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KISS Damage Types: Keep It Simple, Stupid

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Sand_Trout
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KISS Damage Types: Keep It Simple, Stupid

As my mind drifts back to this game on occasion, I'm reminded of certain gameplay aspects that will (almost) certainly carry over from CoH to CoT. Specifically, the issue of how to address damage types.

Looking at CoH, I concluded that there were some damage types that virtually always were resisted in pairs (moreso for players, but still). IE: Smashing/Lethal, Fire/Ice, Psychic/Dark, ect.

My suggestion is to consolidate into a minimal number of more broad damage types.

Here's my attempt at a minimized list of damage types,

Physical: Blunt force trauma, cuts, piercing, and other similar types of direct tissue disruption. This would take up the CoH Smashing and Lethal categories. Rational: Though not always offering equivalent protection, most items or anatomical properties that protect from an attack based on physical contact will offer some level of protection against even attacks it was not designed to negate. For instance: Kevlar with a ballistic plate is designed to stop bullets, but will also offer some, if not especially effective, protection from a knife or crudgle (provided the crudgle hits the plate). A knight's plate might not stop a modern rifle, but may deflect pistol rounds.
Note regarding Powersets:[i] Physial attacks IRL are extremely effective, and are the predominant means of combat, but as they quickly loose energy and are generally highly directed, each attack is only likely to hit a single target. This can be played into Physical damage power-sets as being single-target, high damage attacks, but somewhat lacking in AoE potential.
[i]Note regarding Mobs:
Please don't go overboard with physical defense. The fact that the enemy isn't incapacitated from a 3-round burst to the chest already demonstrates an exceptional resistance to bullets.

Elemental: All heat, cold, and electrical attacks. Rational: Thermal insulation works comparably regardless of if you want to keep out Cold or Heat, and most materials that are thermally resistant are not good electrical conductors either. There are IRL exceptions to a thermal insulator also being an electrical insulator, but they are exceptions.
Note regarding powersets: Thermal and electrical weapons are actually frequently extremely energy inefficient as the energy, even electrical, is quickly disbursed through the subject, but this can play into the Elemental based powersets, as they are subject to higher endurance/mana/whatever costs, but have more AoE damage.

Essence: Thematically, this would be a mix of Psychic or other non-material attacks on the target's mind, soul, chakras, or whatever. Rational: These all deal with attacking a non-physical aspect of the target and one's defenses against such attacks is generally portrayed as a matter of will and discipline.
Note regarding powersets: It would make sense to me that Essence attacks will be relatively heavy in the realm of crowd-control.
Note regarding mobs: Don't make resistance to Essence attacks exceptionally rare. With the theme of the defenses being based around willpower and discipline and the context of a world where Magic and Psychic powers will have been present for a while, I would presume that any dedicated military/police style training would include some training to resist attacks on one's essence. Therefore, rather than Essence resistance being based around dedicated psychic groups (Ala Carnival of Shadows from CoH), it should be correlated with the level and thoroughness of training that a member of the group would typically be subject to. Well disciplined and trained organizations like Malta from CoH would have high psychic resistance while powerful, but disorganized groups like Freakshow from CoH would not.

Toxic: This would include poisons, corrosives, asphyxiants that while physical, are more subtle than a sledgehammer to the face. Rational: These really don't fit with anything else plausibly, and many things that resist a blade or bullet will allow acid or poison gas to leak through joints. Thermal resistant armor could be dissolved by a powerful solvent.
Note regarding powersets: Toxic powersets would be DoT based and therefore lacks the Alpha of other sets, but would apply debuffs, thus resulting in more damage delivered over time and/or less damage received. The balance on this might be tricky to give Toxic powersets average or slightly below average kill times Solo, while retaining their usefullness in a group by increasing all party members' damage.
Note regarding mobs: I would think that robotic, spectral, or wildly mutated enemies would most commonly be resistant to Toxic affects, as Toxins would be hypothetically tailored to the most common subjects, particularly biological ones.

Personal analysis:

Negatives:
There is the issue if this consolidation of damage types would limit the thematic options to the devs when creating enemy groups.
Naturally, as Powers/Animations are going to at least somewhat disassociated, there is nothing preventing a player from making a Toxic set with a fireball animation, but more power to them, as far as I am concerned. I mostly want to enable thematic consistence as simply as possible, nor compel it.
Players may feel overly constrained by fewer options than CoH in terms of damage types.

Positives:
Less complicated and enables more straightforward balance assessment. if more than half of the Mob groups in the game resist one of the damage types, I would take that as a signal to scale down damage resistance to that type. Alternately, if less than 10% of mobs resist a damage type, maybe spreading that resistance around a bit is in order.
If my recommendations regarding damage type "flavor" (or something similar) are also used, advanced manipulation of spawns can be done to mitigate or accentuate the strengths of a particular damage type. For Instance, an enemy faction that tends to have lots of Physical defense will skew towards fewer, stronger enemies in a given spawn, thus allowing a Physical damage player to take advantage of their powerset's flavor (single target, high alpha) even though their specific damage type is resisted, while an Elemental damage player looses some of the benefit of their AoE focus, but isn't subject to significant damage resistance from the targets.

General Thoughts:
Damage types and damage resistances should, first and foremost, serve gameplay. How many and which ones we decide to have is, in the end, arbitrary. Feel free to pick out the good ideas and leave the garbage.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

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I like the idea of

I like the idea of streamlining things in general, but what if these damage types were separate but still had relatively similar mechanics? After all, in CoX, you had enemies like Devouring Earth whose "Swarms" (a type of underling, IIRC) were extremely resistant to lethal damage because slicing at a cloud of insects is largely ineffective, but smashing damage had more luck because it could cover a larger surface area and thus strike more insects. Likewise, ice elementals would have exceptional resistance to ice, but fire damage would be a serious problem, so grouping those two damage types together would be futile. Also, electrical and thermal conductivity are two separate things, so grouping energy/electrical damage types with other elemental damage types may not make sense for somebody who wears a thin rubber suit, which would easily insulate against electricity but would not be thick enough to stop thermal attacks, or a highly conductive metal plating that absorbs electricity attacks but has a low specific heat or melting point. Also, psionic and darkness attacks are made of different types of supernatural energy, and could be spun by a toon's canon to be radically different. (ie. dark damage is dark energy and psionic damage is more spiritual, so separate resistances to dark energy and soul energy are needed) Finally, I'd actually be happy if toxic damage was separated into poison and chemical/corrosive damage, respectively, as strong acids can eat through metal even if cyanide can't affect a machine.

But hey, it was definitely an interesting proposal.

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One of the things associated

One of the things associated with different damage types in COX was the secondary effects of the powers that used them. Energy damage did knockback, fire did ancillary damage over time, ice did immobilization and/or slow, etc. If they intend to continue to distinguish the different damage types in CoT in a similar fashion, I think they're going to need more than 4 damage types for that reason. Whether or not they intend to group them in any way for the sake of resistance is another question. I think I like giving the devs the freedom here to design the powers in bioth damage dealt and resistances any way they want instead of intrinsically linking anything to anything else.

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Sooo...

Sooo...

A Ranged Blaster might have 3 effects on a few of its powers, in a powerset?

Snipe:
Physical ___ 80%
Essence (KnockBacks, Stuns, Slows, etc...) ___ 16%
Elemental ___ 4%

But the 3rd effect can only be unlocked after a Month's worth of effort.. in Trials and/or other Augment gathering/crafting missions?

Not sure if Essence and Elemental can switch if its an AoE, Cone, or Single Target power. :[

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

One of the things associated with different damage types in COX was the secondary effects of the powers that used them. Energy damage did knockback, fire did ancillary damage over time, ice did immobilization and/or slow, etc. If they intend to continue to distinguish the different damage types in CoT in a similar fashion, I think they're going to need more than 4 damage types for that reason.

I think you can have multiple secondary effects that work off the same damage type. In COX there were several attacks (Radiation Blast, Energy Blast, Sonic Blast, Electric Blast) sets that all did Energy damage but had different secondary effects. Working off the P.E.E.T. damage types. Heat Blasts can do elemental damage with a DoT effect. Freezing Blasts can do elemental damage with a slow effect. Shocking Blast can do elemental damage with energy drain. The combination of damage type and rider effects would alleviate the problem of limited thematic options.

While I believe that there should be enough damage type options in the game; enough to allow players and developers to explore countless thematic concepts. But, I think the concept of P.E.E.T.; I think it gives enough to work with without being bloated

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I assume that the power sets

I assume that the power sets will each have some kind of organizing theme which separates different sets from each other and unifies the powers within a given set so as to be "on theme" with each other. Not that EVERY power in a given attack set does the same type of damage and only that type, but simply that the powers in that set are, to some extent, designed to work well within that set and that the one damage type the set is known for is the prevalent one in that set's powers. You might even have powers like Aim and Build Up in there, which aren't really "on theme" in the sense that they deal NO damage in and of themselves, but they make the set they're in work better or work more like it's supposed to, in some way. I feel as though the secondary effects will play the role of "the thing that differentiates different sets from each other". "Burning" has been floated as an example of a power set damage type. It doesn't mean "Fire" per se, but it's the attack set damage type that does residual DoT as a secondary effect. Given that the animations and graphics will be separate from the powers they represent, I have to wonder how much any of the labels were putting on the damage types really mean. Personally I think the only inherent difference between any one named damage type e.g, "Burning" and another is the secondary effect, e.g. "residual DoT".

External to that, there might be damage resistance powers that might resist one or more of these types. In some cases it might make sense to give a certain power resist Burning and resist, say, Lethal. Maybe you're wearing a flame-retardant kevlar suit or something, etc I don't know. As such I don't know if this sort of categorization into 4 or so sub-categories is necessary or helpful. Maybe they would prefer to design different resistance powers such that they don't need to follow the sub-categories at all.

In addition to THAT, you might find you want to categorize the Augments and Refinements in some way. Do we want to organize THEM in terms of "Elemental" and "Toxic" etc? I don't know.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Primary effect - Never stacks

Primary effect - Never stacks
Secondary effect - stacks once (low percentage)
Tertiary effect - stacks 4 times (very low percentage) (unlocked with Trials/Crafting/etc...)

Even though the Tertiary effect is Very minor, it gives the Player the feeling that their character is Different/Unique from All the other thousands of other players.

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One thing I never understood

One thing I never understood about CoX was if you were a fire type toon, shouldn't you have resistance to fire? Same with ice and so on.

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If you carry a Flamethrower,

If you carry a Flamethrower, you Might be smart enough to wear Nomex, but it wouldn't automatically make you fire-resistant.

Granted, if you were a Fire Elemental, one would expect you to Enjoy being fed fire and take no harm from it.

By the same token, if you had a snow-blower-canon that shot ice, you might wear a parka and gloves and resist cold damage, but that wouldn't make you More vulnerable to a liquid napalm attack. An icy-blast might be effective at putting out some fires.

An Ice Elemental might be able to take slightly reduced damage from some sorts of fire, but napalm or white-phosphorous would still be disastrous!

So, I don't feel that attack powers would naturally feed-back into defensive powers. They are separate.

Be Well!
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Fireheart got there first.

Fireheart got there first.


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The damage type, delivery

The damage type, delivery system, accuracy, defense, resistance puzzle is pretty daunting to me to try to design, like at all.

One thing I hope they DON'T do is hand us players the keys to the system and let people apply any area effect, animation, damage type, etc to any kind of attack. I think "Ranged Burning" should be designed to work in and of itself, whatever you choose to represent with it, but it ought to have it's own specific attacks, not "you choose the cone size, you choose the damage type, you choose the animation time, you choose the colors, you choose the graphics". Clearly we're going to be able to choose some of that stuff, and probably all of the cosmetic details, within reason, but I don't think it's a good idea to let people have complete freedom to pick the best range, best recharge time, best animation, best damage type, etc for every attack. I think "Ranged Burning" ought to be designed with specific powers that do the amount of damage, at the range and recharge rate and area size etc that the devs design each power to do.

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To be honest, I'd rather have

To be honest, I'd rather have a mere 5 Types system for damages.

Physical (Smashing and Lethal)
Thermal (both Cold and Fire)
Chemical (caustic acid/base chemical reactions plus poisons and diseases classified as Toxic)
Mental (Psionic)
Energy (both Energy and Negative Energy)


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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

One thing I hope they DON'T do is hand us players the keys to the system and let people apply any area effect, animation, damage type, etc to any kind of attack.

My assumption was that the results were going to be relatively restricted to the preconfigured powersets, but players would have relatively broad leeway in terms of the cosmetic aspects of the animation and effects. IE: An Elemental Ball is the same power in terms of Range/AoE/Damage/Cooldown, regardless of if the player makes it a fireball, Cryogenic grenade, or Ball Lightning.

I wouldn't be completely against a "Build Your Own Power" on general principal, but that would actually be *extremely* complicated to make in a balanced manner to the point of being distracting to the dev team and players.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

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Izzy wrote:
Izzy wrote:

Sooo...
A Ranged Blaster might have 3 effects on a few of its powers, in a powerset?
Snipe:
Physical ___ 80%
Essence (KnockBacks, Stuns, Slows, etc...) ___ 16%
Elemental ___ 4%
But the 3rd effect can only be unlocked after a Month's worth of effort.. in Trials and/or other Augment gathering/crafting missions?
Not sure if Essence and Elemental can switch if its an AoE, Cone, or Single Target power. :[

I hadn't really given much though to the Mixed Type sets writing this, which seems to be what you're talking about. I'm assuming that a given powerset would be dealing a single Damage Type (or maybe a 50/50 Split), and the available powers in that set were preconfigured by the Devs, similar to CoX powersets. While I would be ecstatic to see a well done Build Your Own Power feature, that would be incredibly difficult to design and balance, and extremely complex (opposite of what I'm trying to do in this post).

My thought was that the "Snipe" power between sets would be something like this:

Physical: Long range, single target, extreme damage
Elemental: Medium-long range, Linear path AoE (Very narrow cone, or something similar), high damage
Essence: Long range, single target, high damage, Mez
Toxic: Long range, single target, high DoT, small reduction to all damage resistance.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

The damage type, delivery system, accuracy, defense, resistance puzzle is pretty daunting to me to try to design, like at all.
One thing I hope they DON'T do is hand us players the keys to the system and let people apply any area effect, animation, damage type, etc to any kind of attack. I think "Ranged Burning" should be designed to work in and of itself, whatever you choose to represent with it, but it ought to have it's own specific attacks, not "you choose the cone size, you choose the damage type, you choose the animation time, you choose the colors, you choose the graphics". Clearly we're going to be able to choose some of that stuff, and probably all of the cosmetic details, within reason, but I don't think it's a good idea to let people have complete freedom to pick the best range, best recharge time, best animation, best damage type, etc for every attack. I think "Ranged Burning" ought to be designed with specific powers that do the amount of damage, at the range and recharge rate and area size etc that the devs design each power to do.

Typed damage is tangentially related to combat mechanic. It in of itself is not the "driver" of mechanics. Our team spent months of nightly discussions over handling of typed damage even to the point of asking if there should even be typed damage.

Designing protection mechanics has a much greater impact on the combat system. Applying typed damage merely adds a few "dials" to turn on the control board.

Set design such as Burning Blast uses a template-like system which dictates the basic structure of the set. Players won't be determining a sets typed damage, the effects the set leverages ( such as Burning leverages the theme of damage over time), or which attacks are single target, area effect, nor the size of said area attacks.

Indeed the choices lie in the aesthetics (animations, emanations, particle effects, and colors). Animations is only the appearance, not the cast time. And through play, how those powers are socketed. There may be Power Set Augments which can alter a portion of the set's damage to another type, but this is as close a player gets to choosing a specific damage type for any set as opposed to choosing the set which dictates the damage type (which is the foundation).

Augments may be able to also adjust area effect sizes in much of the same way cone range enhancements did in the old game. I say may because it hasn't been tested yet on how this affects certain gameplay aspects we have to explore.

I hope that clears things up for you, Radiac.


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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

To be honest, I'd rather have a mere 5 Types system for damages.
Physical (Smashing and Lethal)
Thermal (both Cold and Fire)
Chemical (caustic acid/base chemical reactions plus poisons and diseases classified as Toxic)
Mental (Psionic)
Energy (both Energy and Negative Energy)

I like this division better than the OP. It's more intuitive and versatile. The biggest downside I see is that it totally lacks a catchy acronym! :)

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
To be honest, I'd rather have a mere 5 Types system for damages.
Physical (Smashing and Lethal)
Thermal (both Cold and Fire)
Chemical (caustic acid/base chemical reactions plus poisons and diseases classified as Toxic)
Mental (Psionic)
Energy (both Energy and Negative Energy)
I like this division better than the OP. It's more intuitive and versatile. The biggest downside I see is that it totally lacks a catchy acronym! :)

Ehhhhh... just dont make it sound the same like the Infinity Stones/Gems. :p

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Thanks Tannim222, for the

Thanks Tannim222, for the clarity.

All I can say is, it makes a difference if your Fireball does DoT as a secondary or -movement and -recharge as a secondary. Hitting the mob for DoT as they all scatter is one thing, freezing them in place or slowing them so that they'll all get hit by the NEXT area attack is another. Different secondary effects lend themselves to vastly different tactics, and as such the power sets ought to be a little different to handle that, or at least the devs should be the ones designing such things so that the sets don't end up totally underpowered and/or totally overpowered in comparison to each other.

Don't get me wrong, there will always be a "best" option, according to the experts who spend too much time figuring things out, but the issue here is to make that best option still pretty darn close to the #2 and #3 runners up, not light years better.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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The power design system has

The power design system has been set up to at the least provide us with quantifivie properties in order to set up proper bounds of performance. Qualitive differences are another matter. For that, what we've done is designed sets with templates, as I've explained, which leans toward different play styles (one set being more single target focused, while another more aoe is a basic example). The next stage is applying a Theme to the set, that is one or more types of mechanics the set utilizes to distinquish how it plays or what tactics it affords over other sets. This is especially important when you consider that any one set could in theory, look like any other set. The style of play and mechanics are what end up setting things apart.

We are also building out a dev took kit for the power designer which will provide a lot of data prior to even testing a set, up to and including simulations which could be gauged against other existing powers or power sets. If everything looks good at the after the initial passes in simulation, we can then load out the set into our testing environment to test in actual play.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

*snip*If everything looks good at the after the initial passes in simulation, we can then load out the set into our testing environment to test in actual play.

Or, if the designer wants to have fun and not "do work," just skip the simulation part. Experimentation and discovery is the best method of learning they tell me. Statistics are boring.

Thanks for the info wielder of the magical crowbar. PS, anyone think there's going to be a temp power called "magical crowbar?" It wont do damage it'll just turn your foes into rabbits.

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WarBird wrote:
WarBird wrote:

Redlynne wrote:
To be honest, I'd rather have a mere 5 Types system for damages.
Physical (Smashing and Lethal)
Thermal (both Cold and Fire)
Chemical (caustic acid/base chemical reactions plus poisons and diseases classified as Toxic)
Mental (Psionic)
Energy (both Energy and Negative Energy)
I like this division better than the OP. It's more intuitive and versatile. The biggest downside I see is that it totally lacks a catchy acronym! :)

If I could piggy-back off of this idea. I would split Energy and Negative. My reason, when I think of Energy, I think of lightning bolts and laser beams. When I think of Negative Energy; I think spiritual energy attack, life force drain, shadow magic. Let's call it Eldritch. I see them being different enough to warrant separate types.

So we now have the P.E.T.C.E.M. framework (Physical, Energy, Thermal, Chemical, Eldritch and Mental)

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Thanks again for the info,

Thanks again for the info, Tannim222.

As for the other ideas being floated, if you have the 5 type system Red suggested, this leads to the question of what makes "Physical" damage different from "Thermal" damage? Is it that Physical Damage has +chance to stun on its attacks and "Thermal" doesn't? If not that, then what? Is it that resistance powers key off of the 5 types but the secondary effects of the powers don't?

I mean, saying that Physical includes what we used to call Smashing and Lethal is fine, but if those two things are going to have any existence in the game, then they're what, different types of damage that fall under the Physical umbrella? If the secondary effects and resistances still only care about Smashing and Lethal per se and not "Physical" specifically, then what's the point of calling those two things "Physical" at all? It would just be adding a category grouping where one is not needed or checked by the system ever.

If you're talking about narrowing it down to just 5 actual damage types for the sake of BOTH resistances AND secondary effects, I think that limits what the devs can do too much. For starters, it means that the resistance sets will likely all look a lot alike, more so than in CoX, which was already a bit of a thing there. Also, there are definitely more than 5 different secondary effects one could assign to the damage dealt by powers. "Energy" damage in CoX did knockback, "Radiation" did -def, "Electrical" did -endo to the target. If those three things are going to now fall under the larger umbrella of "options contained within the 'Energy' power sets" then it seems to me that a "-def Energy blaster" will work differently from a "knockback Energy blaster" which to some extent means we were better off with damage being typed based on the secondary effects in the first place. I mean, at the level of building a character, calling the -def type of blasty and the KB type both "Energy" but with different secondary effects is a little awkward compared to just calling one "Knockback Damage" and the other "Defense-reducing Damage" or whatever synonyms they come up with. If we just call all damage that gets +DoT as its inherent secondary effect "Burning" and leave it at that, it's more descriptive up front and requires less specification by the user after the fact. If nothing else, it means that when I'm LFT, I would type "Burning Ranger LFT" instead of "Thermal (fire) Ranger LFT"

As for the design of the system, ultimately I think it really boils down to how many secondary effects you want to have, and how many of them should have their own named damage type that a set might get based on (as opposed to just showing up elsewhere in the game, on NPC attacks, on Refinements, Augments, etc here and there). I think that for every major secondary effect you want to have at launch, you will likely want to end up with a named damage type for that secondary effect which manifests itself in the form of a power set somewhere. Maybe you don't have ranged Smashing at first, then later it gets rolled out with some new animations for it like "Shockwave Blast", "Wind Blast" and/or "Telekinetics", etc. Then later you roll out a "Burning" melee set that does +DoT as a form of now "bleed damage" where the +DoT is more like making the opponent lose HP over time due to wounds inflicted instead of catching on fire or whatever, complete with some "Slice and Dice" melee sets, etc and yes maybe even straight up fiery melee in there too.

I'd rather they just make the names of the damage types (and therefore the power sets) tell you what the powers do as much as possible instead of trying to group them together into families at all. It saves time in conveying what your toon does to other players, and it makes the design of resistance sets more free to mix and match different resistances that would otherwise not seem to fit together.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Thanks again for the info, Tannim222.
If you're talking about narrowing it down to just 5 actual damage types for the sake of BOTH resistances AND secondary effects, I think that limits what the devs can do too much. For starters, it means that the resistance sets will likely all look a lot alike, more so than in CoX, which was already a bit of a thing there. Also, there are definitely more than 5 different secondary effects one could assign to the damage dealt by powers. "Energy" damage in CoX did knockback, "Radiation" did -def, "Electrical" did -endo to the target. If those three things are going to now fall under the larger umbrella of "options contained within the 'Energy' power sets" then it seems to me that a "-def Energy blaster" will work differently from a "knockback Energy blaster" which to some extent means we were better off with damage being typed based on the secondary effects in the first place. I mean, at the level of building a character, calling the -def type of blasty and the KB type both "Energy" but with different secondary effects is a little awkward compared to just calling one "Knockback Damage" and the other "Defense-reducing Damage" or whatever synonyms they come up with. If we just call all damage that gets +DoT as its inherent secondary effect "Burning" and leave it at that, it's more descriptive up front and requires less specification by the user after the fact. If nothing else, it means that when I'm LFT, I would type "Burning Ranger LFT" instead of "Thermal (fire) Ranger LFT"

I disagree. We can limit ourselves to 4-6 damage types and have dozen of secondary effects. Hypothetically, we could have the Burning Blast and Numbing Blast both do [Thermal] damage with different secondary effects without leading too much confusion. Burning Blast, Numbing Blast.... those labels tells me enough about the power set. Not only that, I think it allows greater freedom because the damage type is not married to the secondary effect.

The problem, once we starting listing over a dozen different damage types is that they're going to require defense sets to be balanced around them. They're going to require the games mobs to be balanced against every damage type, and make sure there is enough variety so no one damage type is dominate. This is going to be even more problematic if we add new attack types in the future.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

As for the other ideas being floated, if you have the 5 type system Red suggested, this leads to the question of what makes "Physical" damage different from "Thermal" damage? Is it that Physical Damage has +chance to stun on its attacks and "Thermal" doesn't? If not that, then what? Is it that resistance powers key off of the 5 types but the secondary effects of the powers don't?
I mean, saying that Physical includes what we used to call Smashing and Lethal is fine, but if those two things are going to have any existence in the game, then they're what, different types of damage that fall under the Physical umbrella? If the secondary effects and resistances still only care about Smashing and Lethal per se and not "Physical" specifically, then what's the point of calling those two things "Physical" at all? It would just be adding a category grouping where one is not needed or checked by the system ever.

If you're asking me ... I'd divorce the secondary effects from the damage types entirely. Instead, I'd build the Powersets around a specific secondary effect, and then let Players pick what Damage types they want to use for the powerset (or even individual powers within the powerset).

Stun Physical
Stun Thermal
Stun Chemical
Stun Psionic
Stun Energy

That way, you can honor the "agnostic animation" angle with maximum flexibility.

This powerset does Stuns as its feature.
This powerset inspires Fear as its feature.
This powerset deals Knockback/Knockdown as its feature.

And so on ...


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Maybe I misunderstand, but it

Maybe I misunderstand, but it seems that it's the features that make a powerset useful beyond damage. A whole powerset that does different kinds of damage but always does ONLY stun wouldn't seem as useful to me as a set that does, say physical damage, but could knock down, stun and occasionally scare the bejeezus out of someone.

I will grant that having a powerset that does different kinds of damage that can get through a variety of defenses would be useful from a gaming standpoint. But from a realism viewpoint it would seem more coherent to me that if my powers are based around a sword, or energy blasts, or mind attacks, that the general type of damage I do is essentially the same, but its secondary effects could be slightly different.

However, I personally prefer to build Multi-faceted Swiss Army Characters when allowed. Not sure how that will work into the character class system we will have.

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Redlynne wrote:
Redlynne wrote:

Radiac wrote:
As for the other ideas being floated, if you have the 5 type system Red suggested, this leads to the question of what makes "Physical" damage different from "Thermal" damage? Is it that Physical Damage has +chance to stun on its attacks and "Thermal" doesn't? If not that, then what? Is it that resistance powers key off of the 5 types but the secondary effects of the powers don't?
I mean, saying that Physical includes what we used to call Smashing and Lethal is fine, but if those two things are going to have any existence in the game, then they're what, different types of damage that fall under the Physical umbrella? If the secondary effects and resistances still only care about Smashing and Lethal per se and not "Physical" specifically, then what's the point of calling those two things "Physical" at all? It would just be adding a category grouping where one is not needed or checked by the system ever.
If you're asking me ... I'd divorce the secondary effects from the damage types entirely. Instead, I'd build the Powersets around a specific secondary effect, and then let Players pick what Damage types they want to use for the powerset (or even individual powers within the powerset).
Stun Physical
Stun Thermal
Stun Chemical
Stun Psionic
Stun Energy
That way, you can honor the "agnostic animation" angle with maximum flexibility.
This powerset does Stuns as its feature.
This powerset inspires Fear as its feature.
This powerset deals Knockback/Knockdown as its feature.
And so on ...

Question: Is the Tanker type character choosing between powers that resist Stun versus those that do +DoT (what would have been smashing resistance and fire resistance in CoX) or are they choosing between Physical and Thermal?

Case 1: If the answer to the question is "you choose between Stun and +DoT" then there is no apparent need for the "Physical" and"Thermal" labels as they are not asked for when the resistance powers decide how much resistance the tanker gets to the attacks they're sustaining in combat. Your "stun resist" shield doesn't care if that "stun" power is Thermal or Physical, right? Nor are the labels needed by the toon doing the Stun Thermal attack when attacking stuff. The attacker might care that the potential target(s) have high Stun resist, but they're not looking at Thermal Resist, because that's not a thing. So we're calling it Thermal now, so what? What's the point to that? (My own solution to this problem below)

Case 2: If the answer to the question is "you'd choose between Thermal and Physical" as resistable things, then those choices are being made essentially blindly by the tanker toon, because there is apparently no correlatioon between "chance to stun" and any given damage type. Thermal could have +stun just as easily as Physical or Energy could. Thus tankers just need as broad an array of reisitance to everything as they can get, and it really makes no difference what damage type is being resisted the most or the least EXCEPT if the tanker sets overall have a "hole" at say, "Psionic" such that Psionic is the least resistible type, then people will stampede towards Psionic type attacks, and they'll do so without having to sacrifice nice little features like +stun, +DoT, -def, etc. You can then have all of the advantages of the different secondary effects on the most efficient damage type (least well resisted damage type) in the game, you win!

Case 2 sounds like something that could lead to brokenness if not done carefully, and even if they dodge the "right answer" bullet there, there is still the problem of Tankers not really knowing what type of damage they want resistance to when choosing powers. Case 1 is pretty clearly just adding additional labels onto a system that doesn't really require them, UNLESS....

Option A) You COULD key the defense numbers off of one thing and the resistance numbers off of the other. Like Thermal Defense in a thing, but Stun Defense in not. Then have the resistances work off of the secondaries (e.g. Stun Resist is a thing, Thermal Resist is not). I think this would cause people to try to get the least well defended-against and least well resisted combination, but then that might be a close call between several different options, and might change over time or based on the type of baddies one fights.

Option B) Another idea, within the proposed system, would be to base the menu of possible graphics you get for any given power on the type (Physical, Thermal, etc). Since they've talked about having a 100% clean break between what the power does and what it looks like, and since there will likely be a limited menu of different possible graphics for each power, the type you choose could be the deciding factor there in terms of which menu of graphics effects you get for your attacks. Personally, I would still hold people to using the same type (Energy, Physical, etc) for a whole power set though, then MAYBE let a power here or there within a set go "rogue" and have different graphics, maybe, via use of an Augment or something like that.

Just thinking out loud, if I were to take "Burning Energy Ranged Attacks" for my Ranger, he'd do ranged attacks with various ranged single target attacks, ranged AoE effects, etc designed by the game devs, with secondary +DoT on most of them (perhaps one or two don't have it, and maybe one or two have ONLY DoT, etc). Then, when I go to pick the animations for my powers (that is, how the toon moves when powers are used) those are based on the fact that I'm in a "Ranged" set. When I go to pick the actual effects (fiery bolt, bolt of electrical-looking energy, bolt of some kind of generic "just energy of some kind", etc) I can then take the thing that most resembles what I would think of as "Radiation" and color it green and be done. And in that case, MY +DoT is because I just "irradiated" you for a short time causing you to a brief period of radioactive decay.

I could see that.

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For the record, of the Type

For the record, of the Type dictates the graphics menu for the powers, I'd avoid basing any resistances or defenses on it. There are plenty of secondaries and delivery modes for that (stun, KB, -def, AoE, single target ranged, melee, etc)

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Radica wrote:
Radica wrote:

Just thinking out loud, if I were to take "Burning Energy Ranged Attacks" for my Ranger, he'd do ranged attacks with various ranged single target attacks, ranged AoE effects, etc designed by the game devs, with secondary +DoT on most of them (perhaps one or two don't have it, and maybe one or two have ONLY DoT, etc). Then, when I go to pick the animations for my powers (that is, how the toon moves when powers are used) those are based on the fact that I'm in a "Ranged" set. When I go to pick the actual effects (fiery bolt, bolt of electrical-looking energy, bolt of some kind of generic "just energy of some kind", etc) I can then take the thing that most resembles what I would think of as "Radiation" and color it green and be done. And in that case, MY +DoT is because I just "irradiated" you for a short time causing you to a brief period of radioactive decay.

This is actually not too far off from the intended system.


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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Question: Is the Tanker type character choosing between powers that resist Stun versus those that do +DoT (what would have been smashing resistance and fire resistance in CoX) or are they choosing between Physical and Thermal?

I'm not a dev, but my assumption is that Mez effects would essentially be their own "damage type" independent of the damage type of the attack that applied the Mez. If you resist Mez effects, it doesn't matter mechanically if it's thematically a block of ice, a net, or horrifying visions of your parents conceiving you.

I would honestly assume most/all tanker or bruiser melee characters would have, and take, some power that will provide Mez protection (similar to CoX), but some sets or builds might stack either Mez protection or Damage Mitigation more.

As far as I am aware, there will be 3 forms of direct Damage Mitigation in CoT: Resistance, Avoidance, and Healing.

Resistance would be the only thing that is actually Typed against damage.

Avoidance might be typed against attack type (IE: Single target/AoE and Ranged/Melee) that is an independent attribute from damage type, even though certain powersets will necessarily have varying amounts of different attack types.

Healing, by it's nature, doesn't give too many damns about how the damage gets there, as it is focused on replacing the hit-points rather than preventing them from being lost.

This doesn't mean that there would only be 3 defensive powersets, as these mechanisms can be mixed together in various balances (think CoH's Dark Armor set that mixed defense, resistance, and healing, IIRC)

With regard to Mez: This is going off somewhat into a tangent, but I think it would be interesting if the Mez protection operated in line with the Primary defensive attribute of the defense set. IE: A resistance set requires more stuns to land before they take effect, the Defense set just prevents them from landing in the first place, and the Healing set reduces the duration of any given Mez so that they are unlikely to stack enough to take full effect. As a wildcard, maybe have a defensive set that *reflects* some damage and mez at the cost of reduced mitigation.

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Sand_Trout wrote:
Sand_Trout wrote:

As far as I am aware, there will be 3 forms of direct Damage Mitigation in CoT: Resistance, Avoidance, and Healing.

There is a 4th form of Damage Mitigation: HP Damage.

They can't hurt you if they're dead. Just Saiyan.

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Little Red Ragnarok wrote:
Little Red Ragnarok wrote:

There is a 4th form of Damage Mitigation: HP Damage.
They can't hurt you if they're dead. Just Saiyan.

Ha, yeah I know, along with debuffs and CC. I was tossing those into the "indirect" damage mitigation category.

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Sand_Trout wrote:
Sand_Trout wrote:

As far as I am aware, there will be 3 forms of direct Damage Mitigation in CoT: Resistance, Avoidance, and Healing.

I always preferred to call these Protection Schemes. That's because they aren't just protecting you against Damage, they're also protecting you against Mez.

One thing that I definitely would like to see done in City of Titans is to remove the "squishy" divide that City of Heroes imposed. Ideally, EVERYONE gets Mez Protection ... however ... it is something that you have to slot for in order to get more of it. That way, it becomes an investment choice, rather than a game mechanical bias that only favors one playstyle (melee) over another (ranged) due to being baked into the Powersets unequally. As soon as the *amount* of Mez Protection that characters can get becomes a variable, instead of a constant, you've got A Whole New Game on your hands.


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Radiac, I'd be surprised if

Radiac, I'd be surprised if COT allowed resistance type characters to pick powers that were so specific and limit them to that single damage type defense. (I'm using defense as a general term for power types that could be found in scrapper secondary sets) In COH a defense set was made of 3 core powers: defense against smashing/lethal, defense against what Redlynne calls elemental, which also usually included some defense against to toxic and psychic, and defense against mez. This was independent of the theme of the power set. There could also be some variation in how those powers enacted that defense resistance/defense/heal/debuff. I foresee COT doing the same. So long as each powerset comes with some defense against all the final damage types and mez then no resistance character will be substantially under performing any other resistance character through design. If a player chooses to slot their power representing toxic defense lightly and toxic damage is very common...well they are going to have a bad time, but that is their choice.

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If I were handing over

If I were handing over something to the designers of powers in sets, I would want to give them the freedom to combine several different things into one "Resistance" power. So like, instead of "Physical Resistance" you'd have a power that gives, say, "resistance to the type of damage that is associated with +DoT, +stun, +knockback, and maybe a few other things" all in one toggle or whatever. Then you can put several other resistances together in a different power. Different sets could have different groupings. Different sets could require you to take more or fewer actual powers in order to cover all the necessary avenues of attack you want resistance from.

I mean, you already have the ability to make these powers work differently, in terms of mechanics (toggle, passive, long duration click to activate, etc).

Another problem I'm having trouble with is the resistance sets themselves. If the game is separating the graphics and so forth from the mechanics, then you're not calling what was, in CoX Stone Armor by its old CoX name. You could, in practice, apply "stone-y looking" effects to any one of several different resistance sets now, so the unifying theme of those sets isn't going to be tied to the graphics. I guess if I were to call "Stone Armor" anything after removing all references to Stone, I'd call it "movement hampering damage resistance" or "so heavy it slows you down, but boy howdy do you get some resistance" Armor or something. Since all of the resistance sets offer resistance to damage in the powers, they're all the same in that regard, as far as naming sets goes. The only real differences between them will be what you have to give up to get that resistance, or how the resistance is applied, or something. I cringe at names like "Resistance that slows you" and "toggle-heavy endo-hog Resistance" though, so that bothers me a little at this point.

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Don't worry, each Protection

Don't worry, each Protection Set are first categorized by the playstyle they provide, then within each playstyle the are still given a theme for their operational mechanics. The names of sets and powers won't be boiled down in such a no-nonsense manner. Between the playstyle templates and theme mechanics there will be plenty of diversity between different types of sets and even within sets within the same playstyle.


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The purpose of having damage

The purpose of having damage types is to allow more breadth to the game play. It can help with the depth too, but that is first and foremost controlled by the game mechanics.

Having more damage types and resistances forces the player to make optimisation decisions. (if the players can maximise out all damage types then there is not really a point of having them in the first place).
The idea is that no single character can function optimally against all enemies. Ideally this forces players to consider different strategies against enemies that have a particular resistance against their primary attacks. This of course requires that the game mechanics have sufficient depth to allow this. Or players can opt to not specialise too far and be capable against all enemies, but not particularly good against any in particular.

City of Heroes did this, at least for the starting levels, but not too consistently well. Early on the powersets that were most affected by this weakness against specific enemy groups were the ones already suffering from slightly below average damage (illusion and psionic had a hard time against vahzilok and clockwork, while nobody had particular trouble with skulls and hellions or the second tier villain groups).

If damage types are going to be used like they are meant to (and I mean as more than flavour text), every power set needs to have opposing sets that it is slightly stronger against, slightly weaker against and indifferent to. There should never under any circumstance be an immunity, unless the specialisation can early on start working on overcoming resistance against itself (many systems have something like 'mastery' for this). This way somebody who wants to specialise in one direction has a way to overcome high resistances and partial immunities. Or they can chose to pick a secondary set which gives more options but locks out the mastery (or at least its highest ranks).

The problem with games generally is not that there are too many damage types, but that they are unevenly applied. Typical failures are to have only some specialised damage types being resisted by certain enemy groups (making them highly undesirable for players). Or there is one or two damage type that does not get resisted much at all, making it the only logical power set for players, and then it has nothing in place to deal with (or allow!) bosses or high level villain groups that are given a high resistance or partial immunity to that one standard damage type. You then end up with a boss or group that is universally reviled because nobody has developed, or even given the tools, needed to deal with them. This is supposed to create a challenge most of the time, but in reality it is just frustrating for the players. Instead start with ghosts or similarly incorporeal enemy groups early on to teach players that physical damage is not going to be the best solution always either.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

...Between the playstyle templates and theme mechanics there will be plenty of diversity between different types of sets and even within sets within the same playstyle.

Infinite Diversity, in Infinite Combination. \\//_

We may not be able to go very far towards the "Infinite Combinations" (because of the need to balance them at least enough for PvE, which takes dev time), but if we have enough Diversity we won't notice. ^_^

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City of Titans is trying to

City of Titans is trying to decouple game mechanics from animations for Powers.

Why would we have to couple game mechanics (i.e. secondary effects) to specific Damage Types?

Or to put it another way ... there's more than one Damage Type out there that can do Damage Over Time ... it's not something that should be inherently/artificially limited to JUST Fire Only. Same deal with Slowing ... or Stuns ... or Endurance Drains ... or Accuracy Debuffs ... or ... you should get the idea by now (Obvious Point Is Obvious).

Now, tying the secondary effects into Powersets ... THAT makes sense! That way, you can have Powersets oriented around "themes" ... like Burning ... which do Damage Over Time ... and just leave it up to the Players to figure out the APPEARANCE (through animation choice and colors) of how that Power "manifests" and then pick which Damage Type best "fits" that conception of the way the Player wants the Powers to "work" for them. That way, the game's Mechanics function the same, regardless of Damage Type, and the whole Damage Type issue becomes something of a "style" choice ... much like Origins used to be.

It's the difference between doing arithmetic and algebra. The former solves only a single problem, while the latter, through the use of variable terms, solves ALL of the problems that yield that particular answer, simultaneously. Guess which system is the more powerful one that is used more widely for getting "real" work done. Go on ... guess.


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If the secondary effect that

If the secondary effect that is the theme of the power set (e.g. "Burning" which just means "+DoT") is also the thing that ends up getting Resistances pointed at it in other power sets (e.g. powers end up having "Burning Resistance", rather than Fire Resistance from CoX or "Thermal" Resistance from Red's list) then those secondary effects, call them "attack set themes" for lack of a better term, are , I would argue, the new "Damage Types" whether we call them that or not.

In CoX, if you had "Energy Resistance" you had resistance to the ranged attack set which did Knockback as a secondary effect. Note that "Resist Energy" DID NOT mean "Resist knockback". Knockback resistance was indeed a thing that existed, but it was a separate thing entirely. So even in CoX, Resist _damage type_ did not usually equate to Resist _secondary_effect_associated_with_said_damage_type_.

I fully expect that CoT will have some Resistance powers that are designed to resist status effects, and some secondary effects may end up being status effects. Let's say that the attack set that does +stun chance is called "Stunning" in CoT. To have Resist Stunning would not necessarily protect one from the +stun effects at all, only the hit point damage that those powers do. To have Resist Being Stunned would be a power that resists the status effect itself, which is something that is neither a Damage Type (from Red's list of 5) nor an "attack set theme" (e.g. Burning, etc) but rather just a resistance against something you'd want to resist.

But my original issue (which admittedly I already answered myself) was this: If the power sets are to be called "Burning", and the resistance sets are to be keyed off of a combination of things like "Burning" and also other things like status effects (e.g. the actual knockback itself) then clearly NEITHER of those categories of power sets (attacks or resistances) actually care whether you called your Damage Type "Energy" or "Physical". In that case, what purpose do labels like "Energy" and "Physical" actually serve?

Of course, my answer to this above was "Well, that's what determines the menu of graphics effects you get to choose from when you go to assign a graphics effect to the power. If you chose 'Thermal' when you made your toon, you get to choose between things that look like fire and ice shards and heat beams and freeze rays, etc every time you pick a new power from that set."

Is that pretty much what you envisioned? If so, I apologize for being so dense as to have not noticed the obvious implication. If not, then what DO these "Damage Types" actually do, in your original formulation?

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If my supposition above is

If my supposition above is correct, i.e. that the choice of "Damage Type" determines the graphics menu, I would personally make people choose ONE Damage Type theme for a given power set, e.g. flames, and stick with it for that whole set. Now, that "Flames" graphics set might not make everything look flamey, per se, in fact you might have some other "fire-like" effects in there, like smoke, or embers, etc but you wouldn't see lightning arcs or ice shards in it at all either.

As such I would argue that you need more than 5 "Damage Types" in that scheme, because in reality, "fire" and "ice" and "lightning" and "generic energy" probably look different enough that we're making people choose ONE of those themes for each power set. Now, you'll have three different power sets, plus some other powers thrown in, so I doubt this will be a terrible constraint on people's creativity to limit them to one graphics theme per set, and even then you might even allow some amount of deviation from the chosen graphics theme (perhaps for IGC or Stars, perhaps in the form of an Set Augment or something) on occasion.

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Your suppossitions are

Your suppossitions are incorrect. "Damage Type" does not necessitate the exact graphics menu. The theme provides a guideline for the type of particle effects. There isn't any reason we must force players to choose one particular particle effect for their entire set - it will most likely be an option for the sake of ease, but players will also be free to choose any of the aesthetic options available to a set.
The damage types are more along mechanics. That's why stuff that burns have have one damage type, but so many aesthetic options. For a Burning Blast set you may have fire, lasers, electricity, stinging wind, acid, and many more.

The same applies for protection sets, they have a theme, but the theme doesn't necessarily dictate the damage type, only provides a loose set of guidelines. Sometimes they don't necessiate any damage type by theme, like making a set reliant on avoiding attacks instead of taking the brunt of them, or healing back damage. Those are more play styles which dictate the template, but within each of those could be a theme to the set which may provide additional guidelines to mechanic operations. Since we will have specific damage types, there will be specific protections toward those damage types. The appearances are completely separated from the function.


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Burning set is anything that

Burning set is anything that Excites molecules? (no bad puns plz)

Microwaves as well? :)

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To be clear, though I welcome

To be clear, though I welcome the information Tannim222 provided above, I was really more asking Red what the original, hypothetical plan was in reference to the list of 5 Damage Types which Red had proposed. What the actual game devs are working on might be COMPLETELY different from that, and I'm fine with it, I just wanted Red to clarify what Red originally had in mind concerning the 5 proposed Damage Types.

So my point was, if the 5 Damage Types proposed are what you get to pick when choosing a power set (in Red's hypothetical system), and if the intention is that those will dictate not the mechanics, but only the graphics of the powers, in THAT hypothetical case, wouldn't you want more than 5 Damage Types?

I mean, it makes no sense to me that you're giving people who choose "Thermal" the choice of both flames and ice shards as possible graphics for different powers in that same power set, but not lightning effects, because those would be included in "Energy", not "Thermal". It seems arbitrary that you'd be allowed flames and something else (e.g. ice), but not flames and everything else (e.g. a totally free choice). It would make the most sense, to me, to either have the "flames" graphics be it's own separate choice (once you choose flames, you have to use flames for the whole set), or to let people choose from among the much broader list of options available at large (flames for one attack, ice for another, lightning for another, etc). Packaging flame graphics and ice graphics together in a way that still excludes lightning and other stuff seems arbitrary and pointless to me, and I don't see any value added there. I can see an argument for letting people just use whatever graphics they want, within the limits of reason set by the devs, for each power. I can also see an argument for making people decide on ONE set of graphics for an entire power set, to make it look on-theme and coherent, etc. I cannot see any reason to box people into just "flames and/or ice" as an option, which option excludes lightning, laser beams, etc.

Now, going back to the 5 Damage Types proposed, if you want to give people COMPLETE freedom to choose graphic effects for sets, or for individual powers, then there's no need for a Damage Type label at all, or at least the game totally ignores it anyway. It doesn't affect attacks, resistances, healing, defenses, costume graphics, power animations, power graphics, etc. as far as I can tell. In that case you'd just be adding a label on the power set that tells you, the player driving the toon, that the power set is "Thermal" but the other players never get to see that, and the game doesn't ask for or use it in any perceptible way.

So I guess to boil it down, if the 5 Damage Types in the proposal by Red are to be the deciding factor in terms of graphics available for power, then I personally think you need more than 5 types, and if you do that, you're boxing people into one graphics theme for each power set. If the 5 Damage Types proposed are NOT the deciding factor in terms of graphics for powers, then they apparently serve no purpose at all, as far as I can tell. So from what I can gather, when it comes tot he proposed 5 Damage Types, there are either not enough of them, or else even having them in the first place is pointless. But again, this is all in reference to the hypothetical 5 Damage Types proposal Red proposed above, not the actual game, CoT.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

To be clear, though I welcome the information Tannim222 provided above, I was really more asking Red what the original, hypothetical plan was in reference to the list of 5 Damage Types which Red had proposed. What the actual game devs are working on might be COMPLETELY different from that, and I'm fine with it, I just wanted Red to clarify what Red originally had in mind concerning the 5 proposed Damage Types.
So my point was, if the 5 Damage Types proposed are what you get to pick when choosing a power set (in Red's hypothetical system), and if the intention is that those will dictate not the mechanics, but only the graphics of the powers, in THAT hypothetical case, wouldn't you want more than 5 Damage Types?

Wait ... what? I think you're trying to force a connection where none needs to exist.

I pick a "Burning" Powerset that has +DoT as a theme. Choice 1.
I pick a Damage Type for each of the Powers I take from that Powerset. Choice 2(.1 through .9). Note, the Damage Type is not for the entire Powerset, but individually chosen for each Power.
I pick an Animation for each of the Powers I take from that Powerset. Choice 3(.1 through .9). Note, the Animations are not for the entire Powerset, but individually chosen for each Power.

That way, I can do Mental Burning using pink/purple/white/green/whatever ... or I can do Thermal Burning using orange/yellow/red/green/blue/whatever ... or I can do Energy Burning using black/white/grey/indigo/cyan/dayglow green/whatever ... or I can do Chemical Burning using ash grey/foamy white/puke green/fuscia/whatever ... and so on.

City of Heroes did "Fire" or "Dark" for its DoT Powersets.
City of Titans could do ALL OF THEM (theoretically) using the system I'm proposing.

So what's the difference between a Katana/* Powerset and a Plasma Blade/* Powerset? With the system I'm describing, one could do Physical +DoTs (i.e. "bleeding") while the other does Energy +DoTs (i.e. "plasma burns"). The only limitation is the Player's creativity in coming up with "excuses" for how something works the way that it does, and making it look "convincing" enough using the available animations and colors.

Radiac wrote:

Now, going back to the 5 Damage Types proposed, if you want to give people COMPLETE freedom to choose graphic effects for sets, or for individual powers, then there's no need for a Damage Type label at all, or at least the game totally ignores it anyway. It doesn't affect attacks, resistances, healing, defenses, costume graphics, power animations, power graphics, etc. as far as I can tell. In that case you'd just be adding a label on the power set that tells you, the player driving the toon, that the power set is "Thermal" but the other players never get to see that, and the game doesn't ask for or use it in any perceptible way.

You miss.

I figure that Damage Types will be important in City of Titans, just like they were in City of Heroes. Different Foes will be vulnerable/strong against different Damage Types ... so what Damage Type(s) you pick will still matter. OVERALL, when averaged out over the entire contents of the game, it ought to be "a wash" ... but in individual fights it could still matter ... so the perspective of "scale" will make them matter. Big Picture, doesn't matter. Small Picture, could matter a great deal.

Radiac wrote:

So I guess to boil it down, if the 5 Damage Types in the proposal by Red are to be the deciding factor in terms of graphics available for power, then I personally think you need more than 5 types, and if you do that, you're boxing people into one graphics theme for each power set. If the 5 Damage Types proposed are NOT the deciding factor in terms of graphics for powers, then they apparently serve no purpose at all, as far as I can tell.

All or Nothing, eh? I think you're trending too far to the extremes in your statements and views here.

Radiac wrote:

So from what I can gather, when it comes tot he proposed 5 Damage Types, there are either not enough of them, or else even having them in the first place is pointless.

No, I'm pretty sure you missed something of minor importance ...


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Okay, so that we're on the

Okay, so that we're on the same page then, you ARE envisioning the 5 Damage Types as things one might have resistances to. Maybe not the only things, but there would definitely be "Thermal Resistance" specifically and there would probably NOT be "Resist Burning" then, is that right? To be clear, I'm thinking there may well be "Resist Knockback" as in you get knocked back less or not at all when KB powers hit you, and Knockback is not one of the 5 Damage types, nor are the various status effects one would want mez resistance to cover.

So the idea is for there to be resistances to the 5 Damage Types proposed, plus some other stuff, like Mez effects, etc, and none of that has any mechanical connection to the attack power secondary effect themes (e.g. Burning = +DoT).

Okay, I'm not against that I guess. I'm still a little uncomfortable with the idea that I'm picking a resistance power based not on the secondary effects of the attacks (e.g. Burning = +DoT) but rather on a completely arbitrary thing that people can choose seemingly at random for any reason or no reason at all. I guess we're assuming the devs will order the powers in the resistance sets such that we'll get the powers in an order that makes the most sense given the PvE environment of the game overall, like CoX did. So like, since low level thugs probably hit you with fists or rocks or sticks, you get Physical Resist as the earliest tanker primary power, then like way later on you might get Psionic Resist. This might cause PvP problems, depending on the level fo the engagement, but I personally don't care, so I'm not going to argue that side of it.

That said, if this is what the damage types do, I don't think having eight or ten or twelve or twenty damage types is problematic at all. Going back to the original post, I don't think fewer damage types is necessary to make the game "Simple" in the K.I.S.S. zeitgeist. I think the less "packaging together" you choose to do with the damage types, the less necessary the official groupings are. I mean, if you gave each of the top twenty conceivable power sources (e.g. Fire, Ice, Electricity, Toxic, Kinetic, etc) it's own existence in the game, then nothing would be handled under the umbrella of anything else and everything would just have it's own name and existence. I see nothing non-simple about that. It's a richer, more varied, more heterogeneous landscape of power types, and I think that's good complexity to have, not overly complex.
Calling Fire "Fire" means Fire is Fire, it's not some subcategory of Thermal or Chemical or Energy, etc. At that point, all you'd have to do is make sure that all types get resisted in one power or another by whatever resistance powers you make in the tanker primary sets. You don't have to give everyone Resist Fire and Resist Ice as a package deal, you could mix it up more, make different powers in different sets operate differently, etc. To be sure, the resistance powers would each have to bundle together more than one resistance type, or else you'd have to have like 20 different resistance powers, and I'm not proposing that. Maybe the devs want that amount of free design space to play with, maybe they don't. I honestly don't know.

If you were going to do it that way, like with more types, then giving each official type it's own graphics is probably the way to go, at which point you're tying the particle effects AND the resistance categories to the damage types.

They're likely going to add more types in over time, and will need to edit how the resistance powers handle that anyway, I think.

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Based on Tannim's statements

Based on Tannim's statements above, and correct me if I am wrong, the Damage Type will be locked into each of the powers contained within each powerset, similar to CoX powersets.

There may be sets with powers that do different damage types, or all abilities are split between different damage types, but as far as I'm reading, these will not be selectable by the player upon selecting the power.

As for the merits of this limitation, I believe that my OP addresses this. My coupling damage types to certain types of powers, the devs can create combat encounters that are either particularly difficult, easy, or a wash with regard to power-set, and design group combat so that all damage types are useful in different manners.

Decoupling damage type from other aspects of the powerset will, IMO, force the devs to design encounters to be more homogenized.

Here is an example of what Powerset/Damge-type lock allows:

There are two arbitrarily selected powersets, Blasting A and Blasting B. Blasting A does Type X and has lots of Single Target attacks. Blasting B does Type Y and has lots of AoE attacks.

There are 3 arbitrarily selected enemy factions: Thugs, Bots, and Abominations.

Thugs: Found in Open World for solo grinding. Large groups, but resistance to Type Y damage.

Bots: Also found in Open World for solo grinding. Smaller groups of stronger opponents, but resistance to Type X damage.

Abombinations: Hazard-Zone specific meant for group encounters. Large groups of Minions resistant to X damage with larger boss resistant to Y damage.

Result in terms of gameplay regarding 2 players, one who took Blasting A and one who took Blasting B: Either can solo the Open World groups reasonably easily because they either have an Attack Type or a Damage Type that takes advantage of that enemy group's properties. Time-To-Level might not be exactly the same, but neither player should feel completely out of their element for dealing with that group of enemies if called for.

If Set A is used on the Thugs, it can only really clear them out one at a time, but it bypasses most of their damage resistance. Alternately, if Set B is used on the thugs, they are somewhat resistant to the damage, but as there are a lot of them, the AoE aspect of the set ends up being more effective. The inverse is true for the Bots.

Meanwhile, the Hazard-Zone Abomination enemies encourage grouping because the Boss in vulnerable to the high single-target damage of Set A while the numerous minions are more resistant, making them a pain to deal with. Conversely, the Set B player could easily clear out the numerous minions with their AoE abilities to which the minions are also resistant to, but would have trouble with the singular boss that is resistant to their damage type. Therefore, the Set A and Set B players are best off pairing up so that the Set A player can focus on doing damage on the Boss while the Set B player clears out the minions.

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If you're talking about PvE I

If you're talking about PvE I think a certain amount of immersiveness and common sense ought to prevail in all cases. I mean, low level thugs with knives and bats aren't going to deal Cold damage when they hit you, for the most part. Some encounters will be easier and some tougher based on the design of the baddies, I'm sure. I'm not convinced that making all "Fire" damage be the kind that does +DoT matters in that scheme. It's really more a function of the design of the baddies isn't it? If a LOT of mobs in the game at large seem to have Resist Fire all over the place, then some people will tend to avoid Fire as a damage type for that reason, regardless of what secondary effect Fire does, I believe.

But as afar as I know, the only thing we know for sure is that there might be a "damage type" called "Burning" that does "+DoT" as it's trademark secondary effect. You could, in theory, take this power set and apply non-fiery looking effects to the attacks and call yourself "Icy McCold" if you want.

So a choice of different secondary effects for attacks exists (the list that includes "Burning", etc) and different particle effects exist for the powers as aesthetic choices (flamey, icy, lightningy, etc), and as far as I know, that's quite possibly all they'll actually have. Actually categorizing anything as "Fire" or "Cold" beyond that might be completely unnecessary. If that is all they are going to have, then I suspect the resistance powers will key off of the "Burning" etc list and that's that.

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Burning is not a damage type,

Burning is not a damage type, it is a theme to which indicates that the mechanic it leverages is damage over time and the aesthetics includes "stuff that can burn". Burning here is used more colloguially - that is not limited to 'fire' but stuff that can 'burn' in a very broad sense. Eventually, it will signify a damage type to players, but again, it is not the damage type. Protection powers are not keyed to protect against particular themes, they are designed to protect against attack mechanics, how the attack is delivered or what type of damage it does. We can design protection sets to be weaker and stronger toward specific damage types for damage and even specific effects other than damage.


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Okay, please don't divulge

Okay, please don't divulge anything you're not at liberty to divulge, but if Burning = +DoT is not a damage type, and there are in fact going to be damage types, what do those damage types do? From what you say, it would appear that they affect protection powers. That is, you'll never have a protection power that is specifically described as giving you resistance to Burning Attacks, but rather the power you take will be described in it's own description text to provide resistance to, say, Fire, which will exist as an official Damage Type, independent of themes like Burning. You COULD have a Burning power that does Fire damage, if you choose to, but you might choose to make your Burning attack do some other type of damage instead.

If all this is true, it leaves me wondering:

1. Will we be choosing damage types (e.g. Fire) for each power separately, or will it be a choice applied to a whole power set?

2. How does a power, or power set, acquire a damage type? Is it strictly through Set Augments, which had been mentioned (I think?), or do you just pick one when you pick the set you want?

3. When one has to choose what type of damage to apply to their power (or set), what sort of things will we want to think about when making that choice? Will it matter at all what type we choose in any predictable way in PvE?

4. Will some types be harder to access than others?

Again, anything you can't answer, don't.

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Damage types and thus

Damage types and thus protections towards damage types are designed within the powers of a power set. Your example of Burning+DoT is incorrect because Burning is a theme to which within that theme, the mechanic of damage over time is being designed into the set's powers. DoT therefore is a mechanic or an effect. Burning is just a theme to impart the conceptual mechanics and aesthetics. The aesthetics are customizable by players.

Players will not be choosing the damage type of their power(s). Your example of choosing a type like "fire" does not apply.
There may be Power Set Augments - that is a special augment which can be placed into the Power Set Socket which can 'augment' your set's damage type. It was an example given from our update on Augments and Refinements. However, that specific type of set augment has to be tested for viability and how it impacts performance so don't expect it at launch, it is just a possibility.


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Okay, so the damage types

Okay, so the damage types that attacks do, and the damage types protected against by powers which do that, are hard wired into the powers themselves, by the devs, at time of design, and not chosen by us players, ever, except MAAAYBE when there's a Set Augment for that, which might or might not actually happen. If I have that right, that's fine with me. I feel like I understand now.

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So to me it sounds like there

So to me it sounds like there is only "damage" since burning is a mechanic of applying "damage" and fire is the theme, or simply aesthetic, of the "damage." Am I missing the mark here or is that accurate?

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Damage types and thus protections towards damage types are designed within the powers of a power set. Your example of Burning+DoT is incorrect because Burning is a theme to which within that theme, the mechanic of damage over time is being designed into the set's powers. DoT therefore is a mechanic or an effect. Burning is just a theme to impart the conceptual mechanics and aesthetics. The aesthetics are customizable by players.
Players will not be choosing the damage type of their power(s). Your example of choosing a type like "fire" does not apply.
There may be Power Set Augments - that is a special augment which can be placed into the Power Set Socket which can 'augment' your set's damage type. It was an example given from our update on Augments and Refinements. However, that specific type of set augment has to be tested for viability and how it impacts performance so don't expect it at launch, it is just a possibility.

I'm a little fuzzy on this now, actually.

So far, it seems that we know:

A) "Burning" means "Does +DoT", and Burning is a "theme", and +DoT is a "mechanic", neither are damage types

B) Players will not normally have a choice of different "damage type" options for their powers. Those will be hard-wired into the powers themselves in such a way that when you pick a power, you'll know what "damage type" it does and you'll have to take it or leave it based on that knowledge.

From this it sounds like the "damage types" might include things like "Ranged AoE" and "Single Target Melee", and similar such stuff.

To Tannim222: Without divulging anything that would be a verboten spoiler, can you give us an example of a "damage type" as you used the term above?

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A is correct.

A is correct.
B where damage type a fixed design part of the power is correct.
Ranged AoE and Single Target Melee are not damage types. They are types of attacks or delivery methods of attacks. Now our attack mechanics to recognize if an attack is melee, ranged, or area effect for the purposses of delivery and for powers which allow for attack avoidance. You can refer to the old game for how defense protected against melee, ranged, or area effect by helping to avoid being hit.

I cannot give an example of a specific damage type for this game at this time. We do have them is all I can say.


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Okay, fair enough, thanks.

Okay, fair enough, thanks.

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I don't know. I do feel it

I don't know. I do feel it should be kept simple at the same time, I'd like to see some things become a bit more thematic.

In the superhero genre, blunt force trauma, is often, highly resisted. :p Super heroes can just take a beating well. So, that would likely make smashing damage often higher resisted than lethal.

One of the complaints I had with CoH was how Smashing and Lethal (on PCs) was always equal protection. Should be different depending on the defense set. Invulnerability would be equal, but Durability for instance may be way high on smashing, but lower on lethal.

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Brand X wrote:
Brand X wrote:

I don't know. I do feel it should be kept simple at the same time, I'd like to see some things become a bit more thematic.
In the superhero genre, blunt force trauma, is often, highly resisted. :p Super heroes can just take a beating well. So, that would likely make smashing damage often higher resisted than lethal.

I disagree within the context of the game. Regardless of a CoX character's Smashing resistance, it would take a good number of sledgehammer blows, medium-velocity chunks of concrete or stone, and/or superhumanly strong punches to put them down. The fact that the character's hit-points allowed them to take a sledgehammer to the head and keep fighting already demonstrates sufficiently super durability. Even Defenders and Controlers could take normally lethal amounts smashing damage of damage (from which they had frequently 0% or close to it DR) without serious concern.

Quote:

One of the complaints I had with CoH was how Smashing and Lethal (on PCs) was always equal protection. Should be different depending on the defense set. Invulnerability would be equal, but Durability for instance may be way high on smashing, but lower on lethal.

I think this was due to the fact that defensive players have to be very well rounded in their defenses in order to effectively serve in their role of "meat shield" against a highly variable group of enemies.

However, I agree that the common pairings of Smashing/Lethal and Fire/Cold damage resistances was a bit silly, though in my proposal I point out that as these are going to be almost always be paired, why not merge them and reduce unnecessary complexity.

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I always wanted to call

I always wanted to call `Smashing` damage, `Pressure` / maybe `Force` trauma... Maybe i watched too much Law and order. ;D