an effective 13.55 point defense cumulative. Its not designed to make it easy for people to calculate final totals. Its designed to make it easier for players to make incremental decisions. Is this power worth taking now? Should I take that power instead. If I don't take this power now, what happens if I take it later. That's actually not entirely unintentional.
I think people assume that because I know the math, and describe game design in terms of math, I want an intrinsicly mathy game. Actually, I don't. I want the math to work right, but I would rather players spend more time in the game and less making spreadsheets of the game. And in fact, I would make every effort to ensure that the decisions the game presents would be qualitative and not quantitative. So many decisions this game presents have strong quantitative advantages that the qualitative ones are lost. I would eliminate that. The "Arcana" of the game I would design would have their work cut out for them, because I can theoretically make a game design that is arbitrarily difficult to min/max, even for me. Consider how difficult it is for *anyone* even me to make an unambiguous convincing argument for just exactly what the value of the SR passive scaling resistances are. And on a complexity scale of one to ten, those things are a two.
Which would you rather have: a power that absorbs 30% of all incoming damage, or a power that *reflects* 15% back at the attacker? Which would you rather have: a power that deals 100 points of damage to a single target, or one that only deals 50 but will increase chances of the next attack doing double damage by 15%? If your accuracy dropped by 10% for every 20 feet away the target was, is it better to enhance accuracy or damage? If an attack modification increased *both* damage *and* endurance costs proportionately, is it still as valuable to boost damage? If every critter had attacks with different ranges, would it be advantageous to attempt to boost your range? I can ensure the math is complex enough that the min/maxers can't help you. And when I eliminate the ability for the min/maxers to dictate what is the "best" and "worst" build, I free players to decide purely on the basis of preference, at least to a very large extent. If you take no attacks at all, you're still gimp. But if I build for range and you build for speed, I won't be the idiot and you won't be the genius: both would work, because the game would be designed to ensure that both work. Just differently.
This game's original designers added something called a "range enhancement" and never once, it seems, actually asked themselves "why should anyone use it?" Or rather, if they did they only got as far as "to increase their range of course, silly." They didn't ask "but did we design the content and the mechanics so that was worth anything?" Because if they did, someone would have said "actually, we can't let the players outrange the critters because that would be cheating, so we're going to make sure slotting for range is always mostly worthless."
Even if my job at the company was just answering the phones, over my dead body would a design team implement an MMO with that degree of stupid.
You'd think the lesson of making sure you think carefully about how your game works, and what everything is there for, and whether its a good idea to make capabilities and then let the designers ignore them and the players trivially exploit them would be an easy lesson to learn, and then put into practice. To that, I have just one thing to say: gigabolt -> gigabolt -> gigabolt -> gigabolt -> gigabolt.
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I don't know if that discussion actually took place, of course, but it's worth noting that Centriole Exposures (which aren't worth "money" ingame) are used widely in PvP where range IS king, with Boost Range used commonly and a few Centrioles in Blaster attacks so they can leverage their damage and range bonuses to better effect. In fact, I think some of the PvP IOs even add range for that reason, though it's beneficial to support and other classes too.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
This game's original designers added something called a "range enhancement" and never once, it seems, actually asked themselves "why should anyone use it?" Or rather, if they did they only got as far as "to increase their range of course, silly." They didn't ask "but did we design the content and the mechanics so that was worth anything?" Because if they did, someone would have said "actually, we can't let the players outrange the critters because that would be cheating, so we're going to make sure slotting for range is always mostly worthless."
Even if my job at the company was just answering the phones, over my dead body would a design team implement an MMO with that degree of stupid. |
There were a lot of oddball enhancements in the day. I remember there being endurance "add" and "minus" ones, for powers that drained and added to endurance.
Actually, that would bring me to the number one thing I'd change for this game and that's having a mouseover for enhancers that told you what the heck they enhanced. It's easy enough "Red = Damage, Green = healing, Yellow = Accuracy" but when you need to go for a ToHit and it's "Dr. Quantum's Nanooptic Pattern" and I have to click one after the other...it's needlessly obtuse.
I'd also make stuff like Praticed Brawler and so on inherent, because I've seen far too many players skip these because they weren't shields or attacks, to their detriment as they advance in the game.
Would have to think a lot more about other changes but off the top of my head:
-Universal naming of Single Origins
-Make status protection toggles/clickys for melee auto selections.
-Make epic powers redside available at 41, instead of having to grind through patron arcs. Do the arc for the badge.
-At level 24, have a contact pop-up that leads you to Respecetriel or Jane Hallaway, explaining Respecs. Dump the missions that lead you to PvP zone contacts completely and replace them with this.
-Nuke from orbit any escort mission in Oranbega or any rescue mission with more than three or four hostages. If those are in Oranbega too, flog the mission designer.
-Clean out IOs. We don't REALLY need three different uncommon Immob sets do we? And how about making them by "fives" instead of every level?
-Pop-up for capes and aura missions once you hit the levels.
-GLobal channels explained ingame.
-Team finding tools explained ingame.
That's it off the top of my head...
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Arcana, you really should check out the defence thread here in general discussions. It seems to cover a lot of these concepts/
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This is kind of part of where we disagree, and this is my shortcomings coming to the forefront. Ideally, I want a game where anything I pick works, and I will keep saying as much. In practice, I quickly grow to despise games I don't understand.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Interesting to note that in a system like this, it is easy to know what a power will do *incrementally* but harder to know what a group of powers will do in sum. Three five percent defense powers stacked together in CoH is fifteen percent defense. Three five point defense powers stacked together in the system above is an effective 13.55 point defense cumulative. Its not designed to make it easy for people to calculate final totals. Its designed to make it easier for players to make incremental decisions. Is this power worth taking now? Should I take that power instead. If I don't take this power now, what happens if I take it later. That's actually not entirely unintentional.
Which would you rather have: a power that absorbs 30% of all incoming damage, or a power that *reflects* 15% back at the attacker? Which would you rather have: a power that deals 100 points of damage to a single target, or one that only deals 50 but will increase chances of the next attack doing double damage by 15%? If your accuracy dropped by 10% for every 20 feet away the target was, is it better to enhance accuracy or damage? If an attack modification increased *both* damage *and* endurance costs proportionately, is it still as valuable to boost damage? If every critter had attacks with different ranges, would it be advantageous to attempt to boost your range? I can ensure the math is complex enough that the min/maxers can't help you. And when I eliminate the ability for the min/maxers to dictate what is the "best" and "worst" build, I free players to decide purely on the basis of preference, at least to a very large extent. If you take no attacks at all, you're still gimp. But if I build for range and you build for speed, I won't be the idiot and you won't be the genius: both would work, because the game would be designed to ensure that both work. Just differently. |
I remember a friend of mine playing WoW and saying he was missing too much. He asked me if I could somehow help him out, and my first question to him was "Well, what's your current accuracy?" He didn't know. I asked him what they measured accuracy in. "Attack Rating." Yes, but what percent chance to hit does your attack rating equal? "He didn't know." Funny thing is, after trawling their equivalent to ParagonWiki for close to an hour, I STILL didn't know. We ended the day not even knowing if he was actually missing stuff a lot or if he was imagining it or if he somehow ended up fighting things that were difficult to hit. My friend isn't very savvy and observant of numbers, so he hadn't kept track of the circumstances, and I'm not very familiar with the game, so I didn't know the first thing.
In the end, my friend discontinued his subscription. And while that may sound contrived, that WAS one of the reasons he gave me when I asked him. "They patched the game and ruined my character and I couldn't fix him." He'll be back, I know him well enough, but that just goes to show you what an inherently unknowable game that nevertheless asks you to make decisions could lead a player to - very basic discontent and frustration.
I've played a great many RPGs where the min/max game was so complex I ended up throwing my hands in the air and looking for a better game. Do I want a sword which does 50 damage, is fast, does fear, poison and gives me some extra heath, or should I take the hammer which deals 100 points, is slow, does paralyse, steals slife and is extra strong against undead? I don't know. I cannot know. The sheer amount of knowledge and work I need to know is not acceptable. So I end up having to make a choice between between two things I cannot comprehend. This hurts my brain, I choose at random and end up having no idea what's good and what's bad. And given my luck and odd preferences, I invariably always end with the crappiest equipment because I seem to favour the least useful stats, I die a lot, the game's horrid "XP Loss" death penalty hits me faster than I can level up and I end up hating the game for the rest of my life.
I just described the sum total of my experience in Diablo 2. I'm sure you've seen my "love" for the game from other posts. Suffice it to say I don't recall ever having anything nice to say about that... That thing.
City of Heroes is indeed mechanically simple but intuitively difficult, but intuition is easy to fix once you have the knowledge, and the knowledge needed isn't actually all that much. Once I know the mechanics and the numbers, it's fairly easy for me to make an informed decision and get back to punching things. That's really what it comes down to for me. I HATE character-building in every RPG I've ever played. Every time anything comes down to numbers, I hate it. RPGs shouldn't just not be about spreadsheets. I don't want them to be about numbers at all. I don't want them to be about optimization, maximization and statistic. If they are, then I just want them to be simple and gamable so I can find the "right" answer very simply and game the game very easily and in so doing sidestep the build-making process.
I vastly prefer RPG style games that don't deal with stats and numbers but in monolithic specific abilities. Either you can break a lock or you can't. Either you can climb walls or you can't. Large decisions with immediately obvious consequences. Not "5 more points of this." Just "you can now do this." I know games like Soul Reaver aren't RPGs, but I've always wanted to see an RPG drawn along those lines. You can take the ability to fly, climb, swim, phase through grates, shoot and so forth, and that's that. There's no min/maxing of the stats of these abilities.
This is the part where people tell me "MMORPGs aren't for you!" but City of Heroes has so far sufficed. It's knowable if one is willing to do the research, and it's not all that complex. So long as I have the numbers crunched and the build planned, I'm having fun. The times when the game REALLY drags is when I have to stop killing things and start making decisions.
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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.
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Somewhat ironically, for me personally, the place extra range would be most useful is the place they made it irrelevant altogether: melee attacks. Boosting the range on one of those could actually make a significant difference.
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And you're sure that this friend of yours isn't just you in this story, correct?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
In the end, my friend discontinued his subscription. And while that may sound contrived, that WAS one of the reasons he gave me when I asked him. "They patched the game and ruined my character and I couldn't fix him." He'll be back, I know him well enough, but that just goes to show you what an inherently unknowable game that nevertheless asks you to make decisions could lead a player to - very basic discontent and frustration.
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| Do I want a sword which does 50 damage, is fast, does fear, poison and gives me some extra heath, or should I take the hammer which deals 100 points, is slow, does paralyse, steals slife and is extra strong against undead? |
The idea isn't for there to *be* a right or wrong choice at all *if* there are enough choices around to modify any situation. When/if you learn more about what's what, then you can have a preference and pick the hammer over the sword.
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| City of Heroes is indeed mechanically simple but intuitively difficult, but intuition is easy to fix once you have the knowledge, and the knowledge needed isn't actually all that much. Once I know the mechanics and the numbers, it's fairly easy for me to make an informed decision and get back to punching things. That's really what it comes down to for me. |
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| I HATE character-building in every RPG I've ever played. Every time anything comes down to numbers, I hate it. RPGs shouldn't just not be about spreadsheets. I don't want them to be about numbers at all. I don't want them to be about optimization, maximization and statistic. If they are, then I just want them to be simple and gamable so I can find the "right" answer very simply and game the game very easily and in so doing sidestep the build-making process. |
I think you're just taking things too seriously. When you first pick up an RPG, you're suppose to make a character you simply like and have fun with it. For instance, new game has a scythe so I'll probably gravitate to making a character with that weapon regardless if it's a spell-cast weapon or a melee weapon or usable by both. Then I'll just make a character I 'want'. So he'll be a shape shifting scythe user with some necromantic spells or something. Later, after I learn more about the game is when/if I optimize. If I'm having fun, I might just restart the character and do it 'right', in a sense. Or I may find something even more fun than a scythe.
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| I vastly prefer RPG style games that don't deal with stats and numbers but in monolithic specific abilities. Either you can break a lock or you can't. Either you can climb walls or you can't. Large decisions with immediately obvious consequences. Not "5 more points of this." Just "you can now do this." I know games like Soul Reaver aren't RPGs, but I've always wanted to see an RPG drawn along those lines. You can take the ability to fly, climb, swim, phase through grates, shoot and so forth, and that's that. There's no min/maxing of the stats of these abilities. |
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Yes. He's a friend of mine whom I've tried to recruit into City of Heroes multiple times. I even shared my buddy code with him, so he technically owns pre-GR City of Heroes. But he keeps saying he prefers Fantasy and that he really enjoys the gear grind (which I don't believe, since all I've heard from him is complaining about rotten team-mates and cheap raid mechanics) and so City of Heroes isn't for him. I tried to tell him about Inventions and Incarnates recently, which I KNOW he'd like, but he doesn't seem to be into super heroes or contemporary settings. He's currently playing Aion, so I can't say his leaving WoW was much of an improvement |
Originally Posted by Leo_G
And you're sure that this friend of yours isn't just you in this story, correct?
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| Then I'm unsure what you and Arcana are arguing about. |
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| I think you're just taking things too seriously. When you first pick up an RPG, you're suppose to make a character you simply like and have fun with it. For instance, new game has a scythe so I'll probably gravitate to making a character with that weapon regardless if it's a spell-cast weapon or a melee weapon or usable by both. Then I'll just make a character I 'want'. So he'll be a shape shifting scythe user with some necromantic spells or something. Later, after I learn more about the game is when/if I optimize. If I'm having fun, I might just restart the character and do it 'right', in a sense. Or I may find something even more fun than a scythe. |
My problem with RPGs in general is that even when they're not about numbers, they're still about numbers. My character is not a collection of abilities, he's a collection of percentages, points totals and numerical effects. I can't pick "Strength" and know that my character is strong. I have to invest points into Strength and decide how many I want to pit in it and how many I should put in something else. I know the intention is to allow the player to customize his or her character, but to me it just represents a gate. I want a certain character, which I pretty much decide before I create said character, and then I have to figure out what I need to do to achieve this character. The more the system tries to hide my ability to understand it, predict it and chart a path to that character ONCE, the more of a chore levelling up feels, and it really shouldn't.
I've never, ever seen character building or planning as fun in any sense of the word. The only time it's even remotely like fun is when I'm done with it, or alternately when I've planned it out beforehand and I can just follow down the list. And even then, it's not fun so much as less of a chore. I have pretty loose standards when it comes to character mechanics. So long as the character is "decent" and does all the things I need said character to do, I don't care if he hits for 1000 or 2000 or if he "crits" once or twice every five hits. If I ever found a game where performance were treated as customization the way costume selection is, I might change my mind, but every RPG I've ever played has treated mechanical customization with hostility, like the game is constantly trying to screw me over and waiting for me to make the wrong pick.
In a lot of ways, this is great for people who play the game with a self-avatar and shoot for being as strong as they can get away with. I tend to build my characters like the actors in a play, and I have pretty strong limitations on who should be how strong compared to who else. Right now, this is not enforceable since even my strongest characters are at most slightly above average, and I REALLY don't want to go lower than that.
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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.
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These are fine suggestions for patching City of Heroes, but not necessarily good suggestions for City of Heroes II.
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Originally Posted by Neuronia
Would have to think a lot more about other changes but off the top of my head:
-Universal naming of Single Origins -Make status protection toggles/clickys for melee auto selections. -Make epic powers redside available at 41, instead of having to grind through patron arcs. Do the arc for the badge. -At level 24, have a contact pop-up that leads you to Respecetriel or Jane Hallaway, explaining Respecs. Dump the missions that lead you to PvP zone contacts completely and replace them with this. -Nuke from orbit any escort mission in Oranbega or any rescue mission with more than three or four hostages. If those are in Oranbega too, flog the mission designer. -Clean out IOs. We don't REALLY need three different uncommon Immob sets do we? And how about making them by "fives" instead of every level? -Pop-up for capes and aura missions once you hit the levels. That's it off the top of my head... |
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But you have to consider what other powers a character has when considering balance. Resilience on a Regeneration scrapper is something you can take or leave. Resilience on an Invulnerability Tanker? If I had that, I could consider skipping Tough (unless it was a very strict concept build, I'd probably still want Weave).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I feel that the basic notion is as you describe it. If it costs more, it should do more. What you're suggesting strikes me as Bitter Freeze Ray's balance. It does little damage, it costs a lot of endurance and it's very slow to come out. I'm really not interested what kind of synergy it has with its set at this point, it's just a bad, bad power. This is how toggles will be viewed. And I can guarantee you without without a shadow of a doubt that you WILL get the obvious question - "so if a toggle costs more and does less, why should I take it?" That's not a good question to ask about game balance, in my opinion.
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Rage is awesome for a Super Strength tanker, but would you call it a good power for a Master Mind?
In isolation, no power is good or bad.
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You're speaking from the context of the City of Heroes character building system, which is not a very open-ended one. You get two powersets and a host of moderately-useful pools to choose from. Once you have a pack of powers and you're more or less expected to take them all, it makes no difference what any of the powers do and what any of the powers cost, because the utility and cost is that of the package as a whole.|
Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
But you have to consider what other powers a character has when considering balance. Resilience on a Regeneration scrapper is something you can take or leave. Resilience on an Invulnerability Tanker? If I had that, I could consider skipping Tough (unless it was a very strict concept build, I'd probably still want Weave).
Rage is awesome for a Super Strength tanker, but would you call it a good power for a Master Mind? In isolation, no power is good or bad. |
When this becomes meaningful is when you start trying to develop a more open system where powers ARE judged against each other, rather than sets judged against sets. Most RPGs don't give you the opportunity to even TAKE all of your skills, let alone take and upgrade them, while City of Heroes does. You have 18 powerset powers and 24 power picks total, so you very much CAN take all of "your powers" and still take two powers for travel and even then still take all of "your other powers" from the Epic which matches your set combo.
However, even in City of Heroes, I don't want to ignore power-to-power balance, because I still ask these questions: If my passives give me most of my resistances, why would I bother with my toggles at all? And even if I bother with my toggles, I'm still going to feel like a fool for draining so much endurance and hurting my offence for what amounts to bupkis in the long run. I dislike splitting powers into "good" and "bad" with the only reason existing to take the bad powers being that they stack with the good.
Again: Bitter Freeze Ray. This has got to be one of the DUMBEST powers in the entire game, yet every time I bring up its horrible balance, people tell me "Well, it stacks with Freeze Ray, so it's good!" So? It's still a crappy power on absolutely every front. I feel like a slobbering idiot every time I use that, and I feel even worse when I remember that I took and slotted that abomination. I want a power to be good worth taking ON ITS OWN before it even factors into your build. That's what it comes down to.
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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.
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Even in a more open system, you need to balance a power around what powers a player already has.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You're speaking from the context of the City of Heroes character building system, which is not a very open-ended one. You get two powersets and a host of moderately-useful pools to choose from. Once you have a pack of powers and you're more or less expected to take them all, it makes no difference what any of the powers do and what any of the powers cost, because the utility and cost is that of the package as a whole.
When this becomes meaningful is when you start trying to develop a more open system where powers ARE judged against each other, rather than sets judged against sets. |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
However, even in City of Heroes, I don't want to ignore power-to-power balance, because I still ask these questions: If my passives give me most of my resistances, why would I bother with my toggles at all? And even if I bother with my toggles, I'm still going to feel like a fool for draining so much endurance and hurting my offence for what amounts to bupkis in the long run. I dislike splitting powers into "good" and "bad" with the only reason existing to take the bad powers being that they stack with the good.
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I don't agree that there are good and bad powers. I will agree that some powers are more effective than others, that some powers are only rarely useful. But unless a power is actually counter-productive in every instance of it's use, I couldn't say that it's a bad power.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Bitter Freeze Ray. This has got to be one of the DUMBEST powers in the entire game, yet every time I bring up its horrible balance, people tell me "Well, it stacks with Freeze Ray, so it's good!" So? It's still a crappy power on absolutely every front. I feel like a slobbering idiot every time I use that, and I feel even worse when I remember that I took and slotted that abomination. I want a power to be good worth taking ON ITS OWN before it even factors into your build. That's what it comes down to.
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That could just be a difference in opinion in set design. I have no problem with powers people want to skip. I think that Armour sets should have three or four core powers that are really hard to tank without and everything else in the set would be optional.
I think it's okay if you decide that you don't want Bitter Freeze Ray; skip it. If someone else wants it because they're happy to use it, I don't see a problem. As long as the power is useful and the power set it's in is not under performing, everything's good.
Now, if Ice Blast was not soloing at roughly the same rate as other sets, then you'd look at the set, see what powers people were skipping, and see what could be done to improve them, if that would help the set.
But there is no Power vs. Power comparison without knowing what other powers a character has.
What's a better power? Tough Hide or Phalanx Fighting? In order to know which one is better, you need to know how much Defense the person has already and if it's positional or typed, how much DDR the person has, etc.
Invincibility or Phalanx Fighting? That's an easier choice. How much defense does the person have already, and is it positional or typed?
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That's a sure-fire way to make a horrifyingly unbalanced mess of a system. Open systems need to compare possible power combinations versus possible power combinations. Otherwise you get unforseen synergies that create massively UP and OP combinations. Even CoH, with the restriction of power sets and ATs, sees a lot of this.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
When this becomes meaningful is when you start trying to develop a more open system where powers ARE judged against each other, rather than sets judged against sets.
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I disagree on a fundamental level, in that I disagree with the notion of "skippable" power. There should never be a power in a powerset that a person can look at and go "That's worthless!" That's not to say that every person should want to take ever power, merely that every person should have to THINK before deciding if he wants a power, and eventually make that decision based on preference, not obvious mechanical inferiority.|
Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
I think it's okay if you decide that you don't want Bitter Freeze Ray; skip it. If someone else wants it because they're happy to use it, I don't see a problem. As long as the power is useful and the power set it's in is not under performing, everything's good.
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I very much disagree that as long as a set works and a power isn't broken-bad in it, then that power is fine. It isn't. No set should be allowed to be competitive with other sets while only taking half of its powers. This makes it a clearly SUPERIOR set because it can have the same amount of performance while allowing you to take many OTHER powers from elsewhere and boost its performance above the norm. Furthermore, no power should ever be so bad that taking it is pointless (ye olde Temperature Protection) just because the set it's in is otherwise competent even without it. This is bad balance.
Everything we are offered to take should be worth taking in and of itself. Not in a "greater than the sum of its parts" set. Not within a set that's good anyway even without it. The power should be good in isolation. Not necessarily AS good as comparable powers in other sets, but good nonetheless. Any power I'm offered to take should make me WANT to take it, and a great many right now don't do that.
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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.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I disagree on a fundamental level, in that I disagree with the notion of "skippable" power. There should never be a power in a powerset that a person can look at and go "That's worthless!" That's not to say that every person should want to take ever power, merely that every person should have to THINK before deciding if he wants a power, and eventually make that decision based on preference, not obvious mechanical inferiority.
I very much disagree that as long as a set works and a power isn't broken-bad in it, then that power is fine. It isn't. No set should be allowed to be competitive with other sets while only taking half of its powers. This makes it a clearly SUPERIOR set because it can have the same amount of performance while allowing you to take many OTHER powers from elsewhere and boost its performance above the norm. Furthermore, no power should ever be so bad that taking it is pointless (ye olde Temperature Protection) just because the set it's in is otherwise competent even without it. This is bad balance. Everything we are offered to take should be worth taking in and of itself. Not in a "greater than the sum of its parts" set. Not within a set that's good anyway even without it. The power should be good in isolation. Not necessarily AS good as comparable powers in other sets, but good nonetheless. Any power I'm offered to take should make me WANT to take it, and a great many right now don't do that. |
This is all easy enough to say. In fact I think everyone who hasn't actually written a game goes into it with the assumption that power balance must be obvious, and must be detectable from the beginning. I'm not a "real" game developer in the sense that I don't make my living doing primarily that (though I do write some small Flash and Silverlight games and worked for a little while on a MUD or two). The unfortunate reality is that real life programing is nothing like commenting on the boards.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but here is the biggest one: powers are not powerful of themselves. They are only powerful in the context of the game that builds up around them. You can build two powers almost exactly the same, but there are still things about them that won't flesh out like you expected. This is a 100%, absolute, rock solid guarantee: you will have powers in your game that end up better than others.
You might say "well I'll just fix the powers that underperform" but even that is a lot (lot, lot, lot) more complicated than most people think about, because a spell that seems to be total crap in one setting can end up outrageously overpowered as characters switch gears as the game progresses. I suspect many gamers think the developers of the world are phenomenally lazy, because they never seem to get balance right. But there is a good reason that no RPG in history has ever been totally balanced, and that's because game balance is not only hard to achieve, the target you are aiming for is constantly moving if your game continues to introduce new systems or content.
Two more things:
1. Respecing would be easier. Way easier. It would be as easy to create a build in the game as it is in Mid's Hero Designer (or is it Mids'?). I'd make it so you could choose what would go in the power, and when that enhancement is made it is automatically placed in that slot. Respecing would not be level by level, but would start at the end result, and let you add slots and powers as you go (with logic protocols or whatever that stopped it from letting you place slots that would be impossible (such as 6-slotting your level 49 power.)
2. Arcanaville, I respect you and the many things you have done for our game. But I disagree with quantitative versus qualitative building. I prefer quantitative because I want to know what is best. I believe it is instinctual human nature to want to be the best, and having a system that is unintuitive to min-maxing is simply abhorrent to me. While I'm not trying to speak for everyone, I will say their are others like me, who will want to find out whether it is better to take the power that absorbs 30% or reflects 15%. Making it harder on people like me doesn't necessarily increase the enjoyment from playing the game. For instance, I HATE WoWs mechanics. The may not be the best example for the type of game that you are describing, but I believe they fit my case well (and yes, those both can happen.) As previous posters mention, even accuracy is unintuitive and hard to understand.
I cannot tell from the numbers if a WoW character is good or bad. That upsets me, because I don't understand how to make a character better. To continue using WoW, I don't know whether I can survive a raid boss, or if the many types of "endurance" powers will keep the blue bar full, or whether my character does enough damage for high-end raiding.
Making building unintuitive does not make min-maxing go away, but it does add frustration to those who want to maximize their abilities, or even know whether a choice is an improvement or not.
TW/Elec Optimization
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This is one thing I really hate about games. The game asks me to make a choice. I don't know what to pick, so I pick one at random. Did I make the right choice? I don't know. What did my decision change? I can't tell. Is my character stronger now, and in what way? I have no idea. THE ONLY way to proceed in such a situation, if you even care about building a character at all, is to do your homework and find out what effect your choices are having.|
Originally Posted by Combat
I cannot tell from the numbers if a WoW character is good or bad. That upsets me, because I don't understand how to make a character better. To continue using WoW, I don't know whether I can survive a raid boss, or if the many types of "endurance" powers will keep the blue bar full, or whether my character does enough damage for high-end raiding.
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That's not to say I want a min-maxable system. On the contrary, I want a very simple system that leaves little room for that. I want a system that has no ambiguous choices. If I have to make a choice between two options, then I want the result to be obvious as soon as I make it. If I have to pick between Murrumbidgee and Homunculus, then I want to see what these do even if I don't understand the terminology. Say I pick Murrumbidgee and the game tells me "You can now summon forth the powers of a large river and blast enemies with it!" and if I chose Homunculus, the game tells me "You can create an inanimate golem to fight by your side." I don't need to know the numbers to SEE the effect my choices have.
Granted, this will make the creation of a fine-grained system where one character has 5% more health but 10% less attack with the same skillset, but that's a system I will not miss. Less calculating, more clear choices with clear consequences.
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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.
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We simply have different goals on the subject. You want to design a powers system that makes people think, a desire I commend you with. I, on the other hand, prefer a powers system that does not make me think, or at the very most makes me think once until I figure it out and thereafter allows me to forego the thinking and planning stages and just pick things based on what's coolest, rather than what's best.
In fact, my ideal game system would be one which allowed me to have a viable character of the theme and abilities that I wanted without necessarily knowing HOW one goes about making this. The meta-game in any game is uninteresting to me, at best a necessary evil, at worst a show-stopper. That's why I was one of the people (foolishly) arguing against real numbers back in the day - because I was once convinced that a game could be made where I wouldn't have to care about them.
My approach to building a character these days is fairly simple - take all primary and secondary powers, plus two pool powers for travel. The remaining four powers tend to be "whatever fits best." In this regard, I put my faith in set balance, in that I will pick the powers offered to me and trust the game to not screw me over. And for the most part, it doesn't. I've narrowed my AT preference to just the four ATs I can expect to run to my specifications without much fine-tuning, and I basically go without much forward planning. It's not that I can't plan or calculate, it's that I really, really don't want to have to.
Right now, the toggles are 13.875% defense, and the passives 5.625% defense. Unslotted, they are 19.5% defense total.
Right now, you can have just the passives, just the toggles, or both. Slotted, the passive is about 8.8% defense, just the toggle is about 21.6% defense, and the total is 30.4% defense.
The logical progression is to take the toggle first, then the passive. So your defense starts at 21.6%, and rises to 30.4%. Damage mitigation starts at 43.2% and rises to 60.8%. Another way of looking at it is that damage admittance (the damage that leaks through your defenses) starts at 56.8% and drops to 39.2%. Incoming damage drops to 69% of the original value. That's pretty good, and why its worth taking the passive (ignoring its resistances).
Notice, though, that the same thing would be true if the toggles and passives were reversed. If the numbers were switched, it would be the passives that gave the initial 43.2% mitigation and the toggle that was increasing the total to 60.8% mitigation. It would be the toggle that was, in effect, reducing incoming damage by about a third. That's attractive regardless of the superficial numbers on paper.
I would never reproduce CoH's broken stacking mechanics per se, but there are better ways to introduce synergy in a way where the passives would still be very strong, and the toggles would be weaker *on their own* but the combination would be stronger than the sum of their parts.
My very first character in this game was a Kat/SR Scrapper. I was determined to slot as much defence into his powers as I could, ending up slotting his toggles for 1 End/5 Def. The problem is that I simply ran out of slots at one point. I was determined to slot his passives with 6 Def, but when I actually ran the numbers and saw what kind of defences these passives were actually adding, I decided it wasn't worth the slots and left them all at just 3 Def, saving 9 slots to use elsewhere.
Now consider the reverse. If my toggles were weak and my passive strong, then I would have taken the passives first, and when crunch time came, probably not taken the toggles at all. They cost too many power picks, they cost too many slots, they cost too much endurance, and for what? Crappy percentages. No, thank you.
I feel that the basic notion is as you describe it. If it costs more, it should do more. What you're suggesting strikes me as Bitter Freeze Ray's balance. It does little damage, it costs a lot of endurance and it's very slow to come out. I'm really not interested what kind of synergy it has with its set at this point, it's just a bad, bad power. This is how toggles will be viewed. And I can guarantee you without without a shadow of a doubt that you WILL get the obvious question - "so if a toggle costs more and does less, why should I take it?" That's not a good question to ask about game balance, in my opinion.