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Damage types are another thing that I am very split on. My stance seems to depend on my mood that day. In one side, sometimes I think damage should just be damage and not be complicated with typing. Other times I feel it's not complex enough.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Here's a question. Conceptually speaking, what's the difference between an Energy_Attack and a Fire_Attack? And I'm using the underlines to emphasize the nature of the question.
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In the complex category... Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but technically Fire is a form of energy. If I was to go complex, I would make damage types a tree, not a list.
By this I mean, imagine you had Elemental_Attack type, and then under it you had Cold_Attack, Fire_Attack and what the heck, Wind_Attack and Earth_Attack.
If you have 30% Elemental resistance, you would resist all those attacks.
At the same time, I would have an Energy branch that is subdivided into Radiation, Electricity and perhaps also Fire.
This may mean that 30% Elemental, 30% Energy and 30% Thermal all combine in a diminishing form to result in, perhaps, 65.7% final Thermal resistance.
The Kinetic branch may house Smashing, Slashing, Piercing, and potentially also Wind. Earth maybe too?
What I'd do with Magic? Holy, Dark and Runic come to mind.
I know there can always be things like magical fire, but I think that goes down to "power customization" (allowing the player to select fire fx for his magical attacks.)
This is going too far but I would not have the extreme disparity in resistances/defenses we currently have in this game. Even if your primary element was Fire, this would simply give you a slight edge against a type at a marginal expense of a logical opposite or maybe even selected type, but never a crippling hole.
One thing is sure: If I go complex, I do so in a way that allows easy expansion of that complexity. If I want to add a toxic type later, it should be easy to plug it in and everyone that selected a survival boosts may start seeing the standard values where they apply.
BTW: more often than not, I just incline towards no-typing. At that point "typing" is just a thematic thing that determines your FX selection, plus perhaps a few non-damage powers.
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You should take a look at Star Trek Online. It is not THAT far, but the things you can do with faces amazed me. You can decide the XY coordinates and rotation of scars! Give me just pieces I can use to build my own shoulder pads, similar to how I can build my own faces in STO! Let the community managers take care of offensive creations.
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Originally Posted by Sigium
I have a crazy dream of sandbox-like tools being released to the CoH community, where people would work with/modify polygons, smooth out edges in their favorite pieces and make radical designs while experimenting with settings, defaults, customizations, sliders, angles, lengths, widths, depths, translucency and a myriad of other tools that would allow players to create their own costume part.
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In City of Heroes, Fire_Attack is not a form of energy. Fire_Attacks are attacks that can all be defended against by some abstract form of defense that happens to work on all attacks that are in some way related to Fire.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
Damage types are another thing that I am very split on. My stance seems to depend on my mood that day. In one side, sometimes I think damage should just be damage and not be complicated with typing. Other times I feel it's not complex enough.
In the complex category... Not sure if this is what you are talking about, but technically Fire is a form of energy. |
Which is a bunch of gibberish.
There's a very obvious conceptual distinction between positional and non-positional defense/attack types. Positional defense is associated with Evasion. You evade the attack in some manner so that it does not hit you. Non-positional defenses are associated with Deflection and Absorption. In some manner, the attack actually hits you but doesn't affect you for some reason. That evasion/deflection distinction has a very strong conceptual grounding.
But what's the difference between melee_attack and ranged_attack? In City of Heroes, this gets conceptually hazy very fast. Colloquially, melee attacks are attacks that probably can be blocked. They are evaded in the sense they don't land, but not strictly speaking by getting out of the way alone but by also effecting some short-ranged countering move. Parrying, for example. Ranged attacks are more generally evasive. AoE defense is god only knows what.
And among the non-positional attack/defense types it gets even hazier. You can make conceptual cases for smashing vs lethal defense as armor that is strong against crushing blows and vs penetrating attacks: brittle vs ductile armor perhaps. But Fire and Cold, Fire and Energy? Sure you can make up a string of plausible gibberish, but there's really no conceptual logic behind fire defense and fire attacks.
The attack and defense types are mostly spreadsheet fodder. They don't have strong conceptual reasons for existing, except to have lots of types.
Why have types at all? In my opinion, it should be to distinguish things you actually want to distinguish in the game, and its hard to come up with a reason why you really want to distinguish "fire" and "energy" attacks (note: I'm still talking about attack types, not damage types).
I would want to distinguish between magical effects and non-magical effects, because the rules surrounding them are generally totally different in fictional settings in and around the comic book genre. By allocating types to them, I can make that distinction in the game systems.
That's really the only reason to make such typing, and there are no other really sound reasons to do so. In other words, you type things when you need to, not when it seems you should.
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By this I mean, imagine you had Elemental_Attack type, and then under it you had Cold_Attack, Fire_Attack and what the heck, Wind_Attack and Earth_Attack. If you have 30% Elemental resistance, you would resist all those attacks. At the same time, I would have an Energy branch that is subdivided into Radiation, Electricity and perhaps also Fire. |
Which means as obvious as the conceptual distinction appears to be, having those two types was probably 99% a waste of time. You have to start from what you intend to use to what you decide you need. You don't make smashing and lethal damage types just because it sounds good or because it seems obvious. You do it because you intend to *leverage* the difference between the two. This game does not.
We don't really leverage the difference between Fire_Attack and Energy_Attack. Its just spreadsheet sweetener. Conversely, I think the fact we can't distinguish between magical and non-magical effects is a serious deficit, one that almost demands typing considerations.
So when I say I would make magic, science/natural, and mind/psi into some form of fundamental types in an MMO, I'm not saying they *should* be types. I'm saying something a bit different. I'm saying I would make a game that *required* those types. The game I'm thinking about would be impossible to make without that typing. Any game without that typing would be fundamentally unlike the game I'm thinking about in an irreconcilable way.
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Whatever explanation for super powers they give, I'd rather they let us find out via the story rather than telling us. Or maybe we never get a concrete explanation.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Whatever else I think about that game, DCUO did have a more novel way of explaining the sudden burst of superbeings in a way that didn't trivialize their existence. Stealing a page from that story, it would have been interesting if on Primal Earth the first real burst of superheroes were born just in time to fight in the Rikti War, while on Praetorian Earth the first big burst of superheroes was born in time to fight in WW2, and that was the biggest difference between the two worlds. Praetoria, in other words, would be a cautionary world for Primal Earth where eventually superpowers destroys the planet.
In this completely different alternate multiverse timeline, this gives Prometheus an interesting backstory option. Maybe *he* is the one that brings superpowers to Praetorian Earth, and sees what happens, and now he's trying again on Primal Earth, but wants to control the process more and slow things down. |
Again, that goes to flesh out the setting. Maybe nobody knows for sure and every talk show and CNN special has 'experts' offering theories. Maybe you've got people accusing metahumans of being aliens. Maybe you've got religious cults springing up around super humans. Maybe a rash of desperate people trying to induce super powers in themselves by breaking into nuclear facilities, stealing stem cells from bio labs and trying to be hit by lightning. Just think of the super pharmaceutical e-mail spam alone.
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I see... I thought you were talking damage types, my brain is checking out already and I forgot the meaning of _attack.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In City of Heroes, Fire_Attack is not a form of energy. Fire_Attacks are attacks that can all be defended against by some abstract form of defense that happens to work on all attacks that are in some way related to Fire.
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But yea, the overall type_attack system in this game is a mess, I think a perhaps late in development choice to cramp a lot of comic book concepts into a single system.
If we were talking exclusively the ability to avoid damage, I would make stats for melee/ranged combined with some form of directional avoidance stat. This would be great for tanking and ranged. Imagine if a pure range build was able to get high frontal avoidance, you can have a strong ranged AT that must play strategically. If he ever got surrounded, it would likely means his end.
On the other hand, a tank-type or melee type may have better flanking and rear attack voidance. But I think I'm shifting topics here...
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| Why have types at all? In my opinion, it should be to distinguish things you actually want to distinguish in the game, and its hard to come up with a reason why you really want to distinguish "fire" and "energy" attacks (note: I'm still talking about attack types, not damage types). |
Another reason to have damage types is mostly Player Vs Environment. As you said before: NPCs dont get to have fun, so you can actually make use of damage types to give big, exploitable shifts to enemies.
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| That's really the only reason to make such typing, and there are no other really sound reasons to do so. In other words, you type things when you need to, not when it seems you should. |
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| Which begs the question when would you have general vs specific resistances, and what the advantages and disadvantages would be, and would any player actually go along with that. |
Reason to do it from a gaming perspective? Everyone gets content they can be good at on their own. The Human Torch may be able to easily fight The Magma Men, and Iron Skin Tank Man may be able to survive anything but be faster solo shattering The Glass Demons. Players join forces to tackle bigger mixtures of enemies.
The biggest challenge is to have enough content over the entire game to justify all damage types.
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| Its easy to fall into the trap of having distinctions without differences. Smashing and Lethal damage types are one step removed from being redundant. |
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| Which means as obvious as the conceptual distinction appears to be, having those two types was probably 99% a waste of time. |
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| So when I say I would make magic, science/natural, and mind/psi into some form of fundamental types in an MMO |
I keep inclining to no damage type at all every time I think too much about this, though, having just an inherent side effect to your choice of "element" or "power" instead of an actual type. Although I think it may be fun to geek out playing with all the stats, it may be too much and never have enough conceptual reach to make a fun difference.
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There are a couple things that feel missing from all superhero games, especially MMOs including this one. I'd hope any future generations begin to include these.|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
I feel like every games has aspects of it (especially this one), but what are the features of a "perfect" superhero MMO. What game would grab you and engulf you enough to warrant a monthly subscription, a F2P model, or a combination of the two. I guess what I want to know is what features would make you feel as though you are the superhero you always imagined?
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1. - a "manipulation mode" for player characters as a fully developed aspect of gameplay. a bunch of pre-alpha minigames need to be developed IMO to flesh out this idea and test what is feasible, what is fun and in time what is balanced. But powers should be able to double as environmental manipulation powers when switching into this mode: i.e. picking up i-beams, welding joints, carrying civilians (or kidnapping as the case may be), creating ice columns to support structures.
This would require a more robust application of physics with a careful eye towards the now fairly established genre of physics puzzlers. I imagine "manipulation mode" could be then applied to permit heroes to rebuild a large structure with a ghosted template of parts. If you have someone with fire or electrical powers, you can weld the joints. Otherwise you need to escort or carry up available civilian welders and their equipment.
I imagine more complex applications during trial type events where some heroes may need to be in combat mode while others are in manipulation mode. "Cover me while I straighten the train tracks" sort of scenarios, etc. Clicking glowies and simple health bars are admittedly last decade at this point. Much more could be done.
There is also room IMO for things like welds, combination locks, etc. to be sorted out with puzzles a la the classic Puzzle Pirates, with the ease of the puzzle directly affected by enhancements to specific applicable powers.
2. - a persistent world in the non-instanced part of the game that moves with a comic book urban rhythm. Not talking about night and day cycles here. But a rhythm of calm followed by waves of petty crime followed by calm followed by city threatening plot followed by heroes actively participating in the rebuilding and recovery from damage then repeat. Or something to that effect. (EDIT: I personally don't feel that CO's zone events really captured this. In part it is too predictable. Think something more fun than the Steel Canyon fires, but as varied in location and now make a dozen different things that could happen in any given corner of the city during a crime wave. And crimes need to somehow spill over their spawn location without being so messy that they interrupt everything in the zone or kite all players into participating regardless of their intentions when logging in--a tricky balance to be sure!)
There needs to be more dynamism with emergent narratives IMO. There needs to be a meaningful dynamic for the chase. Cop cars chasing bank robbers, petty thieves running down alleyways, etc. More rooftop avenger type stuff. Chose to catch a thief or trail them back to a hideout.
The manipulation mode (yes a poor name) described in item 1 would come into play as the rebuilding phase after a big battle topples a landmark. And it needs to be fun game play, as fun as combat. (And it could be IMO with some experimentation and minigame style research.)
And all this needs to somehow be tied into uncovering plots and stories. Contacts should be dynamic. They should contact you sometimes and then when you accept to pursue that story, should request a meeting someplace--maybe someplace different each time. The location character should fit the contact: a dark alley perhaps where they emerge out of an instance door and approach you, one of the semi-RP/social interiors such as a diner or gymnasium where they await at a table or come out of the locker room to meet you, etc.
The sub-genre of hero MMOs still has a lot of room to grow creatively and in turn a lot to offer back to the wider genres of MMOs and electronic gaming in general.
I hope the former Paragon crew will reform to continue advancing this genre.
(and yes, non inventory-based character customization as presented in CoH is perfect as is and remains the paragon for the sub-genre IMO)
Good Thread! *Thumbs-Up*
Love all the ideas presented in here and in other threads.
To me (and it appears many others) customization is king, it is what made me fall in love with City Of.
Just a few aspects i would like to see approached in a Supers MMORPG...
1.) Sandbox / User Ownership
When approaching a "Supers MMO" game design, i keep having this impulse to inject a ton of sandbox elements into the design. A regulated way of getting user created content/elements into the live game for all to enjoy. (User created cities/zones/buildings/factions/characters/missions etc..)
2.) Less themepark, more dynamic.
The world should react to its current circumstances. ex: Crime is high/low in City #1, the city needs to reflect that. Keeping crime low/high is dependant on the characters(Hero/Villain) putting in the zone time to beat/help the baddies, which could open up other avenues based on the level of zone control. The game world would/should not be 100% the same from one day to the next.
Rant:
This Themepark + Cash Shop trend of the MMO industry is losing my interest in the genre, a genre i was madly passionate about only 6-7 years ago. I know cash is king, but for #$% sakes somebody take a chance!
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You have to, or everything becomes magical or psionic. There's no such thing as the empty set flag.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
I can see the point for magic, and Mind, but science/natural type? Unless you are meaning to flag there anything that is not magic or mental...
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| I keep inclining to no damage type at all every time I think too much about this, though, having just an inherent side effect to your choice of "element" or "power" instead of an actual type. Although I think it may be fun to geek out playing with all the stats, it may be too much and never have enough conceptual reach to make a fun difference. |
- Directed
- Penetrating
- Area of Effect
- Enveloping
Damage types
- Physical
- (Standard)
- Energy
- Elemental
- Magical
- (Standard)
- Metamorphic
- Chaos
- Psionic
- (Standard)
- Telepathic
- Astral
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OK so a base. May be against the naming, though but I guess the third bucket needs some name. Physics or Physical may be a better name, no?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
You have to, or everything becomes magical or psionic. There's no such thing as the empty set flag.
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Attack types
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The Area of Effect... not sure I like it. How are you supposed to, in any way or form, be able to avoid a bomb's blast? I (biased I know) like more the idea of direction and range.
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Damage types
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Magic Standard -> Arcane
Psionic Standard -> Mental
Physical Standard -> Kinetic
Having any one type be "Standard" may have the connotation that the other types are rare and/or situational instead of thematic or conceptual.
Edit: curious, would you note a difference between thermal as an energy form and fire as an elemental force?
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Customization-Good customization to create a character from ground up in looks/costumes and in power selections outside the usual structured power set selections. Wish eventually to have one where the character can have a customizable voice in game.|
Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
I feel like every games has aspects of it (especially this one), but what are the features of a "perfect" superhero MMO. What game would grab you and engulf you enough to warrant a monthly subscription, a F2P model, or a combination of the two. I guess what I want to know is what features would make you feel as though you are the superhero you always imagined?
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Storylines- A good story. If it's going to take itself serious, one that doesnt try too hard to be serious and just is. If it's going to be funny, one that is funny. Just good story lines.
World- Large maps if needed but not a bunch of unused maps that are huge for no reason. And each map have a story to it that is active to the current game. Not some side road that no one goes to.
Powerful character potential- Dont have to be godly, but dont have to be NPCs lackey the entire time. A hero that can go gets his/her own missions instead of relying solely on contacts to tell there there are evil doers lurking.
Enemy groups that are significant and is a threat-None used as filler material.
Variety of mission type-some outdoor some indoor, some under water, some in space, some on the moon, some in offices, some in apartments, some in large homes, some in a bus station, some in a bank, some in a volcano base or something. ANd less ambushes. Ambushes dont equal harder especially if every other mish have an ambush.
Brave villians-While you are powerful, these villians beleive they are a threat to you and willing to fight instead of tucking tail and running at the sight of you. Not very heroic feeling to smash someone that do not wish to fight and rather flee. Let the lowly cops deal with them. Let the hero deal with the villians that are a threat and actually aim to take you out.
Leveling should be done at a good pace whether solo or teaming and all content/storylines should be able to be soloed. Even in super hero lore there are very few heroes that grab a team of each other everytime they want take out some villians. but neither way should be slower or faster than the other.
Interesting villian groups with different goals and will fight each other if they come across one they dont like and work with ones they do like. And each villains group have a well written background story(think I said this already but once again). Nothing worse than a villian group just thrown in there just to be thrown in there unti la contact thinks of something else better.
Defeat all have a real purpose to defeat all. Grabbing a glowy have a real reason for grabbing just the glowing thing. Although it would be interesting to have these things more of a suggestion than requirement. If you defeat all, it may affect the next mish differently than if you left one or two alive to tell the story.
-Female Player-
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Originally Posted by mauk2
Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words.
"Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard.  Never change, E_L! |
What a fantastic thread.
So you could further turn contacts on their head by changing a contacts' ability to talk to a player based not on levels but by reputation.
Building from other discussions in this thread, instead of being of a faction (hero, rogue, vigilante, or villain) you just have some kind of general reputation level. For example, if you have too much aoe collateral damage from destructable items in missions then your reputation is more villainous versus the number of kittens you pull out of trees or old ladies you help across the street makes you more heroic. Oouuuu, how much fun would it be to be able to go and mug citizens yourself as opposed to watching other factions do it all the time. Heh heh. Oh. Digression over, ahem.
So based on your reputation slider the contact either talks to or ignores you using this instead of determining your level. This allows the player more control over what contacts they choose to associate with and removes much of the train tracks that the initial contact system put players on. It also prevents players from outleveling a contact, though faction level and replayability become an issue. Perhaps a branching system similar to the Going Rogue launch would be helpful here to prevent players from playing through all contacts at once. That is, decisions with one contact either unlock or lock potential contacts and interactions down the road in other ways.
You could take the contact system further by having unlockable faction contacts (Here faction refers to groups like the Circle of Thorns or the Paragon Police Department) that only become available once you've earned up enough credibility with the contact you're working with or perhaps run a special mission of some kind. Faction contacts could provide further missions against or for a particular faction and even provide specific rewards like faction specific costume pieces or special recipes or salvage, or faction based repeatable missions. It also unlocks the potential for having an "arch-nemesis" type adventure that was faction specific.
You could even go one step further and take things back to a direction that I think the original developers of City of Heroes wanted to try but couldn't pull off, and that's make the items that contacts provide (buyable enhancements, inspirations, and even possibly recipes) unlockable based not only on the credibility you've earned with that contact but also whether or not a faction was out to get that hero/villain, thus limiting the player's ability to buy items. So if you want that special recipe that only that contact has, well, you better get the Tsoo off your back first, buddy. Thus providing a motivation to players to seek out those missions and complete them.
So now contacts become a very sophisiticated system where by they have an assortment of missions they'll offer to players based on the player's reputation levels and any flags that represent a faction-based attack on that hero. All tied into a reward system that provides the player with better access to equipment, recipe, and other rewards, based on how well the player works with that contact and how hard they work to maintain their reputation level for that contact. Because we all know that a hero that falls can't go chatting with his old buddies anymore.
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At the moment, City of Heroes has a Toxic_Attack type. However, no defense power offers defense against toxic_attack at the moment.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
Hmmm, not sure I like that list, and I may need a bit more on what you mean by Penetrating and Enveloping.
The Area of Effect... not sure I like it. How are you supposed to, in any way or form, be able to avoid a bomb's blast? I (biased I know) like more the idea of direction and range. |
The four types were based on conceptual notions of attack avoidance. "Directed" attacks are the standard notion of the single target attack that attempts to strike a specific target or location. This would be comparable to the Melee_attack and Ranged_attack types in City of Heroes. Area of Effect would be comparable to the AoE_Attack type in CoH. "Enveloping" would be a new conceptual type that was a variation on AoE. As you mention, its conceptually difficult to conceive of a way to "avoid" a radial bomb blast - an attack that literally strikes or covers an entire area. But there are other kinds of attacks that affect an area. For example, a snare that mechanically functions similar to a lasso in some respects affects an area, but in other respects does not. These are attacks that involve areas but don't actually directly affect everything in the area. They are more aptly described as attacks that attempt to encircle targets within an area in an attempt to ultimately hit them. Attacks that come from multiple directions while primarily affecting a single target, as opposed to Directed attacks that mostly come from one direction and AoEs which affect everything in their area.
These three come from my analysis of how you go about attempting to evade an attack. An attack that comes from one direction - Directed attacks - can be dodged or blocked. For me, the melee/ranged distinction isn't that important, and certainly the dichotomy isn't: if range has an effect on how easy or hard it is for the attacker to hit the target and the defender to evade the attack, its a continuous effect not a binary one.
But you can't just dodge or block effects that encompass an entire area. You don't dodge an explosion, short of leaving the zip code entirely. The distinction between Directed and Area attacks is huge conceptually, and the mechanical typing acknowledges that.
But some effects don't fall into those two - again, the simplest example is that of a lasso. It sort of affects an area, but unlike explosions it can be evaded because of its mechanics. Also, I can conceive of magical attacks that "seek out" a single target within an area. And stretching the concept to its limits (as all simplifications ultimately are) consider someone firing a machine gun and trying to zero in on and hit an evading target. In one sense the "attack" is affecting an area, but in another sense its actively trying to zero in on one target in that area. It can be evaded, but not in exactly the same way as a single Directed attack. You could say this is the conceptual boundary between Directed and Enveloping: the case where lots of little directed attacks affect an area. A game designer would have to make a call: is a Rain of Arrows dense enough to be considered an Area of Effect attack, or is it more of an Enveloping attack that can be evaded in a similar manner.
Another way of putting it, albeit in a simplified way that loses some of the nuance, is that Directed/Enveloping/Area represent a way to represent the continuum of attacks that go from (attack from one direction)/(attacks from many directions)/(attacks from all directions at once).
Penetrating attacks are my way of dealing with the Smash/Lethal distinction in a different way.
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Hmmm... I can sort of live with those.... although I would go deeper in those branches with sub-types and rename the "Standard"s to: Magic Standard -> Arcane Psionic Standard -> Mental Physical Standard -> Kinetic Having any one type be "Standard" may have the connotation that the other types are rare and/or situational instead of thematic or conceptual. |
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| Edit: curious, would you note a difference between thermal as an energy form and fire as an elemental force? |
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Okay, so I get your explanations on the positional types down pretty well. But it's the damage types you lay out that confuse me a bit. Isn't it possible for a magic user to weild elemental attacks? Can't a Natural/tech person build a device that attunes itself to human brainwaves and launches psyonic bolts at targets? Or am I mixing your discussions of Origins in with Damage types here and alligning things up too literally?
How do these all relate together? It sounds like the system you're making is one that doesn't make much use of archtypes or powersets in the same way we think of in City of Heroes (not necessarily a bad thing).
* A setting where any character I create fits.
* The ability to create a character, complete with bio, and play that character as I see fit, and on my terms.
* Time. I don't want to see an MMO where nothing changes. I want people to remember me and I want my actions and decisions to impact my stories. Just the fact that you can outlevel contacts, zones, and mayhem missions is great!
* Villainy.
*Mayhem Missions. This is the single best thing about CoH and I will cherish these memories always.
* A steady, reliable constant stream of new content for the game, which Paragon was able to provide for years. I will always use Paragon Studios as the model of how to properly do a free-to-play MMORPG based on microtransactions and optional subscription.
you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you <3
My perfect superhero MMO -- Class-less, level-less, and tiered.
Class-less: Players would choose archetypes based on power structure, like in the PnP Hero System. Power structures might be a theme (fire, or psionics, or animal powers) or a power pool limitation (Multipool -- choose 20 powers that you can switch between, with the switch having a 10 minute cooldown. Gadget pool -- choose 100 powers, each of which is one-use per mission. Et cetera.) These are basic powers, such as Energy Bolt (which can be defined as fire or ice or whatever) or Melee attack.
Each character also gets one Specialty. This is what the character is best at. Possible specialties are: Perfect Aim (ranged shots never miss), Devastating Strength (attacks always down the target in one hit), Invulnerability (Immune to normal damage), Perfect Center (immune to knockback, psionics, vertigo and such), Perfect Dodge (cannot be hit by normal attacks). Every Specialty has a counter -- someone with Perfect Aim shooting at a character with Perfect Dodge rolls to hit normally, for example.
Sounds ridiculous, right? Bear with me.
Level-less: The powers a character starts with are the powers they get, period. These are your superpowers. Superpowers, in general, don't change. But you do learn to use them better.
As the character gains experience, they can spend that xp to purchase power tricks. This lets you use your base powers in new ways. A character with a Melee attack might learn a new punch that hits harder or faster. A character with a Fire theme might learn Fire Shield or Fire Bolt. Tricks might allow expanded area effect, longer range, more damage, et cetera. Every theme should have a tree of tricks associated with it. Every pool should expand its options or usability.
Experience also allows you to purchase Contacts -- who give you more missions -- and Belongings such as a base, new costumes, family members, and temp powers. You can also purchase the chance to change tier.
Tiered: The superhero world should have three tiers: Street Hero, World-class Hero, and Cosmic Hero. The Street Hero fights thugs, muggers, and bank robbers. The World-class Hero fights supervillains and regional threats like giant monsters. The Cosmic Hero fights entire alien armies and things like Doomsday or Thanos. (Entities like Galacticus and Parallax are on a fourth tier that players can't get to.)
If you fight something from out of your tier, the higher-tier combatant gets the equivalent of all the Specialties; they are Invulnerable, have perfect aim, kill in one shot, etc. Sometimes a Street hero must face a giant monster, or a World-class hero must fight Thanos. That's where plot arcs lead, and where they climax.
Characters can purchase temporary tier shifts that bring them to another tier. A Street hero might get special training or gadgets allowing them into the World-class action, or a World-class hero might find cosmic power. A Cosmic hero might allow himself to be depowered to fight on a lower level. ("I'm not allowing someone with the power of a sun to wander around Brooklyn.") You'd have to purchase tier shifts to finish some plot arcs, or to team with friends on different tiers.
There should be raid-style content in each tier that affects the raid content in other tiers. Street heros need to stop the plutonium heist, to give World-class heroes more time when fighting Dr. Pluto, which opens up holes in the shield of the Plutonic Planet-eater that is heading towards Earth.
That's a rough outline. I think it would be a good system that gives players broad customization, Belongings to collect, a resource sink in tier shifting, and some interesting potential plot arcs and gameplay challenges.
But, you know, it's just a pipe dream. Pipe dreams are fun, I guess.
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Yes, yes, and yes. The way I think about attacks is to think about how you'd defend against them, not how you would create them. To (over)simplify a bit, consider an arrow that explodes when it reaches the target. It is not an arrow, its a bomb. That happens to fly. Being an arrow is the visual representation of the attack. But the mechanical one is of an explosion.|
Originally Posted by Lock0n
Okay, so I get your explanations on the positional types down pretty well. But it's the damage types you lay out that confuse me a bit. Isn't it possible for a magic user to weild elemental attacks? Can't a Natural/tech person build a device that attunes itself to human brainwaves and launches psyonic bolts at targets? Or am I mixing your discussions of Origins in with Damage types here and alligning things up too literally?
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A "magic user" is describing the attacker. But if he waves his arms around and ends up hitting the target with elemental damage, that attack is elemental. If it hits the target for magical damage, its magical. I liken this to the Green Lantern loophole. In some of his past incarnations, he couldn't affect yellow, so yellow arrows would pass through his green force fields for example. But he could use his green lantern powers to scoop up a wall and hold it up in front of him: yellow arrows would just bounce off that. Conversely, he couldn't attack through yellow shields. But if he used his power to lift a heavy rock over a yellow shield, the rock would squish the guy.
The origination of the attack might be magic, but what I care about mechanically is what the attack finally ends up being. Because the only reason for typing attacks and damage is to allow for different things happening to the target. So in the above example, the damage type isn't "green" its "rock."
Conceptually, the way I think about this is that attack type describes how the attack hits the target. Damage type describes what the attack does to the target when it hits. Everything else should be handled with customizable visual effects.
As I mentioned further upthread, I don't think its a good idea to dictate "origin" as character origin. I think that's something you should just leave up to the player. I think of the concept of origin in terms of source of power. Does your attack's effects obey the laws of physics? Does your attack's effects obey the laws of magic? That affects *how* those effects ultimately affect the target, because the target can have equally typed protections.
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OK,this and reading all the above, what would you do with this example:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Penetrating attacks are my way of dealing with the Smash/Lethal distinction in a different way.
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A wide targeted sword swing that can hit various targets?
It sounds to be penetrating, area of effect and targeted. How would you deal with multiple overlaps? Do like we do here? Independent checks for each stat until the attack misses or runs out of stats to check against?
Side note: this kind of discussions are the thing I will miss the most out of these forums.
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I guess if some one wants to make a superhero that is the equivalent of Profesor X wearing Ironman's suit and The Mandarin's rings. |
Originally Posted by Lock0n
Okay, so I get your explanations on the positional types down pretty well. But it's the damage types you lay out that confuse me a bit. Isn't it possible for a magic user to weild elemental attacks? Can't a Natural/tech person build a device that attunes itself to human brainwaves and launches psyonic bolts at targets? Or am I mixing your discussions of Origins in with Damage types here and alligning things up too literally?
How do these all relate together? It sounds like the system you're making is one that doesn't make much use of archtypes or powersets in the same way we think of in City of Heroes (not necessarily a bad thing). |
But that's another reason why I incline to entirely remove typing entirely, no mater how you go at it, you will find a way to make things restrictive. Just give players the ability to make their powers look like fire or ice, whatever they prefer.
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Penetrating Enveloping attack with target cap N, dealing Physical damage.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
OK,this and reading all the above, what would you do with this example:
A wide targeted sword swing that can hit various targets? It sounds to be penetrating, area of effect and targeted. How would you deal with multiple overlaps? Do like we do here? Independent checks for each stat until the attack misses or runs out of stats to check against? Side note: this kind of discussions are the thing I will miss the most out of these forums. |
"Enveloping" might not be the best evocative description of the type, but this sort of attack affects an area but in a dodgeable way, therefore its Enveloping. In CoH, multiple attack types are handled in a certain way, but the way I wouldn't necessarily handle them the same way (as high match). "Penetrating, Enveloping" would be more what you would expect: Enveloping for the purpose of dodging, Penetrating for the purpose of checking against deflection, combined in a more synergistic fashion than override.
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If I understand this right... does this means you would use the same stat to determine if you dodge a wide sword swing that you would use to avoid damage in a grenade explosion?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Penetrating Enveloping attack with target cap N, dealing Physical damage.
"Enveloping" might not be the best evocative description of the type, but this sort of attack affects an area but in a dodgeable way, therefore its Enveloping. In CoH, multiple attack types are handled in a certain way, but the way I wouldn't necessarily handle them the same way (as high match). "Penetrating, Enveloping" would be more what you would expect: Enveloping for the purpose of dodging, Penetrating for the purpose of checking against deflection, combined in a more synergistic fashion than override. |
Actually that's a good one that may count: would you even allow for concepts like wide area explosions to be avoidable at all?
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Okay, so to expand further on this idea, I love this notion of indirect pvp. Have players run a series of missions that kick off events in a zone. These events can be things like opening portals for faction groups to attack from (think Anti-Matter or a Nemesis Mole Machine). Fires, or Superadrine riots starting due to careful planting of items by player-run missions. Mass kidnappings/escapes, or just a shortage of authorities due to players taking them out. These can all lead up to a special zone wide event. Call it a zone Lockdown. The idea behind it is the authorities (whoever they are, good or bad) are so freaked out about all the fires, portals, kidnappings, whatever, that they call for a lockdown on the zone and certain specific things change (similar to a Rikti Ship Raid).|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Back when CoV was in beta, I mentioned my belief that, however the logistics of the games were going to be managed, I would not have made a Rogue Isles. I would have dropped the villains right into Paragon. It would have allowed for the possibility of indirect faction competition. In other words, CoV players could have been the ones setting fires to buildings in Steel that CoH players could try to extinguish. CoV players could have been the ones setting bombs that CoH players could have tried to prevent. They could have been the ones opening portals to dark dimensions in the middle of Peregrine Island rather than anonymous relative non-entities (at the time) like Antimatter. There were lots of potential opportunities for faction-based mini-games that could have expanded the grey area between PvE and PvP, rather than make direct PvP be an isolated marginalized activity.
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First, enemy spawn points change from being passive spawns to bad guys actively patrolling their areas in sizes comparable to hazard zones. Second, normal contacts and shops go out, as the zone is too messed up to think of normal business right now. Third, emergency contacts open up to provide missions to aid the zone in it's time of need. And forth and most importantly, pvp flags get set for all players who are of differing reputation settings.
So now the zone is a true hotspot of chaos and mayhem. PvP is active, factions are running rampant, zone events are going crazy and the authorities are in a panic. What happens next. If you're on the opposing side of the zone's natural factional state (for example, you're a villain attacking Steel Canyon or a hero assaulting Grandville), then you try to keep the chaos going, by pvp'ing players, stopping zone events from being ended pre-maturely, or otherwise holding a zone that has no members of an opposing PvP faction in it for a set amount of time. Eventually the zone resets itself all on it's own and you're awarded a badge for seriously altering a zone's state for an extended period of time. If you're on the opposite side of that faction, then you can come in and successfully PvP the opposing zone, ending zone events (put out the fires, etc), defeating x number of factional spawns that are running rampant on the streets, or completing missions from emergency contacts (this last one is very important). All these should contribute to a State of the Zone bar that you and the opposing side work on, until the zone is either saved or the chaos ends on it's own and everything resets (with a substantial cooldown as well).
By providing non-pvp'ers several means to engage in the events of the zone without actually pvp'ing, you provide a major reason for them to enter the event and blunt some of the immediate criticism of PvP in general. PvP'ers don't really need much more motivation to play then what they already come with. And you make the accolades and rewards at the end of the event commensurate with the efforts necessary to swing the zone out of chaos or keep it there as long as you can.
Best of all, it really provides for a fun and interesting way to make the game world feel the effects of players playing in it. There are those that won't go near PvP with a 10 foot pole, but by providing a means to engage in the events without PvP'ing, I think a lot of the criticism could be blunted by the fact that you're being given the opportunity to do something truly heroic (factional differences here don't matter, as kicking out someone who's messing up your home generates a universal emotional response, no matter where your home is). And the opportunity to actually completely alter the state of a zone by players themselves is something that I think would be a worthwhile goal to shoot for.
It's a system that probably shouldn't be available at launch but could have great potential down the road as an expansion system that provides players with a way to dynamically affect the game world in ways they never could before. It's not something you'd want to implement in all zones (particularly, low level zones). But it is something that could significantly spice up the normal gameplay of the game in a tangible way that would provide for a challenge that couldn't just be handled by rote, once the details of an event occurred. The PvP element of the event would create challenges in ways that normal players might not expect or be easily prepared for. But it would definitely allow for a means for players to feel more heroic for saving their zone or villains to feel more bad *** by driving off the namby pambies telling them what they can and can't do in their house. And if you make it difficult to set off (especially for solo players) you can avoid having your zones be in complete chaos all the time. Mmmm tasty.
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Something like an explosion would be an AoE attack. It would not be conventionally evadeable except by escaping the area of effect completely.|
Originally Posted by Starsman
If I understand this right... does this means you would use the same stat to determine if you dodge a wide sword swing that you would use to avoid damage in a grenade explosion?
Actually that's a good one that may count: would you even allow for concepts like wide area explosions to be avoidable at all? |
So no. Evasion would be able to dodge directed attacks and (to a lesser degree) enveloping attacks. Not AoE attacks. A bullet (directed) can be dodged. A sweeping sword (enveloping) can be dodged, albeit it can be harder. An explosion (area) cannot be dodged.
To evade an AoE, you have to not be in the area, or be in the area but break line of sight, if the attack requires line of sight. An explosion requires line of sight (to a first order approximation). A poison gas cloud does not.
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Something that could be added to such a system, to further differentiate and perhaps enable a swift player to avoid some of the effect by conscious movement: area/volume fill speed and linger time.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Something like an explosion would be an AoE attack. It would not be conventionally evadeable except by escaping the area of effect completely.
... To evade an AoE, you have to not be in the area, or be in the area but break line of sight, if the attack requires line of sight. An explosion requires line of sight (to a first order approximation). A poison gas cloud does not. |
An explosion requires line of sight but will quickly fill the affected spherical volume, within an animation frame (or perhaps a few frames for the classic slow fireball). A normal explosion will not linger, an incendiary one might have a briefly lingering burning effect.
A poison gas cloud might not require line of sight, but it could require several animation frames to reach its maximum affected area. The cloud might also linger for a bit after it stops spreading.
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So you would have attacks that are impossible to avoid. Now, I will switch directions here for a bit but: you have been for a long time a proponent that should someone want to make a character that's entirely about "evasion" he should be able to, but at the same time you are extreme about fair balance.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Something like an explosion would be an AoE attack. It would not be conventionally evadeable except by escaping the area of effect completely.
So no. Evasion would be able to dodge directed attacks and (to a lesser degree) enveloping attacks. Not AoE attacks. A bullet (directed) can be dodged. A sweeping sword (enveloping) can be dodged, albeit it can be harder. An explosion (area) cannot be dodged. To evade an AoE, you have to not be in the area, or be in the area but break line of sight, if the attack requires line of sight. An explosion requires line of sight (to a first order approximation). A poison gas cloud does not. |
Where would you make the concession here? If it's possible for someone to have an acid cloud attack that can't be avoided, how you allow for a pure-evasion based build to exist without being unfairly penalized?
Would you rethink the ability to evade the attacks or the ability to be purely evasion based?
What would make the best Superhero game out there?
Perhaps, and call me crazy, but maybe some more input from the community? Not just commentary and suggestions, but entire content.
I have a crazy dream of sandbox-like tools being released to the CoH community, where people would work with/modify polygons, smooth out edges in their favorite pieces and make radical designs while experimenting with settings, defaults, customizations, sliders, angles, lengths, widths, depths, translucency and a myriad of other tools that would allow players to create their own costume part.
Once these parts would be created, they would be submitted into a separate subforum dedicated to judging and feedback of said piece. And once a month, contests would be held and pieces would be added- pieces made by the community and given credit for.
But again, I'm batty.