I need to apologise

I personally think this -- the potential to miss -- should be something players should just have to deal with in a non-twitch game. It'd be nice to find a way to minimize the potential frustration, but the genre needs dodgy characters, and if you ALWAYS take damage, it doesn't feel particularly dodgy.

I ended up taking invulnerability with the block replacer enhancement that automatically triggers in melee to approximate a character who wasn't getting hit. I find it easier to ignore tiny pings of 1 damage with occasional higher bursts than constant half damage onslaughts.

Of course, that might just be me, but I just really prefer designing characters that survive more from getting hit less. I don't aim for unhittable, but I want to get hit for the same damage less often. Not hit just as often for less damage. It's a key conceptual difference for me, and I'll even take substandard performance in general to achieve it.

I think the block concept was a decent one, and block replacement was a fascinating mechanic. I personally think if they had some more depth to character builds -- a single passive? Really? This and a 'stance' is what defines the overall behavior of most characters outside of specific attack powers? -- more could have been usefully done with that.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.

That's actually how I see it, as well. I know quite a few people were in outright war with Jack Emmert to keep him from "fixing" the mistakes that made the game so fun, unique and cool. Remember that whole "1 hero = 3 white minions?" Yeah, that's out the window now, and GOOD RIDDANCE, but that's just one example of Cryptic believing they were developing one kind of game when they had inadvertently designed something completely different that players were really enjoying, broken designs and all. When you look at City of Heroes, it looks like an innovative, bold, brave game that seeks to stand out from the pack.

When you actually look at the original design INTENTION behind it, however, it's an attempt to create a paint-by-numbers MMO that Cryptic simply dropped on its head and it developed into something wholly unexpected. It took the sale of the franchise to NCsoft and Matt Miller's promise to "give the players what they want" before the people in charge actually accepted that we really did like the game we were playing and didn't require it being "fixed" to be more like other MMOs in order for us to enjoy it. City of Heroes is the result of very poor forward planning leading to a game system which plays out very differently than what was intended and thus very differently than practically any other MMO I'm aware of. That, I feel is its primary strength - it's a game of its own possessed of bold new ideas (intentional or not) in an MMO world of pallet swap game clones.

---

As far as AoE goes, I still maintain my opinion from that other thread - a system of distributing attack damage across all affected foes so that the more people you hit, the less damage you do would be a nice balancing factor, especially if it came with the change to make all single-target attacks have AoE potential. That's neither here nor there, though.

And also because a lot of them suck hard, were made on a shoestring budget and follow the same trite old MMO formula. I'm not saying the one you're speaking of is like this (I haven't seen it, but will), but I played a game called Divine Souls which sold itself as being an action MMO. Thing is, it was a Korean grindfest MMO that sucked your soul for playing it, only it had twitch-based combat in it. A lot of "free" to play games are like this - they're terrible whether you pay for them or not.

Still, there are a few of these that aren't quite as bad, Spiral Knights being one that I'm aware of. What I like more than anything, though, is that whether City of Heroes is actually "free" to play or not, there's still a great game behind the system, and getting better all the time. At one point I was convinced the team was content to squeeze the maximal amount of money from us for the least amount of investment, but I was wrong and for this I apologise. Right now, it feels like City of Heroes is only getting better, and I honestly don't see the need for other games for the foreseeable future, unless that Darksiders sequel comes out sooner than expected.

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 okay with Incarnates. It gives my 50s more to do, but I don't feel like I HAVE to do it. I can run a trial if I see one forming when I'm in the mood for it, or I can do something else instead. I was always pretty ambivalent about the whole thing, and did not understand the people who had to have everything the system offered RIGHT NOW.

I'll eventually get my main completely Incarnated out, but since I don't plan on going anywhere, I'm in no rush to do it.

I'm REALLY enjoying:

-Time Manipulation. Paired with Fire Blast on a defender it's pretty awesome. I also have an Illusion/Time controller (might be a future GM soloer in the making there)
-Katana and Broadsword on brutes. remade my BS/DA scrapper as a brute on the VIP server, and rolled up a Katana/Electric brute as well.
-New character creator. I like the way the new one is laid out, it's a little more intuitive. I also like that you can preview pieces you don't have yet.
-For the most part I like the Paragon Points system (even as slow as the market is). I can get things like JUST the Barbarian sword, or JUST the minotaur head, without having to buy a whole booster pack to get them. There are so many costume pieces that I have never once used sitting in my creator, that I only have because I wanted a few pieces out of the booster pack. I didn't have any trouble navigating the market, it felt pretty intuitive to me. Maybe that's a case of my brain working differently than some people's, because lack of intuitiveness is one of the complaints about it I've seen.

Something I would still like to see (but probably won't): I like that they are proliferating more powersets, but I still would like each AT to have ONE set that is exclusive to it. As of right now, the only exclusive sets left are Ninjitsu, Ice Melee, and Illusion. And I'm betting Ninjitsu and Ice Melee will be in the next round of proliferation at least. But that's a minor gripe. I'm pretty sure this one is long past being a possibility.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: I LOVE the Regen buffs. Longbow don't completely kill my regen anymore.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

That's an interesting idea.

I don't think it should apply to ALL single target attacks though. It's pretty hard to hit more than one person at a time with a power like Cobra Strike or Crane Kick.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Here's the thing: I won't get any one single character "Incarnated out." Ever. The system itself isn't fun to me. It's about the worst thing I can do with my time that still passes for entertainment. I don't care about "rewards," as I don't have a habit of earning something and then marvelling at it and calling it my precious. I play games where reward is only part of the fun and gameplay itself is the main driving force. Rewards are fun, but if earning them isn't fun, I'll never have them. And earning Incarnate rewards is pretty much the polar opposite of fun in my eyes.

But again - the most direct solution is to just stop doing what I don't like doing, and I have chosen to do just that. During the Ustream marathon, I asked Posi and Zwill a question: "I21 has a good balance of Incanrate and non-incarnate content. Can we expect this to keep?" In a nutshell: "Yes." Believe it or not, that does make a difference to me, hearing it straight from the fedora-wearing the source. Incarnates are a system I cannot and will not enjoy until and unless that mythical solo option materialises. Until such a thing happens, I'll simply focus on my newer characters and treat my 50s as I always have - as complete. I may pursue Alpha stuff with them if I have missions left to run, but a Common or Uncommon of that type is as far as I go.

Not necessarily. The way Cobra Strike is delivered, it could easily be depicted as hitting foes in a line behind you target, just visually speaking. My goal, though, is more to ape the broader concept of "Like God of War, But..." games, such as Devil May Cry, Darksiders and Legacy of Kain: Defiance. In these games, all of your attacks, basic and otherwise, hit everything along their arc of swing or along their line of thrust. If you swing a sword from left to right, you clip all enemies it passes by. If you punch straight ahead, you hit your target, the two people next to him and the person behind him. Sideways of that, I'd also like to ape L4D, where if you shoot at someone, you tend to shoot through whoever is in front of that someone and whoever is behind him, too, making shooting high-powered rifles into crowds of virtual undead some of the most inexplicable fun I've had in my gaming history.

My point, though, is to eliminate the discrepancy between single-target and AoE by allowing everyone access to AoE all the time and balancing around that. As the sole user of single-target attacks on a large team fighting twenty enemies at a time, it's easy to see how single-target damage falls by the wayside. Typically, an AoE attack is at least half as powerful as a single-target attack, a third to a fourth as endurance efficient and not all that rarely half or more as DPS efficient, to say nothing of DPA. It doesn't take many more than three enemies in the same fight to have AoE attacks become vastly more practical than single-target attacks, and this is something that I sense with my gut long before I comprehend that a difference in statistics actually exists. I just "notice" that I "want" to use my AoEs more and from there try to deduce why that is.

Using Cobra Strike when it was just a stun in a melee of 20 people with seven other team-mates blasting AoEs feels like I brought a knife to a gunfight and everyone's standing around laughing at me. It makes no difference, the enemies I stun die by the time the stun takes effect just from collateral damage and I'm just so much better off simply spamming even as weak an AoE as Dragon's Tail.

So I say make all attacks AoE and have their damage spread across all targets affected. Then, allow us to "concentrate" said powers so that we could focus on a priority target in a crowd without losing damage potential via dispersal, and you have a legitimate strategic decision to make - do I use my powers as AoE or do I focus on what's most dangerous? Right now, this decision doesn't exist - use AoE, obviously!

It's a pie-in-the-sky ludicrous idea that won't ever happen in this game or, likely, in any other MMO and/or RPG, but I'm adding it to the pile of impossible changes I'd like to see nevertheless.

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.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

I know. I thought about it

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.

Interesting idea. With Dual Pistol's toggle changing damage type, that might be a way something like that could be implemented. However, I can see them creating a special AT (or powerset) to test out a mechanic like that first.

Actually thinking about it, such a mechanic might be useful to Stalkers.

Eh, it's just an abstract thought on game design more than anything else. The chance of something like this being instituted in City of Heroes absolutely nil. It's like discovering penicillin by accident. I'm well aware that no sane developer would gut open a functioning game to do something like this... OK, I know of one, but I don't want to hit City of Heroes with an NGE.

However, if a future action RPG were ever made that needed to balance area attacks, this seems like a good point to at least start from. Balancing self-replicating AoE damage across a wide target cap just isn't practical because its scale of damage varies too wildly, so just self-limiting its damage the more targets it hits is a good way to scale it. It brings up Claws' problem of wanting to concentrate on a single enemy, which is where allowing players to "swap stance" and do that comes in.

And I don't think this needs to be limited to just attacks, either. AoE controls vs. single-target controls? Why not. You hit 26 people, they get held for a short time. You hit only a single person, he gets held for a lot. Or heals, why not? If you want to heal a whole raid, you'll be healing them for a little. If you want to heal just a single person, you heal them a lot.

I can actually envision letting players hard-capping their own powers and picking their own stances. You could have one stance that's all AoE and one that's all single-target, one that has half your attacks single-target half capped at five and one capped at 10 and so forth. It could bring a lot more situational awareness on the most basic level - number of enemies present - without actually complicating the build system all that much.

Well, so it seems from the outside looking in, anyway. I'm sure Arcana has a boot with my name on it as we speak, but that would be interesting to hear, as well.

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.

You can't retrofit this into CoH, but my current best idea for balancing AoE in a CoH-like game is to make all or nearly all attacks single target, and have the players basically pay to make them AoE through enhancements.

Of course, to really explain that I would have to explain my idea for two-dimensional enhancement slotting.

I was kind of hoping to just give everyone both single-target damage AND AoE and instead rely on the game's varying situations to provide strategic decisions, but this works too, I suppose. It's less... "Indulgent" than I'd like, though.

Calling it two-dimensional enhancement slotting gives me a pretty good idea of what you mean, actually. Could be a cool idea, but this is probably not the right way to discuss specifics. I've derailed my own thread more than enough already

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 problem is that this game's attacks are directly balanced around recharge, and implicitly balanced around cast time. But if every attack was an AoE (or had an AoE analog you could take) recharge balancing becomes ineffective: it doesn't matter if AoEs have long recharge if you have a lot of them.

That then places all the burden of balancing onto cast times, which would force AoEs to have potentially very high and very un-entertaining cast times.

What we want are for players to be able to quickly and easily make full single target attack chains but make it very difficult to have full or nearly full AoE attack chains. We do not want to replicate the Gigabolt** problem here.



That Other Game uses a momentum-like mechanic to balance stronger powers, rather like domination: attacking increases the meter, and when the meter is high enough you can use your higher tier powers. Using higher tier powers burns this momentum bar forcing you to earn more of it by using lighter attacks. So what do you think happens when you make a powerful AoE attack which requires momentum but *which adds to your momentum bar* when it hits a target?

I don't recall calling you anything other than Foo

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.