What is the Ultimate "FREEDOM"?

I don't see why that's even relevant here, though. It's not a question of what I feel the developers will or will not sell, but rather a question of what I feel they SHOULD and SHOULD NOT sell. It's a statement of opinion from one player to another. If a developer (or, much more likely, a community rep...) reads this and goes "By golly! We shan't sell powers!" then so be it. If a developer looks at this and thinks "Well, then are you gonna' be pissed when you see the store..." then too bad for me. I'm not trying to force the development team's hand. None of us could. About the only thing I can do is state my position as firmly as possible.

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.

The so-called "integrity" or "should and should not" will be tested once Freedom goes live. The majority of the profit will be from cash shop. If sales are bad, the company may have no choice but to create the "should nots".

The company is set up to earn profits. Integrity or Loyalty is just luxury. I do feel this game treats subscribers way better than other games I've tried. It's a luxury but not a necessity in my book. I enjoy my subscription and I will continue to do so. And if they ever have the time to set up a system for "Create Your Own Set", they sure will get more money from me. I enjoy creating a powerset than actually "playing" it. Costume pieces do not do much for me. The arts of creating a powerset for certain play-style intrigues me more.

I am not really looking forward to create an over-powered set. In fact, I think unique sets should be lower in % because uniqueness costs.


I used to work at the bank and my boss kept telling us that "We are not a charity!" People complain that they should deposit/withdraw money for free because they "lend" us money but the company isn't set up "for free". It is setup to get as much profit as possible. This is why I don't feel an "entitlement" that this game should follow what's considered "Loyal". This game should follow what earns the most profit while having fun doing it. The announcements I've read so far sounds pretty "loyal" to the current subscribers.

Agreed. I don't expect anyone will listen, but if we don't speak at all then we can't complain later.

Is that too fatalistic? As I posted elsewhere recently, I survived ED, the defense fiasco and years of regen nerfing. After repeated exposure to radioactive developer decisions, fatalism is now my superpower.

Heh. I guess that was a failed attempt to reassure you that based on their past record the devs have most likely considered those shoulds and should nots already. If you were simply giving advice and you weren't actually worried about the possibility of them doing what you felt they "should not" do, well, uh... How about them Yankees?

You doubt this would be overpowered for a reason - because such a setup would be hideously gimped. Controller hit points in melee with practically anything is never a good idea, considering a lot of things can pretty much one-shot a Controller. Yes, I'm sure some people have built and can play Controllers who are constantly in melee. Some people solo multipe Archvillans, Rikti Pylons and the ITF. "Some people" are scarce exceptions to the general population of people who don't do much math and don't plan all that far ahead.

If I've made it seem like I mind a "points buy" system because of its potential to create overpowered characters, that's really not my concern. My chances of making overpower characters for myself decreases dramatically as the complexity of the system increases. On the contrary, I hate these systems because there's no safety net against gimping yourself. And, no, it's not always obvious you're going to be gimped right at the start. Sometimes you have to go through 30 levels until you realise that no matter what you do, that character ain't gonna' work.

In the spirit of what about, what about Travel Power Man, the character whose only powers are travel powers and their prerequisites. He can run fast, jump high, fly, teleport and grant these powers to others... But he cannot attack or affect enemies any any way, shape or form. Complete freedom would suggest such a character should be respected along with all the others, but such a character would be garbage in actual practice. The class system we have now, even if it doesn't force me to stick to my powersets, at least gives me a clear framework in regards to what I should very seriously consider taking. If I don't at that point, then OK, that's my own fault, but how do I even know what I'm supposed to get in a purely open system?

You may say that, well... The point of a points buy system is to explore the options and if you gimp yourself then that's just part of the experience. Except if I've ever talked about how much I HATE HATE HATE Diablo II, it's because I gimped a few characters in it, played with them horribly underpowered, died all the time and got so pissed off that I've held a grudge against that game for... How many years has it been since it came out now? Like... 8? 9? And I'm still pissed off! Allowing people to unwittingly gimp themselves because your system values freedom before playability is not a good idea in my book.

Obviously, I'm not saying some characters should never exist. Obviously, I want my Swords/Pistols combo. But what I AM saying is that I want every character I make to be good enough to not suck, even if I don't necessarily know precisely what I'm doing every step of the way. And my standard for "not suck" is pretty dang high.

If I recall correctly, they all but confirmed new Epics at some point, possibly with Freedom but I can't be sure. Granted, those will probably be things like Electric for Scrappers (as opposed to bows for Scrappers), but it's better than nothing. Now we just need to make Epics customizable.

I did actually hear something about the development team considering making new pool powers, but I doubt that'll happen any time soon. For some reason, pool powers have been almost completely unchanged since the GDN.

Because I don't say those enough all the time? Yes, it's obviously my opinion. To avoid doubling the size of my post, I'll avoid appending "in my opinion" to the beginning and end of every sentence, but do feel free to read those in there anyway. It's all opinions here anyway.

That's because the game as a whole wasn't much fun at all. The only reason it was fun with cheats is that at least I didn't have to work hard at it, but the hideous maze-like levels, the repetitive enemies and the lack of any goal whatsoever (and the fact that it made me sick to my stomach with vertigo) were a major turnoff for me even then, and it's only gotten worse since. I've never understood the appeal of "spiritual successors" like Serious Sam (oh, irony) or PainKiller, despite Yahtzee apparently liking both. In games like these, I'd pretty much cheat so I could see all weapons, see the first few levels and go back to playing something that isn't such a drag.

And before you tell me it's just a sign of the times that games didn't have plots and settings and points back then, consider this: Doom II came out in 1994. In 1995, Flight of the Amazon Queen came out, and though it didn't have a stellar plot, it had A plot. In the same year as doom came out Blackthorne, and while that game didn't have too much of a plot, it still had one. In the actual game through text boxes and "cinematics," as opposed to on the manual that no-one ever read because everyone just had the shareware copy. Hell, Commander Keen had a plot compared to this, and it didn't give me vertigo nearly as much.

My point in all of this is to say that if a game ain't "much fun" without cheats, then that's a failing of the game, not a failing of the cheats.

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.

The TaxiBots would disagree with you about respect and garbage.

The thing is, a person who creates "Travel Power Man" or "Only Pool Power Melee Man" or "Pure Healer Man" (all of whom can be built under the current system) is a person who is deliberately gaming the system to build a concept. That person is hardly ever someone who is thinking "This concept char should be able to defeat Romulus".

I think the convo is wandering a bit far afield, given that the OP never asked for "give me a menu of powers and let me choose the ones I want". If we WERE given the freedom to design a powerset, the game already provides anti-gimping tools via the "true numbers" interface. Anybody can look at a power before they choose it and move the slider to see its effects from level 1 to level 50. If they choose not to be bothered with it, that's their business. There's only so much hand-holding you can do.

If anti-gimping was truly a great evil, then the "true numbers" could be taken a step further and averaged into a combat score, such that a person would see in big red letters:

Your Combat Score is 3.5. The average Combat Score is 5.0. Are you certain that you want to commit to this power build?

I don't really care. I don't see custom powersets happening anytime soon if ever. It's a non-issue. However, if it became an issue, then I would have to say that I would hold the players responsible for their own power choices given that it IS possible to predict the combat viability of a build if combat viability is a factor in the desire for that build.

Ignoring the fact that over half the real numbers are missing, wrong or incomplete, "numbers" don't help much unless you know what to do with them, or indeed what they mean. A friend of mine who used to play WoW complained to me about missing too much and asked if I could help him figure out why. I asked him what his accuracy was, and he told me something like 750 hit rating (I may remember the number wrong). I asked what that meant, and he just shrugged his shoulders. Is that a lot? Is it too little? What does it calculate against? What "anti hit rating" do various enemies have? What enemies is he fighting and what enemies is he likely to fight?

It is possible to predict the combat viability of a build ahead of time if you're Arcanaville. I'm not Arcanaville, and I can tell you for a fact that I find it amazingly difficult to do so, and I'm using about ten different sources of out-of-game information. Arcana likes to quote the SR passives and how few people can really get any real idea of how much the scaling resistances actually do, practically speaking. I know I have only a very basic clue of how I might try to calculate that, and my idea includes differential equations.

Beyond that, I've gone out of my way to design and build a spreadsheet specifically so that I could calculate the overall cost of a powerset combo, with slotting, with Stamina and other endurance aids and with Alpha Incarnate boosts. To do this took me a full day of work with Excel. To make the spreadsheet reusable took me another day, and quite a bit of specific knowledge about the programme.

If you're telling me that you can toss some numbers in a player's face and then hold him responsible if his build sucks, then I'm glad you're not in charge of power balance. This game has historically gone to great lengths to look after its players. I would be very much against throwing away many of those safeguards, even in the name of "freedom."

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.

On the one hand, you can pick almost anything. On the other hand, once you're done iterating you're usually left with a ranged scrapper. Every CO character I made either became a ranged scrapper, or an unplayed character. All those choices eventually funneled into ranged attacks, maybe a PBAoE or two, a defensive passive, and a block.

Don't even get me started on Martial Arts / Reflexes over there. Both sets sucked at launch in City of Heroes. They outdid themselves the second time around by making both sets inexplicably worse. Unless you paid someone in China to level the thing to 30 for you, and even then that only fixed Reflexes.

One, a free-form power selection system would be loaded with warnings and it would be restricted to subscribers, veterans, or whoever purchased it -- guaranteeing that if the player doesn't know what they're doing, at least they should be aware of what they're getting into.

Second, 'freedom' should include the freedom to fail, even in character builds. Without the possibility of failure there's no thrill in success.

We're just very different people. I loved Diablo II, partially because I found that odd combinations of powers and weapons were viable and created new forms of gameplay. My crossbow necro was one of the best characters I've ever invented, anywhere. Not overpowered, but unlike anything in the 'standard' character builds.

Let me risk gimping myself. Then I will feel accomplished when I learn how not to. Giving players only fixed, pre-vetted archetypes is like giving them an 'I Win' button for the character building metagame.

Yeah. And with inherent stamina and City Traveller the need for new pools has exploded. By rights, new power pools should be the dev team's number one priority, IMHO.

I disagree. Without the fear of failure, the player is free to try whatever he likes. That's why I play video games in the first place - because I don't have to worry about screwing up.

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.

I'm certain that the world is a happier place for my being a player and not a designer.

Regardless, the only "gimp" examples you've talked about are extremes like Travel Power Man. That's an uninteresting case because it's "gimp by design". The people we'd be trying to protect would be the people who would take a bunch of powers that "look cool" but that actually had poor synergy and resulted in sub-par performance.

Unfortunately, this is where the discussion becomes uninteresting, for the reason that you're talking about implementation of something that doesn't even have a design document, let alone a plan or a set of tools for meeting the requirements of the design.

I don't disagree with anything you're saying, really. I just disagree that you're in a position to actually draw any conclusions or make any statements about what "ought" to be when you haven't got any idea what it is that you're discussing in the first place.

The words "custom powerset" or "free-form powerset" or "design-a-set" or however you want to address it, are just words. They don't imply any particular design goal beyond modularity of powers. In particular, they say nothing about the potential problems and whether they are addressable or not.

I hear you say "No way, no how. People should be protected from making bad choices by taking those choices away from them." I say, "Maybe there's a way to give fair warning so that people can make those choices in spite of the potential difficulties." I outlined one such solution already and it took me maybe ten seconds to think it up. I have to think that if the devs devoted some real time and effort to the same problem that they could come up with a much better solution for the same problem.

Which of us is right? Neither of us. Both of us. Who knows? It's a lot of smoke blowing and hand-waving until someone in power decides to act on it and define a design. Once you have a design, THEN you can go over the potential pitfalls and decide what the tradeoffs should be.

More to the point, I have yet to see very many instances in which the devs were taken by surprise and alerted to pitfalls by players calling out those pitfalls. Most of the time, the devs have already considered those things as part of the implementation or they've decided that they could live with the consequences of those pitfalls.

This is why I say it's ultimately an uninteresting discussion. It can't really lead anywhere useful other than to a suggestion post for the devs to consider.

I understand your argument - quoted in a brief synopsis above.

Except Doom / Doom II clearly WAS fun, for a large number of people.

It seems you're trying to reduce my argument - that a game can be fun both with and without 'cheats' - to "well, you're arguing games need cheats to be fun, and I feel that's untrue".

I am most emphatically not arguing that "cheats" are required to make a game fun. I'm similarly not arguing that a game isn't fun without cheats.

What I'm saying, "For many people - myself included - it is quite possible for a game to be fun, both with and without cheats. Possibly, both at the same time."

Still against "freeform power selection", though, for the reasons the always-pertinent Arcanaville cited.

Everyone is different here, but I think most players that play games at least exist somewhere in the vast middle where "failure" of some kind is possible, but not overly strictly penalized.


On the subject of protecting players against dumb mistakes, I think all forms of possible pure free-choice power systems that could possibly work for a game like this one would need training wheels. You would start with exemplars of reasonable powersets, and let players override them as they learn what the heck they are doing. The game would warn them if they were doing something dumb, but if the player turns those warnings off then they are then responsible for their own actions, just like a player that turns off the warnings in-game now become personally responsible for things like accidentally deleting valuable things. That is normally considered a reasonable compromise in any user interface situation.

Coolio Wolfus leader of Coolio�s Crusaders on Union.

Tekna Logik leader of Tekna�s Tormentors on Defiant.

Creator of: Coolio's Tech Beacon Replacements

AE arc 402506, 'The Rise and Demise or Otherwise of Tekna Logik...'.

Probably more than a little.

Oh, you've tried CO? lol I played that game when it came out and I couldn't figure out the design purpose behind the whole "Martial Arts" tree. That's one classic example of how a "create your own" powerset should not be. Martial Arts tree is full of overlapping melee powers with bad synergies. Yes, that game's melee powers suck hard. I haven't paid attention to CO for a long time. Quite frankly, I don't really care what have improved because none of my friends like that game. lol

But yeah, I brought up CO because I think that's one good example of what "not to do" if City Of is going to have its own creative sets.

I have to say I spent more time in Powerhouse than actually playing the character....


I think they can start by letting you choose existing Powersets within the same AT because at least the player already made a choice on what type of AT he/she wants to be?

Lets just say I was in the beta from the beginning, albeit anonymously (double anonymously?). Of course, I thought when I started posting a complete analysis of all the defense passives my cover would be blown, but apparently not.

I have a PM from someone thanking me for proving that game did not need an "Arcanaville." I kid you not.

I should point out, there's a lot of good ideas in that game, and a lot of lessons to learn on both sides of the ledger. Its just that for some reason Cryptic has issues with power systems, at least the data side. The actual *mechanics* are actually a significant step upward from ours in many respects. But the spreadsheet jockeys didn't do as good of a job leveraging the potential of the mechanical systems underneath.

Actually, I think studying CoH, CO, and STO is a unique opportunity. Are there any other opportunities to study three MMOs designed by essentially the same development company and launched within six years of each other, all of which are still being actively developed (albeit by a successor studio in the case of CoH)? This is the sort of thing doctorate dissertations are made to take apart.

Suggestion made. But of course, my fatalism tells me it's a waste of time.

I agree. I must be the only person enjoying that game's PvP and PvE Events (different stages and with final big boss in the end). I have tried to invite about 5 of my friends and I felt like I was forcing them to play the game. lol

And I also agree that CO has more advanced mechanics. They actually have a "leap" power that the character can leap forward. Castle mentioned that he thought about making Eagle Claw like that but the game isn't coded that way. The most you can do is "teleport" like Lightning Rod/Shield Charge.

And you mentioned that in the early stage of CoX, it was mostly ranged Scrapper and yet when CO came out (or maybe it still is), it is the same way. It's like they still haven't learned how to balance melee vs range. CO's melee set sucks so hard that it's not even funny and most of the summon powers are so junky. Attack Toy's AI is the worst I've ever seen in any game I've played. Summon pets literally get stuck and stop following you and when they are lost, they don't know how to return to you. It's like the game was still in "beta" when I bought it. I couldn't believe the # of bugs and the speed they were corrected. They sure took their time to correct things to the point that I no longer care.

Anyway, I am sure CoX can learn from CO's "freedom" mistake. :P One game that seems to be doing well after changing to F2P is Lord of Ring Online.

And you can drill a hole in your head. It's technically possible. That doesn't make it a good idea.

(Yes, I know, "that would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.")

I feel like there's a .sig quote in there somewhere. :-p