Free-form power selection suggestion

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

1. Exactly where does it say that anything the devs has said or done has an expiration date? For example anything posted by the devs over 3 months old isn't valid anymore.

2. I didn't make a statement without any proof. That the devs tested free-form power sets and discarded them is a fact.

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

Who is asking them to?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I understand what you're saying completely. You're saying even though HERO is a well balanced system, its not well balanced enough for MMOs. I'm telling you HERO is not a well-balanced system period. And its years of success have nothing to do with it being a well-balanced system in spite of many of its supporters making that claim. This isn't just true relative to the requirements of MMOs, this is true within the scope of PnP games: its success has never been reliant on its numerical balance, of which it doesn't have much.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

To take this point in a serious direction, the difference between MMOs and PnP games isn't just the question of GM control. Its also that MMOs are shared consensus realities with a single set of rules while PnP games are really frameworks that thousands of small groups of players customize to some extent to generate a unique experience. Its unclear if the two are compatible with any level of technology, because there may be irreconcilable differences in culture. In PnP games, there is only a loose sense of being part of a larger world that encompasses all players playing campaigns in the same system. But in MMOs, there is a sense that everyone is playing in the same world with the same rules. It may actually be improper to compare a PnP "ruleset" with an MMO one because a PnP ruleset is really the sum total of a PnP framework and all of the collective (and sometimes unspoken) house rules that make up a gaming session. Those individual PnP rulesets may be too focused on the specific needs of its target group to be generalizable to an MMO.

In other words, the very things that make PnP game frameworks successful might make them impossible to translate into MMO mechanical systems and vice versa simply due to the scale. Its more likely that with infinite technology PnP games can evolve directly into interactive custom simulations still focused on a small number of people, while MMOs evolve into more generalized simulations of large scale environments with less customized and more generalized physics.

Or to put it another way, it may be that the fundamental difference between PnP games and MMOs is not the human GM or the rules or the computer technology, its that in PnP games the players and the GM ultimately craft the experience in conjunction, whereas in an MMO because of the sheer number of players all of them submit to the will of a singular authority to dictate the experience. These are two logically incompatible experiences, driven by scale. An MMO played with PnP-like participation fragments into many small experiences rather than one consensus one. A PnP game played with MMO-like participation becomes too authoritarian within small groups. That's a difference in psychology not technology and may not be ultimately resolvable by technology.

Originally Posted by Lothic

I think we'll just have to accept that our collective definitions of "game balance" are not compatible. Yours seems to rest solely on numerical/mathematical analysis. My concept of game balance is willing to accept the human intangibles that will never be fully quantifiable. Decades worth of both playing and GMing games has shaped my experience in this direction.

Originally Posted by StratoNexus

I did not say it wasn't worth doing, I said it may not be worth doing (technically I said, "The concept of a more limited version of freeform I still think is worth exploring and discussing, even if it's not worth actually doing." How you read the "if" in that sentence could change its meaning, I guess. Consider this clarification). Ideas for expansion of the game are worth looking at more deeply, rather than dismissing with an /unsigned (not to say some ideas need a lot of discussion, some are more simple). I do not discuss it just to argue, but because I find it an interesting topic. The ability to perfectly tailor a character to my imagination would be fabulous. The variety that it could produce in game would be great. The potential pitfalls are real, which mean discussion and research are vital during any planning stage. Throwing your hands up in the air without seriously thinking about how to overcome the problems is repulsive.

One can argue both the pros and cons of an idea. I do not have to just argue the benefits of the freeform system and feel that it must be placed into the game and those who disagree are just reactionary. Nor do I just need to discuss just the negatives and say the idea could never be workable and insult those who desire change. Just because I like the current system, doesn't mean I would not like a new system. Just because a new system has real benefits, doesn't mean the drawbacks are worth those benefits.

Finally, whose time am I wasting? We are on a discussion forum about a game. Specifically we are in the Suggestion forum in a topic whose sole purpose is to discuss the idea of potential freeform character creation. So I discuss the concept of freeform character creation and advancement systems. But I am somehow wrong because I do not clearly park myself in one camp or the other and instead discuss the idea neutrally?


Indeed. And it is possible that continuing down the line of creating new powersets is the correct choice. But in the past new powersets have been slow in coming, because they take a lot of developer time (yes, I realize they were holding a lot back for this fall, but that also indicates that most forum-goers do not really have any idea what the studio is actually capable of producing, looking at what we are likely going to be getting in a few months on top of what we got the last year, I think some people underestimate their potential just a bit). It is possible that in the long run a freeform system of some kind could save developer time, freeing them to create more powers than they currently are able to. A freeform system would also allow them to create powers without feeling pressure to make sure they have enough to fill an entire powerset. the fact that they only have 3 Whip powers would not prevent dominators or blasters (if ATs were maintained) from getting access to those attacks.


Very true. This one of the reasons I would strongly lean towards freeform as an additional method of creation/advancement instead of a replacement. It is one of the reasons I keep saying I would have the goal that a freeform character and a current character would be able to exist side-by-side in the game without either feeling more or less than the other. They did not remove SOs, when IOs were added to the game, as an example.