Thanks for all the stuff, can you do it better?
By
Ad Astra,
Posted on: 2012-08-13 09:23 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I can read the title two ways:
- "The BMW you gave me is nice and all that, but I want a Lamborghini!"
- "Alright Blue. You've done a nice job on that painting, but with the talent you've got I know you can do it better..."
I don't see the mix and match idea Blue mentioned in their original post working. Even they don't.
Would I like to see more alternate animations for a lot of the powers in the game? Absolutely. More customization wouldn't be a horrible thing to have.
Throwing darts at the board to see if something sticks.....
Come show your resolve and fight my brute!
Tanks: Gauntlet, the streak breaker and you!
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Originally Posted by PapaSlade
Rangle's right....this is fun.
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I do not think you are mad at me Aurora Girl. Trying to be jovial and still get you to see what I am saying. I do see what you are saying. Perhaps a better anology is "I bought this car. There were a hundred cars on the market, and three were near what I wanted, and yours was the closest. But, the cupholders are just not right. (True in my car, like 8 cupholders and only one is worth a darn!) And a list of other things I really want to be different. Also, I am trying not to just throw out "I Want" statements, but to use this thread as a "honing" of ideas. |
Originally Posted by Aurora_Girl
Blue, I'm sorry if it seems like I'm unreasonably angry at you, because I'm not. I like to see new suggestions when they make sense. I just worry that your suggestion (and truthfully, whether it makes sense or not isn't up to me; I don't write the code) won't be taken seriously when you caveat it beforehand. All you have to do is say "You know what would be cool? Generic Powerset." and have the discussion in that thread. No need to defend or justify your position before you even make it.
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Your point about not just switching animations is valid. Except... We can switch amimations, and therefore I know it can be done. Also, the game is already starting to evolve from a static power model. Look at Dual Pistols, Staff Combat and Bio Armor. One power is a "meta power" that changes how your other powers function. Yet does not break game balance. Different, but I think it is valid to bring up.
Lastly, look at the Blaster primaries. Compare Electrical Blast, Energy Blast, and Radiation Blast. Can you honeslty look at that and not consider that someone flipped a coin here or there to decide whether to put in a cone or a Targeted AoE or a PBAoE. It seems like they picked the way they did as if intentionally not duplicating what was done in another set as much as to maintain any sort of play balance. In the end most Blaster Primaries fall well into the model that I threw out. Yes, Ice Blast does not, it has always been the odd child out. To be honest I put my list together in 5 minutes. If I spent a day solo working on it I could present a well thought out plan with many contingencies that might be able to fairly describe most or all blast sets. But sometimes a pencil sketch works great. As long as you realize the scale at least or the the problem *may* have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being *crushed* by a *dwarf*. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.
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No, the "remedy" is:|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Isn't there an IO out there that converts KB into knock down? Sounds like the perfect remedy for all those Energy Blast attacks that constantly knock enemies away from the melee characters on your team.
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(A) The blaster learning to use their powers, including secondary effects like knockback, and
(B) the melee not whining because someone knocked an enemy away from them. (If someone just used an AOE KB right where the melee was, scattering *everyone* away, then the problem is covered by (A.) )
Oh, and (C) players realizing they're on a *team* and working together, not 2-8 soloists who happen to be sharing the same map.
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My solution to KB and how it works with melee characters is simple - if you knock it away from me, that means you want to deal with it. If you knock it towards me, that means you expect me to deal with it. |
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
No, the "remedy" is:
(A) The blaster learning to use their powers, including secondary effects like knockback, and (B) the melee not whining because someone knocked an enemy away from them. (If someone just used an AOE KB right where the melee was, scattering *everyone* away, then the problem is covered by (A.) ) Oh, and (C) players realizing they're on a *team* and working together, not 2-8 soloists who happen to be sharing the same map. |
I also feel the same way when I'm on the character with KB, because at that point it becomes a fun little game of skeet shooting and I try to see if I can have it dead before it hits the ground, or else a "hey, go get that one!" moment. But that's just a combination of A and C.
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Yes, it does. Comic book fights in general often involve knocking people back, and the blasting therein is no exception.
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Originally Posted by EvilGeko
No it doesn't.
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
My 2 bits on KB, and I have 50'd multiple Energy Blast blasters. (I love the animations, can't stay with it...sigh) It is REALLY hard to work with. Compare it to a Radiation Blast/Mental Manipulation Blaster. You can sit and pound the biggest mobs in the game, (pick ITF Swarms, fun example) with Electron Haze, Neutron Bomb, Psychic Scream. The enemies you are agroing are being melted as you agro them. Try that same trick with an Energy Blast/Mental Manipulation Blaster. Don't get me started on hoverblasting and using walls to control KB either. I have my hoverblaster badge, and it doesn't solve all problems. You can talk to me about walls when you give me or a teammate the power to create a force wall anywhere we want to control the terrain. Until then, it is not consistently usable option.The reason I answer this question in such detail is it goes to the heart of why I want customization. Being able to pick what type of Ball attack you want (PB or Targeted, Energy Damage/Lethal/Negative/Fire, etc.) and if you want any secondary effects (-res, -def, KB, more damage, or ...) and then what animation you want for it (Please give me Energy Blast's, cause raising that energy ball for Radiation over the head is just not what I see my character's doing...) does not seem either to be game unbalancing or impossible. Blaster's get a Ball attack. They have a lot of variable, but they are all pretty much the same. Can I get one I like, with animations I like? Is that really that hard. Some folks seem to think "It is this way because it is perfectly balanced, play it that way or be quiet." I do not see perfect balance. I bet you a quarter someone could do a mathematical analysis of Blaster sets and determine they are not balanced. I bet you another quarter someone could do a different mathematical analysis and prove they are. You see, we have entered the world of statistics once we start down that road. I take the much simpler approach. I look at Blaster sets. I see almost every set gets a Ball attack. Each Ball attack is different, they differ by PB or Targeted, damage type, and secondary effects. Oh, and animations, core of the game there. Let the player's define their characters. I promise it will be a good marketing decision.
But animation times do play a part in balancing the sets, at least to some extent.
I am really, really dumb about calculating such things as DPA & DPS & Arcanatime - but those are factors in balancing the sets and are built into such things as animations and recharge times. In theory, your method of picking and choosing animations could result in picking the quicker times and therefore cycling through powers (attacks in this case for a Blaster) faster.
The devs did try allowing free-form choices, way back in the early, early days of the game. And it was a nightmare to balance. Your desire to be able to choose animations and "categories" of attacks (# of ST, Snipe, # of AoEs, etc.) doesn't address this balance issue. I know you state that your choices would be based on esthetics (preferring the look of one animation over another), but not everyone's would be chosen for the same factor.
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."
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Yes, you are right Ad Astra, the animation times do balance the sets. I also am really bad at the Arcanatime stuff. Sort of embarrassing, since I know if I dig into it I can figure it out, especially since Arcanaville has done all the work (a lot) and makes no secret about how she came to her conclusions.|
Originally Posted by Ad Astra
But animation times do play a part in balancing the sets, at least to some extent.
I am really, really dumb about calculating such things as DPA & DPS & Arcanatime - but those are factors in balancing the sets and are built into such things as animations and recharge times. In theory, your method of picking and choosing animations could result in picking the quicker times and therefore cycling through powers (attacks in this case for a Blaster) faster. The devs did try allowing free-form choices, way back in the early, early days of the game. And it was a nightmare to balance. Your desire to be able to choose animations and "categories" of attacks (# of ST, Snipe, # of AoEs, etc.) doesn't address this balance issue. I know you state that your choices would be based on esthetics (preferring the look of one animation over another), but not everyone's would be chosen for the same factor. |
What I am suggesting is there must be a framework that the Devs work in when writing up a set from scratch. If I wanted I could spend the afternoon going through MiDs and researching every number, but it would do nothing to help the core of the argument I am making (nor would it detract, it would just add statistical data).
Basically each T1 blast is going to fall into a range of time, damage, an effective DPS average, etc. Same with every power really. Each Ball is going to be similar, not to far off the chart, where you use a different Blaster Primary and are like, "ZOMG WXY Blasters get a Ball attack that is sooooo much more powerful than NHY Blasters.!" Nope, they re all about the same. Fire Blasters secondary effect is more damage, so that of course tilts their stuff by that amount. But Basically a T! blast is a t1 blast, and I bet a few peeps (like Arcanaville) could recognize one by it's DPS signature long before you actually show them anything else about it, (that is just a guess.) But what I am trying to state is each attack in the Blasters sets has a signature to it, the T1 blasts, T2 Blasts, T3 Blasts, Cones, Balls, are all self similar. The flow up from tier 1 to Tier 9 powers do wander a bit more, but I bet that could be standardized.
My method would be to take 5 or so of the most bland primaries, and figure a method that lets people pick powers and still end up with 90% or better match on each of those. Then just let people pick animations, damage type, and secondary effects. By definition the sets created will all be balanced, they were created using the exact same generic power data used in every balanced set there is. You do not let people pick 3 ball attacks, or 3 cones, or any craziness. no picking 3 tier 3 blasts. It is really similar to what I posted upthread, just fleshed out a little more.
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They don't, actually, which I think is mandated by a huge pool of old sets with random animation speeds being impossible to "standardise" to a specific level without cutting certain sets in half (I'm thinking Stone Melee will get hurt bad). Why I say sets aren't balanced around activation times is Synapse himself has commented to as much, though his full comment does go on to state that, even so, animation times are still taken into consideration. What this means, though, is that there's no standard "DPA" formula that every power must conform to.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Yes, you are right Ad Astra, the animation times do balance the sets.
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There is a formula about the relationship between power damage, power recharge and power cost for almost all attacks, however. Divide the damage of any attack by the endurance it costs and you'll a number of around 0.192 scale damage, or around 12.something for Scrappers unenhanced. For the life of me I can't remember the AoE formula, but it does say that a power with a given damage and with a given AoE area will cost an additional amount of endurance and take an additional amount of time to recharge above what a single-target attack would have.
There is no such thing for animation times, and it doesn't take anything more complicated than Excel (or Notepad and a calculator, in a pinch) to figure this out. While DPE and DPS numbers are very orderly and consistent across the board, DPA and EPA numbers are all over the place, with some of the best DPA coming from some of the strangest places. If you're trying to figure out the best attack chain, say for single-target damage, you typically start with the highest-DPA attack, then the next one after that and so forth, adding up their overall projected DPS. What this means is that unusual attacks can end up taking priority, such as Energy Punch taking precedence over everything in Energy Melee.
When Synapse says that attack animations are taken into account, I don't think what he means is he gives the artists an animation time and tells them "Make it this long to the fourth decimal!" so much as they see what they have when the set's animations and stats are married together and tweak accordingly. I don't expect another Dual Pistols will happen any time soon, but if you think animation times are in any way standardised outside of maybe the Defiance powers, that's just not true.
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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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Thanks Samuel Tow. That is good information, and a lot to think on. Doesn't veer me off my quest, but certainly makes me better informed as I try to get there. (and no, my quest is not to get all this implemented anytime soon, I'm trying to get a coherent proposal ready for suggestion land, in the hopes something might come of it in a year or two.)
Crap, I just realized if I want to put together a good proposal I am going to need to spend a few weeks in Excel and Mids. Anybody got a Mids export of Arcanatime activations (current) end costs, and damage for Blasters lying around?
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All of that stuff is in the default installation of Mids. Arcanatime is an option you can select in the configuration menu; once it's selected, every power's activation time should incorporation the server-tick delay.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Thanks Samuel Tow. That is good information, and a lot to think on. Doesn't veer me off my quest, but certainly makes me better informed as I try to get there. (and no, my quest is not to get all this implemented anytime soon, I'm trying to get a coherent proposal ready for suggestion land, in the hopes something might come of it in a year or two.)
Crap, I just realized if I want to put together a good proposal I am going to need to spend a few weeks in Excel and Mids. Anybody got a Mids export of Arcanatime activations (current) end costs, and damage for Blasters lying around? |
And because I'm slowly but surely working through some I-24 DPS Blaster DPS comparisons, I can personally vouch for Mids' recently added cancel-on-miss calculations for fire dots. I can't guarantee that they're all right, but the ones I checked were, so the program's got the right idea.
Mids' doesn't have the I-24 changes in yet, though, obviously. For those you'll have to hit up the public Beta.
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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Somewhat off topic, but I've personally always believed that low-level powers should have high DPS but relatively low DPA so that you're most often seen cycling them, whereas high-level powers should have lower DPS but higher DPA, meaning they're the things you WANT to use when they're available, but aren't feeling hard-pressed to fit into an attack chain. I'm aware that bigger attacks also tend to be slower, so giving them better DPA than the faster smaller attacks means some numbers-juggling, but there are a few sets which accomplish this quite well.
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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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Freeform power selection? Anything is possible, but one of two things will be true on that day. Either the devs will have created the best power system in existence and City of Heroes will take over the MMO space, or it means City of Heroes will cease being a game and become a SuperSIMS environment.|
Originally Posted by blueruckus
I think OP's feedback is valid and may one day be incorporated in some form, at which point we'll be saying "how did we manage so long without this?!"
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One is far more likely than the other.
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It's the first one isn't it? I can't wait.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
One is far more likely than the other.
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Brutal Arcanaville, but thanks for the honesty. I'll focus on trying to "reskin" existing stuff and alternate animations. If I could get Energy Blast images laid over Water Blast I'd be in hog heaven. Which, just grossed me out.
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Reskinning is much more likely over the very long run. At one point I was discussing with BaB the possibility of making a sort of animation and vfx "library" that you could swap around between the powers. The logistics would be tricky, and it would be better if the FX files were autogenerated by a compatibility library generator rather than created by hand, but its not far-fetched to think its likely in the long term powers will be more likely to look like what people want them to look like.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Brutal Arcanaville, but thanks for the honesty. I'll focus on trying to "reskin" existing stuff and alternate animations. If I could get Energy Blast images laid over Water Blast I'd be in hog heaven. Which, just grossed me out.
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Do exactly what they want them to do is a lot less likely without a complete overhaul of the powers system. I figured out a way to do that for critters, but the advantage there is the critters don't deliberately try to cheat the system. Players will. That's two orders of magnitude more difficult to design around. Assuming you want to do it right.
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I also proposed this "bread and butter" theory long ago, and it was in fact the thing that spurred me to actually coin the terms "DPA" and "DPC" (as far as I know, I was the first one to use it here).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Somewhat off topic, but I've personally always believed that low-level powers should have high DPS but relatively low DPA so that you're most often seen cycling them, whereas high-level powers should have lower DPS but higher DPA, meaning they're the things you WANT to use when they're available, but aren't feeling hard-pressed to fit into an attack chain. I'm aware that bigger attacks also tend to be slower, so giving them better DPA than the faster smaller attacks means some numbers-juggling, but there are a few sets which accomplish this quite well.
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Only one of those terms caught on though.
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Yeah, there are no mechanically viable games with freeform power selection, *cough*SecretWorld*cough*.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Freeform power selection?
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"Do it better."
Don't you mean do it differently?
"Better," in your view, obviously isn't a consensus opinion. Perhaps your wish would, in practice, be ten times worse than what we have now. Saying it's better now is only an exercise in your mind until it's in the game.
Your ideas would be fine for a different game. This game has a certain design philosophy. Your idea doesn't fit the mold. You may not want to hear it, but it's too late in the game to change a core mechanic like how you pick your powers/animations/fx like what you suggest.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
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That a verb can have multiple unique definitions that are easily recognizable as it changes parts of speech?|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Because the heart of the flaw in NoMind's argument is right here.
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| So, my title "Thanks for all the stuff, can you do it better?" is a compliment. |
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I haven't had much time to play TSW although I've followed the game since early pre-beta, so I'm not an expert on TSW. But I can say - at least from what I've seen so far - there's nothing obviously innovative about its core power system, because its fundamentally a point-based skill tree system and not a freeform power system. And like all point-based skill tree systems its a bit mechanically rigid. TSW has two critical departure points that make it both interesting and inapplicable to City of Heroes, though. The first is that its a level-less system. The second is that its reward system isn't tightly coupled to combat proficiency because of its out of combat puzzle components.|
Originally Posted by Jack_NoMind
Yeah, there are no mechanically viable games with freeform power selection, *cough*SecretWorld*cough*.
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Its really embryonic in terms of what they can do with their game. There are great places it could go if they stick around long enough and are ambitious enough. But its not going to be what most people consider to be a freeform powers system. Most people think about something like a fully fleshed out HERO system for computer MMOs.
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it should be easily doable, the key is the modifier matrix. I've done it for a pen and paper game|
Originally Posted by Jack_NoMind
Yeah, there are no mechanically viable games with freeform power selection, *cough*SecretWorld*cough*.
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imagine you can pick any powers in the game (except maybe pets).
then you select your effects levels: damage, defense (including resistance), control mag, buff/debuff percents
everyone could have a ranged attack, damage resistance, a self heal, and a buff to defense
but the blaster has good damage, their DR sucks, their self heal is weak, and their buff is weak
the defender has a good heal and buff, but their other numbers are bad
the game does this already. Just imagine that everyone takes tough and weave plus all of the DR and Def in their sets. Everyone then has DR and Def - just at different levels.
everyone does damage - just varying amounts
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Yes, this. The old Hero system stuff was wonderful, and you could see the beautifulness in it. I could create anything in it. That kind of flexibility is a dream, but I think it's a dream that will be coming to our computers, or gaming consoles, or whatever we have in a few years.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
But its not going to be what most people consider to be a freeform powers system. Most people think about something like a fully fleshed out HERO system for computer MMOs.
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That's an example of paying for diversity in one area by eliminating it in other areas. Everyone has the same specific set of abilities, and the only diversity element is in tweaking specific components of those abilities.|
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
it should be easily doable, the key is the modifier matrix. I've done it for a pen and paper game
imagine you can pick any powers in the game (except maybe pets). then you select your effects levels: damage, defense (including resistance), control mag, buff/debuff percents everyone could have a ranged attack, damage resistance, a self heal, and a buff to defense but the blaster has good damage, their DR sucks, their self heal is weak, and their buff is weak the defender has a good heal and buff, but their other numbers are bad the game does this already. Just imagine that everyone takes tough and weave plus all of the DR and Def in their sets. Everyone then has DR and Def - just at different levels. everyone does damage - just varying amounts |
Fundamentally, that's a point-based attribute system mapped to an ability system.
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I personally think you are reading more into what s/he wrote than is actually there.
Currently on the internet there are hundreds of free games available. Choosing to play those games would give a player "more than s/he had before." However, many of them choose not to play. And for many of those people, there are things about those games they think could be done better.