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I just want to give this joke the respect it deserves. I have made similar ones in real life, and im unsure whether my friends dont follow bsg or mining techniques..but it never gets anything.|
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
And so future supplies of natural gas were assured, the world could rest easy. (Even if the local tap water was undrinkable.)
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For me, its a semantic thing, but i HATE using the way the term "gods" has become abused and degraded in contemporary mythos. In coh we are in contact with an using the constituent power of a primal force, we are superheros that found the power cosmic, the "truth" from fullmetal alchemist(and yes, this is kinda God-ish, but its still just function and technique, not consubstantiation), the speed-force, whatever. bringing other things into it limits it conceptually and it drives me nuts. we aint divine, we just got a little stronger using powerful forces of the world.
opinion, natch. but if you mention it on a tf or trial with me i will crawl through the internet and bite you on the ankle.
Sam? Your entire argument about the game presentation being "consistent" is, and I'm sorry to be rude: hogwash.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...orySegregation
And this trope right here is why. While it would be nice for it be consistent, it can't happen. There will always, ALWAYS be a gap between what the narrative claims and states is possible, and what the game mechanically allows.
Also, people complaining about the "but gods don't team up with other people!" argument...yes, special snowflake stories do tend to cause that, but does it REALLY bother you that much? Honestly? Does it really destroy your experience to know other folks are on your level of power?
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Not to rain on your parade, but these things are, in fact, declarations of fact that either can or can not be proven true. It is impossible for either of those statements to be an opinion, because they are objectively quantifiable statements. You could actually make a scale to quantify both of them. Saying that a lack of narrative consistency is not a problem is an opinion. Saying that it exists at all is a factual statement.|
Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
The previous statement was not. It was concrete, laying down statements as fact as follows:
*The game is consistent with power growth in content that is not incarnate trials. *The game is inconsistent with power growth in content that is in incarnate trials. |
If enemies gradually ascend in power throughout the whole game without ever suddenly dumping us back to Hellion-level threats until Incarnate content, then both the statements listed above are facts. The only way you can argue with either of them is with evidence (for example, if there's points in the game prior to Incarnate content that show us to be at pretty much the exact same level as we were at the beginning according to the narrative, despite the gameplay telling us the exact opposite).
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Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Had it been based on Champions, however, you would have had more or less the alternative that you describe: characters that are mostly at their peak potential right from the very beginning, but who get to refine their abilities in subtle ways over time, or alternatively, save up their "experience rewards" for a big change (ala "radiation accident") somewhere down the line.
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The upshot being that an end-of-game character will be substantially more powerful than a starting character, but because they've got five toggle buffs going and a dozen different attacks with lots of enhancement slots on all of them, as opposed to the starter character who's still running around with two or three starter powers, no enhancements at all, and only four inspirations.
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Originally Posted by Issen
Sam? Your entire argument about the game presentation being "consistent" is, and I'm sorry to be rude: hogwash.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...orySegregation |
On the other hand, making the power levels consistent between gameplay and story is trivial in a super heroes game. Just rewriting some dialogue to explain that these guys who look like regular citizens with rocks have actually been imbued with the power of the ancient God of Rock-Throwing Citizens would do the trick, and even though that was the most entertainingly ridiculous answer I could come up with it is still only slightly more silly than the sorts of things that happen in comics (and CoX) all the time.
Your mechanics should match your narrative, not work against it. This is such a fundamental rule of game design that it can be used as a good metric for game design competency. If someone argues that mechanics working opposite the way the narrative says they should is a good idea or no problem, that's a very good sign that they shouldn't be making games (although it's worth noting that this is different from "this game will make us as much money as we need regardless, so screw it, let's just do whatever," which is not a very respectable attitude, but it's still rational and competent).
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I agree that it is a formula that has made CoX (and almost all the other MMOs out there that rehash the same old tired mechanics and design tropes that Ultima Online established and Everquest perfected) "successful" in the market place. But while CoX is the best MMO I've played, I nevertheless think that MMOs reached a point of stagnation years ago, including CoX, and nobody has had the courage or the creativity to break out of the rut (Tabula Rasa had this as their original philosophical goal but caved in to the "we don't want anything new" pressures of the beta testing community and ended up with an MMORPG/FPS that had very little new to offer at all in terms of an MMO game experience).|
Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
Getting new powers, new enhancement slots, a bigger inspiration tray, etc. etc. all needs to stay, along with the level numbers, because those are all interesting, visible means of progression. They're part of the formula that makes CoX successful for the fairly wide market it's reached, so you really can't mess with it for business reasons, and I wouldn't want them to anyway.
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Skip This If You Aren't A Game Design Nerd
The first thing that needs to happen in order to shake things up, is to throw away all the old assumptions like you listed above. Too many designers appear to be stuck in a mindset that says you have to have levels and you have to have loot and you have to have raiding and blah blah blah. Well my design whiteboard has a huge title above it that is my mantra: Question Everything. And that starts with the assumption that "character progression" is the only thing that will motivate players to play. Millions of player-hours on games like PacMan, Tetris, and Bejeweled say otherwise. Any game, even an RPG, can be designed such that the game play itself is the reason people are addicted to it, not gross power progression. This is not to say that character progression would be eliminated, only that it wouldn't be the carrot that is held out to keep players playing; that an entirely different emphasis would be in place, which would free up the game to focus on internally consistent narratives that don't have to worry about conceptual disconnects like "Your level 40 hero can shrug off a missile fired from a level 10 mecha, but not a crowbar from a level 60 thug."
You might say, well you need something to differentiate the power levels between entities in the game. Correct, but the moment you put conventional levels in a game, everyone expects them to work the way they always have. If I were to use levels merely as an illustrative tool, I would use the following example:
Level 0 or 1: Regular humans. Skilled/trained folks are level 1 (police, military, atheletes, etc.)Two key things to note in the way the above scale is intended to work: (1) A single level difference would make a fight very difficult, while a two level difference is almost entirely one-sided and a forgone conclusion, and (2) A character's entire career would be spent in a 2-3 level window of "progression", with most of that progression happening at a micro-fine level of refinement that takes a very long time before equating to an actual level bump. In case you can't tell, the above level scale is essentially the 4th edition Champions point scale divided by 50.
Level 2: Exceptionally skilled/trained folks (Navy SEALS, James Bond, world record holding atheletes).
Level 3: Fantastically skilled/trained folks, straddling the line between realistic and complete fantasy (Batman, Black Widow, Hawkeye, etc.)
Level 4-8: Superheroes. Level 4 is effectively where every starting character begins the game, though perhaps by taking extra "Weaknesses" they get to start level 5.
Level 10: Major supervillain (Magneto, Dr. Doom, Loki, etc.)
Level 15-20: World-threatening entity (Thanos, Darkseid, Kang the Conqueror, Galactus, etc.)
...and so on...
As you can see, almost an entire game's worth of content could be built around the level 3 stratum simply due to the number of players that like that conceptual level. And while the level 3 Batman types might be able to sort of hold their own doing missions with level 4 superheroes (ala early X-Men) by employing super tech gadgets, they are probably better off staying in their level 2/3 content range so that the narrative logic always matches the mechanical outcomes without having to contrive explanations that don't fit their character concepts (and I would argue that a "regular human" who relies on supertech to be level 4 or 5 all the time is level 4 or 5, and he's called Iron Man, not Batman).
This level breakdown is only meant for demonstration purposes, and isn't literally the way I would implement a new CoX if I had the chance. But it gets across some important elements that would serve many of the issues people have with many of the conceptual disconnects we see currently.
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
they'd never allow it.
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Proof if ever we needed that we are not gods
Thelonious Monk
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Touche on the trope, but still, there's a good reason why Incarnate Trials use gimmicks and seemingly super-cheap mechanics like the Rock-Throwing Citizens or the Gamma Pulse from Keyes Island Reactor. They have to. They cannot use normal in-game mechanics against Incarnates. It's why all the enemies in trials are automatically 54 and the AVs go up to 54+3. If they don't, we'd stomp ALL over them.|
Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
Tropes Are Not Good. Furthermore, virtually everything you say about the trope is flat-out wrong. It's entirely possible to make the gap between gameplay and story very, very small, or with some concepts, totally non-existent. CoX isn't one of those concepts, because there will always be edge cases like "why can't I use the powers of Empathy to try and talk this archvillain's goon squad into running away? Surely they can't all be pure evil like the archvillain himself, and it would make the fight way easier." That's an edge case, though, particularly since the game never flat-out says that Empathy lets you do that sort of thing. On the other hand, making the power levels consistent between gameplay and story is trivial in a super heroes game. Just rewriting some dialogue to explain that these guys who look like regular citizens with rocks have actually been imbued with the power of the ancient God of Rock-Throwing Citizens would do the trick, and even though that was the most entertainingly ridiculous answer I could come up with it is still only slightly more silly than the sorts of things that happen in comics (and CoX) all the time. Your mechanics should match your narrative, not work against it. This is such a fundamental rule of game design that it can be used as a good metric for game design competency. If someone argues that mechanics working opposite the way the narrative says they should is a good idea or no problem, that's a very good sign that they shouldn't be making games (although it's worth noting that this is different from "this game will make us as much money as we need regardless, so screw it, let's just do whatever," which is not a very respectable attitude, but it's still rational and competent). |
Without these gimmicks, the trials wouldn't be difficult in the slightest. So yes, things like damage that %-based and bypasses defense and resistance and massive debuffs and One-hit kills are absolutely necessary. Otherwise end-game is a yawn-fest.
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The violation of consistency is opinionated because it is based wholly on the assumption that the game is trying to tell a story in a particular way. If one sees the level progression in the game in a different way than another person, then the violations in consistency of the "attempted story" become little more than subjective. Likewise, anything that is not plainly stated cannot be objectively inconsistent since it requires interpretation on the part of the audience.|
Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
Not to rain on your parade, but these things are, in fact, declarations of fact that either can or can not be proven true. It is impossible for either of those statements to be an opinion, because they are objectively quantifiable statements. You could actually make a scale to quantify both of them. Saying that a lack of narrative consistency is not a problem is an opinion. Saying that it exists at all is a factual statement.
If enemies gradually ascend in power throughout the whole game without ever suddenly dumping us back to Hellion-level threats until Incarnate content, then both the statements listed above are facts. The only way you can argue with either of them is with evidence (for example, if there's points in the game prior to Incarnate content that show us to be at pretty much the exact same level as we were at the beginning according to the narrative, despite the gameplay telling us the exact opposite). |
For future reference, all things "can or can not be proven" since there is no alternative.
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I actually played an online game once that didn't have great character progression and levels, but still garnered many ours of gameplay. In, Monster Hunter Tri, a great game IMO, there were no levels for you to progress through. All of the strength that your character gained was through equipment that could be swapped, taken out, and even outright ignored on many instances. Even then, the skillsets (the main benefits of wearing armor) are largely customize-able, meaning that a character's strength came largely from a player's ingenuity in making their build.
The real progression of the game was the skill of the player, and not the strength of what the player played. Quests and game content was made to be gradually unlocked at a pace where the player possessed the skill capable of defeating the next round of monsters, not where you're equipment or any sort of level was supposed to come into play.
Making an MMO based on these qualities alone is hard, which is why I believe the MMO version (Monster Hunter Frontier, a foreign MMO only) had to introduce several levels of strength in items to keep players playing.
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By which you mean "make it all exactly like Champions."|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Well my design whiteboard has a huge title above it that is my mantra: Question Everything.
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| And that starts with the assumption that "character progression" is the only thing that will motivate players to play. |
Your level breakdown is, as you yourself admit, pulled straight from Champions with a bit of elementary math applied, and it shows, as the level progression makes little to no sense (multiple hero concepts are differentiated between level 3 and 4, but none whatsoever between 4 and 5?) outside of the point-buy system from which it originated. None of this would irk me so much except that you said it all in the same breath as a rant about questioning assumptions. "Make a Champions clone" is not exactly an innovative idea, even if it would be fun to play.
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Originally Posted by Issen
Touche on the trope, but still, there's a good reason why Incarnate Trials use gimmicks and seemingly super-cheap mechanics like the Rock-Throwing Citizens or the Gamma Pulse from Keyes Island Reactor. They have to. They cannot use normal in-game mechanics against Incarnates. It's why all the enemies in trials are automatically 54 and the AVs go up to 54+3. If they don't, we'd stomp ALL over them.
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Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
The violation of consistency is opinionated because it is based wholly on the assumption that the game is trying to tell a story in a particular way. If one sees the level progression in the game in a different way than another person, then the violations in consistency of the "attempted story" become little more than subjective.
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| For future reference, all things "can or can not be proven" since there is no alternative. |
I've reached Supergod status, so, I'm not going to get involved in the affairs of you subimmortals.
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Originally Posted by Issen
Sam? Your entire argument about the game presentation being "consistent" is, and I'm sorry to be rude: hogwash.
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Why is it that whenever someone says 'With all due respect,' they really mean 'Kiss my ***'? -Ashley Williams, Mass effect |
Especially, I should add, since this problem did not need to exist in this particular case. If you had been arsed to actually read my hogwash argument and present a balderdash argument of your own instead of tossing down a link and expecting that to argue for it, we might have had a discussion instead of a "NO U!" contest. As a point of fact, formulating an argument of your own instead of just link-dropping a TVtropes article would have been a sign of better quality.
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Originally Posted by Issen
Also, people complaining about the "but gods don't team up with other people!" argument...yes, special snowflake stories do tend to cause that, but does it REALLY bother you that much? Honestly? Does it really destroy your experience to know other folks are on your level of power?
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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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And then there's this. I feel this is entirely true. Certain things are subject to opinion, and these tend to do with appraisal of quality. What's "good," what's "enough," what's "immersive" and so forth. These are all emotionally-charged concepts that come in as many different levels as the people who offer them. Not all things are subject to opinion, however. It is not a subject of opinion whether Enrage inspirations are red. They are. If you are red-green colour-blind and can't see it the same way, then you are provably if unfortunately wrong.|
Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
Not to rain on your parade, but these things are, in fact, declarations of fact that either can or can not be proven true. It is impossible for either of those statements to be an opinion, because they are objectively quantifiable statements. You could actually make a scale to quantify both of them. Saying that a lack of narrative consistency is not a problem is an opinion. Saying that it exists at all is a factual statement.
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What I discuss when I talk about consistency is somewhere in between. The game is either consistent with its narrative or it's not, there's nothing in-between, but whether it is or it isn't is subject to debate. I don't just say these things on their own merits, I present arguments for why I believe they are as I present them, and I did present an argument for why I fell that Incarnates are not terribly consistent between their gameplay and their storyline.
Even if we all agreed that gameplay and storyline are consistent - and they're not, but let's assume they were - then the imperative to consider consistency remains nevertheless. Every piece of new Incarnate content needs to be compared and contrasted to pre-Incarnate content to make sure it is consistent. If Incarnate content includes what looks like simple unpowered humans, then there either needs to be a storyline explanation for why they can fight on this level or they simply should not be included. The inclusion of level 54 Malta Operatives in Tin Mage II is a capital offence, in this regard. There is no reason given why unpowered men can punch an Incarnate hard enough to constitute a mortal danger. Because they can. And they're hard to hit and hard to damage and hard overall. Their Titans I can see. Their special weapons operatives like Sappers and Gunslingers, maybe. But the grunts? There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's nonsense.
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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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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph.../OpinionMyopia|
Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
It is impossible to see the level progression as anything other than an advance in power without being factually wrong. In game mechanics, you level up and you become more powerful. In the narrative, you do not increase in power. There is factually an inconsistency. Citizens throwing rocks are objectively far more powerful than Hellions with shotguns. No amount of mental gymnastics will change the fact that if a rock-throwing citizen and a shotgun-toting Bone Daddy got in a fight, the rock-throwing citizen would win. That is something Paragon Studios could actually make happen and the discrepancy in power is so massive that there could not possibly be any other conclusion.
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The interesting thing about the leveling system of this game is that you don't really have stats that increase as you level up. Your HP increases and your damage increases to scale with the HP and damage increase of enemies and other players. Otherwise, the superiority of any party is carried out through a function of each other's levels, and little more than that. The power system in the game, therefore, is relative just to the immediate spectrum of levels near any players. The only balancing on enemies that needs to be done is done so due to power slotting and expanded abilities, and not under the assumption that enemies should get bigger and bigger guns due to the inexplicable nature of heros to become immune to those guns despite having no power to explain why.
There are several groups in the game that persist from low to high levels. Taking longbow as an example, since they're enemies that span ranges from 1 to 54. The grunts you fight at level 1 for the most part are identical to the grunts you fight at level 54. Now, if you take the position that level = absolute power, then you are also taking the assumption that the Longbow grunts can go from pushovers to incarnate strength inexplicably, and saying that this is inconsistent. The basis for this inconsistence being that other groups you find at those levels do not grow in those levels, and thus somehow our characters should have magically become bullet proof to their guns as we went on.
The important factor that everyone forgets is this: Why is it that paragon studios would arbitrarily make it so one group (the longbow) rises forever in levels, and another (Vozhlok) just abruptly stops after awhile? Do they just put enemy groups on a big dartboard, throw darts while blindfolded, and go "Them! Those guys we'll put up to level 54!"? The real explanation isn't as exciting: the levels of enemies is directly related to how relevant they are in relation to the game's story. The Longbow continue to show up in stories and plots all the way up to the Rikti War Zone, and thus have levels to reflect the content in which they are written. The Vozhlok, however, have their stories end quickly, and so cut out at a much smaller level. There are groups of people who want continuations of older enemy groups, like the Vozhlok and the Tsoo. If continuations were made, they would no doubt be at higher levels to be relevant to the gradual progression in levels the players have.
Take this into account, and it is easy to see the leveling system in the game as a different and more logical way than one that is attempting to maintain that magic bullet immunity necessitates that future enemies always have flashier explosions and bigger guns. The levels, with all their relativity in power, are to reflect a chronological progression and not a power progression.
There are all the little details as to how conning works and experience plays a role and how all Enemy 1 vs Enemy 2 would have to occur in the same timeframe and thus necessitate being scaled to the same level, but that is all tertiary to the real point here: You indeed can "see" something different because the way you "see" things (and thus your subjective opinion) isn't the only way to see them. This "my opinion is right, all other opinions must be wrong" attitude should've been broken by middle school.
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It is worth noting that leveling does affect more stats than just hit points and damage, but the other stats have less direct effect on combat. Leveling also affects a number of caps on stats as well.|
Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph.../OpinionMyopia
The interesting thing about the leveling system of this game is that you don't really have stats that increase as you level up. Your HP increases and your damage increases to scale with the HP and damage increase of enemies and other players. Otherwise, the superiority of any party is carried out through a function of each other's levels, and little more than that. The power system in the game, therefore, is relative just to the immediate spectrum of levels near any players. The only balancing on enemies that needs to be done is done so due to power slotting and expanded abilities, and not under the assumption that enemies should get bigger and bigger guns due to the inexplicable nature of heros to become immune to those guns despite having no power to explain why. There are several groups in the game that persist from low to high levels. Taking longbow as an example, since they're enemies that span ranges from 1 to 54. The grunts you fight at level 1 for the most part are identical to the grunts you fight at level 54. Now, if you take the position that level = absolute power, then you are also taking the assumption that the Longbow grunts can go from pushovers to incarnate strength inexplicably, and saying that this is inconsistent. The basis for this inconsistence being that other groups you find at those levels do not grow in those levels, and thus somehow our characters should have magically become bullet proof to their guns as we went on. The important factor that everyone forgets is this: Why is it that paragon studios would arbitrarily make it so one group (the longbow) rises forever in levels, and another (Vozhlok just abruptly stops after awhile? Do they just put enemy groups on a big dartboard, throw darts while blindfolded, and go "Them! Those guys we'll put up to level 54!"? The real explanation isn't as exciting: the levels of enemies is directly related to how relevant they are in relation to the game's story. The Longbow continue to show up in stories and plots all the way up to the Rikti War Zone, and thus have levels to reflect the content in which they are written. The Vozhlok, however, have their stories end quickly, and so cut out at a much smaller level. There are groups of people who want continuations of older enemy groups, like the Vozhlok and the Tsoo. If continuations were made, they would no doubt be at higher levels to be relevant to the gradual progression in levels the players have. Take this into account, and it is easy to see the leveling system in the game as a different and more logical way than one that is attempting to maintain that magic bullet immunity necessitates that future enemies always have flashier explosions and bigger guns. The levels, with all their relativity in power, are to reflect a chronological progression and not a power progression. There are all the little details as to how conning works and experience plays a role and how all Enemy 1 vs Enemy 2 would have to occur in the same timeframe and thus necessitate being scaled to the same level, but that is all tertiary to the real point here: You indeed can "see" something different because the way you "see" things (and thus your subjective opinion) isn't the only way to see them. This "my opinion is right, all other opinions must be wrong" attitude should've been broken by middle school. |
Also, the additional capabilities that characters and critters gain as they level up are significant. One of the main reasons several groups aren't found at all levels is that factions gain additional abilities as they level up when they are intended for higher level ranges and lose abilities at the lower levels. Level 50 Longbow do not in fact have the same range of abilities as level 10 Longbow. There are (were) some missions where a low level faction is scaled up from the low levels to a higher level mission without any other changes. (Hydras for one.) Even with the comparatively greater amount of damage a level 50 critter does versus a level 50 character's hitpoints compared to the lower levels they're complete pushovers that are little more than speed bumps to most teams or characters. That's because they generally have a small number of relatively slow cycling attacks and little to no defenses or buff/debuff abilities. At the higher levels critter hitpoints have increased more than player damage.
In autoscaling events like Rikti invasions characters in the teens or lower will find the Rikti much tougher to take on despite conning as even level due to greater effective hp and more abilities the Rikti possess.
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If you can't see the difference between losing half your health to a nuclear reactor repurposed as a superweapon and losing half your health to a civilian with a rock, then I really don't know what to say to you.|
Originally Posted by Issen
Touche on the trope, but still, there's a good reason why Incarnate Trials use gimmicks and seemingly super-cheap mechanics like the Rock-Throwing Citizens or the Gamma Pulse from Keyes Island Reactor. They have to. They cannot use normal in-game mechanics against Incarnates. It's why all the enemies in trials are automatically 54 and the AVs go up to 54+3. If they don't, we'd stomp ALL over them.
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| Without these gimmicks, the trials wouldn't be difficult in the slightest. So yes, things like damage that %-based and bypasses defense and resistance and massive debuffs and One-hit kills are absolutely necessary. |
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If you want to get into greater details than the bare minimum to say that there are more valid ideas, yes there are "stats" that do increase with levels, albeit indirectly. Such as:
*The enhancement system allows you to get stronger enhancements as time goes on. Before the IO system, however, these still did have a level-relative limitation, and enhancements themselves are not the part of the power or the player. Missions on Ourobos also scale back enhancements as a way to curb the lack of slots and abilities that you would have at that point in time. Imagine the nightmare that would ensue if the devs assumed that new, low level players could afford to full So slot themselves with full bonuses granted at lower levels. The enhancement system itself can sparsely be called a leveling system itself, but rather the equipment system, and that CoX has an equipment system based upon levels (as many other games do, since ones that don't are horribly balanced and "broken" easily). Bad enhancements = bad character, after all.
*Caps on stats increase throughout time. Again, this is a question more about facilitating things such as inspirations and power diversity than it is an actual leveling aspect. At lower levels, it is nearly impossible for any character to achieve the damage cap or the defense cap. Toons who have all rows inspirations from higher levels could just use their wealth at higher levels to buy tons of reds and mow through enemies in lower levels, so Ourobos curbs this. As the game progresses, it becomes less about how any character can handle any situation, so inspirations are helpful to buffer this. After all, there is no limit on lower level players using bigger inspirations. It is just that the game is designed earlier that it is not as necessary, and not as easy to abuse. Again, not a part of the power or the player.
*Beginners Luck. This is actually a negative effect, meaning you have a decreasing To-Hit bonus as you level from 1-19.
*Magnitudes on status protection and resistance slowly increases as levels are gained. This is the closest you can get to actual "stats", since some of these slowly scale much like damage and HP as time goes on.
Thing like accuracy, range, recharge, endurance cost, damage resistance, endurance, recovery, regeneration... static. A toon with 0 defense at level 1 will have 0 defense at level 50 unless they take a power to get defense, are given defense by another player's power, or they have equipped themselves with an IO set that grants a defense bonus.
When I was speaking about level scaling, I was referring to more than just increasing the enemy level. I guess I should clarify this: As enemy groups go up, new abilities are added and more diverse mobs are added to help facilitate the progress that characters in the game undergo. When this isn't done correctly, it can have disastrous effects on gameplay. AKA Welcome to Praetoria. Longbow mobs, as levels grow, do get more moves than just generic rifle shot and brawl, but as you go through high level longbow content, you are still dealing with grunts shooting you with bullets and flamethrowers. Things like Giant Monsters, even though they auto-scale to always con purple on a player, are still built around a certain level where it is appropriate to fight them. Finally, it is assumed that a player is doing a decent job of placing enhancements, and enemies are scaled to accommodate for good enhancing. It is a very wise decision to have low level mobs taking away half a new player's HP in one attack, and if you have ever tried running higher level content without slotting enhancements into any powers, you'll find that you get mopped up pretty quickly.
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Enough with the TVtropes articles. We get it. We all go there from time to time. This is not a Yu-Gi-Oh card game where the best TVtropes articles used at the most opportune time wins. If you have an argument, make it. Stop relying on other people's articles to make it for you.|
Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
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And that goes for everyone.
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Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
The interesting thing about the leveling system of this game is that you don't really have stats that increase as you level up. Your HP increases and your damage increases to scale with the HP and damage increase of enemies and other players. Otherwise, the superiority of any party is carried out through a function of each other's levels, and little more than that. The power system in the game, therefore, is relative just to the immediate spectrum of levels near any players. The only balancing on enemies that needs to be done is done so due to power slotting and expanded abilities, and not under the assumption that enemies should get bigger and bigger guns due to the inexplicable nature of heros to become immune to those guns despite having no power to explain why.
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As a character - say a Scrapper - rises through the levels, that character becomes more accurate, more survivable, more dangerous and moreversatile, to the point where "Level 50 Hellions" are no challenge at all to a proper level 50 character just because they haven't the tools to challenge our arsenal of powers. It's those like Malta, the IDF and the Soldiers of Rularuu - enemies with a wide selection of nasty powers - that provide the most challenge. City of Heroes is simply not a game of stats. It's a game of powers. It's those who have the most powers of the best kind that are the strongest.
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Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
Taking longbow as an example, since they're enemies that span ranges from 1 to 54. The grunts you fight at level 1 for the most part are identical to the grunts you fight at level 54.
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The Longbow of level 1 and even the Longbow of level 10 have nothing in the slightest on the Longbow of level 50. And they're not the only group that looks like they don't increase in power yet do so. In fact, the only group I can think of that's consistently similar at level 1 to level 50 is the 5th Column, and that's the result limited development resources at the time. And even then they throw robots, vampires and werewolves in the mix, despite their human soldiers having the same powers. I guess you can count the Devouring Earth in there, since they have the same set of minions 25-50, but at least they change colours and start developing new, more dangerous lieutenants and bigger bosses as levels progress. Hell, Crey start out with security guards and scientists, but by the end you're fighting armies of power armour supersoldiers and manufactures superpowered beings.
I think this shows that City of Heroes enemy factions are more than capable of presenting the progression of threat in a graphic, visual manner, not to mention a mechanical one. I think that's the standard we should hold all enemy groups to, because it's not an exception.
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Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
There are groups of people who want continuations of older enemy groups, like the Vozhlok and the Tsoo. If continuations were made, they would no doubt be at higher levels to be relevant to the gradual progression in levels the players have.
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Originally Posted by Blood Red Arachnid
There are all the little details as to how conning works and experience plays a role and how all Enemy 1 vs Enemy 2 would have to occur in the same timeframe and thus necessitate being scaled to the same level, but that is all tertiary to the real point here: You indeed can "see" something different because the way you "see" things (and thus your subjective opinion) isn't the only way to see them. This "my opinion is right, all other opinions must be wrong" attitude should've been broken by middle school.
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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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Alright, I'm going to make this painfully simple.
1) If we plucked a Bone Daddy from Perez Park and one of the rock-throwing citizens and had them actually fight in the actual game without changing any of their stats or abilities, the rock-throwing citizen would win, and the fight would not even be close. In fact, the rock-throwing citizen would probably one-shot the Bone Daddy.
2) According to the narrative, a rock-throwing citizen wouldn't even stand a chance against a Bone Daddy from Perez Park. Note that if they could, all the mugging victims we keep saving are mostly just being lazy.
Which of these two statements is either false of unprovable? If neither of these two statements are false or unprovable, then there is an inconsistency between gameplay and story, period, since the gameplay delivers the opposite result of what the story would imply. If you wanted to have a consistent gameplay mechanic wherein levels reflected a progression of time and not power, then you would not get increased health and damage as you leveled up.
If you think that the disconnect between story and gameplay is not a problem, that's an opinion. If you think it doesn't exist, you are factually wrong.
Er, would the rock-throwing citizen win if she were level 12? I've never run TPN but other posts on the topic gave me the strong impression that the citizens are actually minion-class at best and it is the presence of crippling debuffs on the trial that renders players vulnerable to such attacks.
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It all depends on your character's story. Murcielago is a vampire who increases in strength with each victim and over time his power grows.
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Originally Posted by EU_Damz
So before going to sleep last night i was doing my usual day dreaming [or is it night dreaming?] and i got thinking about this game and my characters and how far they've come over the years.
For quite a while we were seen as purely superheroes, beings with superpowers to save the world [or destroy it] and protect the innocent. However as time has gone on and more and more gods have been introduced to us, it has gotten me thinking that we are possibly turning into gods ourselves. As generations go on, the people call us by different names. For example the cimerorans would call superheroes and the nictus gods, however in our time we are called superheroes now because the powers that were rare and not seen before back then are pretty common these days. So my point being is are we actually turning into gods ourselves with these incarnate powers or are we simply evolving with the words to give some purpose to them? A fully incarnated character now [as we saw ourselves in the initiation arc] would be seen as a god in our time, but by the time the whole system is released will it be so common that people will refer to it as the norm and thus back to superheroes? |
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
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If we want to be strict with the gameplay explanation, that's not possible. Skulls spawn from level 1 to level 15, and that's not an artificial limitation. There simply aren't Skull NPCs made for levels higher than that, and to spawn them higher would take work. I'm pretty sure the TPN civilians - that particular brand - don't spawn below level 54, and certainly don't spawn below level 50. The game simply won't allow that sort of pairing.|
Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
Er, would the rock-throwing citizen win if she were level 12? I've never run TPN but other posts on the topic gave me the strong impression that the citizens are actually minion-class at best and it is the presence of crippling debuffs on the trial that renders players vulnerable to such attacks.
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What you say has a grain of truth to it, though - IF those Citizens were level 12, then they wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem, and it would make sense. I'd still tag them as level 1 and use them as AoE suppression, of course, but that's just me. The point is that "Level 50 Citizen" is an oxymoron of gameplay and story segregation. Whenever you're designing content that calls one of these, you need to step back and ask yourself what it is that you're really doing.
"Level 50 Hellions" was a line a Forum poster said to me in 2005 when I expressed how my character was doing well against Marauder's faction, and it was a derogatory term used to express how weak Marauder's minions are in terms of gameplay, regardless of what they may be said to be in their descriptions. They're not QUITE Level 50 Hellions, as they do have a few more attacks, but the point remains - some enemies make sense for some level ranges, but not for others. If an enemy shows up in a level range, it needs to make sense within the context of other things that show up in that level range, and Civilians simply do not.
Again I bring up Crey. One could argue that a "Level 50 Scientist" is stupid and that such a person with no armour and no real weapons would be meat on the table for any decent hero. And the powers team seem to agree, since past level 45, no unarmoured humans show up at all. Everything is power armour tanks, as it should be. THAT is the right kind of presentation. If it doesn't make sense for something to spawn at level 50, then replace it with something that does make sense or otherwise fix it so it makes more sense.
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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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But surely what they're trying to convey with the citizens on TPN is that an extraordinary outside force is weakening the league to such a great degree that these ordinary people can hurt them. They chose to do that by making them level 54 and debuffing the league heavily - would you prefer it if the citizens were level 1 and they added a new mechanic that kept you from hurting them but allowed them to do enough autohit untyped damage that it could endanger incarnates?
If their aim from a story perspective is to demonstrate that you and your cohorts have been weakened, something implausible by the normal rules of the game is going to have to happen because normally you are not weakened. I don't see that it makes a big difference whether the civilians are officially high level or not since either way it's basically a kludge.
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Because it's a game mechanic. I'm willing to accept the idea that a rock throwing civvie can hit me for over half my health because I recognize that it's a game mechanic, regardless how inconsistent it is to the storyline. People seem to believe that the storyline and gameplay MUST be absolutely consistent, or that there MUST be an explanation for any and all discrepancies. You're right, it doesn't make any sense that these particular civilians can hit or put a dent in anything.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
If you can't see the difference between losing half your health to a nuclear reactor repurposed as a superweapon and losing half your health to a civilian with a rock, then I really don't know what to say to you.
One-hit kills are never necessary. |
But it's a result and a function of them creating challenging content.
And yes, I consider one-hit kills necessary. If only because again, if they didn't include these gimmicks, Trials wouldn't be a challenge in a first place.
Why do you think so many things in Trials deal damage that is a percentage of the target's HP, rather than a straight number. Because the straight number is then usually a resistable damage type.
Why do you think so many of the attacks in Trials are auto-hits? Because of the huge number of buffs that often have the defenses of players sitting in the mid 100s, skyrocketing above the hardcap, leaving even the 54+3s with their massive to-hit bonuses with the base 5% chance.
Things like Anti-Matter's Entanglement and Disintegration, or Malestrom's Teleport MA attacks and Marked For Death are necessary functions of being end-game content. Otherwise we have things like Hamidon and the STF/LRSF, which aren't considered difficult at all because Incarnate powers have trivialized the difficulty.
I won't disagree that it's not very consistent with the plot and narrative, but me personally? I can accept that break because of what the Devs are trying to do.
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This is a bad example. Why? The rock-throwing civilian is only level 54 because it's a part of an Incarnate Trial. So really, you're comparing an early-game enemy (Bone Daddy) to an NPC used specifically in one and only ONE piece of content that's specifically in the end-game (Rock-throwing Civvie)|
Originally Posted by RuthlessSamael
Alright, I'm going to make this painfully simple.
1) If we plucked a Bone Daddy from Perez Park and one of the rock-throwing citizens and had them actually fight in the actual game without changing any of their stats or abilities, the rock-throwing citizen would win, and the fight would not even be close. In fact, the rock-throwing citizen would probably one-shot the Bone Daddy. 2) According to the narrative, a rock-throwing citizen wouldn't even stand a chance against a Bone Daddy from Perez Park. Note that if they could, all the mugging victims we keep saving are mostly just being lazy. Which of these two statements is either false of unprovable? If neither of these two statements are false or unprovable, then there is an inconsistency between gameplay and story, period, since the gameplay delivers the opposite result of what the story would imply. If you wanted to have a consistent gameplay mechanic wherein levels reflected a progression of time and not power, then you would not get increased health and damage as you leveled up. If you think that the disconnect between story and gameplay is not a problem, that's an opinion. If you think it doesn't exist, you are factually wrong. |
Praetorian content HAS civilians that you fight, that throw rocks and firebombs, but that's low level content, 1-10 actually. So we have a point of comparison. The low-level Civilian versus the low-level Bone Daddy. And the Bone Daddy obviously wins. Narrative integrity has been sustained.
I'm not stating the disconnect doesn't exist. I doubt anyone is. But just as it's our opinion that the disconnect is an issue that doesn't break our suspension of disbelief or ruin our immersion, it's also just an opinion that it's a problem for you. It's not a -fact- that the rock-throwing civilian is an issue.
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It's a result and function of them creating "challenging content" without giving a crap whether or not it makes sense from a story perspective. If they did give a crap, the TPN as it currently exists wouldn't be in the game, because from a story perspective villains and probably most vigilantes would kill those civilians, PR be damned.|
Originally Posted by Issen
Because it's a game mechanic. I'm willing to accept the idea that a rock throwing civvie can hit me for over half my health because I recognize that it's a game mechanic, regardless how inconsistent it is to the storyline. People seem to believe that the storyline and gameplay MUST be absolutely consistent, or that there MUST be an explanation for any and all discrepancies. You're right, it doesn't make any sense that these particular civilians can hit or put a dent in anything.
But it's a result and a function of them creating challenging content. |
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| And yes, I consider one-hit kills necessary. If only because again, if they didn't include these gimmicks, Trials wouldn't be a challenge in a first place. |
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| Things like Anti-Matter's Entanglement and Disintegration, or Malestrom's Teleport MA attacks and Marked For Death are necessary functions of being end-game content. |
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| I won't disagree that it's not very consistent with the plot and narrative, but me personally? I can accept that break because of what the Devs are trying to do. |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
For some reason I have no problem parsing Sam's posts as expressions of his personal opinion. If I can do that, anyone can (and I figured they did). If you feel Sam believes himself to be all-knowing and incapable of error, then you may be a wee bit oversensitive to strongly expressed viewpoints, and maybe the Internet is not for you.
... you really can't tell? Guess I should give some examples then.
It has a very real visual representation that needs to be consistent with the story the game is trying to tell, and when it comes to Incarnates, it simply isn't.
This is a case where his "opinion" is listed as fact. Contrast it to this:
The previous statement was not. It was concrete, laying down statements as fact as follows:
*The game is consistent with power growth in content that is not incarnate trials.
*The game is inconsistent with power growth in content that is in incarnate trials.
Neither of which are to be disputed or up for debate. This phrase was put out there not to express his opinion, but to correct me on a matter of fact that I got wrong. Is it any wonder that I would react with hostility?
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