Customization and "packages."

This is something of an observation of mine. Call it an attempt to explain why I enjoy visual customization in this game so much more than practical customization. Now, I've gone over this before, and the fact that there's no "wrong" way to dress yet that there very much IS a wrong way to build is still a big reason. However, having made peace with there being no good way to handle character builds without objective values of what "works" and what "fails," something else keeps turning up to bother me that's a lot less abstract at its core - "packages."

When I say "packages," what I mean is sets of stat boots or abilities that come in one overall "set" such that I can't break the set down into its individual components, keep the ones I want, toss the ones I don't, break another set open, pick the ones out of there and generally only keep the benefits I want. As soon as I say this, you think I'm referring to Inventions, and I can see why that might be the first thing to come to mine given my history. But it's not JUST Inventions. This is a wider game phenomenon that Inventions are just part of.

Once upon a time, I suggested creating a set of non-Set multi-aspect enhancements that players would be able to put together from aspects of their own choosing. Do you want Total Focus to deal more damage AND cause a longer stun? Mash a damage enhancement with a stun enhancement and produce a Damage/Stun enhancement. Want four of those? Do that four times, then toss in a custom Accuracy/Damage and a custom Accuracy/Endurance and go for it. But I can't really do that, because such a system doesn't exist. I can somewhat ape this with various Inventions sets, but those are limited by what exists in the game, and what level it exists at. They come in packages and they revolve around levels and their own sets.

How about Incarnate powers? Alpha, specifically. Say I've looked at my build and deduced that I can benefit the most strongly from more damage, more accuracy and more healing. Alpha enhancements often boost three or more stats in the rare and very rare variants, so can I use one of those? Nope, because an Alpha that boosts damage, accuracy and healing doesn't exist. I don't get to pick the effects, I can only pick from one of several packagaes of effects and stick with the one that most closely resembles what I want.

Or, hell, take a basic powerset. How many times have people asked to be able to use Energy Blast, but without the knockback? Many, as I recall, but you can't do that since that's just how Energy Blast is. Even ATs suffer from this, to some degree - there's a reason some of us keep asking for an Assault/Defence AT, you know.

Now, Arcana has spoken about this in the past, I hope will do so again, but the problem with this as I understand it is that such a system is too easy to optimise and thus too easy to game. If you can pick just the boosts you want, then it's trivial to figure out what's best for most people and then everyone would be taking that and nothing else. The old 1xAcc/5xDam problem. It's largely impossible to create a system where there isn't a "best" option, but this best option can be obfuscated such that people can't easily deduce what it is. By doing this, you force people to make judgement calls and build by feel, which gives the impression that there's much more variety.

My problem is that this just disables my desire to mess with builds by making the system more complex than it needs to be. Instead of building for what I feel I should be building and just picking the options I think are best for that, I have to instead build for a little of everything by taking many packages with many attributes and instead worrying about how they stack with each other. I like a system that's flexible, obviously - I like to have what I want. But a flexible system doesn't have to be complex to figure out, I've found. League of Legends, for instance, has a pretty intricate build system, but almost all of the benefits that system grants come in a single-aspect variety and it's up to the player to pick which aspect to increase by how much. And, frankly, once I figure out which kind of stat works best, I DO want to keep raising it, and I can't always do that.

Essentially, this is what bugs me about character building in not just City of Heroes, but in a lot of modern RPGs, as well - packages. I can't pick what I want on a case-for-case basis like I can with SOs. I have to pick packages and worry about sum totals. And honestly... I've always preferred problems that I can solve one part at a time, rather than treating them like puzzles and requiring me to solve everything in one go by having it all click into place.

I'll leave by saying that, yes, I'm aware that things are interconnected in costume design, as well. Theme, colour scheme and good taste dictate that some things go well together and some just don't. That's true, but I can still love this problem by changing one item at a time, looking at the result and going from there. I don't have to worry about using entire costume packs. In fact, I rather dislike costumes made up entirely of a single pack just on a principle level. Even though some combinations of colours and costume items work better than others, I'm still not restricted in what I can use on which costume, and THAT makes the actual process of putting one together as fun as looking at the end result is.

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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.

Something occurred to me that I really should mention, a kind of "crafting" system that I really, really enjoyed. It's the one that comes from Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning, and it's easily the best combat system I've seen in any RPG I've played. It's probably not literally the best, but it has everything I want, and it actually made me quite passionate about crafting. Well, the resource-gathering side was still horrid, but baby steps are good enough for me.

How that works is each weapon or piece of armour is made up of a base item (blade for swords, vest for chest pieces, etc.) that has the base stats, then another mandatory component, then two more optional components, then a jewel. These components could be bought, but primarily they came from breaking existing weapons and armour. And when breaking weapons and armour, what came out of the forge were pieces that carries some of the attributes of that weapon, with different values depending on the quality of the piece, which in turn depended on the quality of the weapon. So, for instance, if I broke a Steel sword that had an additional fire damage component and extra life, I might get a steel blade with the same base stats or a grip that does fire damage or grip wraps that give extra health. Or, really, any combination of the above.

Why I like this system is I can take a randomly-generated item that's a package of effects, crack it open and keep the individual effects as individual salvage pieces. When I wanted to make a new item, I could assemble it using only the effects I wanted, taken from the salvage I'd gathered. This is the fine detail that got me fired up about crafting in that game - I didn't have to keep making things that other people designed, or otherwise keep making things and hoping the result would be halfway decent (curse you, Diablo 3! You ruined crafting for me!!!), I could gather enough resources and make EXACTLY what I wanted. Character customization done right... At least for me.

In City of Heroes, that might involve creating my own multi-aspect enhancements to be part of my own set that had set bonuses of my choosing. I could see there being restrictions, such as certain set bonuses only appearing at certain "tiers," like restricting defence bonuses to only six enhancements or such, or restrictions on not repeating enhancements, like not using Dam/Rech four times. I'd gladly deal with those if it gave me any semblance of control over what I slotted beyond just using other people's ready-made work. I swear - if that were the case, I'd gladly do the math, educate myself and figure it out. If it could be made how I want it, I'd be all over such a system.

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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.

You know Sam most of the time I agree with you but here is where we differ. I see the IO crafting system as limited but not in the sense of the word that your using.

The IO system is limited by the rules of the game which is in turn limited by the rules of the game engine. It is rather easy to memorize all these rules and keep them in mind when building an IO build, Mids makes this even easier. I like the IO system because I can learn everything their is to know about it and understand it at it's basic level (I.E. The Math).


What your asking for is to be able to mix SO's to get ACC/DAM or DAM/STUN in whatever combination you want right? Well HO's do some of that already but why don't you just use the IO's that you want to get the effects that you want and ignore the sets their from? Ignore set bonus's, if you don't want to deal with them don't. Then the only limits are what sets the power takes and if their are enough IO's available to slot it how you want it.

I would not expect any changes to the crafting system in COH though its too well liked and would be a major PITA to change.

Franken-slotting (using IO's/Set IO's and ignoring their bonus) can give some *very* powerful characters out there.

i hate to say, but i played koa, and one of the consistant criticisms was that crafting was unbalanced. I didnt craft much, but i found even basic sagecrafting to add silly levels of power. so its all well and good to enjoy that, but not for a game with any hint of balance. and I think that applies to coh too. some attributes really affect balance when combined, and those combinations probably affected heavily what actually wound up being the attributes of things like alphas, hybrids and such.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I thought that this was going to be about sliders.

I hated the crafting system in KoA:R, but then I can't recall ever playing a game with a crafting system I like.

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Originally Posted by Golden Girl I thought that this was going to be about sliders.

Great, now I'm hungry for sliders.

That's kind of what I mean - sometimes, options kind of like what I want may exist, but I'd either be vastly misappropriating quite expensive enhancements or altering the conditions. And that's not to devalue what you're saying - that's a VERY impressive list you've put in there. Even if it's not exact, it's a HELL of a lot closer than what I expected would be there.

My point, though, is that even at the best of times, you're still running against what specific packages the game offers. Even if we ignore set bonuses entirely, being able to make the exact combinations of enhancements that I want and being able to use the same combination repeatedly would be a lot more straightforward to do. I'm sure it wouldn't be as good as Sets with Set bonuses, sure, but I've never used sets in Diablo or its clones and would always opt for the simpler gear.

Generally speaking, I take all the powers from my primary and secondary, I get them to 50 using SOs and Commons and I then slot them with Uncommon Sets. As luck would have it, only a SINGLE Uncommon set exists for each category at level 50. I could probably do more, but I've tried and my enthusiasm didn't last. From the looks of it, I'll be picking pretty much the same Incarnate powers on all my characters, too, with only very rare exceptions. They're almost all melee, anyway. That's more or less what "package" customization does to me - I find a single package that works and then just stick to it.

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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.

I'm not sure if it's the same thing you're talking about Sam, but there's at least two MMO's coming out this year that feature 'mess with the system as you will' character building, and one of them is NCSoft's very own Guild Wars 2.

This is a system whereby instead of adhering to a build as such, you choose a class, but then based on a combination of items (each of which has different effects) you can come up with a mix and match of abilities that best suit you. GW2 intends to do away with the Holy Trinity (something I think is a very good thing and a step forward for MMO's as a whole) and let everyone equally contribute.

I certainly hope the Devs of this game look at what one of their sister games is doing and learn from it, because I do feel the days of pre-set packages and builds is approaching an end, even if I don't know how quickly. More and more games are putting an emphasis on what you want personally as a player and how you go about making that happen.


S.

Read what you want think I understand you and my response. No thanks.

A system like this will have huge balancing issues, assuming that blanacing was done than your crafted IO's in some cases need to give less bonuses than others. No thanks.

For Secret World referance you can learn all skills in that too and its crafting system is rather what Tow wants but with alot of grinding for materials and with specific way of crafting.

Overall there is no crafting that is easy to make and free-formed otherwise there wouldn't be an economy in-games which people are why focusing on crafting. (especially in sandbox games)